41–50 of 61 posts
With regards to water usage: >But that meant a fairly severe (but simple) change in behavior, like shutting off the water while lathering up in the shower or brushing teeth. I am legitimately surprised that people leave water running during the 2+ minutes when brushing their teeth.
> The cabins are handmade by Treesign, a local builder of tiny homes. Each house had to be hauled into position by a truck along several miles of dirt roads. This isn't sustainable living, it's a niche luxury product.
A real off-grid cabin is like a hunting shack or a boy scout cabin: four walls, a roof, beds, a table, and an outdoor shit house. Heat is optional from a fireplace or gas/kerosene heater. A step up would be indoor plumbing and a basic kitchen.
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> This isn't sustainable living, it's a niche luxury product. I agree, this article is a mis-characterization of what 'off-grid' should mean: not only do these sorts of cabins have all modern utilities, they're also constantly serviced by the owners, who themselves need to drive around to each of them, probably destroying any 'ecological' benefit they might otherwise have. In nordic countries cabins similar to this h…
The ultimate sustainable living is a commie-block in a reasonable small, walkable city with a good public transport and services mixed with residential areas. If you do that - it doesn't matter what the source of heating, energy etc. is, and what kind of a car (if any) you drive. Even if it's all coal and fossil-fuel powered - you are order of magnitude more sustainable than people living in suburbs with solar panels…
But sadly, as with most things commie, it's totally soul crushing. And fugly. If the goal is to pack as many people as possible in high-rises, where's the fun in living?
What is the end goal? Pack 100 billion people in high rises? What for?
I'm sorry but just thanks but no thanks.
P.S: this email sent you over 2 Gbp/s fiber to the home, from a rural area, seaside, seaview , surrounded by vineyards and fields of vegetables, while there's smoke coming out of the chimney. You know: the kind of place where are actually grown and produced the stuff the city dwellers do eat and drink. No neighbors close by and yet the neighbors all know each others.
What's not sustainable is places which are producing neither food nor drink nor trees.
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It's order of magnitude, easily. For example - if you live in a commie-block - you don't need and often you don't have the option to own multiple cars per family. Often you don't own a car at all. Parking space is at premium and walking/public transport solves most of your transporting needs anyway. So that's the difference between producing 1.75 cars per family vs let's say 0.75 in the city. And then driving let's s…
I‘m baffled that you in all seriousness think that it‘s a good idea to live like that. It‘s less resource consumption, ok (for now at least). What about all the downsides to humans? Constant noise. Being exposed to people all the time. Pollution (by that I mean trash on the streets)? What about the pandemic? People had serious mental health issues during that time, that lived in places like you describe, because thei…
For us theirs is no constant noise. The flats have excellent sounds insulation between them so you can’t hear neighbours, and height means there’s zero road noise, or noise from people outside. Our flat is substantially quieter than any detached house I’ve ever stayed in, except perhaps houses deep in the English countryside where there isn’t another human for miles.
There’s also very little pollution. High density house means high density tax revenue, so the local authority is substantially better funded than any rural authority, meaning our roads are clean and free of litter and rubbish, and in excellent mechanical condition because the local authority operates an aggressive maintenance schedule.
For space, we have miles of car free paths and parks, which can all be reach without crossing a main road. It’s substantially easier to walk our dog off lead here than it is in suburbia, where you’re stuck to tiny pavements and the constant fear of a speeding driver.
Every time I stay in the country side I feel trapped, unable to go anywhere without getting in car. I can’t just put a coat on, go outside, and just walk somewhere pleasant, get a coffee, sit in a park, walk along the river, do some quick shopping, or grab transit to visit a friend. Instead the countryside forces me get in a car to go anywhere, something I would rather not do, and certainly not something I consider freedom.
> The cabins are handmade by Treesign, a local builder of tiny homes. Each house had to be hauled into position by a truck along several miles of dirt roads. This isn't sustainable living, it's a niche luxury product.
The point that the owner is openly looking to "buy a Ford F-150 Lightning pickup truck" in order to drive around and battery pump the individual houses just makes the whole thing mega awful for me - at that point surely the proper green option would be to have a little wood-stove in each house which would easily be offset by the natural bio-sequestering in large surrounding woods!!??
Their primary issue is that there just isn’t much sun light in the winter. Not only is the duration very short, maybe 7 hours total per day, but the angle of incident is extremely low (sun doesn’t rise very far), making shading a serious issue. Conversely electricity consumption will be higher because lights need to be on longer, due to the reduced daylight hours.
To top it all of, be so far north also means the intensity of sunlight is lower, so the energy delivered by a each sq meter of solar panel is lower compared to a similar panel near the equator. Put that all together, and collecting enough energy for functional illumination, and pumping water can become a real challenge.
Interesting what "off the grid" means today. - full internet access - a pletora of internet capable devices Not exactly my definition. Plus, spending 600€ + 125€ a month for internet isn't exactly something everyone can afford.
"I live off grid and my expenses are covered by my youtube channel!"
With regards to water usage: >But that meant a fairly severe (but simple) change in behavior, like shutting off the water while lathering up in the shower or brushing teeth. I am legitimately surprised that people leave water running during the 2+ minutes when brushing their teeth.
People don't bother saving things they have in abundance.
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I guess you watch Adam Something, this line is something he repeats a lot and I agree with most of it but as someone who grew up in maisonette block housing (like this https://www.flickr.com/photos/rogersg/44549465930/in/faves-c... ), it is not nearly as nice as living in your own house (even a terraced house). You are at the mercy of your neighbours, shit neighbours, shit time. It's not a bad thing to make compromis…
It's a simple trade-off. Like waiting for luggage in an airport. Would it be nice to take a step forward and be closer to your luggage and have a better view, yes it would. Would it be nice if everyone took a step forward. No, it would suck for everyone and be worse overall. The fact that people can still say "yeah, but if just I do it, then I'd get all the benefits, so it's a good idea" is a failure of our civilizat…
Apparently this is just not good enough for people like you, I must also consign myself to the misery of living in cramped housing surrounded by inconsiderate arseholes.
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Off grid simply means no grid connection. These days that indeed can mean very few compromises with respect to modern comforts like working internet, hot showers, heating, electricity, etc.
So "grid" only means public utilities networks? You can't connect to central service providers via pipe or wire, but you can via radio? The Internet equivalent of generating your own electricity and heat would seem something like generating your own readers and content, talking to yourself via http payloads rendered into a browser. As soon as you're purchasing service from an ISP to get onto a shared network, that so…
Many off-grid people don’t have these weird ideological hang ups that HNers project onto them, they simply want to live on land they own, and electrical service is impossible or extremely expensive.
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The ultimate sustainable living is a commie-block in a reasonable small, walkable city with a good public transport and services mixed with residential areas. If you do that - it doesn't matter what the source of heating, energy etc. is, and what kind of a car (if any) you drive. Even if it's all coal and fossil-fuel powered - you are order of magnitude more sustainable than people living in suburbs with solar panels…
> The ultimate sustainable living is a commie-block in a reasonable small, walkable city with a good public transport and services mixed with residential areas. But sadly, as with most things commie, it's totally soul crushing. And fugly. If the goal is to pack as many people as possible in high-rises, where's the fun in living? What is the end goal? Pack 100 billion people in high rises? What for? I'm sorry but just…
Is it though?
I grew up in the countryside, in a detached house in a middle class family. There were no kids my age nearby. My grandma (which was taking care of us after school) was overprotective and didn't let us go play outside. Which meant we sat in the living room for 3 hours waiting for our parents to go back home. There were 2 TV channels, no computer, no smartphone, no internet. I've read literally every book our village library had, including romance books.
Compare that to the childhood my cousins had in a medium-sized city. They had dozens of friends in 100 meter radius. They had a playground 50 meters from their home and they spent most of their free time playing with their friends outside cause it was safe and there were things to do. My step sister was doing historical reenactment, my step brother was making RC planes in a nearby club. The only pastime people were doing outside in my village was drinking cheap wine on a bus-stop or fishing. Sorry, we had a basketball field as well. Until it was destroyed to make space for a new church parking.
What I did in free time was reading books and eventually programming once I got a computer.
When we all went to a middle school to the big city - they had public transport going every 30 minutes to her home. I had 1.5 hour between waking up and arriving at school which means I was waking up before 06:00. It was still dark most of the year. When I was going back it was already dark again half of the year. So no point going outside. Unless you like walking through a village where everybody sits inside and it's dark and dogs are barking at you from behind the fences. So relaxing.
BTW the last bus back was around 20:30, which means no middle school parties for us.
When I went to the university I started living in the big city and that's when my social life started. I could actually do things with people my age besides taking classes.
I returned after university for a short period. I commuted again for about half a year. I had almost no free time if you discount the commute. Wake up, it's dark, go to work, work, go back, it's dark again. Go to sleep or do sth in your house. Talk about soul-crushing.
I went back to the city and bought a flat there. I changed a job a few times, moved to another city then went back. All that time I never had to commute longer than 30 minutes one way. And most of that time I commuted by walking for 20 minutes through a park.
Now I work remotely, so I guess I could do that from the countryside. But still, I prefer living in a block cause it's much less dumb maintenance work. I haven't had to shuffle coal for over a decade. Or snow. Or to rake leaves. Instead I walk about 7 km per day for the last 2 years to keep in shape and listen to audiobooks and podcasts.
And BTW this is how the ugly soul-crushing commie-blocks look like:
https://d-art.ppstatic.pl/kadry/k/r/23/f5/5ed8b60e6c25b_o_la...
https://www.lut.esn.pl/sites/default/files/filaretow-wawoz08...
> You know: the kind of place where are actually grown and produced the stuff the city dwellers do eat and drink.
That place is perfectly fine without people like us. In fact suburbanization is interfering with agriculture there.
