The friend I was talking to is full-time forester, trained and credentialed and all that, with a decent amount of experience in private consultant forestry, private land management group large-scale forestry, and now in a government position. He's as much of an expert as I'll ever find, and he knows my property pretty well. But it sounds like the experts just try to maximize that roughly 25% and accept that the rest of the trees will pretty much just be filler. My interest is more in the marginal opportunities that are too marginal for the experts and professionals and/or labor-intensive and/or useful on the "homestead" but not commercially viable. I'm not looking for advice specific to my property so much as I'd be interested to hear ideas or examples of what other people would do or have done in the places they live. I should be able to translate to my own circumstances from there. Is there anything you do or have thought of doing (or might consider if you had a tract of forest) to realize more value in the space between your timber "crop trees"?

The things you have to consider are: (1) the climate in your location; (2) whether houses in your neighborhood, of about the same value as yours, have central AC; (3) the cost of putting AC in. In the South, AC is EXPECTED. But in the Northeast there is, or used to be, the belief that you don't need AC because it gets hot for only a few days. Having lived in both climates, I can tell you that central AC is greatly appreciated in both, but it is usually not expected in the Northeast. It might not pay to put it in if the houses in your neighborhood are very modest and, say, built in the 1950s when central AC was rare. If you already have a forced air heating system, central AC is easy and relatively inexpensive, unless there are some technical complications with the ductwork that needs correcting. But if you have to install ductwork from scratch, the cost goes up a lot, and you may then get a smaller percentage return on investment when you sell. The outside consideration is your own priority for your own personal comfort while you live there. After you have figured out the cost of a central AC for your house, you could go to a local realtor and ask about it in terms of expected return on investment. They know the area and could probably tell you. In fact, go to 2 or 3 realtors to see if they agree.

One would think that sealing penetrations is standard. I just built an energy star house which required foaming around windows and door and making sure all fiberglass on walls was covered on 4 sides. That meant extra blocking especially on knee walls in attic and behind bathtubs. I added a few other things but I'm not sure that one of the options was to seal the penetrations from ceiling into attic. I just did it myself - was easy without insulation there yet. No infrared camera needed as there was light whereever the holes were. In some cases, a lot of light. And that was just from windows, in a completed house, you could turn on lights at night and really see any leaks. I also foamed around any penetration even if I didn't see light. Basically light fixtures (1 per room + closets), smoke detectors, HVAC vents, and bath fans. I had put some speakers in so I built boxes around them that were also foamed. While on the subject, I built a box around the attic stairs and put a second lift off door with insulation and weather sealing. Costs I think most people around here would want to do their own just because then you know the job is done right. But I'd ask you insulation people. They might suggest just foaming for an inch everywhere - costs about $1 a sqft. Not a bad option and it doesn't require any thought or attention to detail. The foam has r-value of course and so you can cut back on the blown-in part (how much depends on foam but r-7 would be typical closed cell).

Interesting thread. Lots of people got generators after the 1998 Ice Storm, but without being maintained, most were useless after a couple of years. I don't know about the bigger ones being discussed in this thread. Many city homes (ours included) have a gas fireplace, so that would handle the heat issue of being without electric power. And we have several power boxes that can be used off-grid that are handle for short power failures (to plug in some lights). I wouldn't bother with a generator, myself. During the big power failure in August (2004?), we just did without power for a day, but a few people in our urban neighbourhood had generators - it just made the rest of us irritated, because they ran their AC and had all their lights on, and made a racket. Not impressed.