The Chatelaine's Keys

Sharon August 13th, 2009

This is week two of the AIP course, and I’ve mostly covered, in past classes, the range of options for heating, cooking, water, toileting, etc…  One subject I haven’t written about is light – and I think it is one that bears some attention, because even though light isn’t necessary for life, you’ll be awfully sad, particularly if you live in extreme northern or southern latitudes, if you have to go to bed when it gets dark all year .  Not to mention that high cost in broken toes of tripping over things.

One of the funny things about generating light, unlike a lot of other non-fossil fueled alternatives, is that most of the homemade, seemingly lower impact models are actually *higher* impact – that is, the petroleum based candles you buy at the store are probably of greater impact than simply running a Compact Flourescent lightbulb.  So is your kerosene lamp.  Even beeswax candles may be a bigger impact, depending on where you are getting them from.  That’s because electricity isn’t a bad way to generate light.

That said, however, plastic and battery based things break.  I find that my best solutions are a mix of all of these – candles and kerosene lamps, solar lanterns and rechargeable batteries. 

 Now preparations need to have two functions – first, they meet your needs in a crisis.  But second, they allow you to live the kind of life you want even when you aren’t in crisis, and presuming that most of us want our light sources to be ethical ones, and to provide the most for the least, that means sorting out some options.  Let’s talk options. 

Actually, first, let’s talk not setting your house, child, cat or ferret on fire.  Many of these solutions involve open flames, or slightly enclosed flames.  If you are going to use them, use them very carefully.  Have a good smoke detector around and batteries, keep fire extinguishers and know how to use them, and never leave them unattended where kids or pets could get at them.  If you have children or pets, stable candles with solid bases are better than tall candles with candlesticks, and hurricanes or other containment, or wall sconces are safer than the table where the kids can reach or the dog can bump into things while hoping someone will drop something.  I have several wall sconces with hurricane glasses that I found at a yard sale.  Mirrored sconces will nearly double the amount of light in a room as as side benefit.

 If you really desperately needed light, and wanted to be outside, you could make rushlights or flaming torches – dip cattails in oil or set a stick on fire.  You do not want to do this in your house, just in case you were wondering .  But this is not the most carbon-efficient option, nor is it terrifically convenient (although flaming torches have their place in driving monsters out of the local ruined castle, I suppose).

You could also burn olive oil, in a homemade lamp, with a wick made from a shoelace (cotton only, pull off the plastic ends).  This is not cheap, but it is clean burning.  It won’t give tons of light, but if you have olives where you live, you can make a simple lamp. Here’s a variation that uses a mason jar: http://www.motherearthnews.com/Do-It-Yourself/Make-Olive-Oil-Lamp.aspx

Next possibility are candles.  Most candles are petroleum based, and some have lead wicks, which are not good to breathe, so be careful when buying cheap candles.  I think scented candles are generally disgusting, and they can cause problems for people with allergies or scent sensitivities, so I avoid those as well (is there anyone who thinks those Yankee candle stores smell *good* ;-P).  Soy, beeswax and bayberry candles are much nicer and better for you.  Tallow candles don’t smell so hot when burning, and you really can’t buy them, but you could make them out of leftover animal fats.  If you plan to use candles, think about where your candles will come from – get to know your local beekeeper, plant some bayberry bushes if you’ve got sandy soil, or get your own hive and candle molds.

 Kerosene is not environmentally more sound, but lamp oil does store well, and kerosene lamps can provide a good backup lighting source.  Make sure you know how to use them, and how to trim wicks and clean them.  Lamp oil stores pretty much indefinitely, but make sure you store it in a fire proof container.  These oils are byproducts of coal production, so not likely to run entirely out, but also not real environmentally cool.

You can get lights that will run on propane or on natural gas – try www.lehmans.com - these are used by the Amish, and if, for example, you have a natural gas well or use propane for other things, are another possibility.  Again, they aren’t necessarily a huge improvement over grid electric (depending on how your electric is generated), but they may allow you to rely on more stable supplies.

Flashlights, battery powered lamps, booklights and headlamps make a lot of sense when combined with rechargeable batteries and solar powered battery chargers.  Set these in your window, have several sets of each battery type to rotate, and these can give excellent light for extended periods.  Headlamps are especially nice for a host of purposes – going out to the barn with stuff in your hands, washing dishes, etc…  Book lights clip to your book and allow you to read with tiny quantities of light.  These are also a great mix with LED nightlights for kids. 

If you are going to get flashlights, get at least one serious, heavy duty, police-officer style flashlight, or a floodlight LED type.  The reason is that sooner or later you are bound to have to help track the dog through the woods, find out what’s making that noise under the house, or otherwise do something with a light with *power* – little flashlights are adequate for most jobs, but once in a while, these are useful.  They are also an excellent security device – most people prowling about will stop, blinded when you shine one on them, and many pesty critters will run away .

Hand crank flashlights are good, but usually not super powerful.  Plus you might have something to do besides crank.  I have some, but I also recommend some battery powered ones, although the crank type are great for kids.   Although not at all sustainable, for bugout bags and such, I also see the value of chemical lightsticks for little kids, who need something to be secure.

Solar lights are also great – and the kind designed for gardens are very cheap these days.  Buy a bunch, plant them outside, and then simply stick one in a bucket of sand in rooms where you need light.  Unlike many of the other options here, they are quite pleasant to read by. I also have a couple of solar lanterns, which are very nice, especially when children and pets are about.  The lanterns are easy to carry about with you, as are the outdoor lights, if you keep buckets about.  Plus, the outdoor types can be used, well, outdoors .

You can, of course, put in a solar, wind or microhydro system and use it to power lights and a few other things.  A small system that can run your computer, your lights and your CD player won’t be too expensive.  I recommend this generally, however, only for people who either aren’t grid tied to begin with or who have done most of their other preps – because it is perfectly possible to run those things on rechargeable batteries for much lower cost.

The most important think you can do about alternate lighting is change your attitude towards it – that is, instead of assuming that everyone needs their own lighted room, you all congregate together.  One person can read alound near the light, or perhaps everyone can do something like handwork that is done in low light conditions, to conserve energy.  If you can keep things mostly in the same places, there’s no reason why lights are needed for basic things like trips to the bathroom at night or to latch on an infant.  You can get up earlier and go to bed earlier.  There are lots of ways to adapt to lower light conditions that are less about what you have than what you do.  Of course, that’s true for all of this.

 Sharon

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Sharon August 6th, 2009

Today I’m starting another Adapting-In-Place Class, beginning with the basics of evaluating whether you have a future where you are, what your other choices are, and then triaging your situation, but I’ve already written a good bit about those things, so I want to a basic and essential element of triage – establishing redundant systems.

Why redundant systems?  Well, for the simple reason that, as Yeats put, things fall apart.  We all know this – in fact, we all rely regularly on redundant systems.  For example, when your commuter vehicle breaks, you take the bus, carpool with a neighbor, borrow from your spouse or a friend or rent a car.  Implicit in your commitment to your job is the reality that your car will break, and that you will find yourself in need of a redundant system to back you up.  If you have children, you are are intimately familiar with the filling out of forms that list several “emergency contacts” – that is, people who can be trusted to tend your kids if you are not there.  This is a form of redundancy – thus, if your son takes sick at school, you have a neighbor or relative who can respond, and if not them, usually another person still who can be tried.  The assumption is that with parents plus multiple redundant backups, someone will always be there for your kids.

But most of us don’t have good redundant systems for our home and our lives, if the basic assumptions of our existence, which include full access to grid power and other utilities; an immediate government response to a crisis and the availability of replacement parts, utilities and tools, as well as people to install them and the money to pay for it are all available.  That is, the redundancy in our system all presumes a fully functional economy, energy system and a fairly stable society.  In the absence of each of these things, most of us are tremendously vulnerable.

One of the first and most basic presumptions we all need to make is this – failure is normal.  This is not a prediction – I am not claiming that any particular scenario is likely.  But the reality is that nearly everything breaks, falls apart or is vulnerable in some way to not-terrifically-unlikely disasters.  Your plans for the future should work from the assumption that things will unfold messily, and with copious system failures.  I’ve written more about this here: http://sharonastyk.com/2008/12/13/inconceivable-why-failure-is-normal-and-should-be-part-of-the-planbut-isnt/  I wrote about our strange reluctance to seriously consider the possibility of failure on both a personal and world scale,

“…this leads to a painful  reality – despite the fact that winter power outages happen out my way all the time, we know for a fact that the extended outages in my region there will leave us with people who are freezing, and hungry, isolated and unable to cope.  They won’t have the batteries for their flashlights, or any strategy for cooking or eating. At best, they will come out of this traumatized and miserable. At worst, some of them may actually die.

 But we also know that these folks will be deemed normal, and their lack of preparation will be treated as normal.  Just as people in California with no earthquake preparations or folks in Florida with no preparations for a Hurricane will be treated as normal.  We treat a lack of preparedness, in our society, as completely reasonable and rational, even expected.  Thus, if you are in line at a Red Cross shelter because you have no food and water in your home 48 hours after a hurricane hit Gainesville, odds are no one will even raise an eyebrow and ask why in heck you don’t have any food.

My point is not to pick on anyone (and yes, I know that there are some people who don’t have enough food access to have a reserve, but that hardly describes everyone) - in fact, I think the reason that we look upon the lack of personal contingency plans as so reasonable is that it isn’t just personal – our society as a whole has very few contingency plans – much less strategies for adapting to failure.  We regard planning for anything bad as a sign of an unhealthy focus on the negative.  We feel it is so unhealthy that we find that at every level of our culture – from the purely personal question of whether we have a strategy for dealing with common disasters to the international policy level where no one seems to have ever asked any questions about what might go wrong on a host of subjects – we have no contingency plans.  Not only do we not have them, but we dismiss and deride anyone who suggests we make them.

All of which suggests that we have a very troubled relationship to the idea of failure.  Speaking as someone whose entire body of work could probably be summarized as “Ummm…have you thought about what happens if something goes wrong?”  I’m acutely aware of how unpleasant and frightening most of us find the idea of failure – and because we find it unpleasant and frightening, we are likely to dramatically underestimate its likelihood and frequency, and be truly shocked when failures happen.  But in fact, we shouldn’t be shocked – failure is far more routine and normal than we expect.  Not only is it normal, but treating it as normal might actually reduce the likelihood of disaster.”

And if we do have backup systems, often those systems are themselves vulnerable to failure, and we may or may not have further redundancies in the system.  Now some systems don’t need much redundancy – for example, if you mostly keep ice cream in your freezer, even if you are very fond of ice cream, you don’t actually need a backup plan or system to compensate for the failure of your freezer – one doesn’t actually need Ben and Jerry’s to live, even if it is Cherry Garcia , so no redundant system is required.  But let’s say that your freezer holds most of your stored food, including a lot of high value meats and produce that you rely on, and that would cost you more than 1,000 to replace.  Well, you think, I’ll get a generator.  Maybe you even install it, and store some gas for it.  But the problem is that a generator is a short term solution – it is great for a few days of power outage, and will keep that food cold.  But what if, as happened last year in Kentucky, Massachusetts, New York, Iowa, Texas and several other states, the power is out for more than a few days?  What happens when the gas for the generator runs out, and the gas stations have no power to pump more?  Your redundancy assumes that things will get back to normal quickly – but what if that’s not the case?

The reality is that if your redundancies depend on fossil fuels, on just in time delivery of parts you don’t keep on hand, on government response being there on the ground quickly, on disasters being so localized that nearby other places can send help, rather than widespread, on somehow, things working out, your redundancies aren’t adequate – period.

Now this could end up an infinite reduction game – you could make the case that the need for redundancy never stops, and on some level, you’d be right. Let’s say my backup plan for that freezer is different – it involves me taking my pressure canner and canning up the meat in the freezer on my wood cookstove.  Now someone could legitimately say “well, but what if your stove breaks, or the canner does.  Doesn’t that mean you need an infinite number of canners, a backup woodstove and an infinite number of monkeys to type while you do the preserving?

There’s some truth in this – all things fail, all good things come to an end.  On the other hand, the wood cookstove I own comes from a brand where 100 year old models are routinely used.  Mine is less than 5 years old.  There are a couple of parts that might break, and that’s why I keep a stove gasketing kit around, and have my own chimney brushes.  And it is possible that some unusual situation might occur.  Which is one of the reasons I’m glad I know how to make a rocket stove – and have a big old can big enough to put a canning kettle on, although I haven’t made it yet.  I also make sure that there’s nothing in my freezer I can’t afford to lose – yes, I like what I have there, but I don’t allow myself to rely on it as my primary source of food.  If worst came to worst, we’d invite all the neighbors for a feast and go forward from there – I don’t really need more than that plan in my head, because I know I can lose the stuff there.

So a set of redundant systems depends on several things.  First, a backup that is well made and simple – or if cheap and complex, a bunch of them.  Given that I don’t like the idea of buying a lot of cheap stuff, I’d prefer the former, but sometimes that may not be viable.  Second, if the system is essential, you need the tools and equipment and ability to take care of it and repair it.  That means looking critically over your backup systems and asking what parts might break, and how to fix them if they do.  I have a box in my closet that contains only repair kits for things – often, when making a major purchase, the item comes with an inexpensive repair kit, that contains replacement pieces of things that are most likely to show wear – rust remover and stove gaskets for a cookstove, bearing oil and replacement bearings for my spinning wheel, a sewing machine belt and replacement needles for a treadle machine, etc…  Now occasionally these are a scam, providing cheap parts rather than useful ones, but with well made equipment, often they aren’t.  Making sure you also know how to use them – that you’ve downloaded instructions, say for, say mending harness or replacing parts on your water pumping wind turbine. Ideally, try it before you have to do it in the rain, at night, by flashlight, since that’s how it always works.

The other thing that’s needed is a mental plan to deal with failure – ok, what if my well pump breaks just when I need it?  Well, I know I can filter water from the creek, and from my rainbarrels.  Let’s just make sure I have enough filters or water purifying tablets.  Also, how much do I mind the idea of my final, mental back up plan?  I think I’d find hauling all our water from our creek really annoying.  If that’s the case, and I can afford it, I should probably make sure that we have a backup well pump system.

If you do want a complex, and fossil fuel based backup – ie, you want solar panels to keep your freezer running or a generator or whatever, make sure you a. know how to fix it and b. keep tools and parts on hand.   And also make sure you have a non-fossilized backup, just in case.

Redundancies can and should include sharing with others, relying on others for help, etc… We don’t always need a tool, so much as we need people.  But if your plans include these, ask yourself – am I lending a helping hand now?  Do I have relationships to rely on for this?  If not, time to make them happen.

How much redundancy do you need?  At a minimum, I think you should be as unreliant on high energy, high complexity systems as possible.  For some people, comfortable living with very little, in a simple way, this will mean almost no complexities.  For those tied by major illness to high energy medical systems, or caught in situations where they cannot live without these, it may still be possible to minimize resource use elsewhere, while building up as much of a safety net as possible elsewhere.  Not every person will be able to do every thing – but the more you can build redundant systems into your plan, the happier and more comfortable your lives will be. 

 Sharon

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Sharon July 31st, 2009

It has been a long, hectic week here, simultaneously putting the last touches in _Independence Days_ before it goes to the printer, and also getting the AIP book fully organized, a new contract agreed on, etc… 

Now that I’m writing the book on my own, I admit, I’m going to rely on other people to fill in the gaps in my knowledge and provide a wider perspective – we had always planned to include profiles of people’s efforts to make their place functional in tough times, but they’ve taken on a new importance for me, because, of course, there’s a lot I don’t know, haven’t tried, etc…  I’m taking on this huge subject, and I’m dependent, as always on other people’s expertise.  But I had been planning to stick Aaron with a lot of the stuff that I didn’t know as well, and somehow, taking this on alone seems overwhelming.  But I’ve decided to deal with the overwhelming simply by including as many interesting case studies as I can.

All of which is a long way of saying that I’d love to hear your story about how you are going about making your future where you are. I’m interested in stories from cities and countryside, from suburbs and even the much-maligned exurban housing projects.  I’m interested in people moving back with family, and people making their way alone, in big extended families and singles, young and old, immigrants and emigrants, religious and athiests, and people of all ethnicities.   My assumption is that all of us, when we choose a place to stay are working within constraints, often severe constraints – and I’d like to see how you are making the best possible future for yourself despite the fact that, say, your family is far away and doesn’t take you seriously, or you don’t have much money and live in an apartment,  or your neighbors are radically different, or you are settling in a place that may be subsumed by the sea someday – but that’s where your family is.  That is, one way or another, none of us have the perfect place, the perfect people, the perfect list of resources.  And yet, we’re here, and making a future.  I think that’s worth celebrating.

 I’d really love to hear how you are making your place liveable and viable at every level, from how you are retrofitting your house to how you are making community with your neighbors.  All of that’s a lot of information, of course, and I can probably only read some of it, but I’d love to hear the highlights, in comments or email at jewishfarmer@gmail.com or in a link to your blog in comments.  And if you want, I’m looking for a few people to be profiled in the AIP book.  I can obviously only choose a couple of those (I’ve already got some selected), but even for those who aren’t chosen, it might be possible to eventually put them all up on the book website.  So there’s some cool possibilities there (I’d love to hear from you even if you don’t want to be in the book, obviously). 

So tell me – what are you doing?  What are you concentrating on?  How are you starting where you are and going from there?

Thanks so much,

 Sharon

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Sharon July 13th, 2009

Scott Adams has often seemed to grasp that we can’t go on acting like greedy pigs forever, but it seems that he’s turned himself to the project of designing the ideal AIP community.  Excellent!  And thanks to Brad K. for tipping me off on this.

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/cheapatopia/

 The only problem with “Cheapatopia” is that Dogbert will immediately conquer it .

 Sharon

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Sharon June 29th, 2009

A while back I wrote an essay arguing that while many people will lose their homes and have to move in with family or into rentals in the coming crisis, still more will end up trapped where they are, unable to sell their homes, unable to get credit to buy another, or even to find rental housing due to credit rating losses, and with other family dependent on the only stable home available to them.  That is, the flip side of disruption and movement is that many people are going to be adapting in place – only often with more people in the place than they thought.

 It seems that all of these things are probably roughly coming true.  There has been a substantial increase in the number of people combining housing, although it is hard to measure how much, because there are often prohibitions against such things.  More people are leaving homes and looking for rental housing, although many of them have a hard time finding it, because credit ratings are still important.  Meanwhile, the migration rate – the rate of people moving, has dropped like a stone.

“During the 1950s and 1960s, Frey said, as many as 20 percent of Americans moved in any given year. Mobility rates slowed to 15 percent to 16 percent during the 1990s. But in 2008, only 11.9 percent of Americans moved, he said.”

Meanwhile, some people are Adapting in Place without the amenities of utilities, as reports come in that more foreclosed houses are being squatted in by the original owners. 

Many of us, I think will go into these tough times not where we want to be, but where we are. Others will be the “brother in law on the couch” – moving in with family as needed (I’ve got a post in the works on being the BIL on the Couch, btw, for those who have requested it).  It won’t always be the best prepared person who ends up staying in their home, nor will it always be the best home – it may be the person who keeps their job longest or whose mortgage is smallest, or who happens to live in a place where there is still work. 

And while some folks already have the superinsulated straw bale house, the solar panels and everything else, most of us, well, we don’t.  We’re trying to cobble together our infrastructure, hoping desperately for a few more paychecks and discovering what exactly people mean by “red clay” “R-value negligible” or “fixer-upper” in world where there isn’t as much money, time or energy as we’d like. 

My belief is that in most places, for most people, the process of dealing with our collective crisis is going to be messy.  It will not be as graceful, elegant or smooth as we’d like.  It will involve making the best of what we’ve got, and it will probably involve extensive cursing of how we used our last great burst of wealth and energy.

The good news is that there really is a great deal you can do while you curse (far be it from me to suggest people stop cursing – I try not to advise anything I’m not willing to do ).  Did you always secretly want to be MacGyver, escaping from dangerous agents with baling twine and toilet paper (I’ve never actually seen this show, so I can’t tell if this is an accurate description, but I gather from pop culture references that it was something of the sort)?  Well, think what happens if you manage to survive peak oil, climate change and economic collapse with nothing but 1960s split level ranch, the stuff you can dumpster dive and your paycheck.  It may not be elegant, but you’ve got to admit, it is interesting.

Anyway, there’s no need to despair if you didn’t yet get the money to buy land, if the eco-village turned you down because you still use regular toilet paper, or if your present version of community mostly involves the local brewpub.  There’s probably land that’s underused around you, toilet paper can presumably be used for some MacGyver-like purpose, and beer remains the universal solvent to resistance to forming useful community groups.  Use what you have.  Adapt in place.

Sharon

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