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Landandfarm hasn't helped much in the 2 locations I looked at but Zillow is coming in handy. Even though it's a little more than we can afford, this place was sounding good.....until I read the last line in the description.

 

Lost Hollow Rd

 

The week after Thanksgiving DH gets a couple of days off. It's been a while since we've taken a day trip. I think I'll print off some possibilities in case the weather is nice enough to drive to the mountains.

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i love cemetaries as neighbors. they are very quiet, don't collect old cars and washing machines and rarely turn into developments or strip malls. i think the price is very reasonable for that property.

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You've got a point there, rufftie. I haven't thought about it that way. If the cemetery isn't on the property, it might be a ways off too. But I would need to know if the "right of way" is private or public. I'm loving everything else about the place, especially the fact it has a barn & a couple of creeks. I agree it sounds reasonable but we need to stay within our budget. I did tell DH about it. He seemed interested. I'm not going to get my hopes up but I'm going to forward him the link. (He's at work right now.)

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Well, the realtor got back with me earlier this evening. Turns out the cemetery in on the property, not next to it. And it was public right of way. She said it was an old cemetery and probably wouldn't have much traffic but even though it wouldn't bother her, she wouldn't recommend us buying it. She said it would be a great vacation spot but not good for a retirement home. It was too far away from any medical facility and shopping for the elderly. She did send me a few other listings though. I think I'm going to like working with this lady. Thank you, Mark, for hooking me up with Zillow!

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Brenda, When I was looking out of town for a place I found Realtor.com really helpful. That and a realestate lady that I could call or email if I found a place that looked good. You can do an advanced search and put in a property size min. and price max. plus areas that you want to search. Without doing the advanced search there was way to much to look at.

 

They also have a thing where you can have new listings emailed to you that fit your criteria.

 

Good luck, it's a pain but so worth it. Just take your time and try not to get frustrated.

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... how about central NY state?

 

Aside from the snow (which isn't all that bad, really :)), we're under siege up here from the Marcellus Shale natural gas development boom, and the industry is heading north into central NY state just as soon as some environmentalist bumps in the road can be run -- err --smoothed over.

 

In Susquehanna, Bradford and Tioga counties of PA, property sales are stalled as we are the epicenter of the industry at present and it's not pleasant what with gas well construction, pipeline construction and a housing shortage due to an influx of worked for the industry, not to mention a very high volume of very large trucks and wide load equipment constantly on the move on roads and bridges never built for that kind of equipment and the noise of the drilling when a well lands nearby (not that is always a bad thing, but the price we are paying sometimes goes beyond cash redemption....

 

If you do buy property on either side of the NY-Penn border, it may well have a mineral lease attached that the owner is not going to be willing to part with and depending on what rights the seller assigned, your surface rights may have been affected as well.

 

If you are thinking about West Virginia, I understand the Marcellus shale reaches down through that state as well so my advice would be to do some careful research about the industry in the considered area. There's some big payoffs for some, but overall the community quality of life really suffers.

 

 

North Carolina and Virginia seem like better choices...maybe go for more land and less house? Two acres isn't very much for what you would like to do...

 

Liz

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We're so thrilled about the NG development in PA. Dominion is trying to put in a compressor station 1/2 from our house so they can pump more NG to a facility they are getting permission to use for export sales of CNG. It will increase our noise level to that of a busy highway 24/7 (2x-4x increase in sound volume). We don't even have residential NG in our area.

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We're so thrilled about the NG development in PA. Dominion is trying to put in a compressor station 1/2 from our house so they can pump more NG to a facility they are getting permission to use for export sales of CNG. It will increase our noise level to that of a busy highway 24/7 (2x-4x increase in sound volume). We don't even have residential NG in our area.

 

And they say it will help to reduce our dependence on foreign oil (she says wryly). I'm all for that, but let's help the community impact as well. There are things you can do as a community to reduce the noise if your local planning commission will help. I can't find the resource at the moment, but Penn State has some good suggestions -- one presentation showed a compressor station disguised as a barn and heavily insulated to reduce the noise, plus it looks better on the landscape. (Slide 17 on this presentation...www.blm.gov/bmp/.../WO1_VRM_BMP_Part_4_Slideshow.pp. )

 

Liz

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to go way off topic - west virginia, a beautiful state, is , and has been for some time, being pillaged for it's abundence of natural resources. as a small, poor state, jobs and money are often welcome even though the we know what the consequences may be. it's not always black and white. we all want jobs to support our families, we all want tons of energy, cheap, and we would love to be independent of foreign oil. most of us want a better envioronment. how to acheive all of these things is complicated and expensive. and even though WV is a hot bed of coal, shale, windmills, power plants and power lines, i'd say over 85% of all that energy is sent elsewhere- PA, MD, VA, DC, NY etc.

jumping off soapbox now, slightly blushing.

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There are things you can do as a community to reduce the noise if your local planning commission will help.

Fed regs require an average day/night sound level not exceed 55dBa; that means 1/2 of the time it will be louder and 1/2 of the time it will be quieter. This average is louder than Friday 6pm traffic sound at our house (max of 50dBA - measured); typical noon time noise at our house is 35dBa (+10dBa = 2x increase in volume).

 

FERC rulings & regs trump local and state regs when it comes to power infrastructure (according to the FERC reps at our local meeting).

 

This wouldn't be as bad IF we were getting jobs (none added), significant tax revenue (only $250,000 annually), or even NG brought to our houses (nope).

 

 

 

My recommendation is to check out where the nearest pipeline and power transmission lines are and if there are any proposed changes to these in the area you are considering to purchase.

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And they say it will help to reduce our dependence on foreign oil (she says wryly). I'm all for that, but let's help the community impact as well. There are things you can do as a community to reduce the noise if your local planning commission will help. I can't find the resource at the moment, but Penn State has some good suggestions -- one presentation showed a compressor station disguised as a barn and heavily insulated to reduce the noise, plus it looks better on the landscape. (Slide 17 on this presentation...www.blm.gov/bmp/.../WO1_VRM_BMP_Part_4_Slideshow.pp. )

 

Liz

 

Liz, you should tell anyone who claims that it will reduce our dependency on foreign oil that this is largely a fallacy. The vast majority of petroleum is used for transportation fuel: gasoline for automobiles. Whereas the vast majority of the Marcellus shale gas (along with other shale gas) will be used to generate electricity. It will, therefore, displace coal, NOT petroleum. This much is sort of good from an environmental perspective (if you overlook the environmental costs associated with shale gas exploitation), as coal is such a dirty fuel and mountaintop mining, in particular, has such a high environmental cost. You do get more BTUs out of combusting a given number of molecules of natural gas than you do out of burning an equivalent number of molecules of coal, so even though they're both fossil fuels, you'll get less in the way of greenhouse gas emissions per unit electricity generated when you start with natural gas than if you start with coal.

 

Only if we were to start to drive more all-electric cars (not hybrids, but cars like the Nissan "Leaf" or the Tesla roadster) could natural gas start to reduce our dependency on oil. We're a long ways away from that at present.

 

Personally I wish we'd reduce our dependency on fossil fuels. Period.

 

Off my own soapbox...

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We're so thrilled about the NG development in PA. Dominion is trying to put in a compressor station 1/2 from our house so they can pump more NG to a facility they are getting permission to use for export sales of CNG. It will increase our noise level to that of a busy highway 24/7 (2x-4x increase in sound volume). We don't even have residential NG in our area.

 

Mark, I'm sorry. This has got to be a real heartbreaker after all the effort you've invested in your place.

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Dominion "tested the waters" in two other towns along their pipeline was decided to move up the line because of community pressures south of us. Members of the community south of us found Dominion the property they are considering near us. We're hoping that the community pressure here will cause Dominion to find a more industrial or less populated area for their project.

 

I got curious about the Leaf in terms of the marketing spin that it uses less fossil fuel. Based upon the EPA rating of 34 kWh/100 mile, efficiencies of coal and NG power generation, and our curret mix of power generation (coal, NG, nuclear, petrolium, wind, PV, hydro, etc) a grid recharged Leaf would consume the same amount of fossil fuel (in terms fo BTUs) as a 35-40mpg gasoline powered car.

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There was a discussion on NPR regarding the Leaf. The problem that was noted was the Nissan's claims of 100 miles on a charge aren't entirely accurate and that the average was closer to 65. In a country like ours, with people making long commutes, I don't see how electric cars are entirely practical. I go 73 miles one way to my vet, and the rehab vet is 80+ miles away. I couldn't make it on one charge.....

 

Here is the article.

 

The most interesting bit in the story was the fact that Henry Ford's wife (I think) drove an electric car.

 

J.

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The most interesting bit in the story was the fact that Henry Ford's wife (I think) drove an electric car.

 

J.

The technology for battery operated cars have been around for a long time. I don't know if it's true but the way I understand it, the oil companies buy the rights to them and then sit on them.

 

Besides getting away from so much heat and humidity another reason we want to live in a higher elevation is for the wind. We're hoping when we build our retirement home, we can/will utilize as much wind/solar power as possible.

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Solar hot water systems have a faster payback period than PV systems. Domestic hot water and in floor radiant heating systems can be powered off solar hot water panels.

 

Our hot water system has an estimated payback period of 5 years (we were heating our water with oil).

PV systems I've looked at (with MD grants & fed credits) have payback periods of 10-15 years.

The little reading I've done on wind the payback period is also 10-15 years.

Geothermal systems are very efficient and are a good alternative IF building a new house; retro fit costs can be very high.

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Julie, I listened to the exact same NPR story this morning; it was sufficiently interesting to finally wake me up.

 

Mark (and anyone else interested), the major environmental advantage to an all-electric car would be if "cleaner" sources of electricity could be found. Such as solar energy (with greenhouse gas emissions limited to solar panel manufacture), or that (at present, anyway) oxymoron, "clean coal" (where you might have a chance of capturing CO2 in a more concentrated stream at the plant). But.... even if the electricity used to charge electric cars were generated by conventional coal (the dirtiest fuel), there is still an advantage to be found IF the coal-fired plants generating the electricity had their acts in gear in terms of their emissions of sulfur and nitrogen oxides, both of which are major causes of air pollution. (Not to mention emissions of mercury and a whole host of other problems associated with coal). It's a whole lot easier to control emissions from one stationary source (a coal-fired power plant) than from a gazillion automobiles, even with auto inspections.

 

The cleaner the source of electricity, the better the electric cars look (from the perspective of local air pollution).

 

At the moment we're clearly not where we need to be (either in terms of distance or a recharging infrastructure or a source of clean electricity) to make electric cars any real part of a fix for global climate change. Still... there's a big "chicken and egg" question in terms of switching over to electric cars. No one is going to do it until they're inexpensive and convenient, but until people start buying them, there's no demand for a charging infrastructure, and the cost of the cars will be high.

 

My last off-topic post, too, though I will say that one of the things I'm wrestling with in wanting to move farther out from the city and buy some land is the compromise I'd be making in terms of my own carbon footprint. It's a situation of wanting to practice what I preach...

 

 

 

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I understand it is easier to deal with centralized emissions (I've made the same argument) but there still is equivalent consumption of the limited resources of fossil fuels with our current power generation.

EVs do have the promise of recharging with renewables.

Currently, carpooling and mass transit offer the greatest impact on both emissions and fossil fuel consumption.

 

There are other places to reduce your carbon footprint that could have a greater combined effect than the increase due to personal transportation with a move out of the city (i.e. maximize "slow food " by growing more of your own, more efficient residence, etc).

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Mark, I agree that there are steps everyone can (and should) do to reduce their environmental impact/enhance sustainability. While I support the "slow food" movement for a whole lot of reasons (and I finally this year convinced my spouse that we should switch to pasture-raised meats for such reasons, which range from human health to environmental sustainability to ethical treatment of animals), and we also buy most of our produce (in season) locally from a farmer's market (our own attempts to grow cherry tomatoes, herbs, and chard this year having failed, dismally, lacking the key ingredient of sun in our yard), you have to cut back on a LOT of electricity to compensate for the CO2 emitted from automobiles unless you're lucky enough to be able to carpool or use public transportation. We did have a home energy audit conducted a few years ago, and have been working our way through some of the recommendations (including a new, ultra-efficient furnace and air conditioner, both of which we use as little as possible), but the fact of the matter is that most American's lifestyle simply isn't sustainable, even if we do all we can to cut back on profligate use of resources.

 

This program is fun to play with to see how much effect individual actions can have on your carbon footprint: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/calculators/

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I took it. We have more acres of pasture than the global acres needed to support our lifestyle.

There is no place to enter our solar hot water system.

There is no way to offset our meat consumption by producing the meat ourselves.

There is no place for fuel oil consumption.

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