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.

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.

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.

It's Not All Gloom and Doom Around Here...

Some interesting reading on the BBC's website:

1. GM betting on a greener future
2. Test riding first hydrogen bike
3. Fuel cell cars to get test drive

It looks like the lumbering giant, GM, is starting to wake up to reality.

Unfortunately, Ford's new ad campaign, Bold Moves, is nothing more than that - an ad campaign. They continue to focus on trucks and muscle cars without making any real bold moves. Unless you count laying off workers as a bold move.

Why is Ford laying off yet more workers? The following exerpts from the link above pretty much sums it up:

GWEN IFILL

[...]Also, like General Motors, Ford has been losing market share to foreign automakers, Japan's Toyota in particular. This is the company's second wave of job cuts and plant closings in four years.

HARLEY SHAIKEN

The fact that Ford really did misjudge the market. But it isn't simply responding to the market. It's anticipating and creating a market, much the way that Apple did with the iPod or that Toyota did with the Prius, and then the Ford Motor Co. and GM and Chrysler are saddled with the legacy costs. That's a failure of government policy, not really a failure of Ford or the union. [...]

As far as I know, they have only one Hybrid offering - the Escape. 34 mpg hybrid and 20 mpg gas in the city. I guess 34 mpg is good for an SUV (even a small one), but this isn't exactly a bold move. Ford continues to pin it's hopes on large trucks (the F-Series) and muscle cars (like the Mustang).

A bold move would be to move away from these antiquated technologies and make a hybrid full sized truck. Why not make an electric car whose roof was solar panels in order to help with charging the batteries? If your car sits in a parking lot all day getting beaten by the sun, why not have it charge the battery completely off-grid?

You could even sell charging units to keep at home. Have a solar panel hooked to a battery that charges all day while you're at work. When you get home at night, hook your car to the charger - this draws all of the juice from the solar-charged (i.e. free) battery before pulling juice off the grid.

I'd stand in line to buy such a product.

Instead of paying some ad company to come up with a catch-phrase like "Bold Moves", why don't you actually make some? Ford, are you listening? Well, no - of course you aren't.

Who peed in his Wheaties?

For the first post here on Survive the Apocalypse I guess I should lay down the basic premise for this blog and maybe tell you a bit about myself and my lovely wife, with whom I will be writing this blog.

I am currently a city-dwelling young professional. Some may even call me a yuppie. They'd be wrong, but I can see where they'd get the impression. I am fairly young, I do live in a city (urban), and I work in IT (professional).

I used to blog many, many moons ago back when it was called "keeping an online journal." I would write in my journal every day back in 1999, 2000, and 2001. I was separated from my first wife and I had all of the time and angst in the world to fuel my rantings.

My lovely wife, apocalypsegal, was also an early "blogger" back before it was called blogging. We actually met through our journals.

Shortly after meeting my current (and last!) wife things were just too groovy. The list of things I was pissed off about got smaller and smaller. My need to vent and to vent every damned day diminished and then went away. I stopped posting and eventually my domain name registration lapsed.

I don't think I even have backups of my old entries anymore.

Then came the explosion of blogs and I thought, "Well, I'll never do that again. I mean - how passe can you be?"

But here I am. Here we are, my wife and I.

"Why?", you ask.

Well, I'm putting on this little dog and pony show for you for a few reasons:

1. It's free now! Thanks to blogspot I even get a decent URL for nothing!
2. I need to vent again. More on that later...
3. It's a great way to store my thoughts.
4. I can't lose this data because I misplaced a CD or a hard drive burned out.
5. This allows me to share with you, the general public, information and concerns I feel very strongly about.

So now you know why I started this blog. Now what's it about?

Simply put: Everything is going to Hell. You know it and I do, too.

The dollar isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Just this week the Canadian dollar surpassed the dollar in value. No offense to Canada, but if their currency is worth more than America's, then America has been managed very poorly.

The dollar's lack of value is indicative of many other problems. As a nation we are in debt. Mainly so we could fight a war that has nothing to do with anything but oil. Here's a little factoid that literally turns my stomach:

"Based on the work of Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard public finance lecturer Linda J. Bilmes, the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) recently determined that the Iraq war costs $720 million per day, $500,000 per minute – enough to provide homes for nearly 6,500 families, or health care for 423,529 children in just one day."

I got the above quote from one of the RSS feeds to which I subscribe. I'll credit it if I can remember where I got it.

So instead of investing in our nation we invest in bullets and bombs that can only be used once. Meanwhile bridges collapse, children go without health care, our nation's streets serve as the only home many Americans know.

Instead of enriching the entire nation we enrich a few defense contractor CEOs. We enrich Exxon and Chevron while our education system is in decline and our health care system is a nightmare.

We have money to kill, but not to grow. We have money for bombs but not for books or housing. We have money for destruction but not for dignity.

Our priorities are all wrong.

Global warming, impending oil shortages, and possible global shortages in water supplies are just some of the environmental issues that confront humanity as a whole.

As Americans the rise of China's industrial might is something that should have us much more concerned than we are. The rapid rise of America's industrial capacity precipitated our rise as a major global power. Of course it will do the same for China.

With an entire Damocles Armory hanging over the head of society, it isn't too far-fetched a notion that our way of life may change very soon. Whose life will change? I fear every one's life will take a turn for the worse. Nowhere will this be more true than in America.

By any objective measure, Americans live a gluttonous lifestyle. We are five percent of the world's population and we consume 20-25% of the world's energy. We get everything prepackaged and ready to eat from a store.

We in America are, per capita, the most polluting nation on Earth as well. How many sparkling clean SUVs with a single occupant do you see driving down any stretch of the road at any given time? I bet the answer is "a lot."

How many of us live right next door to people we don't know? I don't know most of my neighbors. Our increasing isolation is very, very bad for us as a social species. It is much easier to stand idly by as a complete stranger is mistreated. It's much easier to not be outraged when someone you don't know is laid off or has medical bills that ruin them. It's much easier to stand idly by as the authorities abuse their power when you aren't the one being abused ("First they came for them, but I was not one of them, so I said nothing...")

So I am writing this blog in order to prepare. I am preparing for a change. The good news is that what we will learn together on this journey will be beneficial for not only you, but your environment, your local economy, and yes, young patriots - probably even your nation (whichever nation that is).

There doesn't have to be an Apocalypse in order for you to reap these benefits. The purpose of this blog is to document my family's transition from gluttonous American waster-consumers into a family that lives in more harmony with their environment and their neighbors.

If none of the worst case scenarios come to pass (global climate change, world economic depression brought about by a collapse of the oil-economy, etc) it will be because people took actions like the ones we will discuss. Actions that fall into these two basic categories:

1. Reducing environmental impact
2. Increasing local involvement

Topics for future posts will range from Mad Max to Einstein (not really) to Julia Child. We will discuss preparation for emergencies, cooking healthy, renewable energy and energy efficiency (two topics that cannot be discussed separately).

As I read more books I will include them in the Required Reading section on the right hand side of the page. At this stage I have read Wilderness Survival by Tom Brown and I am just starting The Renewable Energy Handbook by William H. Kemp.