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How do Amish families keep their homes warm without relying on expensive utility bills? In this video, we explore the traditional heating methods, practical insulation techniques, and simple habits that help Amish households stay comfortable through cold winters.
From wood-burning stoves and carefully designed homes to smart fuel storage and heat-saving routines, these time-tested methods show how families can reduce energy costs while living more simply.
Watch until the end to discover practical ideas you may be able to use in your own home.
#AmishLiving #HomeHeating #OffGridLiving #WoodStove #SimpleLiving #EnergySaving #WinterPreparedness
How do Amish families keep their homes warm without relying on expensive utility bills? In this video, we explore the traditional heating methods, practical insulation techniques, and simple habits that help Amish households stay comfortable through cold winters.
From wood-burning stoves and carefully designed homes to smart fuel storage and heat-saving routines, these time-tested methods show how families can reduce energy costs while living more simply.
Watch until the end to discover practical ideas you may be able to use in your own home.
#AmishLiving #HomeHeating #OffGridLiving #WoodStove #SimpleLiving #EnergySaving #WinterPreparedness
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Every winter, you watch the heating bill climb, and you turn the thermostat down and put on
00:05another sweater. And still, it climbs. And you wonder how it got to cost so much just
00:11to be warm in your own house. And here is a thing worth knowing. My people heat large
00:17homes, full of children, through hard northern winters, warm and cozy, for a small fraction
00:23of what most folks spend. And a good part of how we do it costs nothing at all. It is
00:29not one secret, but several. Some of them a way of heating, and some of them a way of
00:33keeping the heat you have. And the best of them need no fuel and no machine whatsoever,
00:39only the way a house is built and lived in. Let me share the whole of it with you, so
00:44your
00:45own house might be warmer for less this winter. Here is the thing to understand before we begin,
00:51for it divides the whole matter in two. Staying warm is two separate problems, and most folks
00:57only think of the one. The first is making heat, and the second, just as important and
01:03far cheaper, is keeping the heat you have made from escaping and putting it where the
01:08people are. Most folks pour money into making more and more heat while it pours straight out
01:14through the ceiling and the unused rooms, as fast as they make it. The old way works both
01:20sides. It makes heat efficiently, yes, but even more, it keeps that heat and gathers it around
01:26the family, so that far less making is needed. Get the keeping right, and you need make very
01:32little. So I will give you both, and we begin with the making. Quick word before we go further. My
01:39name is Esther Yoder, and the old household ways handed down to me, the kind I am sharing today, and
01:46a great many more besides, are far more than I could ever fit into one video. I have gathered the
01:52whole of
01:53them into a book, and you will find it at EliasYoder.com. If today's tips serve you, that is
01:59where the rest of what my mother and grandmother taught me lives, all in the one place. Now, to the
02:05warmth. My grandmother kept a big farmhouse warm through the bitterest Pennsylvania winters, and
02:11she used to say that warmth is not something you buy, but something you build and then keep, the same
02:17as
02:18you build and keep a good fire in the heart of a home. She taught me that a wise woman
02:23studies where
02:23her heat goes, and stops it going where it is wasted, and that the cheapest warmth of all is the
02:29warmth you never let escape. So let me give you first the good old ways of making the heat, and
02:36then,
02:36which matters more, the ways of keeping it. The finest heater we use is the masonry heater, and it is
02:43a wonder
02:43of old cleverness. Now, most folks know a fireplace, and a fireplace is a poor thing, for it sends the
02:50great part of its heat straight up the chimney and out, along with your money, and warms the room
02:56but little. A masonry heater is the opposite. It is a great mass of brick or stone with a fire
03:02chamber
03:02inside, and you burn a small, fierce, fast fire in it. And instead of letting that heat rush up the
03:09chimney, the heavy stone and brick soak it up and hold it. And then, long after the fire is dead
03:16and out,
03:17that great warm mass keeps radiating its gentle heat back into the room, for many hours, twelve hours and
03:24more, off a single small burning of wood. So you light one good fire in the morning, and the mass
03:31of
03:31it keeps the room warm clear through the day and into the night on hardly any wood at all. That
03:37is the heart
03:37of how we heat with so little, not a roaring fire all day, but a small fire whose heat is
03:43caught and
03:44stored and let out slow. Some build a bench right into the warm stone to sit on, and there is
03:50no
03:50cozier seat in winter. And here I must set down the one rule that matters more than all the rest,
03:57and I
03:57will not go a step further without it, for it is life and death. Anything that burns indoors, wood or
04:04coal or gas
04:05or oil makes a poison air, the carbon monoxide, that you cannot see nor smell, and it kills people in
04:13their sleep every single winter. So any burning heater must be properly vented, sending all its
04:19smoke and fumes up a good sound chimney or flue to the outdoors. Never a burner left to smoke into
04:27a
04:27closed room. Have your chimney seen to and kept clean. Crack a window for a little fresh air. And buy
04:35a carbon monoxide alarm, for they cost only a few dollars, and they will wake you and save your whole
04:41family. There is no cheaper life insurance in the world. Heed that always with any fire indoors. I will
04:50not teach the warmth without it. Now, some in my community heat with a coal stove, where coal is cheap
04:58and near, for coal burns long and steady, a single loading holding its heat through the night, with no
05:05getting up to tend it. And some use the heaters that burn propane or oil, which need no electricity and
05:12warm a room fast. I will not dwell long on these, for they burn a bought fuel, and I lean
05:19always toward the
05:20wood we can cut ourselves. But they are used, and if you use them, mind that same rule above every
05:27other. Vented, careful, and an alarm on the wall. For those especially must never burn unvented in a
05:35closed room. That said and heated, let us turn to the part I love best, the keeping of the heat.
05:42For this
05:43is where the real saving lives and where it costs you nothing. The first and greatest way of keeping heat
05:50is thermal mass, and it is the same idea as the masonry heater turned loose through the whole house.
05:57Heavy, dense things, stone and brick and clay, soak up heat when the room is warm and give it slowly
06:04back when the room cools, and so they even out the warmth and hold it long after the fire dies.
06:11The old stone we prize most for this is soapstone, a dense stone that drinks up heat like a sponge
06:18drinks
06:18water, and radiates it back gently for six or eight hours after the heat source is gone.
06:25So we set blocks of soapstone near the stove, and through the day they warm through, and come evening
06:31as the fire dies, they take over, giving their stored warmth back into the room all night. You can do
06:38the
06:38same. A soapstone, or even bricks or stones, or a cast pan of them warmed by your stove and set
06:45in the room will
06:47hold and spread the heat long after. And a house built with brick or stone or clay walls and stone
06:54or tile floors is a
06:56house that stores its own warmth all through its bones, steady and even, never the sharp swing of a place
07:03with
07:03nothing to hold the heat. But now to the ways that cost nothing at all, the way a house is
07:09built and
07:09lived in, and these are the true old treasure. The first is the plainest and the most powerful.
07:16Heat only the rooms you live in, and let the rest go cold. Most folks nowadays heat a whole great
07:23house
07:23evenly, every room the same warmth whether anyone is in it or not, the empty bedrooms and the storeroom
07:30and the hall all heated the same as the parlor where the family sits. That is pouring out heat
07:36on rooms no one is warming themselves in. The old way is to gather the family into one main room,
07:43warm and snug, and close the doors on the rooms not in use and let them stay cold so all
07:50your heat
07:50goes to warming people and not empty space. Close off what you are not using. It is the single biggest
07:57saving there is, and it costs only the shutting of a door. The second free way is to use the
08:04low winter sun,
08:06what the clever folk call passive solar, and it is free heat pouring in your windows if you let it.
08:12In winter the sun rides low across the southern sky, and a window that faces south catches that low sun
08:19all the short day and lets its warmth pour straight into the room, heating it for nothing.
08:25So the old houses are built with their main windows and their living rooms to the south,
08:30and many face the house east besides to catch the first morning sun. You can use this in your own
08:37house.
08:38On a sunny winter's day, open the curtains wide on your south windows and let the sun come in and
08:44warm the room
08:45and the floor and the thermal mass, free heat from the sky, and then when the sun goes down, close
08:52those
08:52curtains and shades tight, for at night a window lets heat leak out, so you catch the sun by day
08:59and shut
09:00the cold out by night. The third freeway makes use of a thing every child learns, heat rises. Most modern
09:09houses have high ceilings, and all your dear warm heat floats up to the top and gathers uselessly above
09:16everyone's heads, while the people below stay cold and you pay to heat the air near the ceiling that no
09:23one is breathing. The old homes are built with lower ceilings, on purpose, so the warm air stays down
09:30where the people are, at head height and hand height, not waisted up high. And where there is a loft,
09:37the family often sleeps up there, for the rising heat of the whole house gathers up in that loft and
09:44makes it the warmest place to sleep with no fire at all. You cannot lower your ceilings, but you can
09:51understand the principle. Keep to the lower rooms in the cold and know your upstairs is warmer for the
09:57heat that rose to it. This makes what you might call a warmth ladder in a house. The living rooms
10:04and
10:04bedrooms kept toasty, the storerooms and the cold pantry left cool. Each room only as warm as it needs
10:12to be, and none of your heat wasted. And a few smaller old ways beside these. Keep a kettle or
10:19a pot of water
10:20warming on the stove top, for as it steams it damps the dry winter air, and moist air feels warmer
10:28than dry,
10:28and holds the heat better. So you are comfortable at a lower warmth, an old whole house humidifier for
10:36nothing. Stop the draughts, for a house leaks its heat out every crack and gap, under the doors and
10:43round the windows. So a rolled cloth laid against the bottom of a door, and a bit of stopping round
10:50a rattling window, keeps the warm in and the cold out, and it is pennies of work for a great
10:56saving.
10:56Hang a heavy curtain over a draughty window or door in the coldest weather. And dress and bed warm,
11:05the old way, wool and quilts and a warm cap at night, so the house need not be hot for
11:11the people
11:11to be warm. Now think a moment about why we came to believe that warmth must cost so dearly, that
11:19the
11:19only way to be warm is a great furnace roaring day and night and a bill to match. It is
11:25worse than a plot,
11:26for no one had to arrange it. There is a great fortune in selling every family a furnace and
11:33the fuel to run it hot in every room the winter long, and none at all in teaching you to
11:39shut a
11:40door on an empty room, open a curtain to the winter sun and warm a stone by the stove. So
11:47the old knowing,
11:48the building and the keeping and the gathering of warmth, just stopped being handed down, because no
11:54one profits by your being warm for nothing. My grandmother kept a full house cosy through the
12:01hard winters on a little wood and a great deal of wisdom, and somewhere between her day and ours,
12:08we were taught that warmth comes only from a metre and a bill. The mending of it is mostly free,
12:14and it is the keeping more than the making. You gather your family into the rooms you use and shut
12:21the doors on the rest. You open your south curtains to the winter sun by day and close them tight
12:28by
12:28night. You keep to your lower rooms where the warm air stays. You warm a stone or a soapstone by
12:36your
12:36stove to hold the heat into the night and steam a kettle to soften the air and stop your draughts
12:43and bed warm.
12:44And if you make heat, you make it the efficient old way. A small hot fire in a mass that
12:51stores it,
12:52and you vent it safe and keep an alarm on the wall. And your house is warm and your bill
12:58is a fraction
12:59of what it was. That is how it comes home. One shut door, one sunlit window, one warmed stone at
13:08a time.
13:08The keeping of your own warmth back in your own hands. So here is what I would ask of you.
13:15This
13:15winter, try just one of the free ways. Shut the doors on the rooms you are not using and gather
13:21the
13:22family into one warm room. Or open your south windows wide to the sun and see the difference
13:29it makes on your bill and your comfort. And then come back and tell me in the comments which you
13:34tried and how it served you. For I do love to hear a house kept warm for less. And tell
13:41me too, while you
13:42were there, your county and the age of your house. For the old houses were so often built wise for
13:49the
13:49winter. Low ceiling and south facing and full of good heavy walls. While the new ones fight the cold.
13:57And I learned from every one of you how the winters go where you live. And if your own mother
14:02or grandmother
14:03had a way of keeping a house warm that I have not named here, tell me that most of all.
14:09For that is how
14:10this goes. We share what we were given. I read every comment and I learn from you the way the
14:17old
14:18women learned from one another across the fence line. One house and one winter at a time. Next time,
14:25I will show you the old ways of keeping a house cool in the summer heat without any machine. For
14:31the same wisdom that keeps the warmth in through winter keeps the heat out through summer. And a
14:37house built and lived in wisely is comfortable the year round for almost nothing. There is a right
14:44and an old way to keep a home that runs on understanding more than on any furnace or fuel.
14:51But this winter you start with the freeways. You shut the doors on the empty rooms and gather your
14:57family close. You open the south windows to the low sun by day and shut them tight by night. You
15:05keep to
15:05the warm lower rooms. You warm a stone by the stove and steam a kettle and stop your drafts. And
15:13you will
15:13understand, as my grandmother did in her own warm farmhouse, that warmth was never only a thing you
15:20buy and burn, but a thing you build and keep. That the cheapest warmth of all is the warmth you
15:27never
15:27let escape. And that a house lived in wisely stays warm through the hardest winter on a little wood and
15:34a
15:34great deal of old knowing. The home kept the plain old way is the one that remembers how the old
15:41families
15:41stayed cozy through the bitterest winters for a fraction of the cost, with the sun, a shut door,
15:48a warm stone, and the wisdom to keep the heat they had. And that is a thing we are only
15:54just starting to remember.
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