Surviving a major snowstorm and power outage in Maine

 On the day before Thanksgiving a snowstorm swept through the Northeast dumping 6 to 8 inches of very heavy wet snow in our region.  This caused the Birch trees to bend over all the way to the ground under the weight of the snow on them.  The power failed after 6 PM and our automatic generator kicked in, but it stopped working after 3 hours.  We called the guy who services it and he was running around like a madman trying to service all kinds of problems with generators.  He got to us by 12:30 AM and left us a voicemail saying that the electronics controls were fried and he could not repair it for almost a week.  For the first time in many years we were stuck without electricity with our niece visiting from Boston for Thanksgiving.  Here in rural Maine most people are used to dealing with loss of power for extended periods of time during heavy winter storms, but we have been spoiled by having the automatic generator.  Unfortunately I am learning the hard way that the inexpensive Generac generator that I purchased from Home Depot is unreliable and has let us down many times over the years due to various failures.  I can in no way recommend Generac generators for anyone considering an automatic emergency backup generator.

The first thing we did was find our LED flashlights so that we could light all of our candles and kerosene lamps.  The next step was to light up the big wood stove in the basement that has the capacity to heat the entire house.   Throughout the outage we kept that woodstove fully stocked and the house remained quite comfortably warm.  Our other heaters are all propane/electric that do not operate in an outage. 

Then we started thinking about water and how we would flush the toilets.  The pressure tank from our well holds up to 50 gallons, but we knew we needed to conserve that for drinking water and dish washing.   We still had a little water pressure after three days by conserving every drop.  We started out by placing a big pan on top of the stove so that we could melt snow.   This worked but it was very slow and it takes A LOT of snow to get just a few gallons of water.  So I started thinking about other ways to get water.

The following morning the sun came up and the temperatures rose a little above freezing and I noticed that the downspout that I had rigged to feed a rain barrel in the summer was dripping.  So I set up 5 gallon buckets under the spout and we were able to put 3 to 4 gallons in each of five buckets throughout the day, this works really well, but the following day the temperatures remained below freezing.   Fortunately, we had enough water to get us through the total of three days of power outage.   We only used this water for flushing number two in the toilet and reminded our niece: "If it's yellow let it mellow".  We left one of the buckets under the downspout overnight and in the morning it was filled with water but lined with ice and the top had iced over. 

After breaking out the ice on the top we were able to pour some of that water into another bucket.  By this time we realized we could use our propane stove to melt snow and warm water up for dish washing etc.  Shown at right is the ice lining from the 5 gallon bucket before my wife dropped it in the pot to melt.  Amazing!






After every snow storm, the first thing I do is clear all my solar panels and collectors.  The collectors have pumps that run on solar panels - so they could store hot water as soon as we got sun.  My workshop building heating system stores heated water in an 80 gallon tank, but I could not use that stored heat until the utility power was restored because the circulation pumps are AC powered.   But it is good to clear the collectors early in order to gain the benefit of free solar heat for when we can use it.  Because  our solar power system is grid tied, the inverters shut down in the absence of utility power.   It is good to clear the snow off as early as practical so that it does not freeze hard onto the panels.   As soon as any part of the collectors or panels are exposed the suns heat helps to melt and clear the rest of the snow.
 
My niece, Gaia helped out by raking the snow off the solar array.  It is kind of fun - almost like playing Tetris or something because you have to use some strategy to clear off the snow and she enjoyed herself.   This heavy wet snow comes shooting off the roof making a loud "thump" as it hits the ground and you have to stand well clear as it comes down.   We were fortunate that she was staying with us because I am still recovering from major surgery three weeks ago and was not fully up to the task of heavy physical work like this.

It was an interesting Thanksgiving, because our propane oven does not work without electricity, although we were able to light the flames on the stove top manually.  We were able to take our small turkey over to our neighbors early on Thanksgiving morning to use their stove before they put their bird in the oven.  These guys bought their automatic backup generator after they saw mine, but I had already warned them not to get a Generac brand.  They purchased a Kohler that so far has been perfectly reliable.  Kohler units are significantly more expensive, but in hindsight I would have spent the money if I had known how badly made the Generac units are.  The three of us had a nice quiet Thanksgiving dinner without the distractions of television or even the sound of a refrigerator running in the house, it was really quiet.

In the evening, I remembered that I have a 40 amp hour lead acid battery that I use to power my solar lawnmower conversion in the summer.
 

I charge it up before I store it in my workshop for the winter and remembered that I also have a small 300 W inverter.  So I brought them both over to the house to use for charging our cell phones.  We were also able to run one of the LED lights in our home so that we could all have enough light to read and play board games.  The battery lasted over seven hours and really boosted our spirits by providing a bright light. 


When the power finally returned late in the day after Thanksgiving, we were so used to not having lights or being able to use the faucets that it took a while to adapt.   Of course we all took a nice long hot shower the following morning!

In some ways, this experience was a wake-up call to remind us all what life would be like without the conveniences of electric power and running water.   It is so easy to take all of this infrastructure for granted. 

Unsustainable growth

Edward Abbey an American author and essayist noted for his advocacy of environmental issues is quoted as saying that "growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Economists operating within the paradigm of capitalist societies insist that the only viable way forward is continuing growth in all sectors.  Apparently these people believe that we have infinite resources to abuse.  The reality is that we are fast approaching the limits of the resources we can continue to extract from planet Earth.  Humanity has already significantly modified more than 50% of the available land mass with the associated destruction of ecologies.   Most of this so-called growth has occurred within the last 150 years which is a staggering "achievement".  Urban sprawl is displacing animals, forests, and wetlands  causing massive die offs of flora and fauna and this simply cannot continue.  While the population of the United States is stabilizing, this is not true for the rest of the world, and unfortunately developing countries all want to emulate American middle-class lifestyles.  The idea that everyone on the planet deserves to live in a 3000 ft.² home stocked with appliances and personal vehicles is utterly ludicrous.

Here is one definition of 'Per Capita GDP': A measure of the total output of a country that takes the gross domestic product (GDP) and divides it by the number of people in the country. The per capita GDP is especially useful when comparing one country to another because it shows the relative performance of the countries. A rise in per capita GDP signals growth in the economy and tends to translate as an increase in productivity.

The underlying assumption here is that growth in the economy is a good thing because more stuff is being made.  But the resources from which the stuff is being made are finite.  Consider for instance that most plastics are derived from oil, and that many argue that we have passed "peak oil" and are now beginning to tap dwindling resources.  The law of supply and demand will drive the price of oil up to the point that the concept of "cheap plastic" will become ludicrous as will gasoline.  Oil and its derived products will be so absurdly expensive that it will affect every aspect of our society.   Oil is of course only one resource that is being abused in an unsustainable manner one can pick and choose any other resource on the planet from rare-earth metals to trees.   There have been numerous movies informing us about the failings of big agriculture for example. 

Underlying all of this is the elephant in the room issue of overpopulation.   It seems clear to me that humanity is due for a die back.  As Elizabeth Kolbert Wrote in her excellent book "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History", there have been numerous extinctions before and it seems inevitable that humanity could go extinct in the foreseeable future.

In a sense we have a perfect storm of consumerism, overpopulation, and climate change that is certain to fundamentally change how humanity inhabits this planet.  I worked on the visual effects team for the movie "Star Trek, the Motion Picture" in 1979.  There is a memorable line in which the V'ger artifact as represented by the bald female character Ilea in which she refers to the "humans infesting Enterprise".  From the perspective of a cybernetic entity humans were perceived as an infestation rather than the builders of their spaceship.  In a sense humanity is an infestation on the planet Earth that broadly resembles a cancer with our uncontrolled growth and rapacious abuse of finite resources.  I honestly cannot see a viable solution that can prevent the inevitable catastrophe and die back of humanity.

This does not prevent me from choosing to use technology to live as sustainably as I can through the use of renewable energy and energy conservation measures.  However I feel like I am swimming alongside the Titanic trying to push it away from the iceberg.  There are so few of us who are awake and aware of this impending disaster.  I truly hope that the tide will turn within my remaining lifetime and that humanity will wake up to the predicament that we are in an transition to a sustainable mode with a declining population.

Reducing propane used for heating my workshop over the years

Click image for larger version

Maine winters can be brutally cold with temperatures remaining below freezing for months and dipping into the subzero temperatures Fahrenheit at times.  I have kept accurate records of my propane deliveries for my workshop so that I can track the efficiency of the solar heating system I designed and built.   The chart above shows propane statistics since the winter of 2001/02.  Clearly I have reduced my propane consumption by about 75%.  Fiscally you can see that my annual heating cost for propane has dropped from around $1000 to around $450 over the years while the cost of propane has generally increased peaking at just over three dollars per gallon in 2010/11.  

The first year I was here I had moved to Maine from California and was setting the thermostat higher because I had not yet adapted to this cold climate.  Since then I have reduced the temperature setting from 70°F in my workshop down to around 60°F, while in my small 160 ft.² office upstairs I keep the thermostat at 70°F during my working hours and set it back to 62°F at night.

My super insulated building is about 1260 square feet and the propane is used to automatically augment the solar heating system.  As the stored heat from the 80 gallon solar storage tank drops below 140F a Bosch Aquastar propane heat on demand unit ramps up it's flame to maintain a 140F feed to the ground floor radiant slab and 2nd floor baseboard radiators.  The design goal for the solar heating system is that it can heat the building exclusively from solar on sunny days while temperatures outside remain above freezing.   When temperatures drop below freezing I use propane and the wood stove to augment the solar.  

In 2006 I installed an efficient wood stove on the ground floor.  I began by burning just small amounts of scrap wood and have increased the amount of fire wood that I burn up to over 1 cord per season.  I light a fire in the wood stove most mornings in the winter to reduce the my use of propane, on colder days I light 2-3 fires.  By burning wood in a clean burning wood stove from trees felled on my property I am just shortening the carbon cycle of the wood that would naturally decay and release carbon eventually.  So this is basically carbon neutral.  


We installed an automatic backup generator that runs on propane in 2008.  Power outages range from under an hour to over a week as a result of Maine winter storms and wind events.  I estimate that the generator uses over 20 gallons/day, so it can impact our seasonal propane usage.  The winter of 2010/11 was particularly cold, and we were also without power for several days (66.5 hours of generator run-time for the season) so this explains the increased propane consumption for that season.  The generator is necessary so that my wife and I can maintain our home-based businesses and power essentials such as our well pump.  (Incidentally I have Web-enabled my power sources so that I can get email/text messages when the generator starts or stops and when utility power fails and returns)

Overall I am pleased that I have dramatically reduced my use of fossil fuel for heating my building.  I also enjoy the sweat equity of cutting and splitting firewood, as they say it warms you twice.  The first time when you cut, split and stack the wood and later when you burn it.

Seeing our property as a spaceship

My wife and I live on a 2 1/2 acre rural property in coastal Maine.  Our 2000 ft.² house (pictured on the left and 1100 ft.² workshop (right) are on the front part of the property which gets a lot of good sun.  The back half of the property is wooded.   

Sometimes I think of our property in terms of a spaceship in the sense that we operate within a largely closed ecosystem.  We have a deep drilled well that goes down over 150 feet into the granite that provides reliable freshwater.  And our waste goes out through a 1000 gallon septic tank and into a leach field.  The solids are pumped out every 5 years by a company that delivers the waste to a company that converts it to fertilizer.  So our water system is effectively a closed loop much as it is on the International Space Station where some waste is jettsoned.   

Similarly, we generate a more than half of our electrical energy on an annualized basis from our 5.7 kW solar array which not only powers both buildings but also charges our Chevy Volt electric vehicle.  When utility power fails as it did in a recent snowstorm where we lost power for two days, our 5 kW propane generator automatically kicks in to power the entire property.  We keep enough propane stored in the tanks (pictured above right) to operate the generator for over a week and have relied on it for up to five days during extended storm outages.  

Domestic hot water in the house is largely heated by the solar collectors on the south wall of the house (visible below the windows), and 4 solar collectors contribute a large percentage of the heat to my workshop in the winter.  Both buildings utilize propane heaters as primary or secondary heat sources, and both have substantial wood stoves.  The fire wood we burn is sourced locally, and much of the firewood for my workshop is hand cut by me from our own woods.  Again, our energy sources are largely independent and we do our best to limit our use of propane.

Being conscious of this largely closed/locally sourced ecosystem of our property informs my perspective about living sustainably.  For the first part of my adult life I lived in urban environments - mostly in rented artists lofts and realize looking back that this filtered my perspective.  I was completely disconnected from the energy sources and resources that I used.  As a renter I never paid a water or sewer bill directly, and even the electric bill was an affordable abstraction.

I have a sense of comfort and also pride in full ownership of my property and the bulk of my resources.  I am also aware that I am fortunate to be the kind of person who can fix almost anything and rarely have to bring in any kind of contractor, or service person.  Many of my rural neighbors take this lifestyle completely for granted which explains the stereotypical independent Maine character.

I wish that more people had the opportunity to live as I do and be fully conscious of the infrastructure that supports me.  Since 2009 more than 50% of humanity now lives in an urban environment.  This level of disconnect from energy sources and the natural environment is affecting humanity's perception in unfortunate ways.  If we could all just zoom back all the way to look at our beautiful blue marble planet as the finite resource that it is, I think humanity at large would be far more committed to living sustainably.

Astronaut Reid Wiseman has been on the ISS for months now and posts stunning pictures  of Earth via twitter almost daily.  Like anyone who has been in space he falls passionately in love with our beautiful planet - he took the picture at the top of my page.  Similarly Canadian astronaut commander Chris Hadfield has just released a beautiful photo book of the pictures he took from the space station.  Everyone who has the opportunity of seeing the earth from space goes through a spiritual transformation based on that perspective.

I invite you, my dear reader to pull back your cosmic zoom to encompass the infrastructure that surrounds you all the way from your sources of power and water on out to a full view of the planet.  We all live on spaceship Earth with very finite resources that we are abusing at a staggering rate.  It's time we all woke up and took full responsibility for every aspect of our energy consumption.