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Suburban Retrofit

October 18, 2011 @ 22:37 By Gavin Webber 12 Comments

So far I have written about food, transportation, family, community and we even heard from Linda Woodrow about the Cuban Special period and how they handled energy descent.  One of the few things I have left out are ways to retrofit the suburbs, or more specifically a suburban home to prepare for energy descent, and in many ways, help mitigate climate change.

Lets start with the basic inputs into an average suburban home.  These are the utilities that service the home for instance Electricity, natural gas, water, telecommunications, food and fuel.
The outputs are waste (organic and inorganic) in the form of sewage, garbage, green waste, storm water and greenhouse gasses.

As fuel costs begin to cripple the global economy along with increasing financial pressure on governments to repair damage after climate chaos events (i.e. Flood levy), these inputs and outputs within our suburban landscape will rise in cost (everything has a cost) and in some circumstances may cease altogether either sporadically or completely.  How do we prepare for the loss or disruption of these utilities?  Well it just so happens that I have already written about preparing for one off climate or civil disturbance events in the Be Prepared Challenge.  All of the advice given there still rings true when preparing for energy descent, but only in the initial stages.

You will need to plan for the longer term.  By starting now there are advantages like lower costs (materials will rise in cost), current abundance of materials, and youthful exuberance (however you are only as young as you feel).  So lets go through the list of utilities and have a think about what we can do for the longer term to make life as sustainable and comfortable as we can under the circumstances.  Before I do though, be clearly aware that a massive reduction from present day consumption levels is not only going to be necessary due to rising costs and scarcity, it will probably be forced upon us.  Think of rationing in Allied nations during WWII, but without end.

Inputs

  • Electricity:  There are a few options.  If the grid remains stable, then we will be asked to ration electricity.  It maybe unreliable, and we will have to find alternatives to modern day conveniences.  Think of all the things you use electricity for now, and try and find other ways to do them.   Alternatively you can prepare by installing an off-grid renewable energy system.  Wind and Solar PV are probably the most effective in the suburban environment.  At the moment, costs are reasonable for this type of retrofit, but prices will sky rocket when components for these systems become scarce.  As for maintenance, we better learn to do it ourselves or do without.
  • Natural Gas or LPG: Many Australian suburban homes are connected to the gas main for heating, hot water and cooking. Alternatives can be passive heating, ensuring that north facing windows (in the southern hemisphere) are not shaded in the winter to allow maximum solar gain, wood stove for cooking/heating/hot water, solar hot water system to heat water, or even an outdoor clay oven to cook in! Firewood will need to be sustainable harvested by coppicing, and not obtained by clear felling the neighbourhood’s trees. Firewood will need to be seasoned to burn the best so allow for some storage and cover. Another alternative for cooking is to make or buy a solar oven. At the moment you can purchase them for under $500, in which you can bake, roast and casserole amongst other things. There are many plans for solar ovens on the Internet.  You could also make a methane digester if you have access to manure (animals or your own) to make a fuel to cook and heat with.
  • Heating/Cooling: Both Electricity and Gas will be in short supply, so prepare now by insulating your home to lower these requirements.  Learn how to actively manage you home so you can heat it in the winter with the sun, and cool it in summer with evening breezes.  
  • Water: Our water system relies on pumps which are fuelled by electricity or diesel. These may fail, so to have your own water supply will be crucial. Install a water tank/butt/cistern to store as much water as you can. You will not only need it to water your food garden, but to survive on yourself. While you are at it, make sure that you can move it around the home, either by gravity or a solar powered pump. Water is the most important resource that you will need. Make sure you have some on hand.
  • Telecommunications: Electricity is required to power our communications infrastructure. This includes mobile phones, home phones, and your Internet connection. Without electricity there is no telecommunications network. Alternatives are a CB HF or UHF radio for local comms, powered by a battery charged by solar PV, the postal system, yelling (think town crier), or visiting the person you want to talk to by riding your bike! All that being said, if we can save one thing in a post energy descent future, I hope it is the Internet, which has helped us to communicate and share information on a global scale, but don’t bet your shirt on it being available.
  • Food: The supermarket shelves will drain of good, so the only alternative is to buy locally, or grow your own. You will really need to learn now before things go pear shaped. As Linda mentioned in the podcast, Cubans didn’t know how to grow their own food, so had to learn by trial and error whilst under enormous pressure to succeed. By using the time we have, we can learn by joining a gardening or sustainable living group. This way we can learn quickly by utilising collective experience of the other members. Take a look at where you have ornamentals in your garden and think food. Starvation is not a pretty thing.
  • Fuel: Transportation fuels will spike in price and will be rationed. We will drive less and less, and seek alternatives like bicycles in all shapes and forms, draught animals, pack animals, and shanks pony (our feet) to get around and to transport local goods around. I expect that governments that remain will try and keep rail services running so this will be the mainstay of bulk transportation for long haul purposes. If you want to buy an electric car now, you better have the independent means to charge it. You could become the local taxi service and be in huge demand!

Outputs

  • Sewage:  No water for flushing, so the alternatives are a long drop toilet (outhouse) or composting toilet that does not require electricity to work.  You will save on water costs, and not have to worry about an unreliable sewage system.
  • Grey Water: Divert it to the fruit trees in your garden.  Save every last drop by using it to grow food.  
  • Organic/Green waste:  Ornamental lawns will be a thing of the past, so you won’t have that waste stream, and all the other waste will be fed to the chickens (you will learn to love them), or the worm farm or compost bin.  So many choices.
  • Landfill waste:  As fuel get expensive, local governments may have to restrict garbage services to high priority requirements only.  This means that your weekly garbage truck visit will become less frequent or non-existent.  As consumption of stuff will be much lower, I would expect that packaging waste will be minimal, so we may not have too many problems.  Any waste you do have will have to be re-purposed or just don’t buy goods that leave you with waste that you cannot deal with.
  • Storm water:  If you are harvesting water off of your roof, you wont have this waste stream.  If you reach storage capacity, let it flow onto your garden, unless of course you get a deluge.
  • Greenhouse Gas:  With fossil fuels being limited, and hard to come by anyway, you will not have this output. 


So there are a few alternatives that I can think of for the utilities that service our homes, and many of them I have prepared for myself around my own home.  By preparing now, you will save a lot of heartache in the future and of course don’t forget to share your skills and experiences as you prepare your home and neighbourhood for energy descent.  It won’t be easy, but it can be done and we will be a better society for it on the other side.
Do you know of any low tech alternatives that I may have missed?

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Filed Under: renewable energy, Suburbs, Sustainable Living

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About Gavin Webber

Gavin Webber's daily goal is to live a more sustainable lifestyle, in an effort to reduce his family's environmental footprint so we can all make a difference for our children & future generations to come.

Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.

Comments

  1. brendie says

    October 19, 2011 at 05:11

    very thought provoking. in our local paper last night was an add for bicycyles…a new schwann trike, has a basket on the back. at home we discussed lindas post and the need for a good sturdy bike and water etc. You mention rubbish pick up, now theres a challenge, see if you can do without it!, most of our wheelie bin has stryofoam trays and gladwrap, Im gonna try a “reduce packaging challenge”
    as well as investigate forms of protein i can produce at home

    Reply
  2. Anonymous says

    October 19, 2011 at 06:04

    I just found your blog and am really enjoying going through the posts. We have been making progress with many of the points you list but I still can’t figure out the water issue. The pump for our well runs on electricity and hand pumps are near $1,000. We have an asphalt roof so collecting rain water for drinking doesn’t seem like a good option.

    Reply
  3. Linda says

    October 19, 2011 at 06:58

    Hi Gavin, I don’t think ‘skills’ can go unmentioned! Spinning, sewing, knitting, building, etc. Learning these skills now is a priority for us (and so much fun!)

    Reply
  4. angela says

    October 19, 2011 at 07:59

    I agree with Linda, we kneed to re learn how to do the things our grandmothers and grandfathers did. even learning how to resole a shoe will be of benifit. Knitting and sewing even if it just to sew on a button, or repair a rip will also help.
    Just to add this morning on the today show they were reporting that the IMF ( international monetry fund) is predicting that dreded D word. Depression. Me thinks I will go out today and plant more vegies.

    Reply
  5. Sarah R says

    October 19, 2011 at 08:42

    Hi Gavin,

    I agree with everything you say, and I have for a long time been working on a more frugal, sustainable lifestyle. But one of the things about this that makes me very panicky is that so much of what you and other people suggest about retrofitting homes, gardening, water tanks and keeping chooks etc. is simply not available to those of us who are forced to rent in the cities, and particularly people like me who being single, can only afford to rent a flat and many of those don’t even have a balcony to grow tomatoes on. With the enormous cost of housing in Australian cities, the quarter acre block with the chooks and the veggie garden is just an impossibility, and the high cost of rent means minimising space now to try and save as much as possible. I’m very much afraid that people like me will be left literally high and dry when peak oil starts to bite. The alternative is to live so far away from the city that I’m spending all my time and money on the commute, which is also unsustainable and risks being unable to afford to come to work once the costs rise. It’s actually very hard to read about all the things that I’d love to be doing but can’t. I’d really love to hear some solutions for this kind of dilemma – there are many, many people who will be affected in this way.

    Reply
  6. angela says

    October 19, 2011 at 08:56

    Sarah R, you can help start a comunity garden. Even if in a school. you will be surprised how many people are like and would love to have a little plot of land. Contact the council and see if there already is one, or talk to them about starting one. there is always something you can do. They may even be elderly neighbours not far from you who would love the company and you can help them grow stuff in their backyards and share the produce.

    Reply
  7. Linda says

    October 19, 2011 at 08:59

    Hi Gavin, sorry to hijack your post but I want to comment to Sarah R. Don’t be despondent! I’m sure you are doing heaps already by being aware. If you are determined to garden, is there a community garden near you? Have you looked into Landshare (where people with land allow you to garden on their land – sometimes non-gardeners who enjoy a share of the vegies)? By buying locally, getting eggs from someone who keeps chooks etc. you will be doing heaps, and keep your ear to the ground for likemindeds in your area. There will be solutions out there for you!

    Reply
  8. Mrs B says

    October 19, 2011 at 10:58

    Hi Gavin,

    This is a fantastic post!! Like others have said we consider skills to be really important as well. We are currently both skilling ourselves and our son up with a variety of skills to fix, mend, make and grow as widely as possible.

    But we bought our new house to be based on it’s retrofit capabilities. We are slowly getting bikes and aim to have a wood heater and a wood oven at the new place.

    My current mission is reduce our waste to as little as possible. As Brendie said it’s actually a bit harder than you think – we compost, make most of food from scratch but still the rubbish is more than we’d like.

    Reply
  9. Tracey says

    October 19, 2011 at 14:22

    Like Sarah R I’m a renter, so I don’t have the opportunity to invest in green infrastructure like solar power, water tanks etc. But I would like to second Linda’s comment about learning useful skills – and that is something that those of us shut out of the housing market can do.

    For example, learning food preservation skills, especially those which are low energy or free energy (eg. sun-drying, salting, pickling). Solar cooking is another interesting topic to explore and useful for camping trips.

    I do have a veggie patch, but can also experiment with local produce purchased from farmers’ markets. I’m also learning cheesemaking – a house cow isn’t an option right now, but as the world changes a dairy goat in the back yard might become a more common sight.

    Lots of useful skills can be learned and practiced now in a rented home, or maybe now is the time to do a course.

    Reply
  10. Gavin says

    October 19, 2011 at 22:19

    @ Brendie, I agree about waste in our current paradigm. So hard to avoid it, but it can be done with quite a bit of effort.

    @ Anon, have you thought of a solar powered pump for your well. There are lots of great models out there, and as long as the sun shines you can pump water to a header tank and use gravity during the night. Just a thought.

    @ Linda, I agree about skills, I was going to write about it next!

    @ Angela, Homemaking skills are very important, and even more so during energy descent. Men and women need to learn them.

    @ Sarah R. Don’t despair, there are lots of things you can do if you rent. Skills would have to number one on the list, because people will want to barter with excess produce, and you will need to know how to store it for the longer term. I will write more on the subject in a few days time. Chin up.

    @ Angela, the neighbour idea is a great one.

    @ Linda. Landshare is a great program and now taking off in Australia.

    @ Mrs B. Cheers. We are upskilling our 12 year old son in gardening, building, painting, cooking to name a few. As I am learning them, I am passing them on to him.

    @ Tracey. Love the goat idea. Even I would have to take one for a walk every day so that it gets enough feed. I don’t have any lawn as it has been converted to growing space. Skills will be worth their weight in gold in the not so distant future.

    Gav x

    Reply
  11. Darren (Green Change) says

    October 20, 2011 at 12:51

    Another option for the sewage is a septic system – some towns/suburbs are lucky enough to still have them. If the lights go out, they’ll still be functional!

    You could potentially also tap the methane off a septic tank, and use it for cooking, heating, hot water, etc. It’s really just a big underground digester!

    Reply
  12. Sarah R says

    October 21, 2011 at 11:41

    Thanks, Linda, Angela, Tracy and Gavin for your positive responses. I am actually pretty good in the tradtional skills department, though I need more garden to practice on. I wasn’t aware of the Landshare program though – that’s a great idea and I’ll investigate it.

    I guess there are two distinct issues here – how to be sustainable and environmentally friendly, and how to protect yourself against the coming Zombie Apocalypse. City flat-dwellers are often pretty good at the former, since they don’t have lawns, and rely on public transport, but I worry about how we’ll do in the latter instance – there are only so many jars of sauerkraut or bottles of water you can keep under the bed.

    Reply

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