I wanted to install solar when I bought my home.
The home I ended up getting had a beautiful oak tree probably several hundred years old. Which is directly blocking most of my roof on a small lot.
Not much sun to be had.
this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2026
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I mean it does sorta save you money on cooling via shade
They are saying our utilities are projected to go up 40% in the next five years. My electric bill is already getting close to $400. I am wondering how I am going to pay when it is close to $600 as money is already tight.
400??? Holy fuck. Are you running the AC with the windows open? Or is your house 5000 sq ft? You need an energy consultant more than anything. How much insulation do you have? And no, a paper towel stapled into a wall doesn't count. I'm also taking a wild guess that your windows are single pane from the 60's and don't close all the way?
Lol I don't even use it for heat or cooling. 10 people live here and it is a big house with 5 bdrm and 3 bath. We live on an island and have to pay diesel surcharge to maintain a diesel power station in case the hydro power fails. We also have a water pump which probably adds to it.
My heating fuel has been as high as $700 in one month in winter. A friend pays over a thousand because their house is not insulated properly.
That is why it is scary when they talk about rates going up. I am already making hard decisions about what to eat. There isn't wiggle room for continuous rate increases. We will obviously find a way, but it sucks for sure.
Tired
Americans hit with record high everything due to capitalism and fascism.
Got that $300bn Iran bill to pay...
Yeah, I have tried to keep my central AC off as much as possible. My power bills over the past year have been insane.
Wonder how those cheap construction Texas McMansions with the huge foyer and high ceilings will fare. Some of the largest power bills I ever had were from when I lived in Texas, and that was in a pretty small place.
I just saw a YT clip about how the 25 y/o McMansions are all falling apart.
There's also that privatized power grid that's never been a problem
use (ceiling) fans & turn the AC down. way down. heat rises. make the high ceilings work for you not against you. just like they did in the 1920's.
Honest question: doesn't a ceiling fan blow the hot air back down around the house?
logical fallacy..
They are reversible so you can change the direction... which I should do right now!
Not me, I put in solar panels 5 years ago.
I put up panels last year, made the cut off for the federal rebate. I filed my taxes the first week of February and I'm still waiting for my return. They asked for a few documents back in may that they already had, no one will give me an answer. Theyre holding my money hostage.
Our solar panels are probably the best investment we ever made. Year to year our electric bill averages out to zero, even with charging our EV. Over the summer our batteries participate in our electric utilities virtual power plant program, which pays us around $2000 each year for the excess electricity we provide. And our state has a renewable energy program that pays us for every megawatt our panels generate, no matter what it’s used for.
You are lucky....in Florida , FPL actively fights residents installing solar and have insurance companies refusing to give windstorm insurance if panels are installed.....which is not an option if you have a mortgage.
Fuck FPL
Could you install them on land instead of the roof?
electricity companies will just start raising prices for connecting to the grid just to make sure they aren't losing any money from you.
Snip snip, motherfucker
In many states it's illegal to not connect your solar panels to the grid, because fuck you, they own the politicians and will ensure they take your money one way or another.
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No fucking shit. It's not even mid summer yet, and we keep our ac set as high as health conditions allow. Damn thing runs almost non stop with this old, busted ass house
Might cost you less to seal some windows or something than the cost of running the AC 24/7
Other than two windows and one door, we did that back a while. The one door isn't a factor since it's off a porch that has a door that is sealed. The one window is in a wall that looks out into that room lol. That room started as a porch, then got closed in. The other is a big window with just old school panes. Sealed around that as best as possible, but it is what it is.
This house hit 100 recently. It's leaky all over. We've been chasing little things over the years, and it's better than it used to be. Way better lol. I need to drag it ass in the attic and see what else I can do, but the ass I need to drag is old and crippled up lol. And that means fixed income that's disgustingly low, so hiring someone is out if it isn't an emergency.
But, yeah, I do need to go around the stuff I canreach and patch things up.
You forget that American houses, especially lower class ones, are made out of practically cardboard or literally foam. While sealing can help a decent amount most older homes are lucky to have R10 insulation total from drywall to whatever external sheeting exists. Even now most new construction only has to be R15.
That means at best you'd be running the AC 24/7 during the summer months if you live in the 80% of the US that gets above 32c for days at a time.
To be fair, OP said their house is "old and busted". I live in a century old farm house so I know old and busted.
We run our furnace fan sometimes when it gets hot out as our dug basement stays cool so it'll blow that cold air through our house. But we have made sure to seal windows better, use black out curtains on the south side of our house (Where the sun tends to be most of the summer) and do what we can without needing to use our Heat Pump or AC units.
plant shade trees to the south and wait a few years for them to grow?
Working on it! We have a small hill on the south side that leads to our south hay field. We want to start growing stuff on that hill in the next year or two.
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I wish I had foam. My house was built in the 1920s and as such has plaster walls over lath, with a layer of studs behind and asbestos siding over the exterior sheath. Did you notice what's missing from that list? That's right: Insulation!
I insulated the shit out of my roof when I had the ceiling out of the second story (there is no attic), but the walls basically may as well just not be there as far as the season's temperature is concerned, whatever it is. Somehow, some way, I'm going to have to stab holes through the plaster and blow in some insulation material. The bottoms of the exterior walls are literally open into the basement, though, so I have some work to do down there first.
On the bright side, this place was built back when they were still using real timber so it's probably not going to fall down until much later after all of the other new construction around here.
Yeah short of the insulation blowing between the studs like you said with stabbing holes ... The other option is just replacing the plaster and lath at some point and when you do blowing insulation then. That's a huge remodel though.
There's definitely pros and cons to older houses, I bet if it's made of those materials it has a cool layout and flavor.
I live in a place that was built up through the late 80s through mid 90s so the houses have a lot of variety. Feels like once the 00s hit and especially the 2010s single family home neighborhoods all became the same house copy + pasted.
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