The Daily Astorian
Monday 08 October 2007
After spending two years working to convert a 1970s Tudor-style Astoria home into a low-impact, energy-independent household, Caren Black and Christopher Paddon are finally going off the grid - or coming as close as possible to being entirely self-sufficient.
That means making no purchases, producing no garbage, cutting off all outside utilities and fueling their Honda hybrid with just one tank of gas over the entire month of October.
And they'd like their North Coast neighbors to do the same.
"We cannot continue to use and waste power. People are going to have to learn to conserve," said Black, a longtime teacher and school administrator from California. "That's one of the reasons for this challenge: Learn while you can, while you're still on the grid. It's easier to learn now, when if you make a mistake there's still backup."
For Black and Paddon, their October Green Fest is a "test" of the homestead they've developed, "a time to check and see how we're doing," according to the couple, who began the nonprofit Titanic Lifeboat Academy in 2005 for education and research on issues related to peak oil - the uppermost point before global oil production descends into terminal decline. They also hoped their home could become a sort of demonstration center for sustainable lifestyles, systems and technologies.
"The whole point of coming here was to found a homestead that was self-sufficient and erase the footprint," said Black, who is also involved with the county's Community Emergency Response Team. "If we can take this house off the grid, if we can erase the footprint of this house, anyone can do it."
Paddon, a volunteer firefighter for the Lewis and Clark fire district who has worked in industrial design, as a solar-panel installer and once managed a 40-acre ranch in California, added insulation to the home and installed thermal windows. Two goats provide the couple with milk; chickens supply eggs and fertilizer. They also recycle rainwater, using much of it to irrigate a garden and the property's scattered fruit and nut trees.
However, while they can generate about half of their monthly electricity with solar panels on the roof (about 10 kilowatt-hours per day) and a wind turbine (about 6 kWh) in their front yard, unplugging from outside utilities is nearly impossible.
"Both of those systems are grid-tied so any excess (energy) we produce is fed back into the grid system," said Paddon. "If we just disconnected from the grid completely, we would lose the advantage of being able to bank any surplus energy we produce and then use it later."
And while Earth-friendly technologies will help in the struggle to save oil and slow climate change, they won't solve the overall problem, the couple explained.
"What will replace this energy is not some new alternative or some new technology," said Black.
"Technology will not save us," said Paddon. "But if we use and conserve the amount of oil that's left - a scarce amount of oil - we can make that transition easier and the fall a little bit softer."
Efforts to cut back on energy use can be fairly simple, they said, such as changing out standard lights for energy-saving compact fluorescent bulbs; eliminating purchasing for a week; or starting a carpool. They also recommended eating foods in-season and buying only local, organic products, which reduces the need to fuel trucks for shipping it across the country.
Despite growing awareness of resource depletion and global climate change, they said more needs to be done.
"We have a heightened sense of urgency," Paddon said.
"People who insist on living in yesterday are making tomorrow way more difficult than it needs to be," said Black. "People aren't willing to stop to really look at how we're consuming and what the patterns are and what needs to change. There's going to be no easy way down off the cliff, other than straight down."
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