Making homes sustainable & efficient

madison · Heavy Crude Joined: Mar 12, 2005 Posts: 255

For those of us who are not planning on bugging out with a backpack of survival gear and a gun, I wanted to start a thread on how to make our current homes more sustainable and energy efficient. I have a toddler... as much as I might consider "heading for the hills" and living in a yurt 20 miles from the nearest town (sounds nice, though), it just ain't gonna happen.

So, I've been thinking of ideas, please add yours!

First, as soon as I'm out of my apartment lease, I'm moving to a better area of the country - good land, lots of water (rainy side of the Sierra Nevada), liberal laws, small town. Where I'm at currently will be one big graveyard; I pray nothing horrible goes down in the next 9 months!!!

Here's my list:

Water harvesting system: sturdy gutters, cisterns dug into the ground, water barrells, pumps to pump the cisterns, water purifiers.

Insulate the heck out of everything - floors, ceilings, walls, windows, those little door heat loss thingees.

Convert the kitchen to accept a wood burning cookstove.

Install a composting toilet system, possibly utilizing vermiculture (worms composting waste).

Re-do plumbing to incorporate grey water systems running outside to plant beds/garden/crops as appropriate.

Invest in solar power - some power for running an energy star efficient freezer (forget the fridge, or maybe a dorm room small fridge for essentials), rooftop solar water heating.

Buy or build a solar oven, make a cob/brick outdoor oven, make a solar dehydrator. Basically have three or four ways to cook, utilizing as little fuel as possible and making the most use of the sun's free energy.

Buy insulated curtains to keep out/keep in heat.

Raised bed gardening.

Composting everything (maybe using it to heat hot water?)

Raise chickens.

Remodeling the house I plan to buy for passive solar, or building with Rastra Blocks/Panels. Possibly retrofitting a home with strawbales.

Buying and using a pressure canner & hot water bath canning system; investing in a few hundred cans and the re-usable lids someone posted about on a forum here... if I can ever find that post again, lol.

Tear down backyard fences between myself and all my neighbors on my block, thereby making a community garden. Rebuilding the fence flush with the fronts of the houses, making a HUGE fenced in garden. (thereby keeping out dogs, wild animals and people who shouldn't be there). Raised beds, converting freestanding garages into tool sheds or chicken coops or small barns.

Establish wood lots on abandoned property and plant trees appropriate for the area.

Find out what the water rights are, and drill a well for my house. This will definately be a consideration when I decide where to move to.

Encourage multi-family homes or multi-generational homes.

Plant orchards - olive, walnut, almond, fruit trees. Plant berry bushes intead of front yards.

Shoot wild dog packs on sight.

Raise worms, ladybugs and bees!

Encourage community involvement in planning and encouraging folks to make new work - we need someone who can raise & care for a community cow (and make cheese, butter & yogurt for the community), goats, sheep, draft horse or mule etc. Not everyone will need to/have room for/possess the talent to care for a large animal but several would be very good for meeting the communities needs. Encourage children to invest in futures that will provide right livelihood, providing directly for needs within the community. Local grown, local consumed! We need smiths, vets, lactation consultants, doctors, nurses, midwives, soapmakers, herbalists, gardeners, teachers, shoemakers, carpenters/handymen, counselors, child caregivers, elder caregivers, chiropractors, weavers, beekeepers, bakers, bike repairers, carters & wheelwrights, etc!

Consider purchasing archery stuff - a few good compound bows, crates of arrows, finger and wrist guards, repair equipment etc. Hey, the guns will run out of bullets eventually, whether it's in 10 years or 100 years.

I'm going to open a Center for Sustainable Living - part school, part store, part community garden, part farm, part bed & breakfast, part home. Offer workshops & seminars, tools for post-oil life, outdoor concerts & theater, counseling, advice & resource referrals, and a shoulder to cry on... and a kick in the butt when needed Smile

I'll need a basic house I can build onto and remodel. I'd also like to build a building for the Center using Rastra, Strawbale and Cob. So it'll have to be a house with several acres attached, and yet still local enough to be able to walk or bike ride into "town".

I think this plan would cover the basic needs of water, food, light, security and a little bit of luxury.

Any other ideas for converting our current communities into sustainable villages?

Ludi · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 3:29 pm Post subject:

Sounds like you'll need a ton o' money.... Shocked

Barbara · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:10 pm Post subject:

Stay away from technology. Low tech is the key. Which doesn't mean living in Middle Age,but avoid anything you can't repair yourself or have to find fancy spare parts (from China! Laughing

)
I was thinking of solar then dropped it: solar panels for electricity need a lot of maintenance. Avoid to count on generators (for, say, a well pump or whatever). One day you'll run out of what you need and the thing will be useless.
Avoid using wood as much as you can. This is a main point. Think of 6 billions people on earth cutting trees as hell to cook or heat the house.
Cook with solar ovens, heat with garbage or seeds or whatever you can without cutting wood.
Use technology for basic things: say, those big plastic black tanks for hot water or those plastic pipelines.
_________________
**no english mothertongue**
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Objects in the rear view mirror
are closer than they appear.

hrspwr · Coal Joined: Mar 14, 2005 Posts: 11

We are selling our house and moving south to a better climate. My wife and I are going to build an earth sheltered home. I am going to use solar/ radiant heating with pumps set up to run off of PV. We are buying rural property with a spring on it. I also am going to use PV for basic survival needs only. I plan on using the grid as long as possible but being prepared for the worst.

The house we are building will also be using passive solar and have a long sunroom/greenhouse on the front.

It is going to cost us a lot of money, but if the S doesn`t hit the F in the next six months we should escape pretty clean.

Trab · Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2005 4:13 pm Post subject:

Depending on where you live, passive solar and super-insulation is the way to go. I'm stuck in a typical suburban house for now, but I am planning on some day going the passive solar/semi-underground route, with a stove/masonry heater for backup.

I agree the low-tech is the way to go. The less moving parts, the less energy and less need to repair things.

I checked out "The Solar House" by Dan Chiras out of my local library this week, and it has lots of information in there on passive heating, cooling, and other related subjects. Highly recommended.

bamagirl · Coal Joined: Sep 29, 2004 Posts: 10

We live in south Bama, about 20 miles from Fl so our changes have been along the lines of surviving long hot summers, and reducing the electric bill in general (no gas).

*Switch to cf bulbs.

*Use water heater timer and insulating blanket (we're doing this next month). Right now we turn it off during the day.

*Get rid of wall to wall carpeting. We have tile or wood thru out. In the winter, we open the drapes and the suns warms the tile and radiates the heat at night. In the summer, the tile is nice and cool underfoot.

*Programable thermostat set on 81 in summer, 69 in winter.

*Ceiling fans in every room and two floor fans on opposite sides of the house help with cross ventilation with windows open in summer.

*Heavy drapes help keep out the cold in winter and keep out the heat in summer. In the pre-ac days drapes would be wet down so when air blew thru a house it was cooled.

*I don't turn on the a/c until it's at least 85. Between windows, tile, and fans we can keep the house pretty cool.

*We line dry clothes most of the year.

We are planning on getting a wood heat stove because it will probably eliminate our need to turn on the heater at all in the winter. I am all for anything that reduces the amount of money I pay to the electric company lol. Very Happy

We're also doing the whole solar power thing probably this winter or next spring. Again, mostly cause we resent paying an electric bill lol, but also the hurricanes. We got lucky last season and only lost power a couple of days. A few years ago we had no power for a week. Our relatives in Fl had no power for three weeks last season. Sept with no a/c is pretty damned miserable here, even for me and I like to be hot.

gg3 · Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2005 12:14 am Post subject:

Don't get a dorm-sized fridge, get a Sun Frost. Normal (or nearly so) storage capacity for a tiny fraction of the power consumption. Initial cost is high, but it will pay for itself if the cost of power goes wild (or if you're running on solar or wind offgrid). For a high-efficiency washing machine that's mechanically simple, look up the Staber top-loading horizontal-axis machine, and/or the Danby TT-420 twin-tub (I have the latter). Don't use the dryer if at all possible; it's OK to have one, just exercise strict discipline over when it's used.

Graywater for irrigation of food crops: careful! Water from the shower contains potentially nasty bacteria. Water from the laundry is potentially usable if you are very careful in your choice of detergents.

Rainwater collected off the roof may not be safe to drink, due to bacteria in the rain gutters and/or collection pipes and cistern. Use this water for irrigation of crops, and use your graywater to flush the toilet.

Composting toilets may or may not be viable in your area, but you have to know how to deal with the compost. If you have city sewers, may as well use 'em while they last. I happen to believe that public water supply and sewage treatment will be the *last* things to go, i.e. they are so vital that no expense will be spared by municipalities to keep them turned on and working, along with weekly refuse collection (less than weekly leads to a fly infestation problem).

Study sanitation and public health in depth before investing in various water & waste infrastructure.

Cob and some related techniques are basically "weak concrete." If you're going to do masonry, do it right, so it lasts (and doesn't melt in the rain!).

Install an electric meter and water meter indoors so you can easily monitor your consumption. This is a very useful way to keep track of how your efficiency measures are working.

Watch out for "wall warts," those little plug-in power transformers that power many types of small household devices. They use a surprisingly large amount of power just sitting there plugged in. Get a hard-wired telephone, not a cordless. Get power strips with switches to enable turning off peripherals attached to your computer. Etc. etc.

Also try to minimize use of batteries. Expensive energy storage, and hazardous waste after they age to the point where they can't be recharged.