Will the last person to leave Chicago please turn off the lights?

You are walking along the sidewalk and a piano drops on your head killing you. The dropper of the piano is responsible, not you, not the maker of the piano.

You are walking along the sidewalk and come to a construction zone, step inside ignoring the warnings and fool around. A piano drops on your head and kills you. You are responsible. You were an idiot. You have been eliminated from the race. Game over.

You jump out of a skyscraper and land on your head on a piano. You die. The physics were the same. The fault was yours. You are liable for any damages to the piano, the workers moving the piano, emotional trauma to the innocent bystanders, etc. Game over, again, for you.

Too bad Matt Patches can't learn to communicate elegantly rather than using foul language. He has no credibility as a result. Ignored.

You seem very depressed.
You have a pattern of negative posts.
Would you like to talk about it?
Maybe Dr. Eliza v3.0 can help.

TracFone is great for what it does. It allows us to have a simple emergency phone in our vehicle. Nothing fancy. Cheap fixed cost annual plan. Easy. It cost us about $100/year. The phones are essentially free. ($0 to $19). If the phone gets lost you call up TracFone and they transfer the minutes to another phone. Easy-peasy. We've had ours for about a decade.

"thousands and millions of people."

Make up your mind.
Which is it.
Thousands or Millions?
Why not throw Hundreds and Billions into that sentence.
Might as well exaggerate all the way and confuse.

It's a form of mania. It often swings between the extremes. The middle is no fun. Bye-bye polar. Some might consider it a fair price to pay for the highs.

Is this the same Chinese country that is building back doors into networking and computer equipment so they can later take it over as described in a previous article? Seems everyone's hip to this fun game and playing it out.

Why talk about it? We're busy being optimistic. One must be very optimistic to be a startup (any business pretty much) or a farmer. The rest get 9-to-5 jobs.

That will be interesting. I live in the stone house. I doubt he can blow it down. :)

Read the article and you'll find all the details.

How big is a house was not the question. The issue at question is smart vs dumb houses, longevity, long term costs, ability of people to build their own. Some people choose to live in very large houses. Some choose small houses. That is an irrelevant variable. The question is can you affordably build a long term house. Most people can if they want. Do they need the Smart House fancy technology? No. That drives up the cost and isn't going to be supported long term - that was the concern of the original article.

Dumb Rock is my choice.
How big you build it is your choice.

No, you're wrong from applying your experience over someone else's experience and saying that your experience rules. You're failing to accept the possibility that there are other ways that don't fit your world view.

I hope your face gets better after that face palm.

And there lies the error in your assumptions. You assume that because you have seen X that most are X. That is not statistically or scientifically valid. In fact, it is irrational.

You are also wrong about your statement about connecting to the electric company. This further demonstrates your lack of knowledge. You're talking through your hat. We are utility connected.

Reality check: The state inspectors saw my work and were delighted with it. They said they wished everyone did such a good job, including professionals.

It's practical. Read code. Read manuals. Read books. Teach yourself. No experts needed. Just a willingless to learn and do.

It would be really nice if people like you stopped trying to convince other people that they are incompetent. Far better to encourage people to learn and do. People are a lot more capable than you appear to think.

Actually, I have explained it and documented it extensively. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

and then for another similar project read about how we're almost done building our own on-farm USDA/State inspected Meat Processing facility - a _much_ larger project at:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

Largely of the cost of building a house is labor. Supply your own labor and you dramatically cut the cost.

Another big part of the cost is architects, engineers and other consultants. Be your own or use available plans on the web or in books (there are many) and you get rid of that cost.

The "cost estimating of $100/sq-ft" is vastly out of line with reality.

While most people might not have the creativity, knowledge and experience to design and engineer the structure the actual construction cost is fairly low. Most people could do it. The problem is experts, who have a massive conflict of interest, have been telling people that people are not able, not qualified to do things. This has created an economy where people hire out for things rather than doing things themselves. That's good for stimulating the economy, but expensive.

See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/cottag...

That starting page will take you onward to many more pages that extensively document how we did it. It took two months to prep and build the shell to the closed in point. Then winter hit - we have a short construction season here in the north.

This does not include the land - I already owned that - the discussion was the cost of building the house. I was not gifted the materials. The $7,000 is the materials. Our family of five (2 adults, 2 teens, one small child) supplied all the labor while also schooling and farming. Check out the page above for pictures and the blow by blow account.

Since then we have built our own USDA/State Meat Processing Facility e.g., a butcher shop which we're just about to open for business to process livestock from our farm. That was built along the same methods as our house but with improvements in methods - we learn. See:

http://sugarmtnfarm.com/butche...

for details of how that has been constructed and the process of going through the regulatory hoops. It's been a journey.