Possum Valley is off grid with just about everything. I have built and am required to maintain my own power system, water system, drain and sewerage system, haul my garbage, and maintain the roads, etc. Just about any service you might expect the local council to do, they don’t. About once a decade the council will do a few hours maintenance on the road. I do appreciate the local council here is responsible for an area (65,000 km²) nearly the size of the Republic of Ireland, off just 22,000 rateable properties and total population base of 47,000. That’s a population density of about 1.4 km² for every man woman and child.
Still I feel a bit hard done by paying the same or more rates then urban dwellers. Rates are a tax going back to the medieval era when the landed gentry had the money. These days the ‘landed gentry’ such as farmers may be in the lower wealth bracket compared to a dentist with a small property in town.
Yesterday, around 11pm, I noticed that there was no power from the hydro system. I knew I could leave the system on battery power until the morning so went to bed. Early next morning I packed a tool box to deal with the most likely causes of failure, broken belt drive and generator brushes, worn down or broken caliper springs. Donning my leech-proof gumboots, with salt barrier bandages and well packed tool box, I went down to the depths of the rainforest to the generator. Not belts, brushes or springs. Next best guess is a tree or branch has brought down the transmission lines. A visual check slogging through the rainforest reveals a negative there, though a fallen vine has pulled the wires dangerously close together and I clear that with my 6m extended pruner. The problem I finally tracked down to the governing unit where a wire that had served for 30 years, finally corroded and failed. You need a working mental model of your system and good diagnostic skills to do the troubleshooting.
The moral of the story is that being ‘off grid’ is a fine ideal, but the practical reality is that it will not save the world as it is so difficult and requires such a range of skills. Don’t even think about ‘self-sufficiency’ until you have accumulated and practiced a wide range of skills.
Self-sufficiency will only become a viable lifestyle if our present economy based on division of labour collapses. That is not beyond the bounds of possibility. Indeed, seeming more possible as time goes on. Unsustainable debt troubles many countries.
So even though I have have gone the self-sufficiency way, I do not advocate it as a solution for the future. Rather a fall-back position as a result of catastrophe.
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