• positioned myself to interrupt staring and acknowledged I was aware of their staring

• Yes

• Family handled

Edit: you asked, I responded. There was additionally a lot of context surrounding each situation

Good luck finding a carpenter who is free to do any work within a year. They are all a year plus out. And all wishy washy if they will do it.

Land costs are crazy, and if a lot comes on the market, builders snatch them up if the price is moderate. We replaced our failed septic system this past year for $45K, so that shows you what they can cost. You might be able to put some sweat equity by doing some work yourself, but that doesn’t touch the cost of materials. Good luck finding a general contractor. And I’m still hearing about substantial delays in getting needed materials.

I looked at a full off grid solar vs bringing grid to cabin. Costs were roughly equal, I had to out in five poles and trench 100m. Ended up Going grid with intention of adding panels down the road to offset costs.

Costs being equal, ultimately there are a few things that dont do well with solar, hairdryers, toasters and certain powertools, and for me someday I’d like to put in a hot tub which you cant really do on battery power. To truly be off grid you generally will need to make some changes and sacrifices to things most people take for granted.

Having said all that we were fully off grid solar before and ran a generator to run tools and charge batteries when necessary in winter and it was not bad.

How the hell did it get so expensive to build a house?

We have a ~1000sqft cabin built in 1975 that's perfectly serviceable for now. But, we're going to build something new in the next 5-10 years. We'll be using a log cabin fab company, and they bring in the crew to build it if you desire. Sure beats waiting for 3 years and paying $450 a square foot.

I can assure you what you think you know about this is not true. They have an excellent culture

I work At Rutland happy to help answer questions. Feel free to DM

We had the largest array of panels that were legal along with 4 Tesla battery banks installed in our home. This system cost approximately 60k before tax incentives. In the summer we make %200+ the amount of electricity needed. These end up being tax credits later when you don't make enough. In December, January, February and even March there are days where we are only making %10 of what is needed. Having a tank in the ground that feeds a generator is the only way that we found that makes it capable of being completely off grid if we wished. To answer your question with everything available now, there isn't a viable option to be completely self sustaining and live a modern electric hungry life.

http://www.agricolavermont.com/

If you zoom in on the map, there are several VT listings

More unaffordable, unfortunately.

Did you call them out on it?

Built a ~ 1300 sq ft house (above ground sq ft)with finished basement (~600 sq ft). Cost a total of 350k to build without cost of the land. 100k was excavator work (septic/driveway/drainage/basement hole etc) 250k was materials and labor. I did a lot of the work myself with friends and hired a builder to put up the shell (walls, roof, decks). This was in 2012.

Maybe I'm biased but Ludlow Village Pizza has always been more than just a generic pizza joint to me. Back when the Katsanos' used to own it, it was best. Their son is still making pizza over in NH.

Even just a garage is costing 40-50k to build, and a long wait time to.

I don't. Personally, I can count the number of people I know with home wind turbines on the fingers of no hands.

This interesting read might be a good place to start: https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41219.pdf

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Building new is more expensive than buying existing, unless you are a contractor that can build it yourself. But 99% of us are not.

Wow that’s ridiculous

TLDR: costs around $400 -$450 a square foot plus the cost of land and a 2+ year wait time. So even a relatively modest house can set you back over 500k.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vermont/comments/w1z4cj/q_how_much_does_it_cost_to_build_a_house_in/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

If you do the work yourself it will be cheaper, otherwise probably more.

Worst part about building is needing to know heavy equipment people for the earth work. If you know some excavation folks it’s not as bad.

We saw a contractor who said that we could build and the house would be ready in February 2025. Price $350K for a 1200 sq ft on slab, no garage, not including the land cost.

You gonna do it yourself or wait 3 years for a contractor to be available?

I don't know which is worse, the fact that you thought about this three days later, or the fact that you think this bullshit helped your cause.