The Cohousing Road Trip

The wife and I went to the mentor cohousing community this weekend to see what we might expect out of the cohousing development we're looking into. We got to see the model community in action and in practice.

The place was two and a half hours away in Blacksburg, Virginia (home of Virginia Tech). Blacksburg is much less liberal than Charlottesville (home of the University of Virginia), so I'm kind of surprised that they had a cohousing community before we did. Oh well, that's not really relevant.

Our hosts were a couple with 2 daughters (ages 5 and 3). We brought our 3 year old daughter and 6 month old son with us. Our daughter had a blast playing with the other girls.

The tour was good. We got to talk to people who were living in the community and ask all sorts of questions. Better than that, we got the answers face-to-face with the reading of expressions and follow-up questions that are just not possible over email.

Besides that, to me at least, you can look at as many pictures on a webpage as you like. It will never add up to even a short amount of time actually being there and observing something first hand. There's nothing like walking through the pedestrian oriented neighborhood and standing in the common house.

All in all it took me a step closer to being able to commit to the idea. The wifey is totally sold. She'd sell the townhouse tomorrow and move in ASAP if she could.

My main hang up at this point is the financial feasibility of it all. That and the alteration of our long term financial plans. Mainly - we had planned to never sell the townhouse we are currently in. The plan was to pay off the credit cards (thus freeing up a bunch of money in credit card payments) and then rent the townhouse. Have someone else pay the mortgage, you know?

If we rented the townhouse and shook our credit card payments we'd be able to swing another mortgage payment, even if rent didn't cover all of the townhouse payment. That way when we retired we'd either be able to sell the townhouse for a quick cash injection or continue to rent it for long-term income.

Right now it looks like the community we're looking at will break ground in April, with move-ins around September. It depends on when we would have to kick in our down payment and how long it would take to sell the townhouse.

In this market we'd have to put the townhouse up for sale soon. If it did happen to sell in short order, we may have to move in with my Mom for as many as 8 months while our house was being built. That's assuming my Mom would let us move in. I think she would, but you never want to assume with something like that.

I am also fairly certain we'd get enough out of a sale to pay off the mortgage, but you never know in this market. In the original plan we didn't have to worry about the current downturn in the housing market. We weren't going to sell the townhouse in the short term or maybe ever. Housing proces would recover eventually and even if they didn't it wouldn't hurt as bad since people had been paying our mortgage (or a large potion of it) in the form of rent.

I just don't want to get all excited about this and make a bad decision. Our current long term plan is a good one, I think. And maybe in two years we'd be ready to buy a new house without selling the townhouse - but not right now. We need to pay off the credit cards first.

Oh, well. This wasn't what I wanted to babble about. Here's the place we toured:

http://www.shadowlakevillage.org/

A Road Trip, Then?

The mentor community for the cohousing development we are looking into is located about two and a half hours away. We've arranged to visit the place Sunday afternoon for a few hours. This should give us a pretty good idea of what the community life will be like in a cohousing development (since the place we may move is patterned after this community).

That's it for now.

Cohousing Meeting, etcetera

Wow, it was sooo easy to install the new showerhead... and so cheap, too. If you haven't done this already - you have to get this one done. It took about 10 minutes. Unscrew old showerhead (with help of adjustable wrench), clean the threads (just knock off the chunks), apply teflon tape, screw on new showerhead. Done.

That's 50% less water used in the shower and therefore 50% less energy used to heat it. I think this showerhead will pay for itself in about a month since it only cost about $16 ($12 for the showerhead, $3 shipping, and $1 teflon tape).

Cohousing

Me, the wife, and the kids went to a meeting of a local cohousing group this weekend. The people there were all very nice and very normal. The wife came away all excited about it.

For my part, I went with an open but skeptical mind. I must say that personality-wise the people won me over. No worries there.

My main reservation about doing this cohousing thing is that it would be a good deal less off-grid than I want to be in our next place. Like - it would be totally on-grid, Buffy. My personal goal was to have our next place be completely off-grid. To my knowledge, there are no off-grid cohousing developments. I can say with great certainty that there are no off-grid cohousing developments in our area.

But, on the positive side of this, they are building these units to be solar-ready. I assume this means that they would have the inverter grid-tie in place with a line running to the roof. All units are also to be built facing south. Both good points.

I also brought up the notion of building a bio-diesel refinery in either the barn or the large shed on the property. They seemed to be okay with this idea. Another bonus. It seems like this bunch isn't into the sort of anal retentive controls for which many HOAs are known. Ironic, I thought, since this is a very planned community with a very deep social aspect to it.

The wife suggested this may be a good stepping stone for us into something off-grid. She even tickled my pickle a bit by suggesting that we may be able to start an off-grid cohousing development after learning a bit about cohousing from living in this development.

The community we're currently looking at is in the planning stage. We're supposed to go visit another cohousing community in the near future. Scheduling is the only thing we need to iron out at this point. This community is actually the community that ours will be based on (called a mentor community).

I'm pretty undecided at this point, to be honest. I feel like I would be "selling out" my dream of being off-grid. I know we could afford to build a new place in about three to four years from now.

Another draw-back about this cohousing thing is that the community we are looking into will probably start breaking ground in February. The original plan involved paying off the credit cards and then renting out our townhouse before building.

Now, there's no way I can see us doing this without selling the townhouse. This is an alteration of the long-term plan. This aspect of our family planning predates our getting serious about the whole environmental thing (well, beyond recycling at least). I'm not sure the timing is right even if I can get over temporarily giving up the off-grid goal (which is by no means certain).

It is an interesting idea, though. I must admit that a part of me is very excited about the whole notion.

Efficiency - the Name of the Game

Our low-flow showerhead just arrived yesterday. I need to get some teflon tape so I can install it this weekend. This will reduce water use in the shower from 2.5 gallons per minute down to between 1.2 and 1.4 gallons per minute. That's a 50% reduction in water used and a 50% reduction in energy to heat shower water.

I also just ordered an external 160 GB hard drive.

"How does this save energy?", you ask.

By buying this external hard drive and attaching it to my PC at home I will be able to turn off another computer. It's a massive old server with dual power supplies. It sounds like a jet taking off when you hit the power button. This old tank draws 500W of power and it's on 24/7. It serves as the file server for our house holding our music, pictures, videos, and other files.

By turning this machine off we save a lot of energy:

(500W/ 1000 W/kW) x 24 hours/day x 30.417* days/month = 365.004 kWh/month

365.004 kWh/month x 7.09 cents/kWh = $25.88/month in savings

* 365 days/yr divided by 12 months/yr = 30.417 days/month

In other words, this external hard drive completely pays for itself in 3 months. After it pays for itself, it's like an extra $25 a month in the bank compared to what I would have spent on the electric bill.

Cohousing - A Possible Alternative?

I am on the mailing list of a local "Peace and Justice" type group. I know, I know - I don't seem like the type. One might think I'm more of the militia type.

Well I'm a bit more complicated than that, okay?

In any event, there was a link in their latest mailing to a local cohousing community. The idea was pretty intriguing. I like the community aspect invloved with sharing of meal cooking duties, a common house, and the pedestrian nature of the developments.

The one problem with the Cohousing development that we're looking into is that they may not have the commitment to renewable energy that I'm looking for. They mention that all homes will be "energy efficient" and that they'll have features like rainbarrels but I'm not sure that allowances could be made for "going the extra mile", so to speak.

They mention that all houses must be 1,800 sq feet or less and that the floorplans cannot be altered. I don't know if installing PV arrays or evacuated solar tubes for water heating would be considered a deviation from the floorplan or not.

Here's a cohousing community in Ithaca, NY if you'd like an example.

Ha! As I was typing this entry I got an email back from the cohousing community I emailed stating that solar would be allowed. Hmmm.... this is worth looking into.

I think the wife and I will have to look into this - maybe attend a meeting or two.

You Think Your Hippy Food is so Great? Think Again.

My wife often makes the argument that one of the single best things you can do for the environment is to become a vegetarian. This is because of the massive amount of energy and food needed to raise a single pound of beef, for example.

The runoff from most factory farms is also a significant source of pollution to the environment surrounding the farm. Pig farms are notoriously horrible on this count. In many developing countries in South America the rainforest is clearcut in order to make grazing land for cattle.

The conditions for the animals in these factory farms is also pretty terrible. I'm not a particularly large advocate of animal rights, but some of the conditions are just horrible. I don't believe that you should abuse animals, but I also don't think a rational person can make a moral case against eating animals except as it relates to the conditions of these factory farms.

Sounds like a pretty airtight case for vegetarianism, right? Not so fast. My wife likes to eat MorningStar brand "hippy-food" as I like to call it. They make many products like veggie burgers, chicken (not really) nuggets, and a whole host of meat-imitation products.

Why, if you're a vegetarian, do you have to eat a bunch of stuff designed to look and taste so similar to the meat you have forsaken is beyond me... but I am straying here.

All of these products share one thing: where they come from. That's right. All of these products are derived from the soy bean. Now how much processing (and thereby energy) do you think it takes to make something that looks like this...

... look like this...

Hmmm? Those beans have to be processed six ways to Sunday to make them look like a hamburger! I can't think of any way I could determine how much energy and pollution is behind one pound of this MorningStar stuff. It's a shame, too, because I bet it would still show that one pound of beef is responsible for more pollution than one pound of "hippy-beef."

I would be interested in knowing simply for comparison's sake.

Let's just make a safe assumption, since the hard data escapes me for now. The assumption would be that a pound of veggie burger is responsible for a good deal more pollution than, say, a pound of the soy bean it is derived from.

So if you're really serious about vegetarianism as an environmental concern, then you should probably give up the fake meats as well. All of those veggie burgers and chikkin nuggets that imitate the meat you scorn are doing slightly less damage than the factory farmed meats. But why go half way?

As you might have been able to guess, I am not a vegetarian. I am an omnivore, as Nature intended us. All of the strictly vegetarian branches of our evolutionary tree have died off. Since evolution makes no mistakes, we have to believe this was for a reason.

The route I have chosen goes like this:

• Consume less meat - Honestly, Americans eat too much meat anyway. Too much of anything is unhealthy. That's doubly true for red meat.
• Eat local and organic - When I do eat meat, I try to get local and organic whenever possible. It costs a bit more, true, but the taste is fantastic. The added cost will help reduce consumption and the better taste will make it hard to go back to the other stuff. Locally produced food is fresher and wasn't transported long distances to land on your plate.
• Buy from Mom and Pop - wherever possible I buy from a non-chain, locally owned company. Money spent in a locally owned establishment turns over an average of three times within the local economy. Buying from Wal-Mart often sends your money directly to their corporate headquarters with little to no turnover in the local economy.

I think of this as a holistic approach to my diet. By moderating the amount of meat I eat I am practicing healthier habits and contributing less to the environmental impact of meat. I reduce this impact even more by buying local and organic. If I buy this meat from a local butcher who sources his meat locally I am not only reducing environmental impact, but providing a boost to the local economy and taking money out of the hands of the worst environmental offenders.

Mode of Transport

Since October 23rd, 2006 I have been riding my bike to work. I started a new job at a location that was much closer to home (2.1 miles) and I had the opportunity to stop driving my car to work. I took it.

So by changing jobs to a place that was closer (and getting a nice raise in the process), I stopped burning about 4 gallons of gas a week. That's 17.4 gallons a month or somewhere in the neighborhood of $50.

There's an environmental bonus in addition to saving money. By not burning the 17.4 gallons a month I was using going back and forth to work, I am putting out less greenhouse gases (17.4 gallons of gas equals approximately 314 pounds of CO₂).

Also, by biking to work I am improving my cardiovascular health and general fitness level. I arrive at work energized and focused; ready to work. When I bike in the evening, I burn off the stress of the day and arrive home in a better mood.

As an added bonus my daughter goes to a school right on my path to work. It's about a third of a mile from home. We bike together to her school and then I head into work. On the way home I pick her up and we pedal home. It's some good father-daughter time.

It probably doesn't work out so neatly for everyone - a job that involves a raise and is close to home. But maybe the next time you look for a house or apartment you could take proximity to work and the availability of bike trails into account.

Even if the rent for this apartment is a bit more, it's probably worth it. Maybe paying $50 a month makes financial sense since you'll save that much in gas anyways. It may even be worth paying $100 a month more if you take into account that you could cancel that gym membership now that you're riding a bike every day. You weren't really using the gym anyways...

Now, to be honest, I don't ride my bike everyday. If it's going to rain on my way in to work I drive instead. I do have to maintain a professional appearance and showing up soaked doesn't count as 'professional' in most circles. On the other hand if it isn't going to rain until the evening I'll ride my bike. If I arrive home wet it doesn't reflect in my annual raise.

I ride through the winter, too. Admittedly the winters around here aren't that harsh, but going fast down a hill can get chilly.

Torn - or - Attack of the Wiki Links

I'm very torn between two tacks, if you will. The first tack I could take is:

Get the hell out!!

The ship is going down. Society is irretrievably broken and there's nothing one person can do about it. Humanity is blindly charging headlong towards a cliff it made by strip-mining. You keep screaming that there's a cliff ahead, but no one listens. Worse still, they act like you're a bit cooky.

You become part of the office rounds that managers take the newbies on... "And on your left is the office survival nut. Shhh! Don't disturb him! He may engage you in a talk about green energy or universal healthcare!"

In the Get the hell out!! scenario, you pity the blinded fools but you don't lose any sleep over their fate. The best you can do is try not to share their fate.

The second tack?

Hey man! Hope springs eternal, brah!!

Like some hackey-sack kicking, dreadlock-sporting, hippykin child of the suburbs you try to get involved and help fix the problem. Get involved with local politics, support candidates that will promote a green agenda. Ride a bike to work or organize a carpool or - gasp! - take public transportation.

Work on making your house as green as possible - CF bulbs, low-flow showerheads, low-flow toilets, insulate the hot water heater, the whole nine yards. Use canvas shopping bags, buy local and organic food whenever possible. Farmer's Market? Yes, please. Community Supported Agriculture? Sign me up. Buy a hybrid car if you must have a car at all.

The Good News?

The good news is that no matter what tack we take the actions needed are much the same. The only difference really is that with the Get the hell out!! tack you are moving to the country and getting off the grid. With the Hey man! Hope springs eternal, brah!! tack you aren't going anywhere.

We could always strike a tack somewhere in between - Get the hell out of the eternal spring of hope, brah!!! - or something like that. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Get off the grid but stay involved.

I think that's the way I'd like to go.

Green Trek - The Next Generation

One thing is for certain - our habits, as a species, need to change. We need to change and we need to train our children to think differently than we were raised to think.

When I say that our children need to think differently than we were raised to think, I mean that most of us were raised in the halcyon days of America. Most parents at the time were just beginning to become aware of the dangers of smoking and really had little to no awareness on topics such as the environment or global warming. Despite the oil crisis of the late 70's, no one thought that was indicative of shortages to come. They mainly thought this was a geopolitical issue and to a large degree they were right.

My Dad was a bit ahead of the curve in terms of environmental awareness. As long as I can remember he has been a member of the Sierra Club and he always taught us that littering was a bad thing to do. Back then this was as environmentally conscious as most people got. I'm not saying there wasn't an environmental movement or that there wasn't progress made on cleaning up many rivers, bays, etc. I'm saying it wasn't an issue that loomed large in the conscious minds of most people.

This is what it needs to become - an issue looming large in the conscious mind of society as a whole. What will make this change of thought stick as an ongoing realignment of mankind's approach to how we treat Earth is the indoctrination of our youth. Raising our children with these concerns in mind will make them second nature to the next generation of humanity.

I'm no child psychologist, but I am a father of four so I believe I have some insight into kids and how they think. Some people have accused me of being nothing more than a big kid. Well, they have cooties and can kiss my hiney.

Anyway - what I've done in my house is I've involved my kids. If they ask me what I'm reading I tell them. I try to get them interested in what it is I'm reading (right now I'm reading The Renewable Energy Handbook by William H. Kemp).

When I am working on some spreadsheet to calculate this or that concerning our family's energy consumption I make a point of making my work visible. Again, if any questions are asked I enthusiatically answer them. If you tell a kid, "Oh, nothing. What I'm doing is boring" they'll run away and never pay it any mind again.

My kids both have their own PC. They also have an X-Box 360 and TV they share. I showed them my spreadsheet and how them leaving their PCs on all day long was costing our family $17.86 a month each or $35.72 all together every month.

Since they'd both had their PCs for over a year I asked them, "Hey, each of you go get your piggy banks and give me $214.32 please. That's $17.86 a month times 12 months. Thanks!"

Of course my daughter (9) and son (12) looked at me like I was crazy.

"It doesn't cost that much!" my daughter said.

"No, you're right," I said. "You actually owe me more than that since I wasn't even taking the X-Box or TV into account."

Needless to say I didn't actually drain my kids piggy banks. It did serve to illustrate the point. They both realized that all of the allowance they had accumulated over months didn't add up to the electric bill just for their PCs. It was very easy from there to convince them to turn them off while not in use.

I placed a little picture next to the light switch in their rooms that said "STOP! Is your computer off? Is your monitor off? Turn off your light!"

After spot-checks over the last week they are doing a much better job at conserving the power consumed by their personal electronics. I have only had to come behind them and power off their PC once so far.

Our low flow showerhead should be arriving soon. When it arrives I'll see if I can get one of the kids to help me install it. Once installed I'll have to gather the family around and explain to them how they can take advantage of the "pause" feature that this showerhead offers (they can stop the flow of water while they lather up).

By getting them involved and talking to them about conservation, efficiency, and green living I am hoping to raise a green batch of kids. A good sign that they are thinking green will be if they ask you questions about conservation or energy on their own.