I think I need to write a book on living off grid in the city when you're not fully prepared. There's a scripture which states "All these things will give you experience (if you walk uprightly before the Lord.)" Maybe that should be the title.
Did I tell you about the time our furnace blew up on Christmas eve day? Yeah, you try and get it replaced and fixed on that holiday. It was a week before it was replaced and running, which meant we had to turn off the gas to the house for the entire week. Fortunately we had a wood burning fireplace, so not only did we live in the living room to keep warm, we had to boil water for bathing (2 adults, 5 little kids), and took the opportunity to also cook in it with dutch ovens. I managed to be smart enough to get a hot plate so I could cook, but I wasn't smart enough to buy room heaters (ok, it was a money thing too.) It was a not-too-painful experience which educated me on the things I will do differently the next time (and there was a next time) I am "living off grid" without heat or heating elements in the house.
We have lived for up to a week at a time without electric on a fairly recurring basis, most notably when we lived in one section of town where major construction was happening, and often when I forget to pay the bill (or most recently forget to pay a DEPOSIT.) I still don't have major solar panels and batteries which will allow me to be completely self-reliant, but we've managed to acquire enough to keep us going without electricity for a while. Examples: Goal Zero panels for small electronics; we live in a south/east/north facing house (on purpose) which means virtually from sun up to sun down, we don't need interior lighting; home-made rocket stoves to cook; a generator (not yet adapted to use natural gas though, it's on the list). We've made sure our food storage reflects a cooking style which is more stove top friendly than baking or BBQ grill dependent. That takes more intention than you think it would. Hint: rice based, pasta based, tortilla (versus bread) based, raw/pressed juice oriented.
I will confess: with all the experiences we've had the only one we had not yet had was living without running water.
Should have knocked on wood. That changed this week. The main bath shower, which heretofore was a minor inconvenient drip/leak, decided it was going to give way and become a steady, constant trickle. Up to now, I just put a 5 gallon bucket underneath the faucet and every 8 hours I'd go water the plants, vegetables or fill up the Berkey water filter or washing machine. This week it got bad enough that I finally caved and called a friend of mine who is a plumber and won't over charge us.
Good news? He's willing to come help me out and give me the friends and family discount. Bad news: you get the friends and family TIME SCHEDULE too. That means "when he gets there" which translates to next Wednesday (at least), a full week away.
Ok, I could opt to spend a small fortune and get it repaired sooner, but I'm...exceptionally frugal (some call it cheap!) Come on, a nom de plume of "Get Free Groceries" on my @grocerysecrets Twitter handle might be a clue! So this week we are (for the most part) living without running water.
Now, before all the overbearing, micro-managing, snarky people run and call Child Protective Services on me, I want to state for the record that we DO have running water here. We just choose not to USE IT for most of the day and night.
What we've chosen to do is shut it off at the main. Once or twice a day we turn it back on. Everyone showers, does laundry; we fill up in buckets and store what our daily water usage for the day is (mostly, this is for flushing toilets.) So we're only semi-living without running water, but it's been a real eye-opening experience we haven't had before (unless primitive camping.)
I've always "known" despite having ten 55 gallon water barrels that we don't have enough water stored. Now I KNOW it. I'm conscious of how much water we need in a day, versus how much water would be nice to have in a day. A composting toilet is going really high up on my prepping list. (Will I ever choose something that doesn't cost me a small fortune?)
Living without running water changes your behavior patterns. My DD17 queried "how was she going to brush her teeth without running water? (and she meant it.)" I looked at her sideways and said, "the same way you do when you are camping: fill a cup with water from the bucket and go from there." She was like, oh. Yeah. But you just don't think about it with intention when your situation changes.
And that's the key. It's not that we (or you) can't adapt and make do, it's that you have to do so with intention. That's the experience part. I've been so often without power or heat that we now go on auto-pilot and continue living without hardly missing a beat.
Water is a new one. It (along with the drought) is making me rethink 'how and when' to do things. My youngest son learned it's water pressure which flushes a toilet, and that water poured at a decent rate (flow) will directly flush down a toilet (versus flipping a handle.) We've all learned that it takes 3 gallons minimum to flush a toilet. Multiply that by 5 people (15 gallons), 2 or 3 times a day per person, and you start thinking: in a true emergency, is that the best use of 45 gallons of water a day, or do I want to look seriously at investing in a composting toilet? My husband started freaking out that we hadn't stored drinking water (day 1.) My youngest kinda looked at him strangely and walked over to the Berkey filter set up and poured him a glass of water. DH went: oh. Yeah. Not to mention we have bottled water on hand, but it illustrates that when your life takes a prepping turn out of the ordinary, people don't think logically.
You think: do I want to use water to wash dishes or do I want to invest in paper plates, bowls (silverware doesn't use much water)? I already invested in one of those green ceramic skillets which wipes off clean with a damp cloth. I should probably buy another one. I had already planned to build a parabolic cooker to not only cook, but distill sea water. Except my satellite dish is oblong, not round, and I haven't gotten far enough to research whether or not I can still use it, let alone make one.
Thankfully being a mom of 5, I already know 60 gallons of water in a bathtub will wash five
people. THEN--the kids didn't notice the in and out, and I was doing the washing of the kid so it went pretty fast. NOW--they'll notice and have to get over themselves. DH might be going last. Plus you'll need water for rinsing out hair. I'd already started thinking about grey water re-use for laundry.
DD17 pointed out we need to stockpile hand sanitizer if we won't have access to running water. Again I say: fill a cup with water, scrub your hands, rinse off with water from cup. But she has a good point, and it's not something I've heretofore stockpiled. Plus hand sanitizer when paired with a cotton ball does double duty as a really good fire starter.
All in all, like other prepping adventures (voluntary or forced) it's a good experience. We're hoping to move to Texas in the not-to-distant future, and the area I'm looking at we might very well be truly off grid for a long while, so I was already thinking how I was going to solve water issues. The Cairns wrote a book entitled "Off On Our Own: Living Off Grid in Comfortable Independence" Might be an interesting read. But their experience is "in the wild" versus living off grid in a city environment. The mechanics would be compounded if you are living in an apartment or townhome.
Still. The point of this blogpost is that it is a lot easier to gain experience when it's not a real, true emergency. We can take the minor inconveniences of life (power outage, water outage, food shortage (people on strike), etc.) and use them as jumping off points to prepare. Or we can continue blithely through life, avoiding the inconvenience and then be royally hosed (water pun there) when disaster strikes.
This experience has shown me that I need to have way more water than I thought. It has shown me that I want to be able to drill a well when we move to Texas. And I'm going to want to have a ram pump or something similar to bring water to the house: buckets get old really fast, and that's when I can turn the faucet on and refill for the day. I shudder to think about bucketing it in from a distance. I liked those 125 gallon water barrels before; now I'm thinking they're more of a necessity. Aqua dams look interesting and hold 125 gallons. You'd need to store it in something secure though, and I wonder about long term. And I've long desired some large capacity water cubes.
Someone a lot wiser than me said: if you are prepared, you shall not fear. (Or at least: not as much.)
No comments:
Post a Comment