The Self-Sufficiency Handbook. Alan Bridgewater
out—like some sort of New Age Robinson Crusoe—is very hard, if not impossible, to achieve.
The reality is that we all need money to pay rent, taxes, and all the rest. The perfect self-sufficient house can only be a part of a much larger picture. Ironically, whereas in the 1960s and 1970s, most governments tended to regard go-greeners as slightly eccentric, they are now pushing us all to do our part in conserving energy, producing less waste, driving smaller cars, using less water, and so on.
The truly wonderful thing is that many of the much-debated visionary possibilities of the 1960s and 1970s are now realities. You don’t have to dream about such items as small wind generators, low-energy cars, and solar heating; these things are readily available to us. The truth is that if we all do our part toward self-sufficiency—whether a simple step, such as insulating our homes, or trying to go whole-hog and work toward going off-grid—then these efforts will go a long way in solving our country’s, and even our world’s, ever-pressing energy needs.
Better still, where most people once had no choice other than to travel to work, modern computer networks mean that more and more people can now opt for doing a good part of their work at home.
Most self-sufficiency gurus today are of the opinion that the best option is to take the middle road. Their thinking is that most of us do need to earn some money, but we could spend the bulk of our time growing our own food and maintaining our self-sufficient houses. The reality is that most people will not go down the path to self-sufficiency by choice; rather, they may be interested in certain parts of the go-green package, but they will be forced to use “eco” technology out of the necessity to cut living costs.
The Make-Do-and-Mend House
“Make do and mend” comes from a British expression that arose in the time of World War II to encourage people to repair and reuse items that were broken or torn rather than replacing them. The make-do-and-mend self-sufficiency solution is aimed at four groups of people: (1) those who by default choose green technology only because they need to cut costs; (2) those who buy into green technology because it is fashionable; (3) those who are very interested in going green but must stay where they are and make the best of what they have; (4) and those who are inspired to move to a new home and property and do their best to be self-sufficient but are still forced to take it little by little. The make-do-and-mend philosophy involves a step-by-step DIY approach that helps you evaluate what you have—no matter the size of your house—and then make a series of changes to cut energy costs.
Make-Do-and-Mend Step-by-Step Plan
• Install good, heavy curtains on all windows and exterior doors. Open the curtains during the day and close them at night to keep the heat in. Wear layered clothes when the weather is cold.
• Replace all single-pane windows with double- or even triple-pane units.
• Reduce the number of exterior doors.
• Insulate the attic and all cavity walls. If you have solid walls, add insulation to the inside or outside faces.
• If you live in the northern hemisphere, reduce the number or size of north-facing windows and increase the size and number of south-facing windows; vice versa if you live in the southern hemisphere.
• Install a wood-burning stove and remove any gas and electric fireplaces. Install vents and ducts so that you can channel excess heat around the house.
• Install a glassed-in porch or conservatory at every exterior door. Install vents at floor and ceiling height so you can direct hot air from the glass structures into the house as well as create a cooling circulating system.
• Install solar collectors on your roof so you can preheat your cooking and heating water.
• Modify your water system to save and reuse gray water (wastewater from showers/baths, sinks, and washing machines that has not come into contact with fecal matter). One example of gray water use is to use your bath water to flush the toilets.
The Perfect House: The Autonomous House
When Brenda and Robert Vale wrote their groundbreaking book The Autonomous House back in 1975, they inspired and encouraged a whole generation to go off-grid. I remember one evening in college when the oil crisis was in full swing and gasoline had more than doubled in price. I was sitting in a candlelit common room, listening to a group of art students excitedly talking about how we could all become self-sufficient.
The part in the Vales’ book that really got me going was where they likened an autonomous house to a sort of land-based space pod designed to provide an environment that was free from the existing life-support structures of Earth. The impact of the book was such that the term autonomous house is now commonly used to describe a particular type of practical and proactive house and environmental setup. The Autonomous House is still in print, decades after it was first published, and is a perfect recommendation if ever there was one.
The Anatomy of an Autonomous House
An autonomous house is best thought of as a total environment in which every single energy-creating and waste-recycling aspect is considered and modified at a very basic, intuitive level; more than that, however, it is an environment where the relentless aim is to sever all links with utility pipelines and power cables. The autonomous house has solar collectors on the roof, systems to move hot air around the house, rock beds to store heat, water-storage systems, wind generators to turn the power of the wind into electricity, simple systems to recycle waste, small-scale gas plants, systems to save gray water, systems to save and store rainwater, systems that use fuel cells, and so on. The autonomous approach requires you to proactively challenge the status quo and tirelessly make changes until you achieve a stand-alone off-grid environment.
The Perfect House: The Passive House
A passive house is a house that uses no designated energy systems for central heating but instead has passive systems that gather waste heat from the domestic hot-water system, from cooking and lighting, and from the bodies of the people living in the house, along with heat from the sun. In this approach, the building itself or elements of or within the building are designed so that they take advantage of natural solar heating.
Operable windows, vents, Trombe walls, thermal chimneys, and insulation are the primary elements found in passive design. Operable windows are simply windows that can be opened, while Trombe walls use materials such as masonry and water that can store heat energy. The sun shines through the glazing and heats the masonry walls or tanks of water so that the space between the glazing and the wall becomes a thermal chimney. Vents set at floor and ceiling level in both the glazing and the interior Trombe walls are managed so that the currents of hot air that rise by convection between the wall and the glazing—in the thermal chimney—are directed either in or out of the building. Depending on the time of year, and the choice of open or closed vents, the rising hot air can be used either to heat or to cool the space.
Key aspects of passive design include appropriate solar orientation, the use of thermal mass, very high levels of insulation, and air locks or thermal buffers on exterior doors. The thermal mass absorbs heat during the day and emits it at night. Ideally, a passive house is a long, thin structure with total glazing on one of the long sides, situated so that the glazed side is facing the sun at midday. Passive systems are simple, have few moving parts, and require minimal maintenance.
The Perfect House: The High-Tech House
A high-tech house, sometimes called a smart house or even an automated house, is a house that contains automated computerized devices that control the systems