Week 7 - Resilient Living
Until the house is dried in, the weather can significantly impact our construction progress. It has rained intermittently for weeks, keeping our concrete workers from progressing and the plumbers from working in the basement. Now that it’s dry, we had a record-setting heat wave that set off multi-day heat advisories and air quality warnings. On Friday, the power was out in our area for almost 600 customers for almost an hour when it started heating up. Given the weather this week, I assume an unsustainable load on the power grid made it go down.
We took a trip to California in 2016 and visited the Sequoia National Park. We were among trees already 1,000 years old when Jesus walked around.
Our world is changing quickly. Did you know that several new studies found that shipping container pollution artificially kept the Atlantic many degrees cooler? The United Nations changed some fueling requirements, dramatically cleaning up the air in the Atlantic, and now the ocean’s temperature is higher than ever recorded. People in Florida are removing coral in the hopes that they can keep it safe from rising temperatures. The impact we have on our world is complex and unpredictable.
While we understand the environmentalist perspective, which focuses on preserving and protecting the natural environment through measures like sustainable practices, conservation efforts, and climate change mitigation policies, our approach is different. We're working to build a home designed to thrive over the next 100 years. By collectively moving towards an off-grid lifestyle, we can insulate ourselves from issues like water shortages and power outages.
I (Joshua) expect that the temperatures will continue to rise, water will become increasingly scarce, utility prices will go up, and our power grids will be strained. With that super positive perspective, our whole home is designed from the ground up to be efficient and, hopefully, off the grid in the future. We are already mostly off the grid because we are building in the middle of rural Indiana. But how do we get water, power, and sewer sustainably?
Our home is designed for minimal air leakage and will be fully electric with geothermal heating and cooling. The recently installed geothermal loop offers a stable temperature for efficient heat pumps, handling our heating, cooling, and water heating needs. While electricity is usually a pricier heating option than natural gas, the geothermal system will make it more energy-efficient without excessive power.
This next week, our cistern project is going to start. We have decided not to run a well that will pull water from the underground water that our neighbors use. Given that many new businesses have shown interest in the area and pipelines are being tested to feed the water needs of these businesses, it might be prudent to look for readily available water sources instead of depending on reserves with an unknown quantity and lifecycle. So, we have a 5500-gallon cistern that we will be filling with our gutters, filtering, treating, and using for our whole house. As long as the rain remains average, we will collect far more water than we can use.
The sewer is pretty standard: we have a septic system that is very large and highly regulated. By the time our wastewater makes it back out of the system, it will be environmentally friendly.
Looking to the future: Our roof is facing south, completely free of any vents or protrusions, and very close to the recommended 20-degree angle for solar panels. I did some math, and if we could afford it, our main roof could hold over 130 solar panels. The average home with a non-monoslope roof is lucky to fit 20 panels, but that’s usually enough to keep the house running. Once SugarField is done, we will look into solar and wind power. If we put 130 panels on our roof, we would produce more electricity in one month than we could use in a year. We would likely not put nearly that many up there, but knowing we have the space is nice. If we produced more electricity than we could use, we would essentially be off grid for power, water, and sewer.
It’s been a week of weather extremes and pondering the larger environmental picture. Between power outages and unsettling climate studies, the urgency for our forever home to be rooted in sustainable living has never been more apparent. SugarField is a home that’s not just efficient but aims to be largely self-sufficient. From our recent geothermal loop installation to the upcoming cistern project, we’re actively subverting norms to thrive. Here’s to a more sustainable and resilient tomorrow.
