May 2, 2014 • 44 mins
What does it take to get off the grid? From electricity to water to just getting by, we take a look at how challenging it is to disconnect.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, Welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks in the future and says back to
the howling Old Alan the Woods, hunting the hornyback Toad.
I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocal Bam, and I'm Jill McCormick. So, guys,
(00:25):
we have a listener request to answer we wanted. You know,
we invite our listeners at the end of every episode
to send in any request they might have for us
to cover in the future, and this is one of
those episodes. So first we have to give a big
thank you to Sylvia Ramsey who wrote in and asked
us to address a few things. And she was thinking
(00:48):
of I think several different podcasts, but we kind of
lump them all into one in a way because they
all seem to have a similar theme. So here is
the request. I listened to the podcast all the time.
Could we have some shows about the technologies used to
be more self reliant? For example, how electricity can be
generated on a household level cheaply and sustainably, or passive
(01:09):
heating and cooling of the home. What are the new
technologies to retrofit an older home to decrease energy use.
Can I make fuel for my car at home? Do
we have to use food crops to make ethanol? Also,
I'd like to know a little more about regenerating soil
that has been degraded by too much tilling or pesticides
and fertilizer where you have no more remaining carbon and
(01:30):
too much saline, so that it will grow food again.
So that's a lot of stuff, but it all kind
of fits in this whole idea of self reliance fits
on this idea of getting off the grid, not relying
on the things that are provided by various companies and
government agencies that make up what we think of as society,
(01:50):
and becoming this more kind of self reliant unit. And
this could be something that takes place in the middle
of a city. It could be one of those scenario
where you're saying, this is it. I'm gonna be a
hermit in the woods. Either way, you know you have
to start taking into consideration how are you going to
make this happen without too huge an impact on the
(02:11):
life you are used to. Why is it always the woods?
Why can't you be a hermit in the desert or
a hermit in the tundra. You can be a hermit
at either of those places. It's just getting at water
is a lot more challenging in both cases. What about
a hermit in the sea, A hermit on the fertile planes,
I think is probably the ultimate. Yeah, hermit in the
woods is actually pretty tough to carry out, too, especially
(02:34):
if you want electricity. Electrically speaking, if you don't want electricity,
it's easy, but electricity is a big is a big problem.
If you expect to have that in your life, then
the woods may not be the best choice. Well, first
we should talk about why it is that people would
want to be self reliant and get off the grid,
because it has taken our species hundreds of thousands of
(02:55):
years to get on the grid. I have electricity, I
have running water, I have communication services like telephone, internet,
I have all these wonderful things. I have easy access
to food that I don't have to grow myself. It
makes life pretty easy. So what are the reasons people
would have for wanting to disconnect from all of this convenience. Well,
(03:20):
I mean, we've got the whole self reliance at angle,
This idea of being independent and not having to depend
upon others. One of the big issues of this world
that we live in is that a lot of people.
In fact, I would argue most people don't have the
knowledge or skill sets necessary to survive without that system.
(03:41):
So we are not like Cormick McCarthy protagonists. We know
where all the people who died before the story started, right,
We don't have those survival skills and we don't have
the equipment we would need if the apocalypse came. So
part of it is just this idea of being elf
reliant puts you in a better spot. You know, whether
(04:03):
you think the worst could happen or you just think
this is something that's important to me. From a philosophical standpoint,
I'm saying that I want to be able to do this,
and furthermore, I'm not comfortable perhaps taking this much from
the rest of society. Right then, you have the idea
of the people who want privacy. Yes, the folks who
(04:25):
value their privacy are obviously going to want to find
ways to protect that as much as possible. Being on
the grid means you're already giving up quite a bit
of your privacy. Things like how much energy you use
is going to be known at least by the entity
that's providing the energy. And I mean also just just
where you live and how many people know that you're
(04:46):
there and when you're there, when you're using communication devices,
then that definitely starts to give a lot more information.
The more you rely upon the grid, however you define
that grid not just power grid, but this social structure,
then less privacy you're going to have. And then, of
course some of us, a lot of us, choose to
give up a lot of privacy voluntarily we share things
(05:07):
on these communication systems. A lot of us just don't
think about it, you know, you just kind of unconsciously
give that information away, right like saying things like I'm
really looking forward to this vacation, and you're not thinking, hey,
I've already made it clear where I live, and now
I've also made it clear when I'm not going to
be there, right, that kind of stuff. Then the next
(05:29):
big category, I would say, and by the way, I'm
not suggesting that any person only falls into one category,
or that the three categories I'm talking about are the
only ones. I'm just kind of identifying the big ones
that I can think of. But one would be just
the environmentally conscious, the people who want to make as
little an environmental impact negative environmental impact as they possibly can.
(05:52):
And you know, we all know that not all, but
a lot of electricity, depending up on where you live,
can come from sources that end up burning a lot
of fossil fuels, which create a lot of greenhouse gases,
big carbon footprint. Yeah, let's talk about some of the
costs of these grid conveniences like electricity. Yeah, I mean
that's a big one, right. I mean, so in lucky cases,
(06:13):
you might be getting some grid electricity from clean power, right,
or relatively clean power, because, as we talk about pretty
frequently on this show, even something like getting solar energy
from photovoltaics means that someone has to create the photovoltaic material,
which uses a lot of nasty chemicals, right. Or building
a wind turbine also means that the manufacturing process usually
(06:34):
has its own carbon footprint. It's one of those things
where you start peeling back the layers and you realize
that the big picture is a lot more complicated. Now,
the actual production of energy from that point forward much cleaner. Sure,
And that's great. So what's the number one source of
gride electricity? In the United States. Well, it's our old
friend coal. Yeah, coal, yeah, coal. Coal generates about forty
(06:57):
four percent of all the electricity in the United States.
Is that number as of two thousand and nine. I
think I believe so. And even then you're looking at
you know, that's the largest of all the individual ones,
so everything else makes up the rest. So it's less
than half of all the energy, but still the largest
single slice of the pie. And it's also the source
(07:18):
of sixty seven percent of the nation's sulfur dioxide emissions,
twenty three percent of nitrogen oxide emissions, and forty percent
of man made carbon dioxide emissions, meaning it's the largest
contributor to air pollution. So overall, so there are other
things like transportation that if you take transportation as a
whole in the United States, may produce more carbon dioxide
(07:42):
than power plants. But when you look at all the
pollutants across the board, power generation is the top. That's
the biggest one, especially when you factor in things like
heating and cooling. Right, So, getting off the grid, if
you're able to generate your own electricity, presumably not through
your own backyard coal power plant, you're not going to
be impacting the environment negatively beyond whatever the initial carbon
(08:06):
footprint was of whatever device you've decided to use. Sure,
there might also be the fact that the grid is
producing electricity in a way that might not be the
most efficient or convenient for you. Yeah, in the United
States in particular, we have you know, there's this idea
the smart grid. It's a great idea, and there's some
places the reality of the dumb grid right right. The
(08:28):
smart grid is something that has been rolled out in
certain areas, but it's not something that's infrastructure wide, right.
The smart grid is this idea of not just is
it delivering electricity, but it's doing it. It's able to
dynamically change over time as conditions change, so it's not
just a system that's constantly at ninety eight percent capacity
(08:49):
like one of the stories you'll read about. If you
look into the power grids in the United States, so
that most of them are almost at full capacity right now,
and if something happens, if demand somehow changes, that can
result in brownouts or blackouts. We've seen that happen multiple times,
especially on the West coast, but in the Northeast not
that long ago, a few years ago, there was a
massive blackout in the Northeast as well, and it's not
(09:11):
like we can dynamically route power easily through these systems.
A smart grid would have much more flexibility. It also
would allow for if there was an interruption in service.
Often the companies don't know that there's an interruption in
service unless customers start letting them know calling them. The
smart grid would have the ability to let a utility
(09:32):
company know if service had been interrupted in one point,
and they could either re route stuff to make the
affected area as small as possible, or immediately send out
repair crews or both to address the situation right. And
there's another way that the self reliance may come in.
If you want to get off the grid, well, it
might just be because hey, I want to control my
(09:53):
own production of energy. I don't want to have to
call the power company and have them tell me, well
it'll be a few days. Yeah, I want I would
like it if if it meant that power was lost
to the entire region I live in, I still have
power because I'm generating my own electricity. I'm not dependent
upon some external resource. I mean, apart from whatever you're
(10:13):
using to get your energy. You like it until your
neighbors come banging on your door to watch your TV. Right, Uh, yeah, exactly, unless,
of course, the blackout is so wide that you can't
pick up anything. And technically, if you were truly off
the grid, you wouldn't have a television. Maybe you could,
you could have over the air. You could have an
over the air like antenna, and you pick up broadcasts
over the air that doesn't have any reflections, so you
(10:36):
would just be able to pick stuff up. But even then,
if it's a full black out of the region, there
aren't going to be any broadcast towers near enough to
you to get to pick anything up. I was kind
of joking anyway. Look, well, you're trying to catch up
on Game of Thrones, and I'm glad that we knitpiced
to death in that case. Yes, that's that's what we do.
That's what we do. We make a joke and then
we drive it into the ground. Let's let's pit more
(10:57):
let's pit more nicks. Okay, let's pick more nits. No
more nicks, We'll pit more nicks. Okay, Okay, So, Nick Fiery,
let's say you want to get off the grid. This
idea appeals to you. Yeah, how would you do it,
What are the steps you need to take and what
are the factors you need to consider. Well, all right,
let's assume for the moment that you do want electricity,
(11:18):
all right, because if you don't want electricity, then this
simplifies things quite a bit. But let's assume that you
need electricity for certain things. You have certain conveniences you're
used to. Perhaps you still want to maintain some connection
to the grid with communication devices, like you want to
be able to communicate with loved ones who are still
definitely part of society, or you really enjoy refrigeration. Yep,
(11:39):
that's another big one. If you don't have a plentiful
fresh food source that's going to be available all year round,
then you're going to need something to keep that food preserved.
And perhaps you are not great at pickling everything. So yeah,
it's necessary. So yeah, electricity is a big one. Well,
you want to be able to generate it. If you're
(11:59):
going to be off the grid, you're not going to
be dependent upon any power grids out there. The probably
the number one choice, I would say, would be solar. Now,
solar power, of course, you're using solar panels, which we've
discussed many times. If you're talking top of the line
super efficient solar panels, like the kind that are used
(12:19):
in space under ideal conditions, they top out at about
forty percent efficiency, meaning sixty percent of the energy hitting
them gets lost. If you're talking about the kind that
we could actually use in our homes, because those are
reserved for like space stuff, and those optimal conditions really
only happen in the laboratory, and it would be prohibitively
expensive for pretty much any human being apart from billionaires. Well,
(12:44):
I mean, I mean solar power is still pretty expensive. Yeah, yeah,
the initial expense is that's the big problem with any
of these is that you have to make an innational investments. Yeah. Now, now,
over time, you're going to save tons of money because
you don't have to pay any utility bills. You have
to maintain whatever it is you're using. But if you're
using regular solar panels, the kind that most of us
(13:04):
would be able to get for our homes, that efficiency
peaks out around twenty or twenty one percent. On top
of that, each solar panels only generating a little bit
of electricity, so you've got to have a lot of
them in order to get enough power. It affects the
locations you can choose for where you want to live,
right in case you don't want to be somewhere that's
cloudy or has tree cover, or you don't want to
(13:25):
be too far north right, you know, because they're going
to be long get shorter. Yeah, there's long stretches of
time where you're not going to get a lot of daylight.
So the closer to the equator you are, the more
sun you're going to get year round, because otherwise they're
going to be sections of the year where you're not
going to have very much electricity at all. You're also
going to want batteries because otherwise you're not going to
be able to use any electricity after the sun goes down,
(13:46):
which is when many of us want light. Yeah. Yeah,
it turns out that turning all your lights on when
it's already bright outside is not necessarily the most you know,
effective thing. In fact, you could you would probably be
using things like daylighting, which is where you're using either
a wind a series of windows, or even windvanced window technology.
It kind of is there's actually I've seen a really
(14:07):
cool one where you use like a kind of like
a skylight that's installed in the house, and then it
uses a tunnel system with mirrors to direct that sunlight
down to whatever room you want. So it's like having
a light that's that's just a's dictated by the sun.
So you still get light in the daytime, and then
you only use the electricity at night when you don't
have that daylight. I think in a lot of cases,
(14:27):
whatever your source is, it's going to involve a lot
of cutting back on the electricity you use. Yes, yes,
you want to be very, very efficient. We'll talk a
little bit more about that in a second, but the
point being that, yeah, you have to be you have
to be strategic and where you're going to live so
that you can make the most out of the sunlight
you're going to get, uh, and you have to be
strategic about how you're going to use it and how
(14:47):
you're going to store it. But there are other choices
as well, not just not just solar power ed Begley's
stationary bicycle power. You could yeah you could. Actually I
didn't put it in the I didn't put it in
my notes, but yeah, you could actually have things in
there where you're using human power to generate some electricity eyes,
and I'd imagine that would be election. It wouldn't be
(15:09):
enough to power anything, you know, really significant, but I
mean to help charge a battery. Yeah, if you really
need to work out anyway, it's a pretty good way
to charge your cell phone. But if you're using a
cell phone, right, it's more likely that you would use
something like wind power. You could get wind turbines that
you could you can use at your home. There are
a lot of places that allow that. They have very
(15:32):
you know, most areas in the United States have specific
restrictions on how tall those things can be and how
how close they can be. And it certainly depends also
on whether you live in a residential area or somewhere
rural or et cetera, et cetera, because I mean just
your home owners association if you own a home, for example,
might have a problem with you erecting a large, fifty
foot tall tower that's behind your house. So about nuclear
(15:55):
power also not practical, So getting back to things that
actually could happen the wind power, Another issue there is
that you'd have to be someplace where you're getting consistent winds.
So some places are less conducive than others, Like if
you happen to live near a coast, then that's awesome
because you're going to be getting pretty consistent winds in
(16:16):
one direction during the day in another direction at night.
But not every place gets you know, great wind coverage either.
Then you could have micro hydro power. Micro hydropower being
that it's kind of a tiny version of the stuff
you would see at say the Hoover Dam. That would
be macro hydro power. So if you're living next to
a stream or a river or something, yeah, they look
(16:37):
kind of some of them look like little outboard motors
without a boat, right, just sit in the water and
the water turns a turbine, right, and that generates the
electricity which can then charge battery packs which you use
to access power. You'd have to have some sort of
inverter to switch DC to AC that kind of stuff.
But you know, this is also a possibility. I've seen somewhere.
(16:59):
It's a man made try off that branches off of
a natural stream and that's what ends up feeding the
turbine or turning the turbine. S say feeding but turning it.
So again, all of these mean that you have to
be strategic in where you place your domicile. So if
you're talking about retrofitting an existing house, obviously you're limited
(17:20):
by whatever geographic features happen to be in that area.
You can make some depending again, depending upon where you
are and Homer's associations, because some would say no, you
can't put solar panels on top of your house. We're
not gonna allow it on Some cities won't either. Yeah,
but if assuming that they do, then actually, I'm not
sure if that's I mean, always check your local regulations, right,
(17:41):
I think it depends neighborhood to neighborhood actually, but yeah,
it all. There are also some cities that will allow
you to not only use solar panels, but if you
generate more electricity than you actually need and you're still
on the grid, Like, you're not using this to get
off the grid, you're using it to supplement coming in.
If you actually generate more than what you need, some
cities will allow you to sell that extra electricity back
(18:03):
to the grid, right, depending on whether the systems that
you're using are compatible with the local Yeah, there are
a lot of caveats, a lot of qualifiers. I'm off
and on the grid, you know, me and the grid.
We got a thing. We have an understanding. But yeah,
at any of these, any of these considerations you can
potentially use to retrofit a home. Again dependent upon the
(18:26):
geographic and legal situation of that home. Okay, micro hydro power.
That makes me think about water. We actually also get
our water from a grid. Yeah, there's a you know,
most of us are reliant, not well. There are actually
quite a few homes in the United States that have
wells that use wells for water. But if you're living
(18:46):
over over fifteen million households, lots of them. But if
you happen to live in say an urban area like
we live in Atlanta, so we're getting our water from
the municipal system. But yeah, we have reservoirs of water.
We have these water tower which allow us to use
the force of gravity to help provide water pressure, water
mains and piping systems. Yeah. So if you aren't, if
(19:09):
you don't want to be part of that, if you're saying,
I'm being really self reliant, I'm not going to be
on the water system, then you've got to be. You
either have to be close to like a lake or
stream or something like that where you're getting your water
directly from there, or more likely what you're going to
do is drill a well. Now, wells are going to
depend on you depending on the location you may have
(19:31):
to drill well. First of all, you have to get
someone who's truly a licensed well driller, because this is
not full and around. You don't want to do yes yourself,
unless you happen to be a license well driller, in
which case you can't do it yourself. It tends to
run from the last time I looked, between three thousand
and fifteen thousand dollars, depending upon how deep a well
you need to drill and how complicated the job is
going to be, because there's really a lot to consider
(19:53):
if you're going to do this whole well thing. The location,
any potential contaminant and disease testing and purification, the water
that you're getting out, because so much stuff gets into
groundwater that you might not be thinking about before you
just go get a delicious cup of death. Yeah, if
you happen to be really far from everything, then that
might not be an issue. But you know the rest
of us would have to Oh yeah, I mean we
(20:15):
bury trash and landfills. Septic tanks can leak fuels, or
stored in underground tanks. We use all kinds of fertilizers
and pesticides. Industrial and urban area runoff can cause all
kinds of third eyes. Yeah, just think about all the
homeopathic medicine you'd get. Let's not do that. Really, Come on,
don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
(20:36):
You don't like me when I'm not angry, Joe, You're
not gonna like me when I am angry. You might
also be able to supplement this with rain collection. Yes,
you can use cisterns to help collect rain. Usually you're
using this where the gutters will end up all the
runoff will go into a cistern, which then can be
pumped into a home. Either pumped or if the cistern's
(20:56):
on top of the home, gravity can help create the
water pressure necessary for it to be circulated into the
home for use. Cisterns. Also, if you're using those, you
have to worry about things like what your roof is
made of, because some roofing material uses chemicals that could
be dangerous to people, so you don't really necessarily want
to use regular roofing tiles. You would have to probably
(21:16):
look into something else that doesn't have that toxicity to
it that could potentially leach into your water supply. Obviously
that would be in big issue. But any either way,
you know you're drilling a well, using cisterns or a
combination of the two, that would get you off the
grid as far as water is concerned. Again, another one
of those where you have an initial expense up front,
but then in the long run you end up saving money,
(21:38):
assuming that you do pay for water. Sure. The other
half of that, though, is the septic system. You're going
to need some kind of system to dispose of your
waste water, and the way that a septic system works
essentially is that bacteria in the tank can break down
the waste and then release it via pipes into a
drain field where the soil will further break it down.
But yeah, that's pretty important because and you still have
(22:01):
to have someone come out and empty it about once
a year even even with that, because even though it's
it's distributing stuff through this drain pipe system, it's still
accumulating waste that's not going to go through those drain pipes,
and that you have to have someone come out and
empty it out. I lived in rural Georgia in a
house that had a septic tank, So I remember distinctly
(22:22):
the experience of having the the crew come out and
pop the lid and and and pump it out, and
it's memorable. Yeah. No. I also lived near a paper
mill and a major poultry farm. So you know how
they say that the sense of smell is really connected
to memory. Yeah, I got some bad, bad smell memories, y'all.
(22:44):
Uh So, yeah, that's just to it builds character. But yes,
a good point though, that you do have to think
about where does the waste water go. You can't just
you know, dump that back out either. That would that's
not environmentally friendly, especially not if you've got a well,
because then you're contaminating your own water source. Yeah yeah,
so uh and then of course you want to find
(23:04):
ways to conserve water, just like you want to find
ways to conserve electricity. Since you know you're going to
be generating your own you want to make sure that
you're using water wisely and that you're not wasting it
in various ways. I mean, I've heard about people who
will conserve water so far as to like if they're
taking a shower and they're starting to shampoo their hair,
which I hear is something people do. It's been a
(23:26):
long time for me, but that they'll actually turn the
water off while they're while they're lathering the shampoo and
then turn it back on to rinse it all out.
And oh yeah yeah, or you know, collecting, collecting what's
called gray water, you know, basically okay, water to to
put put back out over your your garden or something like. Right,
so that might be something like the water the drains
(23:48):
from your sink would go into this gray water, which
you could then use to to water plants. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah, it's obviously again one of those important parts
where you want to conserve as much as you can. Now,
let's talk about heating and cooling, because unless you happen
to live in a magical land where the temperature is
always a comfortable ambient, I don't know what's comfortable for
(24:09):
you guys. I know what's comfortable for me. But let's
say it's like sixty eight degrees year round, which might
be a little on the chilly side for something. Yeah,
I'm pretty happy at like seventy six. Wow, too warm,
too warm, But yeah, unless you have to live in
some place that's magical. That's that temperature all the time.
You mean San Diego, Yeah, san Diego. When it's on fire,
(24:30):
then you would be You would probably need to have
some form of system to heat and or cool your
house so that in the winter you don't get too
cold and summer you don't get too hot. There are
ways of doing that without using gas or electricity. Their
effectiveness depends upon where, again, where your home is located.
(24:52):
But for example, the passive heating systems all involve things
like the materials that your home is made of. The
orientation you're home is in relation to how the sunlight
hits it, right, So there's this concept of passive solar construction.
And the way this works to take advantage of heating
and cooling is that you build your house in such
a way with relationship to the path of the sun
(25:14):
during the different seasons that you're getting direct sunlight coming
through the passive windows in the winter to produce a
greenhouse effect within the house, so the maximizing the heat. Yeah,
the light comes through the windows, turns into heat and
then is trapped within. But then the house is built
in such a way that during the summer, the angle
(25:34):
of the sun will be blocked by an opaque area
that doesn't allow the sunlight to pass directly through, So
like either an opaque area on the window itself or
an awning of some sort something like that, Right, it
could be either one. You could design the windows in
such a way that sunlight coming at a certain angle
doesn't pass through as easily. Right, So, yeah, that would
be a really helpful system. There are other things besides,
(25:57):
Like you know, an air conditioning system, a full HVAC
system takes a lot of power. Oh yeah, so that's
probably way too much for your average like solar powered home. Well,
if you're talking about efficiency in the home, heating and cooling,
just those two things are a huge fraction of the
total energy we use, and if we just got rid
of that, that would already make a huge dent and
(26:18):
in what you need. And in fact, there are a
lot of things you can do. Just again with the
retrofitting of homes, there are a lot of things you
can do that will really drastically affect that, like making
sure you have really good insulation. Right, that is a huge,
huge factor. So it seems obvious, but yeah, yeah, the
basic materials, the amount of insulation. The quality of the insulation,
and even the paint colors that you're using can make
(26:39):
a very large difference whether or not your windows are
properly treated so that they are sealed well. That kind
of stuff. These are things that you can do to
any home, whether you're building a new one or you're
retrofitting an old one, that can dramatically impact the amount
of power you need to for climate control. Now, one
of the other things I was going to mention on
(27:01):
here that's an alternative to a traditional air conditioning system
is what some people call swamp cooler. It's called a
swamp cooler because it's using water to help take heat
out of the atmosphere. The idea is that you have
a device that has some material that's got water soaked
in it. It's soaked in water in some way. You
use a fan to blow the air from outside through
(27:25):
this thing. The warm air makes contact with the water
material the material soaked in water, and heat from the
air ends up evaporating some of the water, and that
means that the air itself loses heat so it becomes cooler.
So the air that ends up blowing into your home
is cooler than the air than the ambient temperature of
the air, so you get this overall cooling effect. However,
(27:48):
this only works if you are in a place that
has a relatively dry environment. If you're living it does
not work, all right, The air already has too much
moisture in it. Really put this to good use, yeah no, yeah,
we already have too much humidity the air is. The
air is pretty much saturated with humidity, so it's not
an effective way of cooling. I mean, you could just
(28:10):
as well just put a regular fan inside a house
and just have air blowing around, and that circulation might
help some, but it doesn't necessarily make the air feel cooler.
Same thing with a swamp cooler if you haven't live
in a high humidity area. But that's another alternative. So
I've got kind of a big one. Now, Okay, what
(28:31):
about data and communication services? All right, So if you
are able to go outside and shout and everyone you
need to talk to can hear you and shout back
and you can hear them, you're set. Otherwise this is
a problem because communication, by its very nature, requires that
there be some sort of system there for it to work.
(28:54):
If you're talking about anything beyond you know, line of sight. Yeah,
or like I mean, I guess I am radio or something.
But yeah, well even then you got to have the well, yes,
you could do a ham radio I guess, but even
then that's long distance. Anyone could listen to you, so
it's like a party line. I guess. This sort of
depends on whether you like what you're reasoning is for
(29:16):
wanting to get off the grid. If it's something about privacy,
you just might not want to have these services, right
because anytime you're going to use an electronic device that
is used for communication, there by its nature, there needs
to be something that identifies that device so that other information,
other communication can get back to you. Otherwise all you've
(29:37):
got is something that allows you to broadcast but not receive.
Oh well, and in the case of the Internet, there
are more and less secure in private ways to browse
the net and to people. If you're using the tour browser,
for example, that gives you a little more privacy. Although
we did an episode of Tech Stuff about the tour
routing network and the browsers use that's used to acts
(30:00):
and as we pointed out in that episode, that's using
it is not enough like you have to go well,
above and beyond that. If you if you truly want
to reduce the data footprint you're leaving behind that identifies
who you are, you have to go to some pretty
extreme measures in order to really ensure that that happens.
(30:23):
But assuming that's not your goal, if communication, if privacy
is not the thing you're worried about, then you know,
it's less of a problem. You could have something like
a cell phone, and assuming you have cell phone service
wherever you've decided to erect your magical house, then you
should be fine. Again, assuming of course, that you're also
generating electricity because I'm guessing your cell phone is running
(30:44):
on it. Yeah, Or you could just go with the
wireless internet service provider. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, there's there's some
that use cellular networks essentially to use that, you know,
and you just use a dongle or some other kind
of modem like device, router like device to get access
to it. So yeah, if privacy is not the reason
(31:06):
why you've decided to, you know, cut all ties to
the grid, then that would be kind of that would
be one of the routes I would go. Yeah, I've
got a question. Okay, let's say I'm living in a
house off the grid, and Jonathan comes over with his
huge collection of original Star Wars action figures in the
original packaging, and I just start tearing them open, of course,
(31:29):
because I want to play with the toys. You're a
terrible friend. What do I do with all of the
original packaging? Where where do I put all that? Joe?
That's not gonna be a consideration you need to make,
because I will have killed you in hollowed up to
Roddy for use as a sleeping bag Tonton style, the
only fitting way for the horrible thing you've done to Mike. See.
But if I do that at my house, the garbage
(31:51):
people will come and pick them up and take them
away as long as they're in one of the designated bags. Right. Okay,
So we're saying, like, what if your house is not
anywhere near someplace where you have this kind of the service,
or what if you're choosing not to use it not
choosing not to use it? Okay? So all right, well
you've got some choices. First of all, you want to
reduce the amount of stuff you have to throw away
(32:13):
to the absolute bare minimum, which means that you're going
to be thinking a lot harder about the things that
you're purchasing, assuming that you are purchasing things still from
outside sources, right, So you want to be able to
do the three RS right, Reduce, reuse, recycle, So you
want to reduce as much of the stuff that would
necessarily be thrown away eventually as much as possible. You know,
(32:33):
keep in mind, like if you're genering your electricity, you're
going to have batteries and eventually you're going to have
to replace batteries. So that's one of those things that
you've got to remember, Like batteries do not last forever.
Solar panels the same thing. You're going to have to
replace those at some point. And some electronics like that
can in fact be recycled. Yeah, so there's the recycling
part of you know, making sure you can recycle as
(32:54):
much as you can, or you know, buying things in
glass jars that you can reuse rather than in a
plastic already use a lot of glass jars. It is
nearly impossible to live without producing any waste, but you
can definitely cut way, way way down, and you can
do composting to take care of organic stuff so that
you can compost it down and that's a big help too,
(33:16):
sat resource for your garden. Yeah, some stuff you would
probably have to eventually, you know, haul out to a
dump of some sort because you're just not going to
get around it. There's going to be some stuff that
you cannot recycle or reuse. But if you can reduce
that to the bare minimum, then you will dramatically decrease
the impact you have environmentally speaking. So yeah, that would
(33:39):
be what I would That's why to tell anyone who
was thinking about this. Okay, what about Sylvia's questions? Okay, yeah,
she asked about ethanol, like does that necessarily have to
come from food crops? And the answer to that is no,
it does not have to necessarily come from food crops.
There have been experiments using switchgrass, which most people think
(33:59):
of as kind of an irritating plant that otherwise has
no use, but in fact, you can use switchgrass to
create ethanol, and a US government study found that switchgrass
could provide as many as one one and fifty gallons
of ethanol per acre per year. And that's actually way
better than say corn, which is technically that that's the
(34:21):
most popular crop used to make ethanol. Well, it's a
popular crop in America. Yeah, and a large amount of
it is being used for biofuels, although I do want
to put in that frequently the type of corn that
is used in biofuels is either corn waste or a
non edible not non human edible form. Yeah. Corn, Well,
(34:42):
to mean, we don't have to worry about making the
corn nice and juicy, because all you're doing is turning
it into fuel. So do they make it out of
the baby corn because people shouldn't be eating that. No.
I can show you this whole video about how they
package babycorn. Though we watched a baby corn industrial video.
It's essentially made of terror. Yeah. So at any rate,
if you're talking about corn, the average bushel size in
(35:05):
twenty twelve would yield closer to four hundred and forty
gallons per year, so or bushels, see like per acre,
we're looking at an acreage thing sore and fifty gallons
of ethanol versus four hundred and forty gallons per year
with corn. I mean that's obviously a big difference. But
even if you could grow this yourself, like she also
(35:25):
raw enough. Yeah, she asked about the ability to make
fuel for your car at home. Clearly even if you
were able to grow, like you have an acre of land,
let's say, and you've dedicated it to growing switchgrass, you
might be able to grow plenty of switchgrass. To feel
that car, she's got to process that that switchgrass. You
(35:46):
have to turn it into biofuel. That's a pretty intense
biochemical engineering related process. It's not something that you can
you know, you don't just put it in a pot
of water and boil it for like five minutes and
then you got fuel. So yeah, but of course something
like horn to ethanol or switchgrass to ethanol are not
the only ways to create biofuels. You can create biodiesel
(36:06):
out of algae, you can create it out of cooking well. Yeah,
Now most engines are not tuned, even diesel engines, because
you have to have a diesel engine. By the way,
don't put this in a gasoline power vehicle, but diesel
engines can some of them run on essentially what used
cooking oil. So you'll hear about people who kind of
(36:28):
I remember a guy in Athens who was doing this
where he would go around to restaurants and collect their
used cooking oil and use that in his converted vehicle.
That use this as biodiesel for his engine. So the
issue there is that not all engines are very well
tuned for this. You could require lots more maintenance, a
lot more cleaning in order for it to work. But
(36:50):
it's potentially something you could do. Yeah, there's a coalition
of dairy farmers in Vermont who work with their local
utility companies to process their cows waste and use them
thing gas to produce energy. Yeah, that reminds me of
mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Bartertown ran on something similar. Then
(37:10):
you had the question about soil regeneration, this idea of
it's a problem that a lot of farmers have run
into where the top soil that they depend upon, that's
the layer where stuff actually grows is eroded either by
weather or through using grazing lands improperly, that kind of thing,
and you end up with desertification. Things turns into a desert.
(37:35):
So how do you reverse that process? And there's not
a cookie cutter approach to fixing this because the problems
tend to vary depending upon each situation. I read an
interesting series of case studies that were done in Australia
in twenty twelve where they I think it was nineteen
different cases of people using different approaches because their situations
(37:59):
were different enough where merited it. Some of things involved
breaking up the ground a bit so that you had
more facets that were exposed to the air that would
actually help encourage organisms to grow again within the soil.
Some of them involved introducing certain types of plants to
help create that top soil, or rotating crops through that
(38:20):
was another big one. Changing the grazing patterns of cattle
because it's Australia, so almost all of them were cattle farmers,
changing the kind of fertilizers they were using so that
they were relying more on organic fertilizer rather than non organic.
All these things were ways to regenerate the soil so
that it could actually grow the right kinds of plants,
(38:43):
whether that was just grazing material for the animals or
whether it was crops, like a lot of them were legumes,
as I recall. So if you're able to do this,
and you're able to reverse this process, you can start
to get into this natural cycle, the self regidrating cycle,
which is what you would typically see in nature, assuming
(39:04):
there's not some other kind of climate change going on.
If you're just looking at how it nature, the top
soil gets replenished over time just through the natural process
of things dying off and breaking down soil. You can
actually get back into that cycle, but at least initially,
it requires a lot of management because you actually have
to reverse the process of turning into a desert. So
(39:26):
there are other things. If you wanted to reduce the
saline content, it usually means that you have to introduce
a lot more water, so that's a big consideration too,
where you're getting that water from. None of these none
of these solutions are necessarily very easy or inexpensive. They
could be very expensive to implement, but ultimately, especially in
the long run, they're beneficial. So you have to look
(39:48):
at the long term benefits versus the short term setbacks.
And then of course there's the idea about you know,
retrofitting homes. There's lots of technology out there to help
you cut back on the amount of electricity you're consuming,
and we talked about cutting back that heating and cooling,
which is a big that's a huge chunk, right, and
all of those those smart smart meters, the smart meters, Yeah,
(40:12):
smart meters. That's great because the smart meter allows you
to really keep an eye on how much electricity you
are consuming on a day to day basis. You know
most of us, don't you know. I don't know about
you guys. I know that my home has an old
style power meter on there, and I don't go and
look at it every day, and even if I did,
I probably wouldn't be able to make heads or tails
(40:34):
of what was going on. But smart meters give lots
more information and in fact can even hook into an
account that you have where you can monitor the account
online if you wanted to, so you're not having to
go out and look at some external meter. You could
just pop online, check a web page and see and
you can actually monitor how much electricity you're using and
be able to determine what is causing any sort of spikes.
(40:55):
Another good thing is to use like major appliances like
a washing machine or or dishwasher at night as opposed
to daytime, when it's off peak hours, off peak hours exactly.
Another good thing is to get the energy Star appliances,
which use less electricity. They have to actually go through
(41:15):
a certification process that proves that they are energy efficient.
Using smart thermostats like the nest system is the big
popular one right now, right, so that way you know
you're not trying to cool your home to that sixty
eight degrees that I like so much when you're not there. Yeah,
lots of things like that are ways of helping. Also,
(41:35):
just those those different power strips you can get where
when you switch the power switch off, it won't allow
devices to sip vampire power. Vampire power is when you
turn the device off, but it's still draining electricity. It's
still got to pull a load on your electrical circuits,
which means that you are spending money just by having
your stuff turned off. If you have these power strips
(41:58):
that actually cut that off, then you don't have to
worry about that. So that's another thing to look into.
And in a lot of ways you might say this
is kind of nickel and diming in cases like if
you're already pretty careful, but really every little bit counts
and it adds up over time. And only that. Again,
if you know that your house, let's say, is getting
(42:21):
electricity from a coal power plant, and you don't have
the option of investing in some renewable energy source, maybe
that's just not an option for you. Based upon homeowners
associations or the financial burden, then these other methods may
be the best way for you to reduce your carbon
footprint in a responsible way that doesn't impact your life
(42:44):
so sadrastically. Yeah, So, thank you so much to Sylvia
for sending us this terrific list of questions. And I
know that we kind of glossed through a bunch of
a bunch of them. So if anyone would like to
hear something more in depth about any of these these
last few topics that we that we kind of kind
(43:05):
of summarized perhaps but didn't go to in depth with
uh you guys, let us know. Yeah, if there's something
like you thought, well that was really interesting, but you
you you didn't go nearly deep enough, let us know.
We can do a full episode on it. Yeah, and
I would love to hear from you. Yeah, And so
follow Sylvia's example, guys, write us. You can send us
an email address is FW thinking at discovery dot com,
(43:28):
or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus,
or handle at all three of those is FW thinking,
and we will talk to you again really soon. Wow.
For more on this topic and the future of technology,
visit Forward Thinking dot com brought to you by Toyota.
(43:59):
Let's Go Places
Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Forward Thinking. Hey there, everyone, Welcome to Forward Thinking, the
podcast that looks in the future and says back to
the howling Old Alan the Woods, hunting the hornyback Toad.
I'm Jonathan Strickland, I'm Lauren Vocal Bam, and I'm Jill McCormick. So, guys,
(00:25):
we have a listener request to answer we wanted. You know,
we invite our listeners at the end of every episode
to send in any request they might have for us
to cover in the future, and this is one of
those episodes. So first we have to give a big
thank you to Sylvia Ramsey who wrote in and asked
us to address a few things. And she was thinking
(00:48):
of I think several different podcasts, but we kind of
lump them all into one in a way because they
all seem to have a similar theme. So here is
the request. I listened to the podcast all the time.
Could we have some shows about the technologies used to
be more self reliant? For example, how electricity can be
generated on a household level cheaply and sustainably, or passive
(01:09):
heating and cooling of the home. What are the new
technologies to retrofit an older home to decrease energy use.
Can I make fuel for my car at home? Do
we have to use food crops to make ethanol? Also,
I'd like to know a little more about regenerating soil
that has been degraded by too much tilling or pesticides
and fertilizer where you have no more remaining carbon and
(01:30):
too much saline, so that it will grow food again.
So that's a lot of stuff, but it all kind
of fits in this whole idea of self reliance fits
on this idea of getting off the grid, not relying
on the things that are provided by various companies and
government agencies that make up what we think of as society,
(01:50):
and becoming this more kind of self reliant unit. And
this could be something that takes place in the middle
of a city. It could be one of those scenario
where you're saying, this is it. I'm gonna be a
hermit in the woods. Either way, you know you have
to start taking into consideration how are you going to
make this happen without too huge an impact on the
(02:11):
life you are used to. Why is it always the woods?
Why can't you be a hermit in the desert or
a hermit in the tundra. You can be a hermit
at either of those places. It's just getting at water
is a lot more challenging in both cases. What about
a hermit in the sea, A hermit on the fertile planes,
I think is probably the ultimate. Yeah, hermit in the
woods is actually pretty tough to carry out, too, especially
(02:34):
if you want electricity. Electrically speaking, if you don't want electricity,
it's easy, but electricity is a big is a big problem.
If you expect to have that in your life, then
the woods may not be the best choice. Well, first
we should talk about why it is that people would
want to be self reliant and get off the grid,
because it has taken our species hundreds of thousands of
(02:55):
years to get on the grid. I have electricity, I
have running water, I have communication services like telephone, internet,
I have all these wonderful things. I have easy access
to food that I don't have to grow myself. It
makes life pretty easy. So what are the reasons people
would have for wanting to disconnect from all of this convenience. Well,
(03:20):
I mean, we've got the whole self reliance at angle,
This idea of being independent and not having to depend
upon others. One of the big issues of this world
that we live in is that a lot of people.
In fact, I would argue most people don't have the
knowledge or skill sets necessary to survive without that system.
(03:41):
So we are not like Cormick McCarthy protagonists. We know
where all the people who died before the story started, right,
We don't have those survival skills and we don't have
the equipment we would need if the apocalypse came. So
part of it is just this idea of being elf
reliant puts you in a better spot. You know, whether
(04:03):
you think the worst could happen or you just think
this is something that's important to me. From a philosophical standpoint,
I'm saying that I want to be able to do this,
and furthermore, I'm not comfortable perhaps taking this much from
the rest of society. Right then, you have the idea
of the people who want privacy. Yes, the folks who
(04:25):
value their privacy are obviously going to want to find
ways to protect that as much as possible. Being on
the grid means you're already giving up quite a bit
of your privacy. Things like how much energy you use
is going to be known at least by the entity
that's providing the energy. And I mean also just just
where you live and how many people know that you're
(04:46):
there and when you're there, when you're using communication devices,
then that definitely starts to give a lot more information.
The more you rely upon the grid, however you define
that grid not just power grid, but this social structure,
then less privacy you're going to have. And then, of
course some of us, a lot of us, choose to
give up a lot of privacy voluntarily we share things
(05:07):
on these communication systems. A lot of us just don't
think about it, you know, you just kind of unconsciously
give that information away, right like saying things like I'm
really looking forward to this vacation, and you're not thinking, hey,
I've already made it clear where I live, and now
I've also made it clear when I'm not going to
be there, right, that kind of stuff. Then the next
(05:29):
big category, I would say, and by the way, I'm
not suggesting that any person only falls into one category,
or that the three categories I'm talking about are the
only ones. I'm just kind of identifying the big ones
that I can think of. But one would be just
the environmentally conscious, the people who want to make as
little an environmental impact negative environmental impact as they possibly can.
(05:52):
And you know, we all know that not all, but
a lot of electricity, depending up on where you live,
can come from sources that end up burning a lot
of fossil fuels, which create a lot of greenhouse gases,
big carbon footprint. Yeah, let's talk about some of the
costs of these grid conveniences like electricity. Yeah, I mean
that's a big one, right. I mean, so in lucky cases,
(06:13):
you might be getting some grid electricity from clean power, right,
or relatively clean power, because, as we talk about pretty
frequently on this show, even something like getting solar energy
from photovoltaics means that someone has to create the photovoltaic material,
which uses a lot of nasty chemicals, right. Or building
a wind turbine also means that the manufacturing process usually
(06:34):
has its own carbon footprint. It's one of those things
where you start peeling back the layers and you realize
that the big picture is a lot more complicated. Now,
the actual production of energy from that point forward much cleaner. Sure,
And that's great. So what's the number one source of
gride electricity? In the United States. Well, it's our old
friend coal. Yeah, coal, yeah, coal. Coal generates about forty
(06:57):
four percent of all the electricity in the United States.
Is that number as of two thousand and nine. I
think I believe so. And even then you're looking at
you know, that's the largest of all the individual ones,
so everything else makes up the rest. So it's less
than half of all the energy, but still the largest
single slice of the pie. And it's also the source
(07:18):
of sixty seven percent of the nation's sulfur dioxide emissions,
twenty three percent of nitrogen oxide emissions, and forty percent
of man made carbon dioxide emissions, meaning it's the largest
contributor to air pollution. So overall, so there are other
things like transportation that if you take transportation as a
whole in the United States, may produce more carbon dioxide
(07:42):
than power plants. But when you look at all the
pollutants across the board, power generation is the top. That's
the biggest one, especially when you factor in things like
heating and cooling. Right, So, getting off the grid, if
you're able to generate your own electricity, presumably not through
your own backyard coal power plant, you're not going to
be impacting the environment negatively beyond whatever the initial carbon
(08:06):
footprint was of whatever device you've decided to use. Sure,
there might also be the fact that the grid is
producing electricity in a way that might not be the
most efficient or convenient for you. Yeah, in the United
States in particular, we have you know, there's this idea
the smart grid. It's a great idea, and there's some
places the reality of the dumb grid right right. The
(08:28):
smart grid is something that has been rolled out in
certain areas, but it's not something that's infrastructure wide, right.
The smart grid is this idea of not just is
it delivering electricity, but it's doing it. It's able to
dynamically change over time as conditions change, so it's not
just a system that's constantly at ninety eight percent capacity
(08:49):
like one of the stories you'll read about. If you
look into the power grids in the United States, so
that most of them are almost at full capacity right now,
and if something happens, if demand somehow changes, that can
result in brownouts or blackouts. We've seen that happen multiple times,
especially on the West coast, but in the Northeast not
that long ago, a few years ago, there was a
massive blackout in the Northeast as well, and it's not
(09:11):
like we can dynamically route power easily through these systems.
A smart grid would have much more flexibility. It also
would allow for if there was an interruption in service.
Often the companies don't know that there's an interruption in
service unless customers start letting them know calling them. The
smart grid would have the ability to let a utility
(09:32):
company know if service had been interrupted in one point,
and they could either re route stuff to make the
affected area as small as possible, or immediately send out
repair crews or both to address the situation right. And
there's another way that the self reliance may come in.
If you want to get off the grid, well, it
might just be because hey, I want to control my
(09:53):
own production of energy. I don't want to have to
call the power company and have them tell me, well
it'll be a few days. Yeah, I want I would
like it if if it meant that power was lost
to the entire region I live in, I still have
power because I'm generating my own electricity. I'm not dependent
upon some external resource. I mean, apart from whatever you're
(10:13):
using to get your energy. You like it until your
neighbors come banging on your door to watch your TV. Right, Uh, yeah, exactly, unless,
of course, the blackout is so wide that you can't
pick up anything. And technically, if you were truly off
the grid, you wouldn't have a television. Maybe you could,
you could have over the air. You could have an
over the air like antenna, and you pick up broadcasts
over the air that doesn't have any reflections, so you
(10:36):
would just be able to pick stuff up. But even then,
if it's a full black out of the region, there
aren't going to be any broadcast towers near enough to
you to get to pick anything up. I was kind
of joking anyway. Look, well, you're trying to catch up
on Game of Thrones, and I'm glad that we knitpiced
to death in that case. Yes, that's that's what we do.
That's what we do. We make a joke and then
we drive it into the ground. Let's let's pit more
(10:57):
let's pit more nicks. Okay, let's pick more nits. No
more nicks, We'll pit more nicks. Okay, Okay, So, Nick Fiery,
let's say you want to get off the grid. This
idea appeals to you. Yeah, how would you do it,
What are the steps you need to take and what
are the factors you need to consider. Well, all right,
let's assume for the moment that you do want electricity,
(11:18):
all right, because if you don't want electricity, then this
simplifies things quite a bit. But let's assume that you
need electricity for certain things. You have certain conveniences you're
used to. Perhaps you still want to maintain some connection
to the grid with communication devices, like you want to
be able to communicate with loved ones who are still
definitely part of society, or you really enjoy refrigeration. Yep,
(11:39):
that's another big one. If you don't have a plentiful
fresh food source that's going to be available all year round,
then you're going to need something to keep that food preserved.
And perhaps you are not great at pickling everything. So yeah,
it's necessary. So yeah, electricity is a big one. Well,
you want to be able to generate it. If you're
(11:59):
going to be off the grid, you're not going to
be dependent upon any power grids out there. The probably
the number one choice, I would say, would be solar. Now,
solar power, of course, you're using solar panels, which we've
discussed many times. If you're talking top of the line
super efficient solar panels, like the kind that are used
(12:19):
in space under ideal conditions, they top out at about
forty percent efficiency, meaning sixty percent of the energy hitting
them gets lost. If you're talking about the kind that
we could actually use in our homes, because those are
reserved for like space stuff, and those optimal conditions really
only happen in the laboratory, and it would be prohibitively
expensive for pretty much any human being apart from billionaires. Well,
(12:44):
I mean, I mean solar power is still pretty expensive. Yeah, yeah,
the initial expense is that's the big problem with any
of these is that you have to make an innational investments. Yeah. Now, now,
over time, you're going to save tons of money because
you don't have to pay any utility bills. You have
to maintain whatever it is you're using. But if you're
using regular solar panels, the kind that most of us
(13:04):
would be able to get for our homes, that efficiency
peaks out around twenty or twenty one percent. On top
of that, each solar panels only generating a little bit
of electricity, so you've got to have a lot of
them in order to get enough power. It affects the
locations you can choose for where you want to live,
right in case you don't want to be somewhere that's
cloudy or has tree cover, or you don't want to
(13:25):
be too far north right, you know, because they're going
to be long get shorter. Yeah, there's long stretches of
time where you're not going to get a lot of daylight.
So the closer to the equator you are, the more
sun you're going to get year round, because otherwise they're
going to be sections of the year where you're not
going to have very much electricity at all. You're also
going to want batteries because otherwise you're not going to
be able to use any electricity after the sun goes down,
(13:46):
which is when many of us want light. Yeah. Yeah,
it turns out that turning all your lights on when
it's already bright outside is not necessarily the most you know,
effective thing. In fact, you could you would probably be
using things like daylighting, which is where you're using either
a wind a series of windows, or even windvanced window technology.
It kind of is there's actually I've seen a really
(14:07):
cool one where you use like a kind of like
a skylight that's installed in the house, and then it
uses a tunnel system with mirrors to direct that sunlight
down to whatever room you want. So it's like having
a light that's that's just a's dictated by the sun.
So you still get light in the daytime, and then
you only use the electricity at night when you don't
have that daylight. I think in a lot of cases,
(14:27):
whatever your source is, it's going to involve a lot
of cutting back on the electricity you use. Yes, yes,
you want to be very, very efficient. We'll talk a
little bit more about that in a second, but the
point being that, yeah, you have to be you have
to be strategic and where you're going to live so
that you can make the most out of the sunlight
you're going to get, uh, and you have to be
strategic about how you're going to use it and how
(14:47):
you're going to store it. But there are other choices
as well, not just not just solar power ed Begley's
stationary bicycle power. You could yeah you could. Actually I
didn't put it in the I didn't put it in
my notes, but yeah, you could actually have things in
there where you're using human power to generate some electricity eyes,
and I'd imagine that would be election. It wouldn't be
(15:09):
enough to power anything, you know, really significant, but I
mean to help charge a battery. Yeah, if you really
need to work out anyway, it's a pretty good way
to charge your cell phone. But if you're using a
cell phone, right, it's more likely that you would use
something like wind power. You could get wind turbines that
you could you can use at your home. There are
a lot of places that allow that. They have very
(15:32):
you know, most areas in the United States have specific
restrictions on how tall those things can be and how
how close they can be. And it certainly depends also
on whether you live in a residential area or somewhere
rural or et cetera, et cetera, because I mean just
your home owners association if you own a home, for example,
might have a problem with you erecting a large, fifty
foot tall tower that's behind your house. So about nuclear
(15:55):
power also not practical, So getting back to things that
actually could happen the wind power, Another issue there is
that you'd have to be someplace where you're getting consistent winds.
So some places are less conducive than others, Like if
you happen to live near a coast, then that's awesome
because you're going to be getting pretty consistent winds in
(16:16):
one direction during the day in another direction at night.
But not every place gets you know, great wind coverage either.
Then you could have micro hydro power. Micro hydropower being
that it's kind of a tiny version of the stuff
you would see at say the Hoover Dam. That would
be macro hydro power. So if you're living next to
a stream or a river or something, yeah, they look
(16:37):
kind of some of them look like little outboard motors
without a boat, right, just sit in the water and
the water turns a turbine, right, and that generates the
electricity which can then charge battery packs which you use
to access power. You'd have to have some sort of
inverter to switch DC to AC that kind of stuff.
But you know, this is also a possibility. I've seen somewhere.
(16:59):
It's a man made try off that branches off of
a natural stream and that's what ends up feeding the
turbine or turning the turbine. S say feeding but turning it.
So again, all of these mean that you have to
be strategic in where you place your domicile. So if
you're talking about retrofitting an existing house, obviously you're limited
(17:20):
by whatever geographic features happen to be in that area.
You can make some depending again, depending upon where you
are and Homer's associations, because some would say no, you
can't put solar panels on top of your house. We're
not gonna allow it on Some cities won't either. Yeah,
but if assuming that they do, then actually, I'm not
sure if that's I mean, always check your local regulations, right,
(17:41):
I think it depends neighborhood to neighborhood actually, but yeah,
it all. There are also some cities that will allow
you to not only use solar panels, but if you
generate more electricity than you actually need and you're still
on the grid, Like, you're not using this to get
off the grid, you're using it to supplement coming in.
If you actually generate more than what you need, some
cities will allow you to sell that extra electricity back
(18:03):
to the grid, right, depending on whether the systems that
you're using are compatible with the local Yeah, there are
a lot of caveats, a lot of qualifiers. I'm off
and on the grid, you know, me and the grid.
We got a thing. We have an understanding. But yeah,
at any of these, any of these considerations you can
potentially use to retrofit a home. Again dependent upon the
(18:26):
geographic and legal situation of that home. Okay, micro hydro power.
That makes me think about water. We actually also get
our water from a grid. Yeah, there's a you know,
most of us are reliant, not well. There are actually
quite a few homes in the United States that have
wells that use wells for water. But if you're living
(18:46):
over over fifteen million households, lots of them. But if
you happen to live in say an urban area like
we live in Atlanta, so we're getting our water from
the municipal system. But yeah, we have reservoirs of water.
We have these water tower which allow us to use
the force of gravity to help provide water pressure, water
mains and piping systems. Yeah. So if you aren't, if
(19:09):
you don't want to be part of that, if you're saying,
I'm being really self reliant, I'm not going to be
on the water system, then you've got to be. You
either have to be close to like a lake or
stream or something like that where you're getting your water
directly from there, or more likely what you're going to
do is drill a well. Now, wells are going to
depend on you depending on the location you may have
(19:31):
to drill well. First of all, you have to get
someone who's truly a licensed well driller, because this is
not full and around. You don't want to do yes yourself,
unless you happen to be a license well driller, in
which case you can't do it yourself. It tends to
run from the last time I looked, between three thousand
and fifteen thousand dollars, depending upon how deep a well
you need to drill and how complicated the job is
going to be, because there's really a lot to consider
(19:53):
if you're going to do this whole well thing. The location,
any potential contaminant and disease testing and purification, the water
that you're getting out, because so much stuff gets into
groundwater that you might not be thinking about before you
just go get a delicious cup of death. Yeah, if
you happen to be really far from everything, then that
might not be an issue. But you know the rest
of us would have to Oh yeah, I mean we
(20:15):
bury trash and landfills. Septic tanks can leak fuels, or
stored in underground tanks. We use all kinds of fertilizers
and pesticides. Industrial and urban area runoff can cause all
kinds of third eyes. Yeah, just think about all the
homeopathic medicine you'd get. Let's not do that. Really, Come on,
don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.
(20:36):
You don't like me when I'm not angry, Joe, You're
not gonna like me when I am angry. You might
also be able to supplement this with rain collection. Yes,
you can use cisterns to help collect rain. Usually you're
using this where the gutters will end up all the
runoff will go into a cistern, which then can be
pumped into a home. Either pumped or if the cistern's
(20:56):
on top of the home, gravity can help create the
water pressure necessary for it to be circulated into the
home for use. Cisterns. Also, if you're using those, you
have to worry about things like what your roof is
made of, because some roofing material uses chemicals that could
be dangerous to people, so you don't really necessarily want
to use regular roofing tiles. You would have to probably
(21:16):
look into something else that doesn't have that toxicity to
it that could potentially leach into your water supply. Obviously
that would be in big issue. But any either way,
you know you're drilling a well, using cisterns or a
combination of the two, that would get you off the
grid as far as water is concerned. Again, another one
of those where you have an initial expense up front,
but then in the long run you end up saving money,
(21:38):
assuming that you do pay for water. Sure. The other
half of that, though, is the septic system. You're going
to need some kind of system to dispose of your
waste water, and the way that a septic system works
essentially is that bacteria in the tank can break down
the waste and then release it via pipes into a
drain field where the soil will further break it down.
But yeah, that's pretty important because and you still have
(22:01):
to have someone come out and empty it about once
a year even even with that, because even though it's
it's distributing stuff through this drain pipe system, it's still
accumulating waste that's not going to go through those drain pipes,
and that you have to have someone come out and
empty it out. I lived in rural Georgia in a
house that had a septic tank, So I remember distinctly
(22:22):
the experience of having the the crew come out and
pop the lid and and and pump it out, and
it's memorable. Yeah. No. I also lived near a paper
mill and a major poultry farm. So you know how
they say that the sense of smell is really connected
to memory. Yeah, I got some bad, bad smell memories, y'all.
(22:44):
Uh So, yeah, that's just to it builds character. But yes,
a good point though, that you do have to think
about where does the waste water go. You can't just
you know, dump that back out either. That would that's
not environmentally friendly, especially not if you've got a well,
because then you're contaminating your own water source. Yeah yeah,
so uh and then of course you want to find
(23:04):
ways to conserve water, just like you want to find
ways to conserve electricity. Since you know you're going to
be generating your own you want to make sure that
you're using water wisely and that you're not wasting it
in various ways. I mean, I've heard about people who
will conserve water so far as to like if they're
taking a shower and they're starting to shampoo their hair,
which I hear is something people do. It's been a
(23:26):
long time for me, but that they'll actually turn the
water off while they're while they're lathering the shampoo and
then turn it back on to rinse it all out.
And oh yeah yeah, or you know, collecting, collecting what's
called gray water, you know, basically okay, water to to
put put back out over your your garden or something like. Right,
so that might be something like the water the drains
(23:48):
from your sink would go into this gray water, which
you could then use to to water plants. Yeah, yeah,
so yeah, it's obviously again one of those important parts
where you want to conserve as much as you can. Now,
let's talk about heating and cooling, because unless you happen
to live in a magical land where the temperature is
always a comfortable ambient, I don't know what's comfortable for
(24:09):
you guys. I know what's comfortable for me. But let's
say it's like sixty eight degrees year round, which might
be a little on the chilly side for something. Yeah,
I'm pretty happy at like seventy six. Wow, too warm,
too warm, But yeah, unless you have to live in
some place that's magical. That's that temperature all the time.
You mean San Diego, Yeah, san Diego. When it's on fire,
(24:30):
then you would be You would probably need to have
some form of system to heat and or cool your
house so that in the winter you don't get too
cold and summer you don't get too hot. There are
ways of doing that without using gas or electricity. Their
effectiveness depends upon where, again, where your home is located.
(24:52):
But for example, the passive heating systems all involve things
like the materials that your home is made of. The
orientation you're home is in relation to how the sunlight
hits it, right, So there's this concept of passive solar construction.
And the way this works to take advantage of heating
and cooling is that you build your house in such
a way with relationship to the path of the sun
(25:14):
during the different seasons that you're getting direct sunlight coming
through the passive windows in the winter to produce a
greenhouse effect within the house, so the maximizing the heat. Yeah,
the light comes through the windows, turns into heat and
then is trapped within. But then the house is built
in such a way that during the summer, the angle
(25:34):
of the sun will be blocked by an opaque area
that doesn't allow the sunlight to pass directly through, So
like either an opaque area on the window itself or
an awning of some sort something like that, Right, it
could be either one. You could design the windows in
such a way that sunlight coming at a certain angle
doesn't pass through as easily. Right, So, yeah, that would
be a really helpful system. There are other things besides,
(25:57):
Like you know, an air conditioning system, a full HVAC
system takes a lot of power. Oh yeah, so that's
probably way too much for your average like solar powered home. Well,
if you're talking about efficiency in the home, heating and cooling,
just those two things are a huge fraction of the
total energy we use, and if we just got rid
of that, that would already make a huge dent and
(26:18):
in what you need. And in fact, there are a
lot of things you can do. Just again with the
retrofitting of homes, there are a lot of things you
can do that will really drastically affect that, like making
sure you have really good insulation. Right, that is a huge,
huge factor. So it seems obvious, but yeah, yeah, the
basic materials, the amount of insulation. The quality of the insulation,
and even the paint colors that you're using can make
(26:39):
a very large difference whether or not your windows are
properly treated so that they are sealed well. That kind
of stuff. These are things that you can do to
any home, whether you're building a new one or you're
retrofitting an old one, that can dramatically impact the amount
of power you need to for climate control. Now, one
of the other things I was going to mention on
(27:01):
here that's an alternative to a traditional air conditioning system
is what some people call swamp cooler. It's called a
swamp cooler because it's using water to help take heat
out of the atmosphere. The idea is that you have
a device that has some material that's got water soaked
in it. It's soaked in water in some way. You
use a fan to blow the air from outside through
(27:25):
this thing. The warm air makes contact with the water
material the material soaked in water, and heat from the
air ends up evaporating some of the water, and that
means that the air itself loses heat so it becomes cooler.
So the air that ends up blowing into your home
is cooler than the air than the ambient temperature of
the air, so you get this overall cooling effect. However,
(27:48):
this only works if you are in a place that
has a relatively dry environment. If you're living it does
not work, all right, The air already has too much
moisture in it. Really put this to good use, yeah no, yeah,
we already have too much humidity the air is. The
air is pretty much saturated with humidity, so it's not
an effective way of cooling. I mean, you could just
(28:10):
as well just put a regular fan inside a house
and just have air blowing around, and that circulation might
help some, but it doesn't necessarily make the air feel cooler.
Same thing with a swamp cooler if you haven't live
in a high humidity area. But that's another alternative. So
I've got kind of a big one. Now, Okay, what
(28:31):
about data and communication services? All right, So if you
are able to go outside and shout and everyone you
need to talk to can hear you and shout back
and you can hear them, you're set. Otherwise this is
a problem because communication, by its very nature, requires that
there be some sort of system there for it to work.
(28:54):
If you're talking about anything beyond you know, line of sight. Yeah,
or like I mean, I guess I am radio or something.
But yeah, well even then you got to have the well, yes,
you could do a ham radio I guess, but even
then that's long distance. Anyone could listen to you, so
it's like a party line. I guess. This sort of
depends on whether you like what you're reasoning is for
(29:16):
wanting to get off the grid. If it's something about privacy,
you just might not want to have these services, right
because anytime you're going to use an electronic device that
is used for communication, there by its nature, there needs
to be something that identifies that device so that other information,
other communication can get back to you. Otherwise all you've
(29:37):
got is something that allows you to broadcast but not receive.
Oh well, and in the case of the Internet, there
are more and less secure in private ways to browse
the net and to people. If you're using the tour browser,
for example, that gives you a little more privacy. Although
we did an episode of Tech Stuff about the tour
routing network and the browsers use that's used to acts
(30:00):
and as we pointed out in that episode, that's using
it is not enough like you have to go well,
above and beyond that. If you if you truly want
to reduce the data footprint you're leaving behind that identifies
who you are, you have to go to some pretty
extreme measures in order to really ensure that that happens.
(30:23):
But assuming that's not your goal, if communication, if privacy
is not the thing you're worried about, then you know,
it's less of a problem. You could have something like
a cell phone, and assuming you have cell phone service
wherever you've decided to erect your magical house, then you
should be fine. Again, assuming of course, that you're also
generating electricity because I'm guessing your cell phone is running
(30:44):
on it. Yeah, Or you could just go with the
wireless internet service provider. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, there's there's some
that use cellular networks essentially to use that, you know,
and you just use a dongle or some other kind
of modem like device, router like device to get access
to it. So yeah, if privacy is not the reason
(31:06):
why you've decided to, you know, cut all ties to
the grid, then that would be kind of that would
be one of the routes I would go. Yeah, I've
got a question. Okay, let's say I'm living in a
house off the grid, and Jonathan comes over with his
huge collection of original Star Wars action figures in the
original packaging, and I just start tearing them open, of course,
(31:29):
because I want to play with the toys. You're a
terrible friend. What do I do with all of the
original packaging? Where where do I put all that? Joe?
That's not gonna be a consideration you need to make,
because I will have killed you in hollowed up to
Roddy for use as a sleeping bag Tonton style, the
only fitting way for the horrible thing you've done to Mike. See.
But if I do that at my house, the garbage
(31:51):
people will come and pick them up and take them
away as long as they're in one of the designated bags. Right. Okay,
So we're saying, like, what if your house is not
anywhere near someplace where you have this kind of the service,
or what if you're choosing not to use it not
choosing not to use it? Okay? So all right, well
you've got some choices. First of all, you want to
reduce the amount of stuff you have to throw away
(32:13):
to the absolute bare minimum, which means that you're going
to be thinking a lot harder about the things that
you're purchasing, assuming that you are purchasing things still from
outside sources, right, So you want to be able to
do the three RS right, Reduce, reuse, recycle, So you
want to reduce as much of the stuff that would
necessarily be thrown away eventually as much as possible. You know,
(32:33):
keep in mind, like if you're genering your electricity, you're
going to have batteries and eventually you're going to have
to replace batteries. So that's one of those things that
you've got to remember, Like batteries do not last forever.
Solar panels the same thing. You're going to have to
replace those at some point. And some electronics like that
can in fact be recycled. Yeah, so there's the recycling
part of you know, making sure you can recycle as
(32:54):
much as you can, or you know, buying things in
glass jars that you can reuse rather than in a
plastic already use a lot of glass jars. It is
nearly impossible to live without producing any waste, but you
can definitely cut way, way way down, and you can
do composting to take care of organic stuff so that
you can compost it down and that's a big help too,
(33:16):
sat resource for your garden. Yeah, some stuff you would
probably have to eventually, you know, haul out to a
dump of some sort because you're just not going to
get around it. There's going to be some stuff that
you cannot recycle or reuse. But if you can reduce
that to the bare minimum, then you will dramatically decrease
the impact you have environmentally speaking. So yeah, that would
(33:39):
be what I would That's why to tell anyone who
was thinking about this. Okay, what about Sylvia's questions? Okay, yeah,
she asked about ethanol, like does that necessarily have to
come from food crops? And the answer to that is no,
it does not have to necessarily come from food crops.
There have been experiments using switchgrass, which most people think
(33:59):
of as kind of an irritating plant that otherwise has
no use, but in fact, you can use switchgrass to
create ethanol, and a US government study found that switchgrass
could provide as many as one one and fifty gallons
of ethanol per acre per year. And that's actually way
better than say corn, which is technically that that's the
(34:21):
most popular crop used to make ethanol. Well, it's a
popular crop in America. Yeah, and a large amount of
it is being used for biofuels, although I do want
to put in that frequently the type of corn that
is used in biofuels is either corn waste or a
non edible not non human edible form. Yeah. Corn, Well,
(34:42):
to mean, we don't have to worry about making the
corn nice and juicy, because all you're doing is turning
it into fuel. So do they make it out of
the baby corn because people shouldn't be eating that. No.
I can show you this whole video about how they
package babycorn. Though we watched a baby corn industrial video.
It's essentially made of terror. Yeah. So at any rate,
if you're talking about corn, the average bushel size in
(35:05):
twenty twelve would yield closer to four hundred and forty
gallons per year, so or bushels, see like per acre,
we're looking at an acreage thing sore and fifty gallons
of ethanol versus four hundred and forty gallons per year
with corn. I mean that's obviously a big difference. But
even if you could grow this yourself, like she also
(35:25):
raw enough. Yeah, she asked about the ability to make
fuel for your car at home. Clearly even if you
were able to grow, like you have an acre of land,
let's say, and you've dedicated it to growing switchgrass, you
might be able to grow plenty of switchgrass. To feel
that car, she's got to process that that switchgrass. You
(35:46):
have to turn it into biofuel. That's a pretty intense
biochemical engineering related process. It's not something that you can
you know, you don't just put it in a pot
of water and boil it for like five minutes and
then you got fuel. So yeah, but of course something
like horn to ethanol or switchgrass to ethanol are not
the only ways to create biofuels. You can create biodiesel
(36:06):
out of algae, you can create it out of cooking well. Yeah,
Now most engines are not tuned, even diesel engines, because
you have to have a diesel engine. By the way,
don't put this in a gasoline power vehicle, but diesel
engines can some of them run on essentially what used
cooking oil. So you'll hear about people who kind of
(36:28):
I remember a guy in Athens who was doing this
where he would go around to restaurants and collect their
used cooking oil and use that in his converted vehicle.
That use this as biodiesel for his engine. So the
issue there is that not all engines are very well
tuned for this. You could require lots more maintenance, a
lot more cleaning in order for it to work. But
(36:50):
it's potentially something you could do. Yeah, there's a coalition
of dairy farmers in Vermont who work with their local
utility companies to process their cows waste and use them
thing gas to produce energy. Yeah, that reminds me of
mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. Bartertown ran on something similar. Then
(37:10):
you had the question about soil regeneration, this idea of
it's a problem that a lot of farmers have run
into where the top soil that they depend upon, that's
the layer where stuff actually grows is eroded either by
weather or through using grazing lands improperly, that kind of thing,
and you end up with desertification. Things turns into a desert.
(37:35):
So how do you reverse that process? And there's not
a cookie cutter approach to fixing this because the problems
tend to vary depending upon each situation. I read an
interesting series of case studies that were done in Australia
in twenty twelve where they I think it was nineteen
different cases of people using different approaches because their situations
(37:59):
were different enough where merited it. Some of things involved
breaking up the ground a bit so that you had
more facets that were exposed to the air that would
actually help encourage organisms to grow again within the soil.
Some of them involved introducing certain types of plants to
help create that top soil, or rotating crops through that
(38:20):
was another big one. Changing the grazing patterns of cattle
because it's Australia, so almost all of them were cattle farmers,
changing the kind of fertilizers they were using so that
they were relying more on organic fertilizer rather than non organic.
All these things were ways to regenerate the soil so
that it could actually grow the right kinds of plants,
(38:43):
whether that was just grazing material for the animals or
whether it was crops, like a lot of them were legumes,
as I recall. So if you're able to do this,
and you're able to reverse this process, you can start
to get into this natural cycle, the self regidrating cycle,
which is what you would typically see in nature, assuming
(39:04):
there's not some other kind of climate change going on.
If you're just looking at how it nature, the top
soil gets replenished over time just through the natural process
of things dying off and breaking down soil. You can
actually get back into that cycle, but at least initially,
it requires a lot of management because you actually have
to reverse the process of turning into a desert. So
(39:26):
there are other things. If you wanted to reduce the
saline content, it usually means that you have to introduce
a lot more water, so that's a big consideration too,
where you're getting that water from. None of these none
of these solutions are necessarily very easy or inexpensive. They
could be very expensive to implement, but ultimately, especially in
the long run, they're beneficial. So you have to look
(39:48):
at the long term benefits versus the short term setbacks.
And then of course there's the idea about you know,
retrofitting homes. There's lots of technology out there to help
you cut back on the amount of electricity you're consuming,
and we talked about cutting back that heating and cooling,
which is a big that's a huge chunk, right, and
all of those those smart smart meters, the smart meters, Yeah,
(40:12):
smart meters. That's great because the smart meter allows you
to really keep an eye on how much electricity you
are consuming on a day to day basis. You know
most of us, don't you know. I don't know about
you guys. I know that my home has an old
style power meter on there, and I don't go and
look at it every day, and even if I did,
I probably wouldn't be able to make heads or tails
(40:34):
of what was going on. But smart meters give lots
more information and in fact can even hook into an
account that you have where you can monitor the account
online if you wanted to, so you're not having to
go out and look at some external meter. You could
just pop online, check a web page and see and
you can actually monitor how much electricity you're using and
be able to determine what is causing any sort of spikes.
(40:55):
Another good thing is to use like major appliances like
a washing machine or or dishwasher at night as opposed
to daytime, when it's off peak hours, off peak hours exactly.
Another good thing is to get the energy Star appliances,
which use less electricity. They have to actually go through
(41:15):
a certification process that proves that they are energy efficient.
Using smart thermostats like the nest system is the big
popular one right now, right, so that way you know
you're not trying to cool your home to that sixty
eight degrees that I like so much when you're not there. Yeah,
lots of things like that are ways of helping. Also,
(41:35):
just those those different power strips you can get where
when you switch the power switch off, it won't allow
devices to sip vampire power. Vampire power is when you
turn the device off, but it's still draining electricity. It's
still got to pull a load on your electrical circuits,
which means that you are spending money just by having
your stuff turned off. If you have these power strips
(41:58):
that actually cut that off, then you don't have to
worry about that. So that's another thing to look into.
And in a lot of ways you might say this
is kind of nickel and diming in cases like if
you're already pretty careful, but really every little bit counts
and it adds up over time. And only that. Again,
if you know that your house, let's say, is getting
(42:21):
electricity from a coal power plant, and you don't have
the option of investing in some renewable energy source, maybe
that's just not an option for you. Based upon homeowners
associations or the financial burden, then these other methods may
be the best way for you to reduce your carbon
footprint in a responsible way that doesn't impact your life
(42:44):
so sadrastically. Yeah, So, thank you so much to Sylvia
for sending us this terrific list of questions. And I
know that we kind of glossed through a bunch of
a bunch of them. So if anyone would like to
hear something more in depth about any of these these
last few topics that we that we kind of kind
(43:05):
of summarized perhaps but didn't go to in depth with
uh you guys, let us know. Yeah, if there's something
like you thought, well that was really interesting, but you
you you didn't go nearly deep enough, let us know.
We can do a full episode on it. Yeah, and
I would love to hear from you. Yeah, And so
follow Sylvia's example, guys, write us. You can send us
an email address is FW thinking at discovery dot com,
(43:28):
or drop us a line on Facebook, Twitter, or Google Plus,
or handle at all three of those is FW thinking,
and we will talk to you again really soon. Wow.
For more on this topic and the future of technology,
visit Forward Thinking dot com brought to you by Toyota.
(43:59):
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