Sustainability vs Survivalist

It seems that there are two very different threads in the Ebola topic, one on the disease and the other on either sustainable living or preppers. I thought it would make sense to shift the latter to its own topic. If I'm wrong feel free to continue on the Ebola topic.



Interesting story. Here there were a number of complaints because of caveats. When you bought a house site in a new development there would be caveats on the contract that restricted you from some actions. The most ridiculous one I heard of was mandatory dark roofs (in a sub tropical climate). This type of stupidity has now been banned by law, so in stand alone dwellings at least they can't stop you putting on solar panels, but wind turbines must pass a noise test. Our sewage and waste water systems discharge into a well buried rock filled trench, so the area of yard above is always the greenest. After 40 years the wildlife (kangaroos, wallabies and bandicoots) graze there by preference so no ecological damage.




smr wrote:
In San Francisco, their is a lady that created a system to use the sewage and waste water of a home to fertilize the lawn. The process takes the sewage and waste water and treats it so it can be used to water the lawn. This was in response to the high water rates for watering the lawn. Currently, she is being sued by the water company!

I will have to research more on this topic but I know I can only use these type of ideas in Unincorporated areas or outside city limits. It's the same idea of installing wind turbines or solar panels on my current property...it's illegal according to my home owner's association and the city of Houston, TX, USA. To be fair, I probably can get the city of Houston's permission but the home owner's association will never allow it. A neighbor had both solar panels and wind turbine for power generation and the HOA made them remove it from the property.

It's hard to do sustainability within city limits in many places because of rules and regulations that can and will be used to impede the person doing it (the lady in San Fransisco for example) by nefarious individuals or groups (city employees/leaders or companies).

Survivability can be somewhat difficult as well with limited space to story goods (apartment buildings) and the aforementioned rules and regulations which can limit what you can do to make your home/place of residence more of a place to survive calamities better.


It is a lot easier to do those things in the country/rural areas which are more open and have more relaxed rules and regs. You have to work with what's allowed in your area or prepare to move to an area where you can do what you want.

I can see the problem with personal wind turbines in an suburban setting. They can be very noisy. One or two isn't a big problem but imagine the racket if everyone had one!

The only legitimate governmental objection I have seen thus far to solar panels in a suburban setting is from fire departments.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/ ... 4420130905

There are other practical considerations that would make solar roof panels a bad idea for individual homeowners: north facing roof, shaded roof, local climate not conducive to solar power etc. But frankly while those should be taken into consideration by the homeowner, they shouldn't be any business of the government.

Zakharra wrote:It's hard to do sustainability within city limits in many places because of rules and regulations that can and will be used to impede the person doing it (the lady in San Fransisco for example) by nefarious individuals or groups (city employees/leaders or companies).

Survivability can be somewhat difficult as well with limited space to story goods (apartment buildings) and the aforementioned rules and regulations which can limit what you can do to make your home/place of residence more of a place to survive calamities better.


It is a lot easier to do those things in the country/rural areas which are more open and have more relaxed rules and regs. You have to work with what's allowed in your area or prepare to move to an area where you can do what you want.

Hi Zakharra,

Absolutely true. The sad truth is sustainability for city dwellers mainly means having the means to get out if TSHTF, and very quickly. The golden hour post nightmare event we all hope never happens.

Let's take Katrina as a real world example. Presuming one's home was not flooded out the immediate problem was having safe water and enough of it, then food. But those are nearly rendered moot by the fast wave of crime that happened. Thugs ran amok in too many neighborhoods. Reality was the cops were unable to contain it and it took well over a week for any help to arrive. That is the doom on cities, the folks who run amok and do not mind stealing and killing to get what they want. And the reality that help will take well over a week and probably longer - maybe much longer - to arrive. There is also the very real danger of fires getting out of control. This is the sad and dangerous reality of urban crisis. One can hope neighborhoods would band together to keep out the thugs but...

From that let's look at the traffic nightmare Houston had when they ordered an evacuation in the next hurricane threat that year. What a godawful mess on the roads. Gas stations ran dry, traffic was backed up for miles. No water, No food. Horrid heat. No help. Freeways became death traps for some and misery traps for everyone else stuck on them. Take side roads and go early and fast as possible. Remember that always full gas tank I harp about? This is why.

The ones who did ok were the ones who got out very early, before the evac order. As it happened the storm was not as bad in town as feared -though Galveston was a nightmare mess - but what if it had been? Then the ones who stayed would have been in a mess. As they were in Galveston, though not as bad as Katrina because they could get out and other reasons. Size, nearness of help.

Make the situation wider spread and ugh.

So, if I was living in a city I would be focused on what I'd want with me to bug out, what routes I'd take, both by car and on foot, where to go, all that. and I'd have some food and water etc in my residence just in case that was not an option. But I'd want to bug out, pdq. Delay can be deadly. Decide ahead of time where you'd go and what you'd do when you get there. Be aware a shelter is a place where you give up all freedoms and all privacy. You will not be allowed to keep weapons and maybe nothing else, either. Be aware and think hard before you opt for one.

If you have friends and family accessible out of town in a fairly safe-ish place, that is where I'd do my just in case stocking up. Presuming they are agreeable. If they aren't, you'd have a problem and I'd try to arrange with someone less head in the sand.

The time to think about all this is before anything happens. Too late once it does, whatever 'it' is. Think about it, game it in your head. What are the possible scenarios and how would you realistically deal with each one. What would you wish was in your pockets or purse or computer bag? In your car? At your desk in a bag? At home ready to bug out with. Then winnow it down to what you really really are willing to carry all the time in your pockets, bag, car, bug out bag in your home, etc Be real. Too much trouble and you'll start leaving it home. So, keep it real and practical.

Thinking this stuff through can be an interesting mental challenge and you will already be way ahead of most folks because they have not spent two minutes playing 'what if'.

That is precisely why, among other reasons, we do not live in a city.

Now, in normal times things like growing a garden and having fruit trees etc work fine in most city backyards. Imagine if everyone had a fruit tree in their yard. Imagine the bounty that would overflow the neighborhood. I say overflow because fruit trees, including dwarf ones, can be very abundant and berry canes and bushes likewise. We can a lot but also give away a lot of fresh tree ripened fruit every year. Funny how it always finds homes Same for garden veggies.

Mr Northstar just took two big tubs of tomatoes to work this morning. They'll all be gone by this evening, and that is good. If I have to can any more tomatoes this year I will go on strike. We have plenty now. Mostly canned as tomatoes and onions, 2 parts tomatoes, one part onions chopped. A bit of lemon juice and salt. Wonderful in recipes all year around. Plenty of tomatoes, onions and green peppers too. Same way. But enough already this year, so the extra goes to others.

On the matter of survivability

its more fun than serious but I will usually give some thought to the defensibility of any building I spend long enough in, in the event of a zombie apocalypse

For example the office building I'm currently working in is a no no (too many ground floor windows and emergency exits to secure)

I know I'm not prepared for the collapse of civilisation, but I have given it some thought (obtaining suitable transport, supplies etc) which puts me ahead of 90% of the people I know, the other 10% are the people I will be attempting to get together with once the fecal matter hits the rotary air impeller

I'm a "retarded" firefighter, (FF). Do not believe some of what you read from most news agencies. They have it "dead wrong." Regarding the "shock hazard" from roof top PV panels, (solar panels) there ain't any.

There is no shock hazard. PV panels are low voltage direct current with little actual wattage or, more importantly, amperage. Roof top PV panels will most certainly NOT shock Firefighters. Laughable.

Remember that PV panels only work in direct sunlight. To state they may shock emergency personal is not too bright. Consider such during cloudy or nighttime conditions? Again, not enough voltage or amperage.

However, some large arrays may be up to 48VDC. Generally speaking the combined amperage at such direct current voltages is NOT enough to be considered dangerous. Also such voltages are very well protected with conduits.

Venting roofs, under some conditions WILL be a concern, but not a big problem. Firefighters will just remove the PV panels. Venting continues. Again, PV panels are NOT a life hazard to fire personnel. Sorry. Now you know.

One reason why I moved from the Central Valley of Kommiefornika, (California) to SW Oregon, USA, was to escape most if not all of the silly, made up, stupid, dumb, restrictive, rules, laws and regulations. I mostly succeeded. Josephine County gov has little tax base.

This is good. What it means is that there is also little or no interfering governmental infrastructure. My neck of the woods is most definitely NOT a nanny state. Natural law. Things are quite peaceful.

Actually little violent crime. Some petty stuff, but what happens is that the village morons or criminal types are asked politely to move on. Most do. Those who do not seem to leave also. Very nice.

One can pretty much do what one wants, as long as the moral desire of doing no harm to others is maintained. It is amazing that private property owners DO have the environments best interest on their own land.

HB of CJ (old coot) Cm. (retired FF, PM. ISO Class One Dept.) I love this forum. Understand that I represent the radical right. Part Libertarian, part anarchist. A long term master survivalist in my own mind. Everyday I learn something new.

I currently reside in a suburb. Not my idea of heaven, nor where I will retire. But it lets my kids go to a decent school and it's not horribly expensive. I can't stand silly city rules, and ignorance of neighbors. The sooner I get out of the suburbs and into the country, the better. (Though that won't happen till the kids are all gone!)

But enough of that....

Solar panels, of any photo-voltaic variety, as previously stated generate a small DC current at low voltage. The voltage is typically either 12 or 24 DC volts. Hardly more then grabbing a 9V battery. You won't even feel a tingle. Never mind a shock. There are two main types of systems. Those which augment your household power system, but shut off when you loose the utility grid. And those which remain to provide you with power when the utility grid goes down. The second type requires you to have a disconnect from your house to the grid, and that you have storage batteries on your property.

The storage batteries, depending on how big a storage unit you have, is far more dangerous to firefighters then the solar unit's power generation. Though with modern systems it is possible to generate some amount of power all day long, direct sunlight, cloudy day, or even in the rain. The amount is simply vastly reduced. The most efficient systems in testing are about 50% efficient. The reality of what you're likely to be able to get reasonably is around 20%.

Anyrate, enough rambling about solar systems. If anyone is interested I've installed a few and done a great deal of research into their viability. In countries where power is expensive (Spain or Italy for example) they are already a usable source of commercial power if the countries wished to invest. If the upcoming technologies mature, as I hope they will, then solar will become extremely attractive in the US.

I intend to be living in a much more rural setting. Away from a major city by at least an hour. I will be the proverbial crazy guy in the hills. Complete with garden, guns, sufficient solar power to manage the geothermal plant and run a water pump. Not because I want to be an off the grid loon, but because I prefer the long term savings. And I prefer to not have people telling me what I can do on my property.

For a bit of hilarity on government and regulatory failure, the Government of Ontario had relentlessly pushed PV and wind turbines despite the opposition of multiple sources (wind turbines were opposed by so many people that the government eventually passed laws essentially expropriating land without right of appeal to mount these things), while rooftop PV got massive subsidies.

Cities were less keen on rooftop PV because these systems were often installed improperly and there was a danger that in the event of a power failure the grid would be sporadically and randomly energized by working PV arrays. Once again Provincial laws had to be rewritten to override city bylaws and electrical codes.

Overall this has been a massive failure, and Ontario now has the highest electrical costs in North America, yet has to export electricity at a loss to the US when the sun shines and the wind blows in order to keep the grid stabilized (Wind energy is subsidized to the tune of $.135/kWh. conventional energy costs about $.08/kWh. When the wind blows in off peak hours, New York State buys the excess energy at $.04/kWh. The Liberal Party's economic record in other areas is just what you'd expect after looking at these figures).

I am confident that advances in these technologies will actually make them more practical. Isolators to prevent current flowing into the grid if the grid is shut down is common sense, and an serious users of PV should be rising excess capacity into batteries instead of the grid. Various types of micro desalination and water purification systems are available or in advanced prototype stages, so urbanites may yet be able to decouple from the grid, even if only enough to avoid paying "peak" rates.

About solar panels - mine are 60-cell arrays that put out 32-36V at up to 8.2A in full bright sun. I have 8 panels, so the total output is around 260VDC. At 8 Amps or more. That is enough to put a serious hurt on ya. Hey, if they didn't put out a lot of power they would be useless. The converter manual says it handles inputs from 190V to 500V and is most efficient at over 300VDC input, so I'm planning to add 2 more panels - more power AND better conversion efficiency. The converter also HAS to be designed to shut down when line power is lost, so it won't still be putting out 240VAC when folks working on the equipment think the power's off.

Where I live at about 32.5 degrees north latitude we have a lot of bright sunny days, so solar power makes sense. In cloudy Ontario (Canada, I presume) at anything from 46 to 60 degrees latitude, not so much. Sure, you get 17 hours of sun in summer, but in the winter it's less than 7 hours, plus the panels are buried under two meters of snow. Barely worth digging 'em out for.

Denmark went for wind power in a big way, then discovered that you get grid stability problems if more than 40% of your power comes from distributed and variable sources.

Here in California we're in the third year of a major drought. The governor has declared a "Stage 3 Drought Emergency". People are getting fined for wasting water. Recently on TV I saw some accounts of people getting nasty-grams from the ASSociations for cutting back on their lawn watering. One gal got fined over $700 for taking out the grass and putting in a quite attractive arrangement of rocks and flowering cactus. The state fines you for watering your lawn, and these bozoids fine you if you don't.
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

I agree Imaginos. My solar system is similar to yours in output. A couple of years ago I did what you are considering by putting in two more panels, more to raise the power to an optimal 270 volt than adding capacity. The result was that I went from 12 panels in two 6 panel arrays, each putting out about 230V to two 7 panel arrays each putting out 270V which is the optimal input for the inverter. End result was an increase in capacity of 16% that gave an increase in output of 25% due to greater efficiency. We have isolators that automatically cut off the solar power if the mains power goes down. We aren't allowed to connect wind power to the grid, but I have lived off grid with wind power.

Unless other countries have very different systems I'm a bit concerned about those here saying that solar power isn't dangerous. My panels each only produce about 38V but add them in series it multiplies. You then add two arrays in parallel and the voltage doesn't change but the amperage does. Although DC isn't as dangerous as AC, I wouldn't like to cop 270V at 9 amps or 2430 watts, which my system puts out. On a sunny day my big 2.4KW bore hole pump is run solely by the solar, so it does have grunt.

Generally our government interference has been beneficial, in that they have prevented some of the more outrageous caveats or local ordinances being imposed. Sort of big government preventing small government from infringing on property owners rights.

I'm interested to hear that California has 240V AC as I thought the US was on 110V AC.

Imaginos1892 wrote:About solar panels - mine are 60-cell arrays that put out 32-36V at up to 8.2A in full bright sun. I have 8 panels, so the total output is around 260VDC. At 8 Amps or more. That is enough to put a serious hurt on ya. Hey, if they didn't put out a lot of power they would be useless. The converter manual says it handles inputs from 190V to 500V and is most efficient at over 300VDC input, so I'm planning to add 2 more panels - more power AND better conversion efficiency. The converter also HAS to be designed to shut down when line power is lost, so it won't still be putting out 240VAC when folks working on the equipment think the power's off.

Where I live at about 32.5 degrees north latitude we have a lot of bright sunny days, so solar power makes sense. In cloudy Ontario (Canada, I presume) at anything from 46 to 60 degrees latitude, not so much. Sure, you get 17 hours of sun in summer, but in the winter it's less than 7 hours, plus the panels are buried under two meters of snow. Barely worth digging 'em out for.

Denmark went for wind power in a big way, then discovered that you get grid stability problems if more than 40% of your power comes from distributed and variable sources.

Here in California we're in the third year of a major drought. The governor has declared a "Stage 3 Drought Emergency". People are getting fined for wasting water. Recently on TV I saw some accounts of people getting nasty-grams from the ASSociations for cutting back on their lawn watering. One gal got fined over $700 for taking out the grass and putting in a quite attractive arrangement of rocks and flowering cactus. The state fines you for watering your lawn, and these bozoids fine you if you don't.
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Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!