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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know

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Speaker 1: from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. Chuck's here. I'm here. I'm Josh Clark. This

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Speaker 1: is Chuck Bryant. We're both here. Yeah, we are, Chuck. Um.

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Speaker 1: You know, Chuck, I've been really getting batted around by

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Speaker 1: my electric company lately. Man. Do you know that, for

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Speaker 1: the most part, electric utilities just kind of guess how

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Speaker 1: much you've used, how much electricity you've used like now,

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Speaker 1: I think maybe once every quarder they send somebody out

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Speaker 1: to actually check. But I don't think they ever go

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Speaker 1: back and say, oh, we owe you some money because

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Speaker 1: we were wrong. They just guess how much you're using

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Speaker 1: so you can conserve as much electricity as you want.

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Speaker 1: It's actually good if you're doing that, you know, environmentally speaking,

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Speaker 1: but financially it may not help you at all. You

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Speaker 1: you may actually pay more. Basically, it's a lot of

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Speaker 1: times it's based on the previous year's usage. And uh,

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Speaker 1: I went to do some nightmares with the water company here. Man,

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that'll happen. Boy, ridiculous. You want to give

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Speaker 1: us details about your your nightmare. Uh yeah, I could

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Speaker 1: give you some quick details. We moved into uh this

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Speaker 1: house we bought and after being there a month, we

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Speaker 1: got a five thousand dollar water bill. Holy cow. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: so that you know it's set off a chain of

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Speaker 1: phone calls for just months. And that's not when you

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Speaker 1: just kind of swallow hard and go through with right. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: now that was bad. They're not fun to deal with

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Speaker 1: you and did you finally get it knocked down? I'm

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Speaker 1: not afraid to say that either they're not fun people

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Speaker 1: to deal with. Well no, And you also have to

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Speaker 1: think about it with the water company specifically or the

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Speaker 1: water utility. Um, you have no competitor to go to.

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Speaker 1: You can't just be like, oh, yeah, I have a

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Speaker 1: five grand how about this, I'm gonna go to your

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Speaker 1: competitor because they'll say we don't have one, so good luck.

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Speaker 1: You feel like you have no no power? The power

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Speaker 1: is all you know what this makes me want to do? Man,

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Speaker 1: go turn on a faucet. Now. It makes me want

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Speaker 1: to just live off the grid, scrap it all, get

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Speaker 1: the heck out of town, and shun public utilities altogether. Okay,

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Speaker 1: so I've I've heard of this. It's um, it's the

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Speaker 1: back to Earth movement, generally living off the grid. What

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Speaker 1: is it? It's well, yeah, it's one name for it,

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Speaker 1: back to Earth movement. It's basically people that I want

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Speaker 1: to take the solar energy and wind energy and conservation

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Speaker 1: a step further and completely be not tied to their

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Speaker 1: their power utilities and their water and their sewer gas. So, Chuck,

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Speaker 1: I'm pretty excited about this prospect of you know, not

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Speaker 1: having a power bill anymore clearly, or a water bill.

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Speaker 1: And I'm quite sure other people are, maybe even some

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Speaker 1: of our listeners when we talk a little bit about

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Speaker 1: living off the grid, because it's it's not it's pretty precise. Actually,

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Speaker 1: that has a very a very precise definition of what

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Speaker 1: it entails, right, and they starting starting usually with electricity. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a plan, it's not you just don't go into

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Speaker 1: it all willy nilly, like what do I do grid? Um,

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Speaker 1: I don't want to get a bill anymore. Uh, now

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Speaker 1: that's not how it works. What happens is, um, there's

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Speaker 1: a few major bills. You know, cutting your phone is

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Speaker 1: easy because if you just decidy you don't want love

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Speaker 1: with the phone, you can cut your phone off because

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Speaker 1: your cable same deal. Have you ever actually lived without

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Speaker 1: cable TV? Yeah, yeah, it's but it's odd, isn't it.

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Speaker 1: It takes a little a little getting used to, and

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Speaker 1: then all of a sudden you can find reading and

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Speaker 1: having conversations. Did too. I went out cable for a

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Speaker 1: couple of years, and um yeah, the same thing happened.

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Speaker 1: I didn't miss it after a little while at all.

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Speaker 1: So it takes a little game used to, huh yeah,

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Speaker 1: but eventually I did cable. It's not all it's cracked

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Speaker 1: up to be. Although I do love my reality TV,

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Speaker 1: so this might be a little hard And now I'm

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Speaker 1: just kidding. Um Brett and Michael's Rock of Love. Sorry,

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Speaker 1: uh yeah. The grid basically refer to the power grids.

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Speaker 1: So you're talking about power, water. Your major utilities are

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Speaker 1: the ones that you're really going to have to work

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Speaker 1: to get around if you want to cut those off.

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Speaker 1: And you know, the obvious um answer for power is

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Speaker 1: solar power. It's it's obvious, but it's also fairly expensive,

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Speaker 1: isn't it. I mean, this is this is kind of

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Speaker 1: a financial obligation one is making here too. It's one

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Speaker 1: of those deals where it's you you pay some upfront,

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Speaker 1: but in the long run it pays itself off and

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Speaker 1: then you're making money basically. Yeah, there was a Bronan

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Speaker 1: article um once where I came across this company called

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Speaker 1: sun Power. They're out of California. They make these things

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Speaker 1: called sun tiles, and they're actually roof shingles that that

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Speaker 1: are individual solar cells. And they look just like roof shingles,

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Speaker 1: are just as durable as roof shingles, but they actually

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Speaker 1: connect to a power grid on your roof and apparently

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Speaker 1: they provide are they convert like more electricity or convert

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Speaker 1: solar power into more electricity than a traditional solar cell. Yeah, so,

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Speaker 1: I mean, I I don't know how expensive they are,

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Speaker 1: how much mass production they're in yet, but it seems

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Speaker 1: like a pretty good idea to me. That's a great idea.

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Speaker 1: And wind power is another awesome idea. A lot of

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Speaker 1: people are getting their their energy from the wind. It's

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Speaker 1: kind of the same concept at work, except the wind

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Speaker 1: blows a turbine instead of collecting the energy from the sun,

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Speaker 1: and that produces energy that's converted to usable energy. And

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Speaker 1: a lot of people are kind of hooking these things.

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Speaker 1: You don't need batteries. They're hooking these things into the grid,

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Speaker 1: but you're technically not off the grid then right, well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's a couple of uh ways here. If if you're

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Speaker 1: if you have solar power and that's pretty much all

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Speaker 1: you have going on. Uh, it's stored. The energy you

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Speaker 1: create a stored by the power company. And this is

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Speaker 1: actually kind of cool and not I don't think many

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Speaker 1: people know this. If you create more power then you're

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Speaker 1: using and you're still hooked up to the power system.

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Speaker 1: You get a check from them every month instead of

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Speaker 1: having to write a check. How cool does that? That

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Speaker 1: would be very cool Georgia Power sent you a check

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Speaker 1: for like a hundred bucks every month. It would be nice,

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Speaker 1: it'd be great. But at the same time, you'd still

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Speaker 1: be you're still in the grid, on the grid. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if you want to completely cut ties, that means you

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Speaker 1: need to uh store the power yourself. And um you

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Speaker 1: do that, like you know, most people have like a

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Speaker 1: shed or a garage and just a huge uh supply

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Speaker 1: batteries all hooked together. Basically, it's it's really a pretty

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Speaker 1: simple system. And how do they how does the electricity

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Speaker 1: stored in the batteries as like DC right, and then

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Speaker 1: there's like a converter, right while an inverter and it

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Speaker 1: converts the d C to a C, which is what

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Speaker 1: you can use in your house. Hey, so quick fact

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Speaker 1: about a C and d C. Not the band, but

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Speaker 1: actual electricity. When you're being electrocuted, you're actually if you

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Speaker 1: see someone being electrocuted, you can tell whether the being

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Speaker 1: electrocuted by a direct current or an alternating current. You

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Speaker 1: know how, I can't wait to hear this. With a

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Speaker 1: direct current, you're frozen in place because your your muscles

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Speaker 1: are are seized up and it's just electricity running through.

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Speaker 1: With an alternating current, you'd be shaking from the the

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Speaker 1: spasms and contractions and and your muscles spasming and relaxing

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Speaker 1: over and over again as the current alternates. Wow. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would say that's the complete opposite of living off

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Speaker 1: the grid is dying dying on the grid. It's good though.

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Speaker 1: I like that. You're welcome. Um, all right, so we've

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Speaker 1: covered uh, your your power. Then there's water. You gotta

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Speaker 1: get your water somehow, and you do that through um.

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Speaker 1: You can have a well, or you can have a

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Speaker 1: cistern system. Cisterns basically like a slightly more sophisticated system

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Speaker 1: of rain barrels, right, increase of pump and just tying

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Speaker 1: into the plumbing in your house where rainbarrel might just

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Speaker 1: have a spigot. Yeah, it's basically just a big, big

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Speaker 1: water collector and um a lot of people you can

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Speaker 1: have them under your driveway. It's just like a big

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Speaker 1: cement tank. Yeah, not always cement. They can be plastic too,

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Speaker 1: but but it runs off of your roof. Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: runs off your roof. And the I wonder if the

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Speaker 1: sun tiles are good for allowing water to run down

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Speaker 1: them and collecting them, because I know you said in

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Speaker 1: the article just regular tile shingles not not that good

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Speaker 1: because you get all the little litttle eally, you don't

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Speaker 1: want your asphalt. I think it's made out of asphalt. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you don't want that. And I think they've talked about

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Speaker 1: clay shingle and stuff like the metal metal shingles. Right. Yeah, Okay,

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Speaker 1: so so you got water. Most people who are living

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Speaker 1: off the grid as far as water goes, have a

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Speaker 1: well though, right, Like fifteen million Americans have a well. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's that's the number. And wells aren't cheap like three

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Speaker 1: grand to fifteen grand depending on how deep you have

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Speaker 1: to go, and the deeper you have to go, the

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Speaker 1: more expensive. And it's cleaner water though better water because

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Speaker 1: you're hitting like an aquifer or something, right, Yeah, groundwater

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Speaker 1: basically okay, But what do you do with your waist?

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Speaker 1: I mean you get a septic system, right, okay, And

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Speaker 1: a lot of people have septic systems as it is,

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Speaker 1: a lot of people are on septic and well and

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Speaker 1: might not realize that they're partially living off the grid

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Speaker 1: right now. They just don't live like in the city

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Speaker 1: right now. They moved into the trailer that or the

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Speaker 1: house that had the aseptic nan But I guess the

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Speaker 1: question is the question that was on my mind until

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Speaker 1: I figured the answer out, um was it's a good

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Speaker 1: idea to have a septic a septic system which uses

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Speaker 1: a leach field, which is basically the waste just goes

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Speaker 1: into the soil, right and a well. Isn't that like

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Speaker 1: the ultimate and recycling where you're like drinking your own

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Speaker 1: waste over and over again. You know, that's a good question.

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Speaker 1: You find an answer that, Yeah, the the it's actually okay,

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Speaker 1: And I think that is kind of what's happening to

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Speaker 1: a degree, Um, But the soil acts as a natural filter. Again,

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Speaker 1: you know the the microbes that all the all these

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Speaker 1: things in the soil that eat all the waste products

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Speaker 1: and basically all that's left is purified drinking water, right,

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Speaker 1: so and really green grass exactly Apparently if you have

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Speaker 1: the septic system and it goes out in your yard,

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Speaker 1: it's like incredibly rich soil. Yeah, exactly. Kind So then

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Speaker 1: you can grow your own Uh. That's part of the

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Speaker 1: living off the grid thing too, is a lot of

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Speaker 1: these people on the back to the Earth movement, they

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Speaker 1: grow their own crops, so that eliminates the need for

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Speaker 1: the refrigerator. And another big thing if you want to

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Speaker 1: be off grid, is your your garbage pickup. Not many

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Speaker 1: people think about that. So if you're growing your own

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Speaker 1: if you have chickens and you're getting your eggs from

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Speaker 1: your chickens and you're growing your own vegetables, you're not

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Speaker 1: dealing with egg cray it's and uh. Or if you're

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Speaker 1: milking around cows, you're not dealing with milk gut containers

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Speaker 1: and just a lot less waste is produced. So is

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Speaker 1: that an essential aspect to living off the grid, no

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Speaker 1: garbage collection. Yeah, I mean, if you really want to

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Speaker 1: be completely off grid, then um, you're gonna have to

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Speaker 1: get rid of your your waist pick up. But the

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Speaker 1: people that are into it can recycle enough and limit

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Speaker 1: their waste and composts enough to where they say they can,

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Speaker 1: you know, limit to like a bag of garbage a month.

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Speaker 1: And I learned something new. I didn't realize that you

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Speaker 1: could compost um animal waste or by products like chicken

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Speaker 1: skin or something like that. I thought it putrified and

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Speaker 1: that's not what you were supposed to do with compost

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Speaker 1: that it was just supposed to be plant matter. But

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Speaker 1: I looked it up and found out that you can,

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Speaker 1: and you have to just you have to turn your

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Speaker 1: compost a lot more. It can't just be a pile

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Speaker 1: that you throw stuff onto. Else all of a sudden,

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Speaker 1: you do have rats in that kind of thing. I haven't. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's cool. There's all kinds of things you can compost

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Speaker 1: if you go to like websites about composting, is pretty

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Speaker 1: cool to look into. So Chuck, I mean, I mean

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Speaker 1: I realized a lot of people are doing it because

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Speaker 1: they want to get away from the power bill, or

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Speaker 1: maybe they're getting back to earth. But is this like

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Speaker 1: a trend you're seeing, maybe not complete living off the grid,

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Speaker 1: but at least partial living off the grid. Well, I

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Speaker 1: mean I lived in Los Angeles before I came back

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Speaker 1: here to Atlanta, and uh, it's a lot bigger in

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Speaker 1: l A. If not completely off the grid. UM solar

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Speaker 1: and wind power and uh sister and systems. Really yeah,

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Speaker 1: so people trying to augment and not pay as much.

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Speaker 1: I think in okay, were you doing that? But I

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Speaker 1: click rainwater now just because out of your A C unit, right, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and my air conditioners water and we use that the

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Speaker 1: water plants. It's mainly just because we're under a watering

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Speaker 1: band and yeah, we don't want everything to die. Yeah, essentially.

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Speaker 1: But the final one that we need to cover, I

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Speaker 1: guess is gas. Um if you if you get your propane, uh,

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Speaker 1: you'd have to switch to propane sorry, Yeah, gas has

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Speaker 1: to be piped in through the grid, right, but you

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Speaker 1: can just have a big old truck come and fill

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Speaker 1: up your propane to there were some other backup power

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Speaker 1: supplies like electric generators that run on biodiesel. Yeah, that's

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Speaker 1: pretty cool. That's the augment. Like if you if you

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Speaker 1: are off grid and it's like not it's overcast for

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Speaker 1: like a week straight or rainy, you might not be

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Speaker 1: getting the energy need. So most of these people have

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Speaker 1: like backup systems and those those steps that seem you know,

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Speaker 1: minute and almost useless to people like us on the grid.

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Speaker 1: Like you know, if you if you make sure your

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Speaker 1: windows are sealed in colk properly, you can save a

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Speaker 1: hundred bucks. And you're like, who cares about a hundred

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Speaker 1: bucks over a year, But really, electricity is so cheap

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Speaker 1: that that hundred bucks equals a lot of a lot

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Speaker 1: of electricity, right, Um, So I imagine that if you're

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Speaker 1: living off the grid, it's best to take steps to

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Speaker 1: steal your home's envelope or you know, use passive solar construction,

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Speaker 1: which is the placement of trees to kind of keep

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Speaker 1: your house shoes and what color you paint your house

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Speaker 1: and where the windows are placed. Yeah, a lot of

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Speaker 1: people do that because then you won't need your lights

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Speaker 1: as much. You have more natural light. And the way

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Speaker 1: they have it set up with the windows is you

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Speaker 1: open some during certain parts of the year and others

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Speaker 1: and other parts of the year, and it encourages either

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Speaker 1: cool air or warm air to flow through. And uh,

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Speaker 1: I know that a lot of these folks when these hippies,

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Speaker 1: when when it doesn't rain for a long time, you know,

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Speaker 1: they'll like take really quick showers or not shower, or

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Speaker 1: you know, not flush the toilet if it's yellow, let

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Speaker 1: it mellow, and they'll do like just conservation techniques like

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Speaker 1: that help. You know, water is the next oil. These

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Speaker 1: people are gonna be down with it when when the

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Speaker 1: when the grig goes down, Yeah, it might be nice.

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Speaker 1: I'd love to night get bills. I'm with you. Great. Yeah, Well,

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Speaker 1: before you cut off your garbage service, first, go on

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Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and read how Living off

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Speaker 1: the Grid works body Charles W. Bryant for more on

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Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff

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Speaker 1: works dot com? Let us know what you think. Send

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Speaker 1: an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.

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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousands twelve Camery.

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