103 comments on CBC: Your Basic Petroleum Depletion Story (a Story You're Likely Going to be Seeing a Lot More of Soon)
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103 comments on CBC: Your Basic Petroleum Depletion Story (a Story You're Likely Going to be Seeing a Lot More of Soon)
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Right now, we can't even get people to install solar hot water heaters in the sun belt, so they obviously are very afraid yet, are they?
My view is that those who start doing such things believe in technological fixes.
I think that it would be more useful to build a home that can sustain itself - passive solar heating. I can survive without hot water but I need food in my belly and a warm (at least cool) house to live in.
Anyways - energy is so cheap that the return on investment for "green" upgrades is so far in the future that nobody will consider them and I believe that this is yet again the receding horizon problem. This has been the case for decades and will continue to be so. As energy costs go up so will my taxes and insurance and repair costs.
The breaking point will hit those who can't afford to stay in a house all - at least during the rollercoaster after we know that PO is in the rear view mirror. The wild card is what happens to the jobs.
Right now I'm with a group looking at co-housing aka intentional housing such as Ithaca Eco village. What scares the @#$#@$ out of me is that even though I'm financially sound I'd be jumping into this with people who will need a mortage and a few families defaulting will make the whole thing insolvent.
So how much does one worry about PO and the amazing decline of savings in the USA, the USA debt and deficit, default rates and the money pit / transfer (from the middle class to the wealthy) that is the occupation of Iraq?
It can't keep on keeping on!
It's a lot easier just to roll over, pull the covers up and forget about PO and just keep on keeping on than it is to think about this!
"I think that it would be more useful to build a home that can sustain itself"
Then I would suggest the following. Dig a large level area the size of your pad into a sloping hillside. Form it up with a 12" concrete forms and pour the walls. Lay your plumbing and then pour the pad. Leave only the front open. Cover the top with earth. Put in one flue for a wood heater. Place the cold air return right over the top of the woodheater(in the ceiling). Plan for one room to not be heated and serve as a 'root cellar' for storage of supplies,firearms,etc. The airhandler will distribute the heat from the woodheater and the backup electric or gas HVAC system is there until TSHTF.
You now have a home you can live in with or without heat or cooling. Its highly defensible and very economical to build and weather proof(tornadoes,earthquakes,etc).
As I was building my loghome on the identical foundation as above my neighbor came over and did exactly what I described above except that he has a storage space above instead of an earth covered top.
He can heat it easily. Its extremely comfortable. It fits well with the environment. It was not too costly to build.
I doubt many are going to go this way since they wish to have others ohhh and ahhhh over their visible lifestyles and tend to place them in plain view. I live way back up near the woods away from the plain view and not prone to being ripped off so easily. Ifen you wish to sneak up on me you have to outfox my dogs. Dogs don't do well near roadways either. You need to build with a view to the future and all possibilities.
As you said...'easier to roll over and pull the covers up(and over your head).
Airdale
Ummm, I've often wanted to do this but the cost/time to complete such a project discourages me... so the next best thing, I think, would be "converting" an existing home that is built of rock (about 12in thick) and building up earth around it, putting in skylights, solar water heating and solar pv. The house has a fireplace with a heat-o-later (sp?) that has two small fans on the bottom. It does a good job of drawing in cold air and pushing out warm at the top. The house is in central texas where the heat can be as bad as the north's cold.