Due to increasing energy demand in the PNW (US), my local electric utility, which gets most of its power from Bonneville Power Administration, is saying energy deficits are expected to occur within the next two years and continue indefinitely.
This is what Jimmy Carter was saying back in 1976, almost half a century ago. I live in the country, surrounded by an extended family who ride ATVs, hunt, can't keep their hands off their contractor equipment even when on vacation. They don't clearcut (for the most part) but they do cut the most valuable (read oldest) trees on their property, causing ridiculous flooding, slower growth in saplings surrounding their elders, the increase of local temps, destruction of cover for wildlife, etc. I protect my woods so they poach saying all the deer are hiding on my place, and my temps are a full 10 degrees lower than that on cleared land and in town. They live between 30 feet and a half mile from each other, but do they walk to each other's homes? Hell, no. They have to drive their work trucks or their ATVs, back and forth, the live-long day. They are their own little society and cannot bear to be alone, apparently. I have never been able to count how many vehicle trips they make within a 24 hour period. I'd estimate 30-40. When the electric goes out, on come the whole-house generators. I use no more than 1.5 cords of wood for heat every year. This winter I'm using roughly 1/4 what the average consumer here is in electric and still feel guilty. They're trying to put in SMART meters which actually cost you more since they draw electric to surveil your energy use 24/7 as well as emit EMFs. The electric company wants us to pay for infrastructure they haven't built yet, even though a lot of the electricity generated here (natural gas now--used to be coal) goes to large metropolitan areas like NYC. The one home up a dead-end road near my place uses a cord every three weeks for an outdoor burner which also uses electric. This wood is cut from trees on their land. And these people are not unusual. I feel guilty using satellite internet even though that's all that is available here. When it was out for two weeks, it cut my electric bill in HALF! I am a low consumer because I grew up in the Middle East so I'm keenly aware of the many real costs--not just financial--of oil consumption and have always had the need for low consumption in all energy sources drilled into my head. Climate change aside, the addiction for oil in the West will likely result in WWIII and nuclear war. If for no other reason, the US and Israel need to get out of the Middle East. And how much pollution have the Ukraine/Israel wars caused? I read somewhere one sortie by a fighter jet produced as much pollution as your typical, over-consuming American driver would if they lived to be 100. One flight.
If you ever live off the grid with the lowest electric consumption you can, you know getting rid of as many excessive appliances as you can cuts your need for electricity to a shocking degree. When I first bought my land, I lived in a trailer and had a very small solar system. I used 200 watts per day. Of course, I had an on-demand-propane water heater (do not want fossil fuels in my life, if possible now) and a propane fridge (ditto). I'm working on getting off the grid again in a much larger house that dates back to 1790 and was built for the climate here. Nine months of the year the most climate-mitigating energy I use is a fan facing outwards on the top floor to draw cool air in and up from below the house.
There are a number of products (solar generators with built-in battery banks) available now that do not require you to wire your own solar system. I am buying smallish Bluetti solar generators so I can get off-grid entirely. And when I quit my current work, I'll quit with Internet at my home. There are plenty of free wifi stations within cycling distance. The difference in energy consumption between a laptop and desktop system is enormous. There is so much we could do, but are not, because people figure they have the money to pay for excess consumption so why not? Average electric bill right now around here is between $300-600 a month. That's 1/4 to 1/2 many people's monthly income. Perhaps electric costs should be graduated year-round so that the less you use the less you pay. Conversely, the energy hogs need to pay more. There need to be limits on demand. Americans think they have a right to as much of an item as they want/can pay for. They do not. We have produced most of the pollution and consumed way more than even Europeans use (6X per capita; 12X what Middle Easterners use; 24X what Africans use).
It sounds like you're very knowledgeable. We're building a home and I'd like to make it as energy efficient as possible and hopefully be off grid. Any specific advice you'd give to someone in my situation? Also, what is the difference in energy expenditure between laptop and desktop?
My path is a low-tech one, so as to do the last damage possible to the environment. Wood stove, (outdoor) rocket stove, water catchment, outdoor washing station (planned, not yet built), planting native plants and trees, including fruit and nut bushes and trees, and my hope I can significantly improve my gardening and non-refrigerated food storage skills in the next few years.
Laptop vs. desktop will make no difference when the grid goes down, so I'm sticking with my old phone, old computer until they stop working at which point I'll unplug entirely.
Buying the smallest home you can, and prepping it to be as low-tech as possible would be my recommendation.
I found a pre-WWII ringer washing machine. It uses very little electric. I fill it with warm water, homemade laundry detergent, and clothes. Then run the ringer for a few minutes. Then leave it for 24 hours. Run the ringer again for a few more minutes, and drain. Then do the rinse cycle. That water doesn't have to be heated. And hang in the sun. Appliances made during or after WWII have built-in obsolescence. They don't last long. Generally speaking, they're poorly made. Maybe that's Boeing's problem.
Just reading that exhausted me. Choose your fights wisely. Don't do more physical labor than you have to. There's plenty to do without it. Just keep your eyes open for an old wringer washing machine. My grandmother used to do that with a fire under the copper washtub. It took all day. And then she had to do bluing to make the clothes white. Six sons and three daughters. You know how much mud six sons rub into their overalls? It's okay to use labor-saving devices. Honest.
If you can tell me where (or in what kind of local climate) you live in, I could be more helpful. I originally was going to build an underground home with clerestory, and a fridge built into a cob wall which is super efficient, below the natural springs up in the woods. But then my neighbor's marriage fell apart, and the husband asked me to buy their place (originally both our place had been part of the original settlers' place) because they were going into sheriff's foreclosure. I always liked the original house. So I dropped my plans. Had also considered building a cob house but it's probably too humid here. Though the local climate is changing and it's hard to predict what it will be in just a few years. With earth walls, the thicker they are the more consistent the humidity and temp is indoors.
With things heating up I'm wondering if I should build a small house underground or even a cob house (maybe inside the big barn which was built around 1790 and is huge).
Wood is better in earthquake territory. Underground is great. Also there's an Iranian architectm Nader Khalili, who went home after college in the U.S. and traveled around and realized the old pottery kilns in all these old villages were like rock. They were indestructible. So he developed a building system that is easy and super cheap and beautiful. He now (or used to? he might have died) holds workshops in SoCal--at Cal Earth--where you fill these long tubes with dirt in circular, conical rooms. Beautiful. The original design is made with a form of cob. You build it with straw, dirt, clay and water. Little kids can do it. Then you fill in the door and windows loosely with clay brick and stick a propane stove in there, run a fire for about three days. When it cools, remove the bricks from the door and windows and you have a rock house. You can add beautiful glazes. For a chimney he has a sort of wind catcher that catches breezes in the summer from the north and serves as a chimney for a wood stove or fireplace in the winter. The walls are very thick. The circular form of the rooms gives you non-electric movement of air in circles up the walls. The architect is Nader Khalili. https://calearth.org/pages/our-founder Watch all the YouTubes about his system. Very beautiful, solid, energy efficient. You can mix-and-match these building systems.
As for laptops and desktops, I'm assuming you will build to be off-grid. Laptop is about 19 watts (or mine are) and my desktop is 100 watts. Yours may be less. So the laptop averages around 10 watts an hour. That's 1/10th of what a desktop runs. Or one 60 watt bulb per day compared to 600 watts, closer to a therm. You need to seriously assess your energy needs. Don't go with an appliance because it's cheaper. Go with the one that is most energy efficient--the one it costs LEAST to run. Check out backwoodssolar.org. They help property owners put in their own solar systems and sell very efficient appliances. I just use conventional chest freezers--the smallest available--and put some blueboard insulation around it. Place it in the northern corner of the house. When the electric goes out, it's still frozen four or five days later without juice. I also use an external thermostat to turn a freezer into a fridge. You can choose what temperature it should cool at.
Water supply is important. Quality (and cleanliness) of soil. Look at permaculture. If you can store food in a root cellar. Think about how your place can be modified in extreme cold and extreme heat.
But the absolutely MOST important thing is the neighbors. That's the one thing I shall always regret. Everyone I asked said they were great. But they're bullies and have vandalized my land repeatedly. They thought they could scare me off but I'm a pretty stubborn, persistent, hard-headed person. I've lived on this land longer than any single property owner in the last hundred years!
This is a huge subject. The building system you should use will speak to you. I'm just working with a pre-existing homestead that dates back to just after the Revolutionary War. I've always preferred non-electric, hand-powered technologies. But that's just me. Chop wood, carry water. That's my mantra. The less you rely on outside systems, the more self-sufficient you will be.
I think you are right. It's astounding to me the level of denial out there. And all the people on here and other social media who insist climate upheaval "is just a hoax."
Nope.
As a grower, I have watched the changes over the past 2 and a half decades, and to me it's apparent to anyone who spends time outside each day and is actually paying attention.
After I complete the clean-up of my property after Helene (many more months), next step is a wood stove. After Helene hit I had no power for 10 days, and fortunately the temps were still mild (southern Appalachia). But being without power that long in the dead of winter would be a major problem.
I don't see the utility companies doing much of anything to shore up the grid, and I doubt that's just around here. Amazing how the government can spend billions in handouts for other countries to buy weapons, but we can't invest in our aging, piece-meal power grid?? Or start getting serious about renewable energy? wtf....
Unfortunately my state is "serious" about so-called "renewable" energy, which are just fossil fuels in material form plus destruction of the Earth from mining. So-called "renewables" are also incredibly hard on the grid--they are intermittent and the grid requires stable sources of power, and constant frequency, to keep the grid from crashing. These land-intensive, materials-intensive rebuildable technologies will not help ecological overshoot; in fact, they will worsen it. Here, the dams have destroyed the rivers, the wind turbines are hugely destructive of land and of raptors and bats, and solar is also eating up more and more land destroying native plants and pushing wildlife off the land. And none of it is keeping up with increasing demand and absolutely no-one is willing to contemplate LESS of anything.
The price of electricity will rise, while the grid will become more unstable. The time to plan is now.
You have discovered a conundrum- Ever growing needs verses a finite resource that is now reacting . It’s not going to be nice or fair but I’m betting the earth will win .
Thank you for being sane.
This is what Jimmy Carter was saying back in 1976, almost half a century ago. I live in the country, surrounded by an extended family who ride ATVs, hunt, can't keep their hands off their contractor equipment even when on vacation. They don't clearcut (for the most part) but they do cut the most valuable (read oldest) trees on their property, causing ridiculous flooding, slower growth in saplings surrounding their elders, the increase of local temps, destruction of cover for wildlife, etc. I protect my woods so they poach saying all the deer are hiding on my place, and my temps are a full 10 degrees lower than that on cleared land and in town. They live between 30 feet and a half mile from each other, but do they walk to each other's homes? Hell, no. They have to drive their work trucks or their ATVs, back and forth, the live-long day. They are their own little society and cannot bear to be alone, apparently. I have never been able to count how many vehicle trips they make within a 24 hour period. I'd estimate 30-40. When the electric goes out, on come the whole-house generators. I use no more than 1.5 cords of wood for heat every year. This winter I'm using roughly 1/4 what the average consumer here is in electric and still feel guilty. They're trying to put in SMART meters which actually cost you more since they draw electric to surveil your energy use 24/7 as well as emit EMFs. The electric company wants us to pay for infrastructure they haven't built yet, even though a lot of the electricity generated here (natural gas now--used to be coal) goes to large metropolitan areas like NYC. The one home up a dead-end road near my place uses a cord every three weeks for an outdoor burner which also uses electric. This wood is cut from trees on their land. And these people are not unusual. I feel guilty using satellite internet even though that's all that is available here. When it was out for two weeks, it cut my electric bill in HALF! I am a low consumer because I grew up in the Middle East so I'm keenly aware of the many real costs--not just financial--of oil consumption and have always had the need for low consumption in all energy sources drilled into my head. Climate change aside, the addiction for oil in the West will likely result in WWIII and nuclear war. If for no other reason, the US and Israel need to get out of the Middle East. And how much pollution have the Ukraine/Israel wars caused? I read somewhere one sortie by a fighter jet produced as much pollution as your typical, over-consuming American driver would if they lived to be 100. One flight.
If you ever live off the grid with the lowest electric consumption you can, you know getting rid of as many excessive appliances as you can cuts your need for electricity to a shocking degree. When I first bought my land, I lived in a trailer and had a very small solar system. I used 200 watts per day. Of course, I had an on-demand-propane water heater (do not want fossil fuels in my life, if possible now) and a propane fridge (ditto). I'm working on getting off the grid again in a much larger house that dates back to 1790 and was built for the climate here. Nine months of the year the most climate-mitigating energy I use is a fan facing outwards on the top floor to draw cool air in and up from below the house.
There are a number of products (solar generators with built-in battery banks) available now that do not require you to wire your own solar system. I am buying smallish Bluetti solar generators so I can get off-grid entirely. And when I quit my current work, I'll quit with Internet at my home. There are plenty of free wifi stations within cycling distance. The difference in energy consumption between a laptop and desktop system is enormous. There is so much we could do, but are not, because people figure they have the money to pay for excess consumption so why not? Average electric bill right now around here is between $300-600 a month. That's 1/4 to 1/2 many people's monthly income. Perhaps electric costs should be graduated year-round so that the less you use the less you pay. Conversely, the energy hogs need to pay more. There need to be limits on demand. Americans think they have a right to as much of an item as they want/can pay for. They do not. We have produced most of the pollution and consumed way more than even Europeans use (6X per capita; 12X what Middle Easterners use; 24X what Africans use).
It sounds like you're very knowledgeable. We're building a home and I'd like to make it as energy efficient as possible and hopefully be off grid. Any specific advice you'd give to someone in my situation? Also, what is the difference in energy expenditure between laptop and desktop?
My path is a low-tech one, so as to do the last damage possible to the environment. Wood stove, (outdoor) rocket stove, water catchment, outdoor washing station (planned, not yet built), planting native plants and trees, including fruit and nut bushes and trees, and my hope I can significantly improve my gardening and non-refrigerated food storage skills in the next few years.
Laptop vs. desktop will make no difference when the grid goes down, so I'm sticking with my old phone, old computer until they stop working at which point I'll unplug entirely.
Buying the smallest home you can, and prepping it to be as low-tech as possible would be my recommendation.
I found a pre-WWII ringer washing machine. It uses very little electric. I fill it with warm water, homemade laundry detergent, and clothes. Then run the ringer for a few minutes. Then leave it for 24 hours. Run the ringer again for a few more minutes, and drain. Then do the rinse cycle. That water doesn't have to be heated. And hang in the sun. Appliances made during or after WWII have built-in obsolescence. They don't last long. Generally speaking, they're poorly made. Maybe that's Boeing's problem.
I used a bucket, a washboard, and a clothes line, and heat the water on the wood stove or rocket stove. Works great!
Just reading that exhausted me. Choose your fights wisely. Don't do more physical labor than you have to. There's plenty to do without it. Just keep your eyes open for an old wringer washing machine. My grandmother used to do that with a fire under the copper washtub. It took all day. And then she had to do bluing to make the clothes white. Six sons and three daughters. You know how much mud six sons rub into their overalls? It's okay to use labor-saving devices. Honest.
If you can tell me where (or in what kind of local climate) you live in, I could be more helpful. I originally was going to build an underground home with clerestory, and a fridge built into a cob wall which is super efficient, below the natural springs up in the woods. But then my neighbor's marriage fell apart, and the husband asked me to buy their place (originally both our place had been part of the original settlers' place) because they were going into sheriff's foreclosure. I always liked the original house. So I dropped my plans. Had also considered building a cob house but it's probably too humid here. Though the local climate is changing and it's hard to predict what it will be in just a few years. With earth walls, the thicker they are the more consistent the humidity and temp is indoors.
With things heating up I'm wondering if I should build a small house underground or even a cob house (maybe inside the big barn which was built around 1790 and is huge).
Wood is better in earthquake territory. Underground is great. Also there's an Iranian architectm Nader Khalili, who went home after college in the U.S. and traveled around and realized the old pottery kilns in all these old villages were like rock. They were indestructible. So he developed a building system that is easy and super cheap and beautiful. He now (or used to? he might have died) holds workshops in SoCal--at Cal Earth--where you fill these long tubes with dirt in circular, conical rooms. Beautiful. The original design is made with a form of cob. You build it with straw, dirt, clay and water. Little kids can do it. Then you fill in the door and windows loosely with clay brick and stick a propane stove in there, run a fire for about three days. When it cools, remove the bricks from the door and windows and you have a rock house. You can add beautiful glazes. For a chimney he has a sort of wind catcher that catches breezes in the summer from the north and serves as a chimney for a wood stove or fireplace in the winter. The walls are very thick. The circular form of the rooms gives you non-electric movement of air in circles up the walls. The architect is Nader Khalili. https://calearth.org/pages/our-founder Watch all the YouTubes about his system. Very beautiful, solid, energy efficient. You can mix-and-match these building systems.
As for laptops and desktops, I'm assuming you will build to be off-grid. Laptop is about 19 watts (or mine are) and my desktop is 100 watts. Yours may be less. So the laptop averages around 10 watts an hour. That's 1/10th of what a desktop runs. Or one 60 watt bulb per day compared to 600 watts, closer to a therm. You need to seriously assess your energy needs. Don't go with an appliance because it's cheaper. Go with the one that is most energy efficient--the one it costs LEAST to run. Check out backwoodssolar.org. They help property owners put in their own solar systems and sell very efficient appliances. I just use conventional chest freezers--the smallest available--and put some blueboard insulation around it. Place it in the northern corner of the house. When the electric goes out, it's still frozen four or five days later without juice. I also use an external thermostat to turn a freezer into a fridge. You can choose what temperature it should cool at.
Water supply is important. Quality (and cleanliness) of soil. Look at permaculture. If you can store food in a root cellar. Think about how your place can be modified in extreme cold and extreme heat.
But the absolutely MOST important thing is the neighbors. That's the one thing I shall always regret. Everyone I asked said they were great. But they're bullies and have vandalized my land repeatedly. They thought they could scare me off but I'm a pretty stubborn, persistent, hard-headed person. I've lived on this land longer than any single property owner in the last hundred years!
This is a huge subject. The building system you should use will speak to you. I'm just working with a pre-existing homestead that dates back to just after the Revolutionary War. I've always preferred non-electric, hand-powered technologies. But that's just me. Chop wood, carry water. That's my mantra. The less you rely on outside systems, the more self-sufficient you will be.
I think you are right. It's astounding to me the level of denial out there. And all the people on here and other social media who insist climate upheaval "is just a hoax."
Nope.
As a grower, I have watched the changes over the past 2 and a half decades, and to me it's apparent to anyone who spends time outside each day and is actually paying attention.
After I complete the clean-up of my property after Helene (many more months), next step is a wood stove. After Helene hit I had no power for 10 days, and fortunately the temps were still mild (southern Appalachia). But being without power that long in the dead of winter would be a major problem.
I don't see the utility companies doing much of anything to shore up the grid, and I doubt that's just around here. Amazing how the government can spend billions in handouts for other countries to buy weapons, but we can't invest in our aging, piece-meal power grid?? Or start getting serious about renewable energy? wtf....
Unfortunately my state is "serious" about so-called "renewable" energy, which are just fossil fuels in material form plus destruction of the Earth from mining. So-called "renewables" are also incredibly hard on the grid--they are intermittent and the grid requires stable sources of power, and constant frequency, to keep the grid from crashing. These land-intensive, materials-intensive rebuildable technologies will not help ecological overshoot; in fact, they will worsen it. Here, the dams have destroyed the rivers, the wind turbines are hugely destructive of land and of raptors and bats, and solar is also eating up more and more land destroying native plants and pushing wildlife off the land. And none of it is keeping up with increasing demand and absolutely no-one is willing to contemplate LESS of anything.
The price of electricity will rise, while the grid will become more unstable. The time to plan is now.
Well I guess it could be worse... and it's gonna be.
You have discovered a conundrum- Ever growing needs verses a finite resource that is now reacting . It’s not going to be nice or fair but I’m betting the earth will win .