Day Without Electricity - How It Went
Well, we've had another Day Without Electricity. The thought behind this is really because electricity is unreliable here (the lines are all above ground, we live on a windy, twisty road, and drunk people are attracted to power poles) and it's always good to know that when the supply is interrupted, your life isn't.
We were having pizza for dinner, so we decided to shut down after the pizza was done baking (our oven is electric). By 8:30, all the lights in the house were already out and the kerosene lanterns going. We'd shut down the UPS for the computers and I'd remembered to empty and turn off the ice maker. The Pirate went out and switched off the breakers, and he, Peaches and I settled in for pizza and a heated game of Super Munchkin. I won.
We turned out the kerosene lanterns and, carrying our individual candles in their brass holders (which are not only nice looking and make carrying easy, but also keep wax spots off the carpet and furniture), we brushed our teeth and went to bed.
Just before I fell asleep, I realized that my iHome alarm clock (which has a battery backup) was still set for 5:45am. That's fine for weekdays, but I like to sleep in until 7 on the weekends, so I tried to turn off the alarm, only to find out that while it's in battery mode, you can't really change its state. You can't reset the time or turn off any of the functions. Drat!
Got up Saturday and created the Big List of Chores. This is something we do every Saturday, and we write them on the dining room window with window markers. I must say, these things have become indispensable in my life. One entire wall of my house is windows, and it means that this surface is effectively a white board for lists, ideas, etc.
ANYWAY...we put on the grubbies and got to work. My chosen task was shifting a 9' x 3.5' stack of concrete tiles from next to the driveway to the side of house near the trash bins. We're hoping to use the area next to the driveway for more parking, and the concrete tiles had been creating an artificial wall that made the space less usable. The tiles are about 12" x 9" and weigh probably 4 pounds each. Not a big deal until you've stacked 15 of them into a wheelbarrow and pushed it uphill. Fifty times.
Meanwhile, the Pirate was finishing the terracing for the new garden, and putting drainage pipes in the terraces to divert the water from the terraces below. Peaches kept herself busy pulling weeds out of the bed along the asphalt path up to the house, including pulling out some French broom trees that were taller than she is.
I took a break in the middle of the day to host the Girl Scout cookie sale in front of the local supermarket. Ironic, considering that my own little Brownie was not in evidence. The other mother there told me that her husband had just been laid off. They were telling everyone they knew, because that's what one does when one has been laid off. You get the word out so that people can help you catch on somewhere else.
Eventually the topic drifted to Day Without Electricity, and she thought the idea really interesting. We then talked about things like home canning and keeping chickens - things that the Pirate and I do because they're fun and cool. We've learned a lot about how to preserve food, and I invited her over to learn how to can. I also turned her on to Freecycle (passing along the incredible gift given me by my friend Chia) where you can get stuff you need and pass along stuff you don't want. Finally, I told her about my own experiences with joblessness, and how they never lasted long (I hope I haven't jinxed myself, here). She went away feeling, I think, a little more hopeful about their situation.
I came home after the cookie sale and continued shifting the enormous pile of concrete and helping with the weeding. Our former neighbors were, it turns out, pigs. Peaches went up on the hillside to pick up the visible trash (it falls down from their property onto ours) and threw down a 2' x 3' wire cage (the kind you'd keep a rabbit or guinea pig in), all rusted and bent, innumerable pieces of plastic sheeting, bottles and cans, wrappers of all descriptions, and one ~12' piece of 1/2" rebar. Thanks guys! Nice of you to have left us something to remember you by!
The thing about being outside and doing all this work is that it calls out the need for doing MORE work. I want to build a retaining wall along the pathway leading to the house. I want to take out the grass in one bit, covering that ground with wood chips and putting in plants in barrels. There's so much to do, and when you don't have electricity and electronic things to distract you, it all becomes much more possible.
Afterward, we call came inside exhausted and filthy. The Pirate had been good enough to make us reservations at the hot tub place, and we all took some ibuprofen and headed out for some well-deserved relaxation. Peaches had her own tub room, and apparently fell asleep in it. Heh. Poor baby. Home again, home again to turn the breakers back on and go back to the world where the lights come on with a flick of a switch. The problem with that world is that they also go off with a flick of a switch, and we too often forget that second flick.
This exercise, as the last one, was very instructive. There were more lessons learned:
Before going to sleep Friday night, the Pirate and I had a long talk about our experiments of non-electricity. We've already made the infrastructure investments (kerosene lanterns, wood stove, cookpots that can double as dish sinks) to make some of this possible, but there are other things we can do to further our experiment.
Outdoor shower. I'd read somewhere about a cheap, DIY solar water heater, and was thinking that one of the things that goes down when you don't have power is the water heater, which has an electric ignition. The heat itself is propane, but without electricity, it never comes on. But without electricity, we tend to work outdoors more, and get really filthy and hot showers are, let's face it, GREAT. We thought of rigging up an outdoor shower, using this type of solar water heater. It will involve putting a new water barrel on the upstairs deck, and installing a hand pump so that we can pump water from Cistern Joseph-Ann (our 1100-gallon rainwater cistern) and let gravity feed it down through the solar coils. We've already got a pvc-pipe structure that the Pirate built for the blackberries, but they never really moved in. That could easily be adapted into a shower stall. The rest just involves being okay with standing outside the house naked.
The Pirate and I were talking about building the outdoor shower and about making other changes, and he said "Well, we can buy this and hook up that..." and I told him that I didn't want us to over-resource things just so that life without electricity would look and feel exactly like life *with* electricity. What I wanted was for us to adapt our life to the resources available.
The latest issue of Ode Magazine has an interview with British journalist Nick Rosen who argues that the concept "green" has been co-opted by every product manufacturer in the world, and is now doing more harm than good. Remember "reduce, reuse, recycle"? Products that use slightly less packaging or are made with renewable resources like bamboo are still manufactured products that their makers are encouraging you to buy, rather than going without, repurposing something you already own or re-fabricating components of old things. As long as a package says "green" on it, people will buy it and feel smug about it.
I found myself feeling that this guy was voicing what I've been thinking for a long time. If society is to survive, people have to stop consuming ready-made goods and start learning to make for themselves. While it sounds preachy, it's just not as hard as people think. To that end, the Pirate and I have decide on an experiment. For the next few months, EVERY Saturday is going to be a Day Without Electricity. The breakers go off around sundown Friday night, and come back at sundown Saturday night. It'll be interesting to see what lifestyle adjustments we end up making, how much progress we make on those things that require long, uninterrupted bouts of work, and (and this is not at all inconsiderable) how much we save on our electric bill. Our electricity (and very likely yours too) is billed on a graduated scale. You pay a smallish amount per kilowatt hour for the first few kilowatt hours, a slightly larger amount for the next few, and so on. The more you use, the more you pay per kilowatt hour. This means that for each kilowatt hour you DON'T use, you're saving money off the top of the fee scale. Assuming that there are 4 Saturdays in a month, and that the month is 30 days, shutting of the power on Saturdays means we're using 13.3% less electricity. The experiment will prove what that means in terms of dollars saved.
The last thing I want to say is that, while having a smaller carbon footprint and being more environmentally conscious and saving money are all really good things, there is something even more immediately valuable. By Friday afternoon, the Pirate and I were grouchy from a long, stressful week. I was ill for much of last week, and the Pirate has been not only working on a big, involved project at the office, but picking up the slack for me. We've both been feeling fragile, needy and stressed. By Friday, I was pointing out that our habits of staying plugged in 24/7 - his obsessively checking his work email after hours, my phone constantly announcing my friends' Twitter updates, etc. - weren't helping. The more info you get, the more you begin to think that you need it. You start twitching with the constant, nagging feeling that somewhere, somehow, you're missing something important. The irony is that the important thing that you're missing is YOUR OWN LIFE. That thing that's happening around you while you're plugged into your computer/phone/Wii.
By this morning, the Pirate and I are feeling as though we've had a week's vacation. Calm. Happy about our achievements. On better emotional footing. And I attribute it all to shutting off the constant stream of information and attending to what is in front of us.
It would be great if other people participated in this with us. I could just see everyone in my little town shutting off their breakers on Friday nights. In fine weather, we can walk downtown and visit with one another. In less fine weather, we can meet at each other's houses and drink mulled wine from the ever-present pot on the fire. Or we can just stay in, reading our favorite books by the light of our little candles. I predict that if everyone did this, widespread happiness and contentment might just be the result.
Gosh! What if THAT happened?!
We were having pizza for dinner, so we decided to shut down after the pizza was done baking (our oven is electric). By 8:30, all the lights in the house were already out and the kerosene lanterns going. We'd shut down the UPS for the computers and I'd remembered to empty and turn off the ice maker. The Pirate went out and switched off the breakers, and he, Peaches and I settled in for pizza and a heated game of Super Munchkin. I won.
We turned out the kerosene lanterns and, carrying our individual candles in their brass holders (which are not only nice looking and make carrying easy, but also keep wax spots off the carpet and furniture), we brushed our teeth and went to bed.
Just before I fell asleep, I realized that my iHome alarm clock (which has a battery backup) was still set for 5:45am. That's fine for weekdays, but I like to sleep in until 7 on the weekends, so I tried to turn off the alarm, only to find out that while it's in battery mode, you can't really change its state. You can't reset the time or turn off any of the functions. Drat!
Got up Saturday and created the Big List of Chores. This is something we do every Saturday, and we write them on the dining room window with window markers. I must say, these things have become indispensable in my life. One entire wall of my house is windows, and it means that this surface is effectively a white board for lists, ideas, etc.
ANYWAY...we put on the grubbies and got to work. My chosen task was shifting a 9' x 3.5' stack of concrete tiles from next to the driveway to the side of house near the trash bins. We're hoping to use the area next to the driveway for more parking, and the concrete tiles had been creating an artificial wall that made the space less usable. The tiles are about 12" x 9" and weigh probably 4 pounds each. Not a big deal until you've stacked 15 of them into a wheelbarrow and pushed it uphill. Fifty times.
Meanwhile, the Pirate was finishing the terracing for the new garden, and putting drainage pipes in the terraces to divert the water from the terraces below. Peaches kept herself busy pulling weeds out of the bed along the asphalt path up to the house, including pulling out some French broom trees that were taller than she is.
I took a break in the middle of the day to host the Girl Scout cookie sale in front of the local supermarket. Ironic, considering that my own little Brownie was not in evidence. The other mother there told me that her husband had just been laid off. They were telling everyone they knew, because that's what one does when one has been laid off. You get the word out so that people can help you catch on somewhere else.
Eventually the topic drifted to Day Without Electricity, and she thought the idea really interesting. We then talked about things like home canning and keeping chickens - things that the Pirate and I do because they're fun and cool. We've learned a lot about how to preserve food, and I invited her over to learn how to can. I also turned her on to Freecycle (passing along the incredible gift given me by my friend Chia) where you can get stuff you need and pass along stuff you don't want. Finally, I told her about my own experiences with joblessness, and how they never lasted long (I hope I haven't jinxed myself, here). She went away feeling, I think, a little more hopeful about their situation.
I came home after the cookie sale and continued shifting the enormous pile of concrete and helping with the weeding. Our former neighbors were, it turns out, pigs. Peaches went up on the hillside to pick up the visible trash (it falls down from their property onto ours) and threw down a 2' x 3' wire cage (the kind you'd keep a rabbit or guinea pig in), all rusted and bent, innumerable pieces of plastic sheeting, bottles and cans, wrappers of all descriptions, and one ~12' piece of 1/2" rebar. Thanks guys! Nice of you to have left us something to remember you by!
The thing about being outside and doing all this work is that it calls out the need for doing MORE work. I want to build a retaining wall along the pathway leading to the house. I want to take out the grass in one bit, covering that ground with wood chips and putting in plants in barrels. There's so much to do, and when you don't have electricity and electronic things to distract you, it all becomes much more possible.
Afterward, we call came inside exhausted and filthy. The Pirate had been good enough to make us reservations at the hot tub place, and we all took some ibuprofen and headed out for some well-deserved relaxation. Peaches had her own tub room, and apparently fell asleep in it. Heh. Poor baby. Home again, home again to turn the breakers back on and go back to the world where the lights come on with a flick of a switch. The problem with that world is that they also go off with a flick of a switch, and we too often forget that second flick.
This exercise, as the last one, was very instructive. There were more lessons learned:
- Turn off the alarm clock BEFORE turning off the breakers
- Always have a fire going. Even when it's not cold in the house, there's always a need for heating - things like hot water for coffee, hot water for washing people and dishes, etc.
- We need to work out some kind of oven. One that can be used after dark, as well.
Before going to sleep Friday night, the Pirate and I had a long talk about our experiments of non-electricity. We've already made the infrastructure investments (kerosene lanterns, wood stove, cookpots that can double as dish sinks) to make some of this possible, but there are other things we can do to further our experiment.
Outdoor shower. I'd read somewhere about a cheap, DIY solar water heater, and was thinking that one of the things that goes down when you don't have power is the water heater, which has an electric ignition. The heat itself is propane, but without electricity, it never comes on. But without electricity, we tend to work outdoors more, and get really filthy and hot showers are, let's face it, GREAT. We thought of rigging up an outdoor shower, using this type of solar water heater. It will involve putting a new water barrel on the upstairs deck, and installing a hand pump so that we can pump water from Cistern Joseph-Ann (our 1100-gallon rainwater cistern) and let gravity feed it down through the solar coils. We've already got a pvc-pipe structure that the Pirate built for the blackberries, but they never really moved in. That could easily be adapted into a shower stall. The rest just involves being okay with standing outside the house naked.
The Pirate and I were talking about building the outdoor shower and about making other changes, and he said "Well, we can buy this and hook up that..." and I told him that I didn't want us to over-resource things just so that life without electricity would look and feel exactly like life *with* electricity. What I wanted was for us to adapt our life to the resources available.
The latest issue of Ode Magazine has an interview with British journalist Nick Rosen who argues that the concept "green" has been co-opted by every product manufacturer in the world, and is now doing more harm than good. Remember "reduce, reuse, recycle"? Products that use slightly less packaging or are made with renewable resources like bamboo are still manufactured products that their makers are encouraging you to buy, rather than going without, repurposing something you already own or re-fabricating components of old things. As long as a package says "green" on it, people will buy it and feel smug about it.
I found myself feeling that this guy was voicing what I've been thinking for a long time. If society is to survive, people have to stop consuming ready-made goods and start learning to make for themselves. While it sounds preachy, it's just not as hard as people think. To that end, the Pirate and I have decide on an experiment. For the next few months, EVERY Saturday is going to be a Day Without Electricity. The breakers go off around sundown Friday night, and come back at sundown Saturday night. It'll be interesting to see what lifestyle adjustments we end up making, how much progress we make on those things that require long, uninterrupted bouts of work, and (and this is not at all inconsiderable) how much we save on our electric bill. Our electricity (and very likely yours too) is billed on a graduated scale. You pay a smallish amount per kilowatt hour for the first few kilowatt hours, a slightly larger amount for the next few, and so on. The more you use, the more you pay per kilowatt hour. This means that for each kilowatt hour you DON'T use, you're saving money off the top of the fee scale. Assuming that there are 4 Saturdays in a month, and that the month is 30 days, shutting of the power on Saturdays means we're using 13.3% less electricity. The experiment will prove what that means in terms of dollars saved.
The last thing I want to say is that, while having a smaller carbon footprint and being more environmentally conscious and saving money are all really good things, there is something even more immediately valuable. By Friday afternoon, the Pirate and I were grouchy from a long, stressful week. I was ill for much of last week, and the Pirate has been not only working on a big, involved project at the office, but picking up the slack for me. We've both been feeling fragile, needy and stressed. By Friday, I was pointing out that our habits of staying plugged in 24/7 - his obsessively checking his work email after hours, my phone constantly announcing my friends' Twitter updates, etc. - weren't helping. The more info you get, the more you begin to think that you need it. You start twitching with the constant, nagging feeling that somewhere, somehow, you're missing something important. The irony is that the important thing that you're missing is YOUR OWN LIFE. That thing that's happening around you while you're plugged into your computer/phone/Wii.
By this morning, the Pirate and I are feeling as though we've had a week's vacation. Calm. Happy about our achievements. On better emotional footing. And I attribute it all to shutting off the constant stream of information and attending to what is in front of us.
It would be great if other people participated in this with us. I could just see everyone in my little town shutting off their breakers on Friday nights. In fine weather, we can walk downtown and visit with one another. In less fine weather, we can meet at each other's houses and drink mulled wine from the ever-present pot on the fire. Or we can just stay in, reading our favorite books by the light of our little candles. I predict that if everyone did this, widespread happiness and contentment might just be the result.
Gosh! What if THAT happened?!
posted by Aoibheall | 10:08 AM
3 Comments:
I think I'll try Day Without Internet to start with, next Friday-to-Saturday sundown. Not only is the internet a time suck, but I use it to over-rehearse and over-prepare ridiculously. I don't really NEED to look up what library books are waiting for me, or what's on the menu of the restaurant I'm going to. Or, for that matter, when sunset's going to be on Friday. I will find out when I get there.
Hi--I'm doing a newspaper story about people doing A Day Without Electricity. Would you be up for a phone interview? (I'm in Los Angeles)...
Sure, Jeff. I'd be happy to. Email me at cincaef at gmail dot com, and we can hook something up.
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