green housing

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Self-Reliant Living: Alternative Energy

We keep pushing the envelope, learning how to live independently.  I love the sense of freedom and peace of mind that gives me.  Water and food were our first focus.  That foundation is feeling pretty solid now.

Our next focus has been energy.  We have been seriously researching lots of alternatives for reliable, low cost electricity generation.  Most people think of solar PV, wind and, to a lesser extent, micro-hydro for green power. But there are problems with each.

Solar Photo Voltaics are expensive.  The costs are beginning to come down, but aren’t there yet.  Probably won’t be for some time.  I want to power my house without bankrupting the occupants.  And I don’t want to have to sacrifice so much on consumption that I give up all the conveniences.  Then there are the cloudy days, requiring big battery backup.  PV cost per KWh is just way too high.

Wind is nice.  Lots of new innovations, especially with vertical axis turbines.  They are primarily designed to make wind power acceptable in an urban environment by putting the turbine close to the ground.  But that’s where there isn’t much wind.  Oh, well.  We’re rural, so that’s no advantage.  Wind’s disadvantage for me?  You need really strong, consistent wind to produce a lot of electricity – like on the plains of Nebraska.  We are on a plateau at 2,000 feet with nice breezes, but not gale force winds.  We could still do it, but would need multiple windmills to make enough electricity for our needs.  Again, the costs become too high relative to the output.  Plus, you only get electricity when the wind blows.

Then there’s hydro power.  It’s the lowest cost per KWh alternative, but you need either a big river or a perennial creek with lots of head (drop in elevation). We have the latter, but flow varies a lot depending on recent rainfall.  Summer flow isn’t enough.

It all comes down to cost and continuous reliability.

We discovered a little-known, low-cost, low-tech and proven alternative.  It’s called wood gasification.  Surprisingly, over a million cars in Europe were powered with wood during World War II when gas was short.  Unlike the other green power sources, we have an abundance of fast growing, renewable, free wood here.  So, we are installing a system that converts wood into a gas that can run an internal combustion engine with plenty of horse power to drive a generator.  We can run it any time, in any season, independent of the weather.  And, best news of all, the cost is competitive with the big utilities on a cost per KWh basis.

The founder of the company that has brought this technology into the 21st century will be here a week from next Saturday installing our new system.    Give me a call if you would like to see it or any of our other self-sufficiency systems in action.

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Tiny Homes – Big Life

Some time ago a Realtor suggested to me that the formula for calculating the cost of building a home should be a large multiple of the cost of the lot.  At the time it struck me as a bit odd.  The more I have considered it, the more out of step that thinking seems.  It reminded me of advice I received as a young man.   I was contemplating marriage and buying an engagement ring.  The jeweler informed me that I should budget a certain percent of my annual salary for that ring.  There was no consideration for any of my personal values, economic circumstances, nor of my future bride, only custom and fashion.  A thinking person holds neither fashion nor custom in very high regard.  It seemed that someone concocted these  formulas more for the benefit of the salesman than for the happiness and well-being of the buyer.

For a person who values nature, if there is to be such a formula, shouldn’t the numerator and denominator be flipped?  Shouldn’t the land value be a multiple of the house?  Which is the more durable, the more valuable over time?  What does REAL in Real Estate refer to?  Great architects will invariably assert that good architecture is molded to the character of the land, not the other way round.  The most famous example of the principle is “Falling Water” designed by our most lauded architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.  But I hold that the true spirit of the principle was best illustrated by my favorite philosopher, Henry David Thoreau.  He found his greatest joy living in about a 150 square foot house of his own construction beside a lovely pond in the woods.

Today, it has become quite fashionable to downsize to small, even tiny houses.  How good it would be if behavior were driven by wisdom not fashion, but what a happy coincidence we find ourselves in!  The unforeseen benefits of a small home are substantial.  When the land one lives on is of greater value than the house, the true proportional value emerges between things made by man and those made by God.

This conflict of interest has reached absurd proportions as American suburbs filled with McMansions that people can neither afford nor use.  Huge spaces that only require the owner to fill them with furniture that they can also not afford.  Possessions own us.  Thankfully, current economic hardships have brought a degree of common sense back to at least some.

In the Village, it’s really ok to own a small house rather than be owned by a huge, wasteful one.  There is no minimum house size here. We are blessed with a mild climate and stunningly beautiful land filled with plants and animals in their natural state.  A small home invites one to be outside and enjoy all that nature has to offer.  The Village lifestyle is the antidote for the cocooning generation, holed up with TV’s, video games in cavernous mansions, full of things and yet empty of life.

How full one’s life becomes when the great out-of-doors becomes the boundaries of our habitation, not the walls of our house.

For some ideas on living small, check this out:   http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/

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Yes, You Can … be free and independent… and we can help

A recent visitor shared with us his desire to make a break from dependence on an unstable world… quickly followed by a confession of fear of plunging into the unknown.  Is it just an illusion for old hippies who live in communes?

We took a walk past our thundering waterfall, then to our garden that provided about 80% of all our food last summer.  I showed him our newly planted orchard and  greenhouse that will easily quadruple our growing capacity and our 7,500 gallon cistern that provides water security.  I showed him several projects I’m working on to make us energy self-sufficient.  Then we talked numbers, how all of this plus our modest, sustainable home (built for less than $80 per square foot) were all completed at minimal cost and how being debt free and self-sustaining on our family plot of land has brought us such peace of mind.

Like most white collar workers from a corporate background, I lacked the backwoods skills necessary to be truly self-sustaining.  So, like most people, I was afraid of the unknown.  Was it really possible to live well outside the tenuous infrastructure that is crumbling around us?  Could I do it?  After two years of joyful work, learning and doing, I can answer unequivocally, YES !!!

Still dreaming but afraid to make the leap?  Our concept is of a community where intelligent people with a strong work ethic and family values independently own their own property but work and play together to build solid relationships on top of an unconquerable desire to be free and self-sufficient.

Having proved that it is possible, we’re here to help you achieve the same peace of mind.  Come take a look.  Like they say at Home Depot,

YOU CAN DO IT.  WE CAN HELP!

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Learning to live the Not-So-Big Lifestyle

At the Village, we are focused on sustainable, green living, which can mean considerable downsizing. My wife and I went from a 5,000 square foot house to a 1,400 square foot house. I designed it myself and although there are a few things I would change about it,  we love our little house in the woods.

We find that we have an increased sense of ownership of things that count instead of being owned by our stuff.

Today, I ran across an article that does a nice job of discussing the changes in mentality and lifestyle that are required to make that shift. It points out that this doesn’t necessarily mean downsizing as it much as it means right-sizing the house of your dreams to your real needs.

Here’s a link in case you would like to read this article. I think it pretty fairly summarizes a philosophy that was intuitive to me.

http://www.motherearthnews.com/Green-Homes/Not-So-Big-House.aspx?utm_medium=email&utm_source=iPost&page=4