The $0-Bill House Protocol

What Not Knowing Costs

The Utility Pamphlet Told You To Change The Filter. It Never Told You Where The Money Was Going.

140 degrees, eight feet over your head, every afternoon of the summer. Insulation is a blanket, and a blanket lying in the sun gets hot on top and passes it down through itself. The bottom of your insulation is your bedroom ceiling. Nobody at the utility ever mentions the attic.

Your ducts are running through 140-degree air. Cold air leaves the air handler at 55 and picks up five or ten degrees on the way to the register. You are cooling the attic with your own air conditioner and paying for the privilege, in most houses in the South.

The house is still hot at ten at night, long after the sun went down. The attic is a battery. It charges all afternoon and discharges into the bedrooms from eight until midnight — which is exactly the window where the compressor never stops.

Every winter your house works as a chimney. Warm air leaves through the plumbing vent, the wire holes, the recessed lights and the hatch, and cold air comes in at the bottom to replace it. A black box on the south wall of a leaky house heats the outdoors.

The first buried pipe the author priced came in at $1,000 and cost about $2,500. He priced the pipe. The sand, the sump, the fan, the filter box, the second day of the excavator and a hundred dollars of glue were all still coming. The pipe is less than half of it.

Thirty-seven thousand gallons a year fall on an average roof, and you watch them go down the driveway. A 1,500 sq ft roof in a 40-inch climate — about 30,000 gallons of it keepable. Most people buy the tank before they ever work out the number.

The Whole Idea, In One Line

Stop Buying Machines To Fight The House. Make The House Do The Work.

This is not a book about buying a solar array or a battery bank. There are people who will sell you that, and some of it is good. This is about the roof, the ground under the yard, the south wall and the rain — so that whatever power you do have, from the grid or from the roof, has very little left to do.

And one number decides most of it: your ground number. The sun only heats the top few feet of soil and the winter only freezes the top few feet. Six to eight feet down, the earth does not know what month it is — it sits within a couple of degrees of your town's average yearly air temperature, plus two. Fargo about 45. Chicago, Detroit and Denver around 53. Nashville 62. Atlanta 64. You can look it up tonight at the kitchen table, and it tells you whether a trench is worth digging before you spend a dollar.

What $27 Actually Buys You

183 pages, written the way a man explains it leaning on a shovel — the reason before the instruction, the mistakes he made himself, and an honest number every time money comes up.

Thirty Degrees Out Of The Attic, This Weekend

Two mornings, one afternoon, a stapler and a friend at the bottom of the ladder. Foil under the rafters the way it actually works, soffit vents that breathe again, a hatch that isn't a chimney, and black screens on the west and south glass. Feel it by Sunday.

Your Ground Number, And The Dew-Point Test

What the dirt under your lawn is offering, from a table instead of a hole. Then the test that says whether a buried pipe will cool your house or grow something in the dark — the chapter that tells some readers not to dig at all.

The Buried Pipe, Built Right

Six to eight inches, a hundred to two hundred feet, six feet down, two percent slope to the drain. Screened intake, cleanout at the low point, condensate, filter, fan — and the radon monitor you do not skip. Plus the closed water loop for humid country.

Cooling The Rest Of The Way Without A Compressor

The night flush that dumps the day's heat, overhang geometry worked from your own latitude, the solar chimney that pulls air with nothing but sun, and the evaporative box that only makes sense in dry country — with the honest line on where it doesn't.

Free Heat From A South Wall

The five places a house loses heat, in the order that saves the most per dollar. Then a four-by-eight solar air heater that blows real warmth into a room on a sunny afternoon — including the one $26 part people leave off, the one that makes it heat the yard all night.

Water You Own

Six-tenths of a gallon per square foot per inch of rain — your whole rain number in one multiplication. Gutters, leaf screen and first flush, an honest comparison of plastic, steel and concrete, the pressure gravity gives you free, and what makes it safe to drink.

See It Before You Buy It

Real pages from the book — not mockups. Large type, hand-drawn diagrams of what is happening inside the wall, photographs of the actual work, and a full-page plate whenever the numbers matter.

A full-page plate from the book showing what each length of buried pipe delivers, from thirty feet at 82 degrees to two hundred feet at 64 degrees — A full-page plate whenever the numbers decide the build

A page from the book explaining how attic ductwork loses cold air, with a photograph of an infrared thermometer being pointed at a bedroom ceiling — The reason before the instruction, and real photographs of the work

Everything In It, Chapter By Chapter

Part 1

The First Weekend

Where the heat actually comes in, the radiant barrier, venting the attic, and exterior solar screens. The cheapest work in the book, it works in every climate, and you feel it by Sunday night — with the readings to prove it.

Part 2

Before You Dig

Your ground number, the dew-point test, reading your own lot with a piece of rebar and one free phone call, and an honest open-loop-or-closed-loop answer. Read this before you move a shovel — for some houses the answer is don't.

Part 3

The Pipe And The Rest Of The Cooling

Sizing, the trench weekend, intake, condensate, filter, fan and radon, plus the water loop for humid country. Then night flush, shade geometry, the solar chimney and the evaporative box — cooling without a compressor.

Part 4

Heat, Water, And What It Really Costs

The south wall and the mass that holds the day's heat. Your rain number, tanks, first flush and pressure without a pump. Then the real budgets build by build, permits and the "banned" myth, the six questions that shrink a quote, the yearly rhythm and the one-page checklist.

Before You Decide

No, and the author says so on the first page. Chapter One is a weekend with a stapler and a ladder, it costs a few hundred dollars, it works in every climate, and it is the best money in the book. The digging chapters are the ones you read carefully and then decide against, if your ground says so.

A normal suburb is exactly who it is written for. It is about the roof, the yard, the south wall and the rain on an ordinary house on an ordinary lot — including what an HOA can and cannot actually stop, and which of these jobs never sees a permit counter.

There is a whole chapter of budgets, build by build, in three lines each: materials, the machine, and the labor line a contractor would charge — which is the money you keep. Ranges rather than single numbers, because pipe costs more in Vermont than in Texas, with the low end a rural county on sale and the high end a city at full price.

It explains why before it explains how, and defines every term in the sentence it appears in. It is also plain about the jobs to hand over — the electrician, the roofer cutting the hole, the man in the excavator on a rocky lot. Knowing what to ask for and what a fair quote looks like is half of what you are buying.

The title names an aim, not a promise, and the book is honest about that throughout. What it does is take the load off — so the house stops fighting itself and whatever power you buy or generate has far less left to do. Every number in it is an estimate that depends on your house, your climate and your ground.

Instantly, as a PDF, to the email address you use at checkout. It reads on a phone, a tablet, a computer or printed — and the one-page checklist at the back is meant to go on the refrigerator.

Because it's an instant digital download, all sales are final — that is the honest answer, and it's why the pages above show you real spreads before you buy. If you hit a technical problem with your file or your download, email contact@liibro.com and we'll make sure you get your copy. Full details in the Refund Policy.

Replacing The Air Conditioner Costs About $6,000. The Weekend That Takes The Load Off It Costs About $800.

A drilled well is six to sixteen thousand before the pump. A geothermal system is twenty to forty-five. The attic work in Chapter One — foil, baffles, a hatch that seals, screens on the west glass — is about eight hundred dollars of materials and one weekend, and it is the first thing the author would do to any house in America.

One summer's worth of the difference is more than the book. This is $27.

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183 pages · the attic weekend, start to finish · your ground number from a table · the dew-point test before you dig · sizing and building the buried pipe · the closed loop for humid country · night flush, shade geometry and the solar chimney · the south wall heater and the part people leave off · your rain number and the tank that fits it · real budgets build by build · permits, HOAs and reading a quote · the one-page checklist

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