The Household Chronicle

Practical guidance, without the sales pitch.

A corner of the house

Environment

Practical guidance, without the sales pitch.

6 pieces gathered here

  1. A wall-mounted home battery unit in a garage with metal conduit running up to a disconnect box beside it
    A Battery on a Small Ranch House Earned Its Place on Three DaysA household added storage to an existing array and then watched it do almost nothing for most of a year, which is the ordinary and slightly misleading result.
  2. A string inverter and metal conduit mounted on the exterior wall of a house beside a gray electrical disconnect box
    The Solar Proposal, Line by Line: Which Numbers Are Facts and Which Are ForecastsA residential solar proposal mixes verifiable specifications with modeled projections and prints both in the same typeface. Separating them takes about an hour.
  3. Rows of solar panels mounted on a residential asphalt shingle roof, seen at a low angle across the ridge line
    The Payback Figure on a Solar Quote Is the Least Reliable Line on the PagePayback is the number every household reads first and the one built from the most assumptions, several of which nobody involved can actually know.
  4. A roll-off dumpster on a residential driveway, half filled with broken drywall and old cabinet carcasses, with plywood under the rear rail
    A Dumpster, a Hauling Crew, or Your Own Truck: What Each Costs on a RemodelDebris removal is the line most often left out of a remodel budget, and the three ways of handling it are priced on three completely different things.
  5. A residential asphalt shingle roof slope photographed from the ground, with the shadow of a mature bare tree falling across one end of it
    Thinking About Solar? Two Things on Your Own Roof Can End the Conversation EarlyAn hour spent on your own roof before anyone quotes it will tell you whether the project is worth pursuing, and occasionally that it is not worth pursuing yet.
  6. A garage corner stacked with four worn car tires, a rolled mattress leaning against the wall, and an old refrigerator with its door removed
    Paint, Tires, a Mattress, and a Dead Refrigerator: Where Each One Is Supposed to GoFour items that will not go in a regular bin, four completely different systems for getting rid of them, and one sequence that keeps the total cost down.