I used to drive a Sienna until it rusted out from under me. The AWD rarely kicked on, but the ground clearance was a PITA. Lift it up an inch or two and it's a great vehicle for VT.

the mental gymnastics here is impressive

Is that a Tesla! /s

Most brands do

just providing my experience with sienna. AWD was nice living up in elevation on a dirt road. The 3rd flat tire in freezing temps made us drive to dealership and get a forerunner.

Really depends on the road you live on and roads you travel often. If you’re not going up mountains and rough dirt roads you should be fine in terms of ground clearance.

Depending on the SUV, the minivans may have comparable ground clearance. If the SUV you currently have has AWD and not 4WD, there's a chance the Siennas AWD system is better as well. Plenty of people drive FWD or RWD sedans and hatchbacks during mud season. I wouldn't worry about it too much. I'd recommend test driving all the vehicles you are considering and looking into the ground clearance as well (Sienna 6.3", Pacifica AWD 5.4"). I'd also recommend the Sienna over the Pacifica for reliability reasons.

Very cool, did he use a lift kit or just upgrade the tires?

Awesome, this sounds like the best of both worlds.

I would generally avoid Chrysler products.

Toyota beats Subaru for reliability..

You can easily and cheaply find a compatible spare online or at a junkyard. Not a big enough issue to discount the sienna entirely.

I have a coworker who has a Sienna AWD van, he put slightly taller AT tires on it so it lifted the ground clearance about an inch. He drives it all over for camping and stuff. He loves it.

Is you want a vehicle that's great it all seasons then get a Subaru. There is a reason so many Vermonters drive them

get a lift kit and some 44's it'll look awesome and it'll have the clearance! (actually just posted due to a similar dilemma so I can find it

I do fine with my Honda Civic. You'll be OK with a 4WD anything.

A friend does have a sienna and it works super well. They have lots of traction.

Edit for my pedantic friend: AWD not 4WD

After having a sienna I wouldnt due to the fact that there was no spare tire. Suffered several flats and traded it in.

[deleted]

Looks like in 2022 we used roughly 450 gallons. This includes a 40 gallon water heater that was roughly 12 years old and replaced with a new one in November, a forced air furnace, and our stove. About 1800SF of heated space that is mostly poorly insulated. We switched over to heatpumps for the majority of our heat this winter so when taking that in to account we would probably average closer to 600-700 gallons depending on the winter.

In the summer the propane is only running our hot water and stove so the usage from about april to october is maybe 150 gallons.

Ha! Me too!

Vermontbackcountrycottages.com great cottages with outstanding views and centrally located.

6-8 gallon in winter zero in summer

We refill our 300gal tank once a month from November to March or so. Usually I fill when it gets down to 25% and they usually only fill to 75%- so that’s about 150gal per month.

Once winter is done we will go the entire summer without refilling. So probably 150gal between May and October. March to May it really depends on the year.

House is 2400sqft, we have a small wood stove in our addition with vaulted ceilings so the wood stove mostly just heats that room but on a mild day it will heat the whole first floor. Woodstove runs pretty much 24/7 from November until March. Otherwise we have baseboard heat and our hot water comes off our boiler as well. We don’t do anything else with propane (cook, run generator, etc)

This is a great idea! Whenever I book an Airbnb somewhere I try to find out if the owner is a local or at least lives in the state, I want to support the area I am visiting as much as I can. I booked a place on lake Seymour and the host was a native Vermonter, I said YES! immediately.

May 2022 to November 2022 I used <100 gallons, then used ~550 gallons between Nov 2022 to April 2023.

This year I've used ~170 gallons between June and mid-December, and last I looked at my tank a couple of weeks ago, there's another ~150 gallons used there.

House is ~2600 sq ft, kept at 60 F constant. Except for when we had a visitor from the tropics who needed their room at medium rare temps for a few days.