Eco Footprint in Cottage Living

"mightysprite;c-17990569" wrote:
Yes, all you need are a few garden plants if you want to send the eco footprint greenward again, @Beardedgeek

Hmph. That never works for me. I'll have loads of plants - both the planted and landscaping variety - and they don't matter a bit.

"invisiblgirl;c-17990692" wrote:

"mightysprite;c-17990569" wrote:
Yes, all you need are a few garden plants if you want to send the eco footprint greenward again, @Beardedgeek

Hmph. That never works for me. I'll have loads of plants - both the planted and landscaping variety - and they don't matter a bit.

Yeah, my experience is that you have to push the limits and it is almost impossible anyway. Unless you turn footprint "off" (" " is right since the mechanic is still going in the background unless you uninstall the pack!! Typical EA). In that case all worlds everywhere slowly turns green and you cannot stop it!!.

I have had a house with over 20 garden plants, 6-7 big trees, 12 (!) solar panels, 6 (!) wind turbines and only green footprint materials in the house and it never goes fully green for more than an occasional day, mostly hovering mid way between green and neutral.

It doesn't help that virtually no eco friendly materials are good looking. Basically all good looking build and buy materials and objects such as windows are either neutral or more often Industrial. EA really wants us to only build ugly houses I guess?

I've had great luck with the hedges if that helps? I use the Starter Hedge as fencing around my sims property - but even just doing an odd spot really ups the footprint for me. Or the ones from Island Living. Most of my lots only have like 2-3 trees tops. Some don't even have any of the Eco stuff - windmills, solar panels et al.

"WildIrishBanshee;c-17990703" wrote:
I've had great luck with the hedges if that helps? I use the Starter Hedge as fencing around my sims property - but even just doing an odd spot really ups the footprint for me. Or the ones from Island Living. Most of my lots only have like 2-3 trees tops. Some don't even have any of the Eco stuff - windmills, solar panels et al.

I have one household that turned green and it doesn't have any solar panels etc. Or green wallpapers or flooring. I guess it's the plants but I replaced some in debug and it still stayed green. It's very frustrating because I use a lot of plants in all my builds and this is the only one that seemed to go green.

I still need to play with the pack more but I did get a mod called called basemental eco hacks which gives you the option to pause footprint for certain lots or neighborhoods and even slow it down if it changes too fast. I used it in Port promise to keep it Industrial.

I know this is an old thread that hasn't had a comment in a couple of months, but I didn't want to start a completely new thread on a topic that was already being discussed.

I have had a green eco footprint in Old New Henford since shortly after moving a played household there about 40 game days ago. Since then, however, I've had members of the family go on 2 different destination vacations. Once to Granite Falls and once to Sulani. Both times, the eco footprint of Old New Henford reset to neutral upon returning.

Is it supposed to "forget" the eco footprint of an active household's lot when you go on a destination vacation?

It's really weird because I have two other neighborhoods which also have green footprints from other households I've played in this save, those were unaffected. Only the one neighborhood which has the homelot specifically of the household which took vacation was rolled back to neutral.

Also, just something not mentioned in this thread which also pushes a neighborhood to green and is super easy. Don't leave lights on, set them to auto light. It actually makes a significant difference both in the rate of moving toward green and also on electricity useage.

Thanks for bumping this thread. Interesting read.

I have only owned EL and CL for a short time and have hardly dented either pack. I have done just enough in EL to work out the mechanics and have been playing in HOB quite a bit since. As I have also just added Seasons, I started the game in Fall and have gone round all the houses and made sure their fires were lit and put in thermostats and got the homes toasty ready for winter. I am hoping that smog hits this world and is my gameplay intention, so I can have some eco sims put em right.

I did this as I live in the English countryside and this would be pretty true to life. When you have a small group of houses in a valley here and everyone cranks up their heating, lights their fires and starts burning piles of leaves for good measure. And, you can also add in bonfires in early November, then you can forget any notion of fresh country air.

Even worse, if the air is still and there is the right temperature gradient, then all this smoke hangs around in the valley bottom sometimes for days with each day's fires, etc adding to it.

@ModerateOsprey, I grew up in rural Wisconsin....deep woods rural, and I hear you about the smoke fires. Pretty much everyone had to have fireplaces and/or wood-burning stoves in their homes because in Winter the power could get knocked out by ice storms and be out for days. We also had to do burns every fall, not just leaves, but also all the many twigs and branches that fell onto the lawn and pastures over the spring, summer and fall.
It was a very hilly area, so the smoke would just hang in the valley communities. I rather liked the smell, much more of a natural smelling smoke than the cities I have lived in. :lol:

As for getting your own communities to move toward industrial, it goes fastest if you also avoid the "green" things. So set lights indoors to be always on rather than auto-lit, don't have a garden, etc. All of my homes in Henford-on-Bagley have multiple fireplaces, but with auto-lights enabled and a garden, they all have slowly drifted toward green.

@Stormkeep Aye, I have to confess to liking the smell as well, but I am sure its not good for you!

Hmm, avoiding gardens is going to be tricky. Yup, keeping the lights on, that works. Folk round here seem to like their security lights as well, so I can pop some of those in.

We need 'muck spreaders' for cold still days as well. A muck spreader is a tractor attachment that spreads cow muck on the fields. Lends a very particular tang to the air :grin:

Maybe add a generator to all the homes that you want a garden on too. Saves the household some money on bills, and helps tip it to industrial. It also seems like a reasonable thing to have in a rural environment.

And yes, I'm familiar with muck spreaders. I grew up on a horse ranch (we bred, boarded, and showed them) and it takes a LOT of hay to keep horses fed through the winter when you have a lot of them. I have done my share of work in the fields, including driving the tractor with a manure spreader attached. We did it after every hay harvest.

Generators - excellent idea :)

Both my daughter and I ride. Dales ponies, rather than horses. Utterly fantastic animals.

Your area seems to share a lot with mine. Being England, it is quite small scale of course. Mainly dairy herd in the valleys and sheep on the higher moorland .