You can set up automatic payment to zero the balance every month. It makes it easier to not forget to pay the bill.

This should be an inspirational poster glued to all tree trimmer's trucks, by law, with penalties for not doing it.

The latest remodel for the Orange Cumberland Farms was to take down the canopy over the pumps. I feel like more of a man, out there gassing up my truck in the falling rain and snow. Not really, I go to anywhere else but the East Main Street Cumbys.

One's birth year being the destination for time travel makes one feel like a time traveler. For example, the movie Back to the Future. I was a baby during the 1950's.

Connecticut seems to have a program to recycle mattresses for free.

https://mattressrecyclingcouncil.org/programs/connecticut/

New rules like the mattress ban take some time for the disposal system to adjust and become something people can live with. Returnable bottles and cans were a big hassle for people at first, but somehow people adjusted. Getting mattresses that don't need to be replaced as often, or that easier to throw out, might start to enter into people's purchasing decisions.

I just paid $8,900. With a $10 k rebates, so $18,900. For three mini splits to heat and cool a 1700 sf house.

Sandri in Greenfield did it.

I heat with wood anyway, this is back up. It's a good deal for a heating system for when (if ever) I go away over night.

I agree. When I was born CO2 was at 316 parts per million. It's now at 420 parts per million. The small aberrations that we notice, cooler or hotter, don't mean that much compared to the huge cluster fuck we are perpetrating.

The rebate is from National Grid in Massachusetts. I don't know about other programs.

I had Samsung mini splits installed in December, because of the $10,000. rebate. The cost to use them will be zeroed out by the 33 solar panels on the roof.

When building a new building, make it work for solar panels. The mini splits then become the obvious choice.

I agree that it would be better if people saw themselves as fellow people first, and Americans second. Name calling is just tearing down a culture that might be a little different from ours. We won't come together when we are shouting, even in quiet conversation, like we have here on Reddit. I have seen the best minds of my generation degrade themselves by being better than citizens of other states. For example, Vermonters calling outsiders "flatlanders". We need to love each other, and that only happens when we want to be together. Let's try to respect other state's citizens better, try to understand them, and feel free to comingle our culture with theirs.

Except New Hampshire. Let's build a fucking border wall, with one way doors in it that let people go north, not south.

Watching 617 shrink was a lesson in politics.

617 used to extend westward to about where New Hampshire, Vermont, and Massachusetts meet. Each time 617 got too crowded, the less important people got a new area code. Now 617 is really small, but it includes Boston.

Who is "Energy Need Network" (OP)?

Greenfield has heroin and rough people if you know where to look, and go there. There's some projects on the edge of town, a sketchy bar, but it is nothing compared to cities in the eastern part of the state, or south in the valley. Greenfield is small enough that people know each other. There aren't streets you can't go down, because some gang owns them.

Greenfield tends liberal, community oriented. Go sit in Greenfield market for lunch, and see who shows up. I always see people I know there from around the county.

There are a lot of people who live in older housing stock north of Main Street who chose a lifestyle not as dependent on cars.

Look at air source heat pump electric hot water heaters.

Heating water to heat your water isn't as efficient as heating your water.

The boiler is expensive. Save wear and tear on it by using it less.

I used to heat the water off a gas boiler. Now the boiler sits there as a back up to to minisplits, which are a back up for the masonry heater. Solar panels mean no electric bills, no more gas bills, either.

We can call him names, but this political action is working with a certain percentage of the people in the United States. People like this have a lot of support.

Please get out and vote against politicians that would bring authoritarian government to the US.

Otherwise known as Philppston. Culturally, Phillipston is central mass, because the people that live there say "Westministah" an "Wistah".

Going westward on Rt 2, one encounters Orange, and Daniel Shays Highway, honoring Shays Rebellion. This rebellion, our lost cause we still mourn, defines us as Western Massachusetts.

Fortunately there don't seem to be any Shays Rebellion flags to put on our pick up trucks.

Talk to some local Mass Save contractors. They can do the work, and for a little extra, they will do work outside of the Mass Save contract. It's all legal, they aren't cheating Mass Save.

If you're in Western Mass, talk to Ideal Home Improvement. They can take up the floor. air seal insulate, and get Mass Save to pay for most of it. They have done this and a whole lot more to two of our family houses.

Four years ago in Mass the maximum size solar system I could put in was 10 KW, 33 panels.

I switched the gas dryer, gas stove, and gas hot water heater to electric. I bought electric space heaters to lessen the load on heating with wood.

I still make more electricity than I use. In the shop I run three phase woodworking equipment off a 20 horse power phase converter, that has a 70 amp breaker. The good thing about being hooked to the grid is that I can start up things like that.

I think I produce less carbon pollution by being hooked to the grid. I don't carry excess capacity to support peak loads. At the same time, I don't waste electricity by storing it. The back up is several generators, remotely wired into the buildings, with interlock cut outs to prevent back feeding. We regularly lose power for days at a time.

Find out what the rules are from your insurance company, and follow them.

Liability from an uninsured accident can be huge, like covering someone's legal and medical bills.

Hog butchering time brings back fond memories of spending time at my grandparent's house when I was a child.

My grandparents had a large cast iron kettle that had been passed down through the family for generations. On hog butchering day we would haul it out of the barn, hang it from a tripod, and build a fire under it. The kid's job was to fill it with 100 gallons of water, and feed the fire with slab wood from the saw mill.

The uncles would kill the pig and hoist it on the hog hoist to collect the blood. The aunts would start processing parts. Us kids would run away in terror. That night there would be a big dinner for everyone with t e best parts of the hog, plenty for everyone.

My suggestion is to get busy and have a lot of children by any means in order to have help hauling and heating the water.