Our friends over at the Touchwood Project are hosting a power off weekend.
Basically you turn your electric off at the mains for the weekend and see how you cope. Apart from the "blitz" spirit eating by candle light should inspire I think its a fantastic way to re-asses our living habits.
After all ANYONE can live without power for 48 hrs. But how would you manage with no power...ever?
Take a look around you and make a mental list of everything electric in your home. Cooker? Washing machine? Lights? Central heating? Even your phone, if its cordless, will be reliant on electricity. What would you do if the power went away tomorrow?
To tell you the truth I feel a little like this isn't a HUGE challenge for us at the (almost) car-less family (although its plenty thank you!). After all we have the log burner. It cooks and heats and makes hot water for us, all without a bit of electric to it. That's three more essentials we will have that a mostly electric run house won't.
Yesterday I felt bad, almost like we would be "cheating", but then I decided, no. Its not cheating, its showing others that we are already prepared, that even though it would be a bit of a pain when it came to doing the laundry we COULD do it, and in warm water too.
Our lovely log burner, not as posh as an Aga but still does the job! We had been discussing whether to bite the bullet and get radiators in the house, the extension especially being very cold, but of course, even though we have the hot water to run through the radiators, we would need an electric pump to push the water there. Would this then complicate our so far simple heating system?
In actual fact we had already pretty much decided against this and are now looking into more passive solutions, like trombe walls, shutters and more insulation.
You can find out more about Power off weekend HERE and join their Facebook event HERE .
So I hope you join us in turning your power off at 11pm 11th December and leaving it off until the 13th December 11pm. You have 12 days to plan for it, imagine what would happen if you had no warning? Enjoy the chance to re-think your life!
We were affected by the big blackout of 2003 and lived poweless for a day and a bit. Luckily it was in August, and we didn't have the kids. It wasn't too bad we traded food with neighbours and drank ;).
ReplyDeleteNow with the kids especially since they're so small it would be difficult, they wouldn't understand. But when they're older it would be a great opportunity to teach them how they did it back in the day without all the gizmos we think we need now.
I think it would be hard to remember everything we rely on that's energy reliant, I didn't think of the water heater. So many things we take for granted.
My parents built their house and it is well insulated with a wood burning stove and propane tank backup and gas stove. They live in the country up north and get lots of snow and have go through a few power outages a winter. I know they are very grateful for the wood burning stove. It has so many uses!
What are trombe walls?
Here is the wiki link for a trombe wall http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trombe_wall
ReplyDeleteBasically it is a wall (pref south facing) which is covered by glass from a few inches to a few feet. The wall should have vents top and bottom to allow a flow of air. The priciple behind it is that the sun shining through the glass heats up the wall and passivley heats up the room behind it through warm air going in and cold air coming out.
Thats the theory anyway :P