Big Fatty's BBQ in White River Junction - you can pop across the street and grab yourself a delicious growler of River Roost on your way out.

Was this the home that had the basement full of sand or something that stores the heat from the summer in some way?

Vermont doesn’t have a concealed carry license? It’s a constitutional carry state.

What do you think "a difficulty in life" means if not "economic hardships"?

Some joke about, if you are 5-10 years out, you should start scheduling now, tradespeople in new England are.pretty slammed, lol.

I've been interested in passive solar for decades, ever since I read an old backwoods home magazine article, about a couple who built one in northern Michigan, that was designed to store a years thermal energy so it averaged out the yearly temp, not the daily. This article has lit a fire under me to do more on it. Been thinking how to convert my house here in Vermont.

> As long as there are parties involved, I don’t believe there will ever be more than two viable candidates. The current system allows for more than two parties but human nature is to align with others, that share similar beliefs to maximize power, which is always going to lead to 2 groups only.

Actually, no. The two party system is 100% due to our current voting system and how it works, not just simple human nature. This is a fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-past-the-post_voting

Under "Effects on political parties and societies", it mentions Duverger's law. Essentially, the two-party system only exists because of this style of voting. Ranked hcoice won't totally eliminate it, but it'll remove a few of the contributing factors such as the spoiler effect (see: ralph nader taking some of Al Gore's votes, making Bush win even though Nader voters would have preferred Al Gore).

> If everyone was an independent and not beholden to a party platform

then people would start grouping those independent people as "gun supporters", "socially liberal", etc etc, until you've got a list of labels that describe a general group of people. you've not got parties again. having political parties grouped around general beliefs is unavoidable: having only two of those parties dominate, however, IS avoidable.

Either way I think we got it good, we have a good mix of red and blue and most "hot topics" we settle on something that makes everyone happy. Glad we dont have the major drama big states have, whether my neighbor votes blue or red they're still my neighbor ❤

It also has More people. So more places for shitty people. Compared to its surrounding towns. Other towns are smaller or have wealthier people or are college towns or resort towns. Rutland also has a train station used by drug dealers who set up shop locally.

Sounds like Rutland needs another type of train station....

Checks out

thank you for your help, I’m not trying to fully insulate the basement just trying to strike a balance between reducing heating costs, having a warmer floor during the coldest days and not spending a lot of money. I’m also thinking it would help avoid a sticking point when I sell since I can get this done for about $600 and insulation and maybe $30 for a painters suit, goggles and mask.

This sucks so much. Seeing the bald eagles around Ludlow is awesome and it sucks that some idiots would fuck with them.

Yeah, makes sense. Good stuff. I know in the future if we have an addition made for a first floor bedroom, we may consider stick built on a slab, so great to hear about options for construction! Thanks for all the info.

The vast majority of people do not commute my bike and do not want to commute by bike. You would need a robust bus system for this to work we have nothing of the sort plus we have a severe lack of blue-collar labor in this state. You’re talking about needing hundreds of blue-collar workers to drive trains and buses and considering how poor the wages are in the state on average I doubt a lot of people are going to move here to drive a bus.

That’s still a very tight house, nice work!

It depends on the builder/architect/engineer. I like to treat the interior wall as non load bearing and stagger it from the exterior. More thermal break makes me feel good and then we can make the stud layout an even 16” from one corner on the inside so drywall and trim are easy. Realistically if the wall is 10” thick you still get an r12 break wirh aligned framing and the total r value is only knocked down by 5% or less.

As long as there are parties involved, I don’t believe there will ever be more than two viable candidates. The current system allows for more than two parties but human nature is to align with others, that share similar beliefs to maximize power, which is always going to lead to 2 groups only. If everyone was an independent and not beholden to a party platform, that would give people more options to choose somebody that is most closely aligned with your personal beliefs.

Rail service to Boston has a lot more utility than rail service in Vermont. BTV doesn’t have a direct flight to Boston anymore and the last time they did it was a nine seat prop plane that canceled more often than it flew, could not fly in bad weather or cold weather plus it wasn’t even cheap. Between the hassle of getting through an airport and wondering if your flight is going to leave on time or be canceled the train starts to make sense for shorter trips.

That’s because the vast majority of people would still use the roads. Let’s say I live in Saint Albans, I don’t but I think it’s a good example. It’s about 35 minutes from Saint Albans to the airport, it’s a similar amount of time to most of Burlington and South Burlington. If I hop in my car 40 to 45 minutes before I start work I’ll generally be fine. Now if I’m commuting by rail I have to get to the rail station whenever there’s a train that will get me to work on time and it’s unlikely for most people but that time will be convenient. I will then need to transfer onto a bus or more likely more than one bus to get where I’m going. So not only am I at the mercy of whenever the train is running I have to assume that the buses will be on time plus I will still have to walk since my job being on the bus route is no guarantee. Then all of this Hass to be done in reverse and again the buses and trains will likely not sync up with a lot of peoples start and end times. I don’t know about you but the last thing I want to do when I’m done working is spend an hour or two trying to get home when I could’ve done so in 35 minutes. I’m tired, my feet are tired and having to walk to a bus stop then stand outside in the cold hoping the bus comes by is not something I want to do.

Barre has tons of great restaurants. The Meltdown and Cornerstone are also fantastic places to eat in Barre.

Old Stone Museum Brownington is pretty awesome. I grew up near Proctor and the Vermont Mable Company now owned by OMYA. Proctor has impressive marble buildings and a neat bridge This is Old Stone Museum. Visit the Amish bakeries if you go.

https://preview.redd.it/kq2pewn0ngfa1.jpeg?width=3877&format=pjpg&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=1868fc69770ab5bf07340d9d3c8989d819ff1c7d

Not strict, go for it!

You want to insulate the floor system between 1st floor and bassment? Batts will work, I’d go with mineral wool since it’ll hold its shape better and mice hate it vs fiberglass.

Perfectly said!!!

i went to brandon and got robbed BRANDON IS A BAD TOWN

For sure...I seem to recall my house fell in the 0.5-0.75 ACH50 range, which is pretty tight. Interesting to know that foam prices have risen so much. We paid as much for the SIPS as we did for the timber frame (About $30K for frame and $30K for SIPS in 2019 prices)

Is the double stud scheme staggered? It's pretty fascinating how much the state of the art changes in building tech...seems like so much is pretty much built using legacy techniques still.

> I don’t see two party rule as any more of a problem than 3 party rule.

You think that having fewer viable options is the same as having more viable options? I'm not sure how to respond to that. That's pretty ridiculous. If you don't like the mainline dem/rep candidate now, you're fucked. If there were 5 options, you could have someone your beliefs more closely aligned to to vote with.

It's not "5 party rule" at that point. That's just having five different candidate options. Maybe some are the same party, maybe they aren't.

Don't underestimate the NIMBY ability of Vermonters. If the noise argument doesn't work, they'll find some endangered Aphid, or a wetland that nobody previously cared about, to use as leverage to prevent this kind of development.