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