lacoste polo shirts men’s outlet What do you do when the power goes out? How long could you keep warm in winter? Alex looks at wood stoves (not very good, even the EPA approved ones make a lot of pollution.) Pellet stoves are better, but need electricity to operate the fan and the pellet supply mechanism. Then there is photovoltaic solar, which would need to be set up like an off-grid system, complete with inverters and batteries for when the grid goes down.
Another approach is one our neighbours at the lake where I live in the summer use; they have a huge antique wood stove smack in the middle of their combined living/dining/kitchen area that they fire up when the power goes out. It radiates enough heat to warm the room, has a tank on the side to warm water, three burners and an oven. I doubt it meets EPA standards, but when it is off it makes a great island and conversation piece, and when it is on it does everything you need.
As Alex notes, we have to design up front to rely on less water in the first place, through high efficiency fixtures, low water landscaping, low volume shower heads and efficient horizontal axis washing machines. TreeHugger has also promoted grey water systems to use even less water.
For a lot of people in North America, particularly those in the Great Lakes basin, water has never been a particular worry. When I renovated my house, I put 3/4″ water lines to the Speakman heads because I liked the pressure to blow me across the room; since then I have learned that even when there is a lot of water, there is a lot of stuff that has to be done to get it to the shower, including treating it, and pumping it up the hill to the reservoir. The system can break down. Alex makes some very good, inexpensive suggestions to protect yourself.
There is much that we can learn from the Australians, who are like Fremen on Arrakis when it comes to water saving and storage. They have developed sophisticated systems like the Water Hog that can be integrated into the structure of your home so that they do not only store water, but provide thermal mass for passive heating and cooling systems.
Here is where it gets really interesting, because most people who think about resilience are watching Doomsday Preppers on National Geographic on their genset powered TVs. But in fact, people have lived in villages and towns for thousands of years because it is in fact the most resilient place to live; you have safety in numbers and others you can rely on. And ultimately, like so much else, it all comes down to the car.
Community resilience also relates to how well we could get along without our cars. In some future crisis, gasoline might become unavailable for an extended period of time, or a political upheaval somewhere could result in a quadrupling of the price of gasoline, which could price it out of reach for many. Additionally, without power, gasoline pumps at service stations don’t work, so unless a service station has back-up power, its gasoline pumps won’t work. How would we function without cars?cheap mens jeans
Feb
16
Resilient Design: Emergency Renewable Energy Systems
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