Showing posts with label woodstoves. Show all posts
Showing posts with label woodstoves. Show all posts

Thursday, 19 September 2019

Responding to Collapse, Part 12: coping with longer power outages

Volunteer butternut squash and gourds
that grew from one of our compost bins this year.


Dealing with power outages, Section 2

This is the second of the four sections I promised in my last post where I talked about the most basic preparations you should make for short power outages.

Today we'll talk about some further preparations that you can make that aren't (for the most part) terribly expensive and which will help see you through longer outages. There are some pieces of camping equipment that can be quite useful when the grid temporarily lets you down, and useful for camping, as well. This still comes under the classification of coping with a failing BAU (Business as Usual), rather than adapting to a failed BAU.

Because camping often takes you out of contact with the power grid there is a range of camping equipment that uses energy sources other than electricity or allows you to generate your own electricity. When camping, or during an outage, you want to use as little electricity as possible, so that the equipment you need to generate it is as small, simple and inexpensive as possible. Electrical appliances that turn electricity into heat are the first thing you want to get rid of in favour of using some sort of fuel directly to produce that heat. Things like furnaces, heaters, stoves, toasters, and so forth.

Two different type of small propane cylinders
and a can of Coleman fuel

The fuels you'll most likely use are either propane gas or white gasoline (also known as naphtha or Coleman fuel). You can easily store enough of these fuels to get you through an outage a few day to a couple of weeks in length. There is quite a bit of discussion on the internet as to which is better, liquid fuel or propane. All the camping equipment I have uses liquid fuel, which costs less, is less bulky, is safer to store, handle and move in a vehicle, and works better in the cold. It is a bit more complex to use. I do have a propane barbeque and a propane torch for soldering and such.

I keep two or three cans of Coleman fuel on hand, and I've read that as long as the can hasn't been opened it stores quite well. I've left fuel in partly empty cans (with the cap closed) for years and then used it with no problems, so I'm not sure how much of an issue stale fuel really is.

The choice between liquid fuel and propane gas is largely a matter of personal preference. If you go with liquid fuel, have a funnel on hand for filling and a spare set of guts for the air pump. And the one thing you must not do is to fill Coleman appliances with liquid fuel indoors. That's asking for a fire. Make sure you go outside to a well ventilated area with no nearby sources of ignition.

There is also a lot of discussion on whether it is safe to use this equipment indoors, much of which is pure bunk. For safety's sake crack a couple of windows to get some ventilation and have a carbon monoxide detector in the area where you'll be using the equipment. I have found when using even a small appliance like a mantle lantern indoor in the winter that it generates enough heat to make up for the loss from windows that are slightly open.

At this point I should address the issue of natural gas. Many of you probably have a natural gas supply connected to your house. You'd think that this supply would be unaffected by electrical outages. Sadly this is unlikely to be true. In the majority of cases, that natural gas supply is pressurized by electrical pumps that won't be working during a power outage. Some large trunk lines are pressurized using pumps powered by natural gas, and I am told they will probably continue to work during a power outage. But their controls are probably electrical, and unless they have battery backup and/or a backup generator, they won't work either. So I wouldn't rely on your natural gas supply to be impervious to power outages. In any case, most of your natural gas appliance have electrical control and ignition, so they won't work during an outage. Unless you have a generator (see more below).

Perhaps some of you have propane appliances supplied from a large tank that the propane company installed next to your house, and which they fill regularly. This is a source of energy that may well carry you through a power outage. As with natural gas appliances, most propane appliance have electrical controls and ignition, so you need a generator, or a way of hooking you camping style propane appliances up to that big tank. There are a couple of other concerns. Most propane companies work on just in time delivery and if your tank is almost empty when an outage happens, your propane supply won't last long. Perhaps you can talk you propane supplier into a different delivery arrangement. And during high use periods like cold snaps the local supply of propane may run out and you won't be getting any deliveries, even if the power is on.

At this stage you probably still don't want to make majors changes to your lifestyle—when the power is out, you'd like to be able to have some electricity, for a variety of uses that aren't easy to power with other energy sources, or to provide control power to appliances that burn natural gas, propane or even fuel oil.

If you just want a small amount of power, there are small battery banks which store enough power to recharge your phone, tablet or even your laptop. The simplest ones can only be recharged from 120V AC, but the more sophisticated ones (know as solar generators) can be recharged from a solar panel, 12V car outlet, or 120VAC, and they sell foldable, portable solar panels which will charge these battery banks. They have power outputs at 120V AC, 12 VDC and powered USB ports for phones and such like.

I don't have one of these devices, so I can't speak from personal experience, but while they do appear to offer a certain degree of convenience, they are quite expensive and they really don't store very much power—a few amp hours at the most. Certainly not enough to run typical refrigerators or freezers, for instance. If you want to go with solar power, you might be better to consider the full fledged solar panel, inverter-charger and battery system that I'll be discussing in my next post.

Generators

Our Generator

The obvious thing here is to get a generator. I finally gave in and bought a generator a couple of years ago, and last fall we installed a wood stove. We have electric heat and it just isn't practical to have a large enough generator to run our electric furnace, so the two decisions went together.

Our generator is a gasoline fueled, 5500W model made by Champion Global Power Equipment that we got on sale at Canadian Tire for less than $1000 Canadian. (Canadian tire is a chain of automotive/hardware/houseware/sports/garden stores here in Canada. If you live outside Canada don't know what you are missing.) If I had deeper pockets I would have gotten a Honda generator—in my experience Honda power equipment starts more easily, is more reliable and lasts longer, but also costs a lot more. So far the Champion has started easily and run well, even in the winter. This was the smallest generator I could find with a 240V output, needed to run our furnace fan and some of my woodworking equipment.

Some may wonder why I didn't get an "inverter-generator", which uses a DC generator and solid state invert to produce AC. They offer better fuel economy if you want to run your generator pretty much continuously and under light loads most of the time. And they usually are set up to run quite quietly for use in campgrounds. But they are more expensive and more complicated. I intend to run my generator only when there is really something for it to do, and I needed to get the most bang for my buck.

Draining stale fuel form generator
into spare jerry can.
On the left, two jerry cans full of gasoline.

Generators do require some on-going effort to keep them in good condition. I start ours once a month and run it for a short while, then shut off the fuel valve and let it run dry so as to stop fuel from leaving deposits in the carburetor. Fresh fuel is also very important. I have three 20 l. (5 gallon) jerry cans, two of which I keep full of fuel. Before running the generator each month, I drain its fuel tank into the third jerry can and empty that can into my car's fuel tank. The other two cans are labelled "odd" and "even" and in odd numbered months I empty the "odd" can into the generator and then fill it with fresh fuel at the gas station. Same for the "even" can in even numbered months.

Like most generators, this one will run about 8 hours at 50% load. My jerry cans hold the same amount of fuel as the generator's fuel tank, so I'm good for 24 hours at half load. Of course, most of the time I'll to be running the generator at less than 50% power and I have no need to run the generator round the clock, especially with the wood stove and Coleman equipment. I expect that during an outage I would run the generator for an hour or so morning and evening to cool down our freezers and fridge, and do anything else that I need power for at those times. So I hope to be good for outages up to a couple of weeks long.

I got a gasoline fueled generator because my car uses gasoline and I can rotate stale fuel into the car rather than throwing it away. And during an outage, if I desperately have to go somewhere and gas stations aren't operating, I have some spare transportation fuel on hand. If you have a diesel vehicle or you live on a farm with diesel equipment and have a big tank of diesel fuel in your equipment shed, you should consider a diesel generator. If you have propane appliances already and a large tank of propane that your supplier fills regularly, you might want to consider a propane fueled generator.

I just googled "does diesel fuel get stale" and apparently it does after a few months, so you'll still need to rotate your diesel fuel. This will be much less of an issue with propane.

There are a few other complications with owning and using a generator that we should discuss.

Some maintenance will be required, such as changing the oil regularly (check the owner's manual for how often) and cleaning or changing the spark plug. And eventually you'll want to take that generator to your local small engine place for a complete overhaul.

Because the gas tank is full of fuel, a generator is a fire hazard and you shouldn't keep it in your house. I keep mine in my backyard tool shed.

When it is running, the exhaust is a problem (carbon monoxide and so forth), so it should be run outdoors or the exhaust vented outdoors, and not upwind of any ventilation intakes.

Because this is a piece of electrical equipment it needs to be kept dry, and this includes keeping it dry when it is running outdoors in the rain. A leanto made with a trap and some 2X4's would do in a pinch. Or you might want to build a very well ventilated shed to both store and run the generator.

Hooking your generator up to the electrical system in your house in a way that is safe and meets the requirements of the electrical code is a job for an electrician. Until that job is done, you can hook up individual loads to the generator with extension cords. Using a cord with two male ends to plug your generator into the house system is dangerous and illegal. The main concern is that if you leave your main breaker or switch closed, you'll be livening up the whole grid and the people who are working on it trying to restore power. It is no exaggeration to say that that deaths can result from this.

My generator is quite noisy and I don't plan on running it through the night. You can get generators that run fairly quietly, but they are more expensive and usually come in smaller sizes, so I chose not to get one. During an outage, that noise is going to attract attention. In the little town where I live, I expect my neighbours to drop by and see if I have power. When outages become more common, I expect we'll develop a tradition of generator parties, and I'd be pleased to host one.

I hear American survivalists and preppers talking about noisy generators attracting unwanted and possibly dangerous company. They'll probably shake their heads and laugh at my idea of a generator party, but things really are different here in Canada. As my American daughter-in-law, who grew up in Camden, New Jersey, and lived in Jacksonville, Florida, before coming here, says, "it's like moving to a different planet."

Single Mantle
Coleman Lantern
Spare mantles on the right.

OK, having covered all that information, now let's run through our list of services with all this in mind.

Lighting

You can get battery operated lanterns that are quite effective, but I would advise getting a Coleman mantle lantern. They generate a bright white light that is barely distinguishable from the electric light we are all used to and give off a fair bit of heat as well. The mantles are fairly fragile when in use, so keep a couple of spare mantles on hand. Kits of repair parts for the air pump on Coleman appliances are available and you should have one.

Water

Additional water storage would be a good idea, enough for a week or two, at minimum of a gallon per person per day. For two people for a week that's 14 gallons. The next step after storing more water is to have a water filter that can make surface water safe to drink. If you live near a lake, pond or stream, this will prove usefull.

Google will give you links to many types of water filters, but if you are looking for a tabletop filter that will turn the most unsavory surface water into something drinkable, Berkey or Doulton are the brands you want.

Filter elements
inside the upper bucket
Our homemade water filter

They are a little pricey, though, and it is possible (I have done it myself) to put together a much less expensive DIY filter using a pair of plastic buckets that is functionally equivalent to the factory made filters, and uses the same filter cartridges. Here are a couple of links to instructions: 1, 2.

It is also a good idea to keep some 5 gallon plastic buckets on hand for carrying water. You'll find they actually come in handy for a great many purposes.

There are a variety of water treatment/filtration systems for use when camping or backpacking. I'm not really up to speed on these, so I'll include this link to a review of Best Backpacking Water Filters & Purifiers of 2019 to start you on your own research if you are interested.

Of course there are filters you can make at home using charcoal and sand, but I'm going to leave those for my next post.

If you have a well and a generator, best call your electrician and see what is going to be involved in powering your water pump from the generator. Many water pumps have a 240V motor, so you'll need a generator with a 240V outlet, a suitable extension cord, and some wiring at the pump to make it safe and easy to hook the generator up to it.

"Jenkins" Style Sawdust Toilet
with bale of wood shavings in front

Sewage

What I said in my last post applies here as well. Keep an emergency bucket toilet on hand, or go for a Jenkins style sawdust toilet . I have one of them tucked away in a secluded corner of my basement woodworking shop. If we were going to use it regularly, some ventilation to the outdoors would be needed.

I can recommend a couple of books on the subject of humanure: The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins, and The Scoop on Poop by Dan Chiras.

Food

I'm going to leave the issue of storing large quantities of food for a post in the near future where I'll discuss the ongoing availability of diesel fuel and its effect on supply chains. But it is a good idea to have enough food on hand to last two weeks at a bare minimum, assuming that many stores won't be open and regular deliveries won't be happening during an outage. The idea here is to store what you eat and eat what you store. Don't get taken in by those people who are selling expensive freeze dried emergency food.

Some of that food may end up getting served at a generator party, so plan accordingly.

Two burner liquid fuel Coleman stove, and large kettle

If you are in the habit of always eating out and don't normally keep much food in the house, you need to break that habit and learn how to cook as part of your collapse preparations. It is likely that most restaurants won't be operating during an outage.

The first long outage will catch a lot of people, both consumers and those working in the supply chain, by surprise. A rude awakening, but one that may lead to better preparation for future such problems.

Cooking

You won't want to subsist for very long on food that doesn't need to be cooked. I would recommend a two burner Coleman stove to use when your electric range isn't working. If you have a propane stove that will work without power you're in luck. Propane barbeques can also be useful when the power is out.

Spare parts for Coleman pumps

I recently acquired some spare parts for the pumps of my Colman lantern and stove. The cup on the right is made of leather and will work at much lower temperatures than the usual rubber cup, which stiffens up in the cold.

A big kettle for heating water for washing is also handy.

Refrigeration

At this level of preparation, refrigeration is a tough issue. My own response was to get a generator and plan to run it for short periods a few times a day to keep our fridge and freezer cold. Freezers will stay cold for a day or two without power (especially if they are full), but refrigerators only stay cold for about 4 hours without power and I expect to keep several bags or plastic bottles of ice in my fridge to extend that time (so I can get a full night's sleep if nothing else). I'm also shopping around for a "fridge thermometer" so I can tell how that's working.

There are refrigerators intended for off grid situations that are better insulated and take less power than typical fridges. And there are propane powered refrigerators of the type used in RVs. Both are pretty expensive, so I'm not seriously suggesting you get one at this point.

It is possible to turn a horizontal chest freezer into a refrigerator that takes very little power and stays cool longer. When you open the door, the cold air doesn't fall out, and they have thicker insulation than a regular fridge, so they stay cold longer and use less power. This would be particularly useful if you are setting up an off grid solar power system and need to keep your power usage to an absolute minimum but still want to have refrigeration.

Here are some links to instructions: 1, 2.

The only criticism I would make of these instructions is that it is pretty dumb to run the capillary tube for the sensor bulb under the door seal—hard on the door seal, and leaky. Instead, you can get the temperature sensing bulb in into the fridge through the drain valve and put some duct seal (industrial strength plasticine) around it for a good seal. The "old school" mechanical temperature controller shown in both those articles is definitely the way to go since it uses no power itself. Sometime ago I read another article where the author had gone to a lot of trouble to build an electronic controller that used less power than the fridge. It still used a bit of power, though—better to stick with the simple mechanical controller.

Awnings on the south side of our house

Cooling

As I said in Part 1, if you've chosen your location carefully, you should be able to get by without air conditioning, and just suffer through the few hottest days in summer. Shade and ventilation will help, and believe it or not, if you stay out of air conditioned spaces for a few days , you will get used to the heat. Try to take it easy though, until you've adapted.

Shade can be provided by trees and/or awnings. Trees take a while to grow, so it's best to look for a place that already has shade from tall deciduous tree, definitely on the south side and if possible on the west side. Or plant quick growing trees like mullberries, and wait patiently.

My house has lots of south facing windows from solar gain in the winter, but that's not a good thing in the summer. And it is in a location without trees and where planting trees isn't really practical. So I made up awnings to shade the windows that were picking up the most heat in the summer. They have to be put up in the spring and taken down in the fall, but it's worth the effort.

Guts of attic vent,
based on salvaged furnace blower
Attic Vent Grill

A well designed house can get quite a bit of cooling from natural ventilation, especially from cool breezes in the evening. It helps to have windows that open. This still just wasn't enough for our house, so I put in an attic fan which draws air in through the windows and pushes it out through the attic vents, cooling both the house and the attic in the process. This works best when it cools down after dark, which it usually does in our area.

Our wood stove

Heating

We have an electric forced air furnace, so when the power is out, we have no heat. We do have a catalytic tent heater that uses liquid Coleman fuel. It works pretty nicely in a tent and does OK in the house in a pinch, but it would be best to do the initial lighting outside and you really have to open some windows for ventilation.

There are space heaters that burn propane or kerosene and apparently are safe to use indoors and don't use electricity, or at least work OK on batteries, and aren't terribly expensive. Something to look into if you really don't want to get a woodstove, or simply can't afford one.

But perhaps it would be best to just get a wood stove. Especially if wood heating is common in your area, and there are people making a business of installing wood stoves and supplying firewood.

We did that last fall, and while it was a major expense (especially the chimney—we have a tall house), wood is still cheaper than electricity, so it will pay itself back over a number of years. Of course, there is a bit of work involved in tending a wood stove, but it seems worth it to me. Though I must admit that I am retired and often looking for something to do in the winter.

Our very tall chimney
Ten cords of firewood ready for this winter

Communications

You should make arrangements for communicating with your family (and other house mates) who may be away at the start of an outage. Cell phone will be working for 2 to 4 hours and landlines for quite a bit longer than that.

It appears that CB radio is no longer a big thing, but amateur (ham) radio is. For those who are so inclined I would suggest taking up ham radio and joining a group who use their two way radios for emergency response co-ordination. Not for everybody, clearly, but a fun hobby for techies who like to talk to strangers.

Transportation

I don't have much more to say here than in the first section. Keep you vehicle's tank at least half full, and in a pinch you can use some of your stock of generator fuel in your car.

Bicycles are useful, even when the power is on. I have to admit that living in a hilly town I lust after a bicycle with electric assist, which could be charged by generator or maybe even by a solar panel if you don't plan to use it too much.

And of course, in a small town, walking is quite practical and something we should all get more accustomed to doing.

In Closing

Quite a bit of what I've advised here is not expensive and can be done even by apartment dwellers or if you are renting a house. Much of it would probably be a good idea even if you aren't preparing for collapse. And it will allow you to get through longer and more frequent power outages with relatively little suffering. But best not to kid yourself that this will give you much in the way of long term independence from BAU. We tackle that sort of preparation in my next post.


Links to the rest of this series of posts, Preparing for (Responding to) Collapse:

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Monday, 28 January 2019

Responding to Collapse, Part 6: finding a small town, continued

The end of January and finally it is looking like winter on Lake Huron

In this series we've been talking about how to adapt to collapse and I've put forward the idea that small, remote towns may be much better places to do that adapting that the cities where most people currently live. In my last post I said, "pick a town where you can live while BAU (business as usual) is still working and that will also be livable after BAU is no longer capable of supporting us."

In that post I proceeded to talk about how you might do the first part of that. But that is the simple part, since you can see how a town is doing currently, especially if you live there for a year or two. It's harder to predict how it will get along as BAU continues to break down. But there are a few important things that we can check on fairly easily, and I'll talk about that today.

First though, there is a detail that I should have covered last time—I did mention "Deliberate Descent", living more frugally as if the economy had already collapsed, as an important strategy for getting by if your move from the city leaves you with less income. But I didn't direct you to a series of posts about Deliberate Descent that I wrote a few years ago. I hope the information there will be of assistance.

And now on to picking a town that will be a good place to live as collapse progresses.

There is a strong tendency, even for me, to think about before and after collapse in very black and white terms. No doubt this comes from years of extensive reading in the "collapse sphere", which is saturated with the idea of apocalypse—a hard, fast collapse. But of course that's not what I'm expecting. I don't even think it is useful to identify stages or steps along the way from full BAU to full collapse. Rather, I like to think in terms of movement along a spectrum, admittedly sometimes in fits and starts, and at different rates in different areas.

Over the years to come, even towns that are now economically strong and have recently updated infrastructure, will suffer from economic contraction and the gradual wearing out of that infrastructure. Infrastructure that won't get repaired or replaced due to lack of money. Because small remote towns are more expensive to service and have fewer voters, governments will be forced to abandon them first. In some cases this is already happening, with the cost of various programs being downloaded onto municipalities to make provincial/state budgets look healthier.

You might wonder why you'd want to move to a small town if that is the case. Or if you're already in a small town under such conditions, you might be tempted to give up and move to a city. But the cities are on the same curve, just some years behind. And as I've been saying, they won't be able to do as good job of coping with the situation. Cities rely on essentially everything they need being brought in from outside. Many small towns could, with a little adaptation, get by on locally available resources.

Once you are firmly set up in a remote small town, reduced outside support may not be such a bad thing. It will allow you to work on the beginnings of a post BAU economy without having to compete so much with BAU. Currently, where BAU is doing well, it is very difficult to even discuss, much less establish, any sort of alternative.

When you move to this hypothetical town we're talking about, you'll likely start out relying almost entirely on BAU for the necessities of life and experience infrastructure breakdowns so rarely and briefly that you can largely ignore them. But as time passes, breakdowns of infrastructure and supply chains will become more frequent and more lengthy, necessitating that you be prepared for outages of the power grid, the municipal water supply, or shipments by truck from out of town. Traditionally, government recommendations were to keep enough emergency supplies to get by for 3 days without outside help. Many areas are increasing this to two weeks. As time passes the interval will no doubt get longer.

Eventually, the outage situation will become normal and availability of services and supplies the exception. At that point communities that have become largely self sufficient will be the successful ones, and many others will already have been abandoned.

A few years ago I read Short Circuit, a book by Richard Douthwaite, which is about "Strengthening Local Economics for Security in an Unstable World". The title comes from his idea of short circuiting BAU economics and setting up to provide the most urgent necessities locally. This is in a European Union setting (Ireland) and very much against globalism, which suits me just fine. Douthwaite says the first things to worry about are money, energy and food. (I have to comment at this point that most of Europe is too densely populated to have much hope of becoming locally self sufficient, but nonetheless the book is full of good ideas.)

Money in this case refers to the financial services needed to facilitate a functioning community, and I'll be discussing that at length in a future post. To energy and food I would add water.

In a future post I'll talk about the actually concrete steps you'll need to take to make you, your family and your community more self-sufficient, but certain local resources are needed to make that possible and that's what you'll be looking for initially.

Water

When I started thinking seriously about water, I soon realized there are more aspects to the subject than initially meets the eye.

Ideally you'll want to move to a town with modern, recently updated, water supply and waste treatment systems. But such systems rely on the power grid, and consumable supplies and repair parts that are not sourced locally. Fortunately, there are low tech alternatives that can be set up using local resources, providing the actual supplies of water are safe and secure. So that is the main thing you'll be looking for—a water supply that can be relied on in the long term.

Existing waste (sewage) disposal systems are also something to look at in the short run, but in the long run you'll be switching to a composting toilet to cut down on water usage and supply fertilizer and organic matter for your garden. The degree of resource waste in our current "waste" treatment/disposal systems is appalling.

On farms and in very small villages, you'll usually find each house has its own well, and a septic tank and weeping bed for waste disposal. In the short run this means you'll be responsible for more in the way of maintenance, but in the long run having your own well already set up will prove handy. Most likely the pump won't be collapse proof, but that can be remedied, providing the well is less than about 300 feet deep.

It would also be a good idea to check into the health of the local ground water—does it get depleted during long dry summers, for instance. Especially since you would need more water for your garden under such circumstances. And of course, if things are so dry that local agriculture has to rely on irrigation for field crops, you won't even be interested in the area in the first place.

Contamination of your well is a major concern, especially in an area where a lot of livestock are being raised. Make sure that well isn't downhill from nearby barnyards and feedlots, and check into what's being done in the way of "nutrient management", i.e. where the manure from livestock ends up. This is a serious concern for confined animal feeding operations which generate large amounts of manure and don't have sufficient land associated with them to absorb the waste. Small farms don't have as much of a problem this way, although in our area farmers are being encouraged to fence off river bottoms to reduce contamination of streams and the lakes they flow into. There is also a volunteer group working at planting trees in those river bottoms, which I think is a brilliant idea.

In larger villages there may be one or more wells maintained by the municipality. Convenient in the short run and provided you are within easy walking distance, maybe workable in the long run.

The town where I live draws its water from Lake Huron and has a new water treatment plant. This is nice, but I also live within easy walking distance of the lake and I have a home built water filter ready for when it becomes necessary to use lake water directly.

The municipality here has run pipelines to some of the outlying villages to supply potable water, rather than try to ensure the safety of previously existing, and occasionally contaminated, wells. The next town to the east of us is Walkerton , which had major problems with its water supply a few year ago. This has left people in this part of Ontario pretty concerned about water quality. Fortunately, government money has been made available for upgrading municipal water systems. In many areas (think Flint, Michigan) this hasn't been the case and water infrastructure has not been brought up to modern standards, or properly maintained if it was.

As well as water from wells, surface water from rivers, lakes and reservoirs that don't run dry in the dry season, and are not seriously contaminated, is used by many towns and cities. Often long pipelines are needed to get that water from the source to where it will be used. It's not hard to see that as collapse progresses these systems will be faced with many serious difficulties.

In addition to biological contamination from livestock operations, you'll want to look into lead contamination from outdated water systems, heavy metal contamination (lead, arsenic, etc.) which is a natural characteristic of the ground water in some areas, and industrial contamination. This sort of information may be available on the internet or from the local municipality, but I wouldn't actually buy a property without taking a water sample and having it tested for both bacterial and heavy metal contamination.

Looking back on what I've just written, I can see that there are some things I don't really know about our local water supply and I'm going to be looking deeper into that. I'll fill you in on what I find out in a post at some point down the road.

Another use for water is transportation. A town located on a canal, navigable river or lake has some major advantages, especially when shipping by truck and rail becomes unfeasible.

Too much water can be as much of a problem as too little, especially if you are situated on a flood plain. Keep in mind that locations that seem bone dry in the summer may be flooded with snow melt in the spring. There are several small towns in this area whose main street occasionally floods in the spring. I grew up in a house that needed two sump pumps to keep the basement dry for a week or two almost every spring. I wouldn't buy real estate that I hadn't seen during flood season.

Food

The next thing to look at is food and the prospects for producing it locally. For this you'll need arable land and adequate rainfall. You'll want to drive through the area surrounding the town you are looking at and see what sort of farming is being done.

In the area where I live, quite a variety of crops are grown: corn, soybeans, wheat, barley, oats, rye, sorghum, flax, canola and, most recently, marijuana. There are also a few orchards (mainly apples, but also cherry, peach and pear) and berry farms (mainly raspberries and strawberries). And many livestock operations: dairy, beef, pork, lamb, chicken and turkey. There are only a very few market gardens, but there could be more if there was a greater local demand. Currently it is hard to compete with the supermarkets.

Some areas will specialize more, but I think a wide range of agricultural products is a sign of a healthy farm economy. That variety will also be a big plus when the day comes that you have to rely primarily on local foodstuffs.

But it occurs to me that most of you, who did not grow up on a farm like I did, would have a tough time identifying most of these plants and animals standing in a field as you are driving by. So, talking to farmers in the area is going to be a necessity. Definitely stop by the local farmers market, and get to know the farmers selling there. Some of them will be able to point you to the local community garden if there is one. If you are renting for the first while, a plot at the community garden will allow you to get started on learning how to garden.

The odds are that most of the agriculture in any area will be conventional***, as opposed to organic. I am not as negative about conventional agriculture as many kollapsniks, especially when it comes to the safety of the food it produces. Before jumping to the erroneous conclusion that I'm paid by Monsanto, stop for a moment and understand that organic agriculture/food is a multi-billion dollar per year industry that relies on fear to get people to buy its pricey products instead of their less expensive conventional competitors. Millions of dollars are being spent to convince you that non-organic food is dangerous. In fact both conventionally grown and organic foods are about equally safe. Sadly, neither method of agriculture is even remotely sustainable, mainly due to their reliance on fossil fuels, and a once through approach to many of their inputs.

But there are a few questions you should be asking:

One, can the GMO corn and soybeans being grown on local farms be eaten safely in the event of a supply chain breakdown? The scientific consensus is yes, and I agree.

Two, can those conventional farms be converted to a more sustainable form of agriculture when the time comes to do so? Again, the answer is yes. In particular, modern herbicides are much less persistent than the older ones they have replaced and do not "poison" the soil for long periods of time after application. At worst, crops that aren't "Round Up Ready" can usually be grown with no trouble in soil that was treated with Round Up (glyphosate) the previous year. Of greater concern is soil health—conventional farming methods do often lead to both organic matter depletion and erosion. But sustainable farming methods can address those issues.

And from a more reality based viewpoint:

Three, is the land being farmed at the moment, regardless of the method? You certainly don't want to have to turn currently forested land into farmland.

And, four, is it being farmed without irrigation for field crops such as grains and hay? This will indicate the local rainfall is sufficient to support agriculture.

You'll want to look at a map and see if the area of farmland surrounding the town you're looking at is large enough to support the local population. In the short run, just to provide food, think an acre per person. In the long run more like 5 acres per person would be required to allow room for crop rotation and provide fiber, lumber and firewood. Sure, this will vary somewhat from one area to another, but those are good rules of thumb to start with.

Of course, you should be thinking about the long run. For a town of 10 thousand people that would mean 50 thousand acres or 78.125 sq. mi. of farmland, a circle approximately 5 miles in radius with the town at the center. For the same town situated on a lake, it would require a semicircle approximately 7.07 miles radius. And don't forget to take into account the area taken up by lakes, river bottoms, swamps, forests, roads and settlements.

One last item to look for in the area is a butcher shop. In a lot of areas they have almost been regulated out of existence. A thriving butcher shop, or shops, is an indicator of a strong local food industry.

Thinking about all this, I see that I have some work to do myself—some further questions to ask of the farmers I do know and maybe even getting to know a few more farmers.

Energy

Climate change considerations will mean that most of the areas worth looking at have a season when heating is necessary. Eventually supplies of fuel oil, natural gas, propane and electric power used for heating will become over priced, unreliable or non-existent. Provided there is sufficient standing timber in the area, a wood stove is a viable alternative. Possibly a cost saving measure right now and later, a life saving one.

You'll be looking for the presence of wood lots on most farms and some larger forested areas as well. Also look for local businesses which sell firewood and others that sell and install woodstoves. All this would indicate that the area already has a thriving wood heat industry.

Wind, water and solar are other forms of renewable energy that I think will eventually have a role to play in a sustainable society. But all the big wind turbines and solar panels that have sprung up in this area over the last few years won't work unless they are connected to the grid, and don't, as far as I can see, have much of a future.

One thing to keep an eye out for, if the town you're looking at is on a river, is the remains of a water powered mill. The dam may still be more or less intact and perhaps even the mill itself, though it is very unlikely to still be in use. The day will come when such installations can be refurbished and put back into use, very much to the benefit of the local community.

Muscle power is also going to become a more important form of energy as BAU declines, not just human muscles, but also those of draft animals. Look for people keeping horses, especially work horses. Even if this a only a hobby now, the existence of breeding stock will be a big help in the future.

Beyond looking for these basics (water, food, energy) you'll want to select a community that is well endowed with other useful resources, is resilient enough to withstand the shocks that lie ahead and has already made a start on local self sufficiency. Exactly how to tell if that is the case is beyond me, but it's something to think about.

Well, that pretty much wraps things up for this post. Next time I'll start looking at what you'll need to work on once you're actually living in a small town.

***I don't think that 7 billion people can be fed sustainable on this planet, regardless of the agricultural techniques used. But a lot of the criticisms leveled at conventional agriculture simply aren't based in fact, and are pretty insulting to the farmers. Only 18% of the food produced in the U.S. comes from corporate farms. The rest comes from family owned farms, some of them admittedly quite large. But those folks take pride in the food they produce. For a look at the subject from their viewpoint, check out Michelle Miller, The Farm Babe. Like me, she isn't being paid by Monsanto, or any of the other big agritech companies.


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