Sketchy House Files — 11 video ideas, graded by evidence

Why: Faithful transfer of the donor's freshest winner (245K in 2 weeks) with only the OBJECT slot rotated: TV antenna → old satellite dish, a near-identical scavenged-metal dish nobody in the cluster has run. The donor's antenna-family averages 3×+ outlier across three titles (354K/249K/104K). This is the #1 pull because it rides the donor's live vein the week it is live.

Thumbnail Text 'FREE POWER' bold yellow top-left; rusty satellite dish on a lawn with jumper cables running to a glowing bulb; red arrow from dish to bulb; dusk sky.

Why: The electricity fill is the OPEN slot in a hot 3-channel family (932K gardening, 522K living, 340K/243K heating) — and it is exactly this channel's home turf. Every prior attempt at the electricity fill is a corpse (116 views; best ever 26K), while the surrounding fills keep winning. Dozens of exact-copy corpses at 1–2.5K prove the family punishes clones and pays rotations — this is a rotation.

Thumbnail Text '"ILLEGAL"' in quotes, red, top-left; sepia depression-era photo of a farmhouse spliced against a modern smart meter with a red cross over it; torn-paper split down the middle.

Evidence flag: the second topic-evidence entry (116 views) is deliberately included as slot-occupancy evidence, not demand proof; demand rests on the 157K donor video and the family's own winners.

Why: Silas Mercer owns the generic heating fill (243K, 12 days) and its exact copies are already dead (164/106/7 views) — but the Amish rotation is open (only corpse: 418 views) while Amish heating as a subject carries 2.45M/1.59M/1.45M. This finally deploys the Amish authority frame the July run flagged as the cluster's strongest unused differentiator, and it lands exactly on the September heating pre-season. Hold for publication ~1-7 Sep.

Thumbnail Text 'FREE HEAT' yellow/red top-right (mirrors the 227K source thumb); glowing cast-iron stove coil in an Amish farmhouse interior, oil lamp, red arrow to the glow; no faces.

Evidence flag: the 2.45M is subject-interest lane (big channel), and the peer-lane proof (45K) sits just under the 50K floor — the grade leans on the two independent skeleton winners (243K/340K), which is the stronger leg here. Heating-specific peer evidence = Frugal Solutions (267K subs); the Eli Yoder Secrets leg is Amish-authority but attic/cooling domain — labeled on the card.

Why: Moves the proven question frame (1.88M Wild Line; 210K Ray Holton rotation on a 15K-sub peer) off cooling — where the exact fill is swarmed with corpses — onto the niche's biggest live topic: earth batteries (donor 1.05M + 157K two weeks ago). Nobody runs the question frame on energy storage yet; the history angle ('two metals in the yard' = classic telegraph-era earth batteries) gives it a real story to tell.

Thumbnail Text 'WE FORGOT THIS' white-on-black top-left; split image — 1900s sepia diagram of buried copper/zinc plates vs modern yard with a glowing wire rising from the soil; yellow arrow between them.

Why: The question frame has never been run on the salvaged-EV-battery topic, which pulls 959K/229K/111K in the authentic-build lane. The 'why did we stop / why doesn't everyone' framing lets a faceless channel ride the subject without needing a real build. Storage topic = the channel's own proven appetite ($5 DIY Battery, 42K).

Thumbnail Text 'FREE POWER?' yellow; crashed/salvage EV with its underfloor battery pack half-slid out, thick cable running to a lit house at night; red arrow along the cable.

Home-doable flag: a salvaged EV pack is the least at-home-doable topic in this set (cost, HV safety). The frame carries it as a watch-why story rather than a build instruction — script should answer the question (BMS complexity, fire codes), not pretend it's a $20 weekend build.

Why: Double-proven intersection: the salt slot inside the question frame did 210K on a peer (Ray Holton), and salt-as-storage pulls 197K/124K in-lane. Note Ray Holton's own decay ladder (210K → saltpeter 21K → liquid salt 2.8K): he is milking salt×cooling, but salt×STORAGE is untouched — and cooling closes Aug 29 while storage is season-proof.

Thumbnail Text 'SALT = POWER' white/yellow; mason jar of brine with two electrodes lighting a bulb, 1920s sepia workshop backdrop; red arrow from jar to bulb.

Why: Donor's 156K 'bury it in your yard' winner with the object rotated to a clay-pot battery ring — the 'Baghdad battery' clay-pot story gives it a distinct hook and honest history segment. Buried/built-in fixes beat placed gadgets in every measured pair in this cluster (447K/631K vs 2.3K/5.4K). Habit slot = a bill everyone pays.

Thumbnail Text 'BURY THIS' yellow; ring of terracotta pots half-buried in a lawn trench, copper wire linking them, faint glow from the ring; red arrow down into the soil.

Structure flag: same STOP-on-this-channel caveat as the Edison card — donor-proven, channel-unproven. Publish the Edison test first; if it clears ~5K, this follows.

Why: Second pull on the antenna-family ladder — a rusty trampoline frame is the most recognisable dead backyard object in America, and 'rusty junk → power' is the family's emotional core. Runs after the satellite dish; same skeleton, different enough object to avoid self-cannibalisation.

Thumbnail Text 'SCRAP = POWER' bold yellow; rusted trampoline frame with jumper cables and a multimeter showing live voltage; dusk sky.

Why: Donor's pergola winner (137K) with the structure slot rotated to the most common US backyard structure that actually has the roof area — a carport. More households own a carport than a pergola, and the ladder rule says order fills by audience size. Solar-as-roof evidence: 219K/77K.

Thumbnail Text 'NO GRID' red top-left; ordinary carport with its full roof as panels, thick cable into the house, meter at $0; golden-hour light.

Why: The donor's 157K winner re-filled by NAMING the object (nickel-iron Edison cell — a real 100-year battery, so the science leg is honest). Eli Yoder Secrets proves the named-Edison angle at 227K. Naming the entity follows the measured rule that proper nouns beat anonymised objects.

Thumbnail Text '100 YEARS' bold white; antique Edison cell jar (visible plates) next to a swollen dead lithium pack with red X; green check over the jar.

Structure flag: STOP-structure is donor-proven (157K) but has flopped twice on THIS channel (431, 1.6K). Both flops broke the habit rule (whole-house fan gadget; generator fuel). This one keeps the donor's exact winning habit (dead lithium batteries). Treat as a test of whether the structure or the habit was the problem.

Why: The donor's propane-tank winner (155K) with the container rotated to the junk container EVERY US home actually replaces: the old water heater tank (thermal/compressed storage story). Chosen over the workflow's fire-extinguisher pick after finding the donor already ran fire extinguisher and it FLOPPED (2.8K) — that transfer value was burned.

Thumbnail Text '$10,000 vs $60' split red/green; old water heater tank on a dolly beside a sleek wall battery with red X; cable from tank to breaker panel.

Swap note: workflow proposed 'truck inner tube' and 'old fire extinguisher' for this slot; the extinguisher was found burned (donor flop, 2.8K) and a $150 inner tube fails the price-credibility check. Water heater tank replaces both. Same STOP-on-channel caveat applies.