Re: "some of the daylight that the sun carelessly drops in our direction and is just going to waste"
> My house sits on a one-acre lot, and I sometimes think my neighbors are *still* too close for comfort
The size of your lot is irrelevant: No matter how big it is, neighbors will always be too close for comfort...
(And that's not (just) basic misanthropy speaking, it's a fact that people have an inborn capacity to be annoying over great distances, like for instance believing that they can turn the "music" up to 11 in their garden because they are "alone". I live in an apartment and hear my neighbors just as much as some friends who live on a 7-acre plot.)