Trying to be ecological in rural Alberta. - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14698164
So, I moved to rural Alberta with the wife.

The plan is to live with her parents until we finish building a sustainable home elsewhere in the property.

Ths is actually a series of smaller projects, and is also a smaller project in a larger, more long term project.

The overall idea is to use this first house as a prototype for more homes to be built on the same property, with the goal of being able to have a small community of people living off the grid and learning how to live off the land in a traditional manner for the area.

The smaller projects are the little steps we will use to get there. The first step was to clear out the entire bottom floor of the existing house for us and the horde of daughters. This took several days and the help of many friends and family.

The second step is to finish the bottom floor and turn it into whole bunch if bedrooms. Fortunately, there are two bedrooms almost already finished. They just need mudding, painting, some acoustic insulation in the ceiling and one wall, and floor and ceiling finishes. In the rest of the space, we need to put up some walls. The exterior wall of the mechanical room also has to be redone. When I pulled out the existing insulation, I noticed the waterproofing has a hole in it large enough to let in a trickle of sand, which was used as backfill. That is going to be a nice little project later.

So, once the renovation of the existing house is done, I am going to start laying foundations for the new house. My father in law says the ground is awful for digging around here. Lots of roots and clay. I will probably need to hire someone with a backhoe.

The house will be a passive solar strawbale bungalow.

Elsewhere on the property, we want to look at allowing nature to reclaim the land, hopefully getting some more biodiversity. This involves cleaning up the centuries of garbage that are littering the property, up to and including whole buildings.
#14698174
I feel that you would be disappointed in me if I did not respond in the usual fashion...

So, once the renovation of the existing house is done, I am going to start laying foundations for the new house. My father in law says the ground is awful for digging around here. Lots of roots and clay. I will probably need to hire someone with a backhoe.


Image
#14698179
What we really need is a modern film/ decent TV series about Cortez and his men to be produced. Then there would be loads of stills from it online of Conquistadors marching through the jungle/ Cortez doing evil shit to the natives/ conquistadors supervising their lands and workers etc. That would be ideal (and probably worth watching too).
#14698190
Mind you, the period art gives it a nice classical touch.


Maybe so but I find the variety isn't there, it can be hard to find something relevant to exactly what you said. Maybe I am just being picky though.
#14698233
Decky wrote:Maybe so but I find the variety isn't there, it can be hard to find something relevant to exactly what you said. Maybe I am just being picky though.


Never settle for mediocre.

----------------

Today was a perfect storm of itchiness.

It is dry out, so my skin is already dry and itchy.
It is hot, so I am sweating, which causes itchiness.
It is mosquito season here.
I am taking out and replacing pink batt insulation.

I basically have to take a cold shower each time I want to pick up the baby.
#14698258
Good luck with this to you and your family, Pod!

Very ambitious and exciting plan. Sounds like a lifetime project.

I'm all for self-sufficiency and renewables if you have the means and conditions for it, and while traditional living would be going a step too far for me personally, it's quite in character for you, so I'm not too surprised.

Would be great to see some pictures of your progress over time, if you are willing to put them on this board. :)
#14698259
Yes, definitely post some pics on your progress. It sounds good. :D

What part of AB are you living in? It's a great province if you can avoid the very few vocal Conservatives there.
#14698275
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:Good luck with this to you and your family, Pod!

Very ambitious and exciting plan. Sounds like a lifetime project.

I'm all for self-sufficiency and renewables if you have the means and conditions for it, and while traditional living would be going a step too far for me personally, it's quite in character for you, so I'm not too surprised.

Would be great to see some pictures of your progress over time, if you are willing to put them on this board. :)


It is a very ambitious project. Perhaps more than a lifetime.

Getting off the grid and entirely onto renewables is more of an end goal than a real possibility right now, mostly due to lack of capital. Some things are easy and cheap, like passive solar and strawbale construction, which is why we are starting with those. Ideally, we would eventually transfer to active solar (photovoltaics) or wind or both.

In terms of water, we can get off the grid immediately using septic fields for drainage. In terms of supply, there are two wells on the property that we can access until we dig a new well close to the proposed house. This is also expensive, and as you can imagine, a much higher priority than solar power or windmills.

Foodwise, we have acres of land. We will need gardens, chicken coops, maybe a deal with a local beef farmer, and even an indoor garden. I am not looking forward to that part.

Some traditional things will be used as long as they are useful and/or they help my wife get in touch with her indigenous roots.

I will start putting up pictures once I do something worth recording. Right now, we are just in the very beginning phases. I am still trying to make enough space in the existing house and property to start working, so stay tuned.

@Godstud, we are in Lac Ste. Anne county, about an hour or two west of Edmonton. I can deal with vocal conservatives. I come here, do I not?
#14698546
@Pants-of-dog
Getting off the grid in stages or at least with some backup is probably better anyway. I can definitely appreciate the costs.

We were looking to move a year ago and that's when I became a bit more interested in self-sufficiency. There were some houses on our list that were self-sufficient to quite a high degree, although we didn't end up in one of those.

But even in some Auckland suburbs there are quite a lot of houses which are not connected to the sewage system or water supply, so you'll see plenty of water tanks, and the more rural you live the more common this is. It may be somewhat similar in Canada since apart from the urban centres it's also quite sparsely populated.

I've tried some gardening over the last year with mixed success. Living in the (so-called) winter-less north means that conditions are great for enthusiastic gardeners. You can grow a large variety of veggies and fruit all year round. I have resisted chickens so far, but I've been told that they aren't as much work as a city person like me would imagine.

I predict you'll love this way of living overall despite the difficulties and challenges. The amount of work you have to do seems almost overwhelming, so one step at the time is definitely the way to go. Again, good luck! I hope it's going to be a success.
#14698557
I'd be interested in following your progress on this. I wouldn't describe myself as an ecologist as that is hippy nonsense, but I am all in favour of self-sufficiency and living with nature.

It's prohibitively expensive to do that in the UK sadly, but one day I hope to have my own green space so I can get a taste of it.
#14698575
It can be expensive here too.

Luckily, my wife's parents bought this property in the middle of nowhere over twenty five years ago.

But we are still going to need metric tons of cash. We will actually be applying for grants as part of a land collective study, as well as looking at tax rebates and other sources of income. With only one of us working, and me staying at home taking care of the girls, money is still tight.

People look at me like I have a third eye when I pull away from the corner store (15 minutes away on a two lane road, on the corner of the highway) on my bicycle.
#14698579
I have a weird looking bike. And a straw fedora. And a safety vest. Now that I think about it, I do look like a weirdo.

My father in law loves gardening, so I will leave that to him. I am horrible at everything except weeding. I am good at killing plants.
#14698607
I recommend you look into the tiny home movement because it seems that a lot of what you're doing has a lot of overlap and people have probably already come up with cheap solutions for any problems you may encounter. Also, if you want to go off grid look at preper sites, you might want a reprap 3d printer for custom tools, and look up hydroponics/aquaponics for cheap/efficient food
#14698623
Pants-of-dog wrote:I have a weird looking bike. And a straw fedora. And a safety vest. Now that I think about it, I do look like a weirdo.

:lol: For the first 6 months here in NZ I was overdressed about 90% of the time. I'm sure people also thought I was a bit weird.

I continue to refuse to wear tracksuits when I leave the property though.
#14699586
So we are currently redoing the basement in the existing house to use as a living space while we build the actual house. Lots of painting, cleaning, hauling, cleaning, installing insulation, cleaning, scraping, cleaning, and trying to keep the cats out of the dangerous areas.

As for the new house, I was doing some research on foundations for strawbale houses.

Now, the foundation is designed to transfer the load of the superstructure to the ground, so the easiest and safest way is to have the foundation wall directly under the load bearing components of the structure. And since I am using a light wood frame structure, this means that the concrete foundation wall will be under my 2x6 wall.

The problem is that I want my strawbales on the outside of the structure so that my structure stays warm and dry. This means that the strawbales will be sitting on the ground right outside my foundation wall.

The solution is to build a foundation wall that goes from the inside surface of the 2x6 wall to the outside of the strawbales. This means a 30" foundation wall.

A 30" foundation wall is way too overkill for a single story house. Foundations like that are used in 7 storey buildings with underground garages. And I cannot afford that much concrete.

The hippies use something called earth bag foundations. They are basically nylon bags filled with (you guessed it!) earth. I am going to use these as a foundation under the strawbales. They will sit on the same footing as the concrete foundation walls (i.e. go to the same depth) and will sit in front of the concrete foundation wall.

This means I only have to build a normal 8" concrete foundation wall, and I can use the earthbag foundation as permanent formwork. Then I just need to add rigid insulation on both sides, and bob is your proverbial uncle.

Ideally, I will fill the earth bags with rocks that I remove from the excavated earth. This will save money but require far more cleaning and other forms of manual labour. This will, in turn, take time.
#14699589
Kaiserschmarrn wrote:Getting off the grid in stages or at least with some backup is probably better anyway. I can definitely appreciate the costs.

Given that Canada mostly uses water dams for its electricity, isn't electrical autonomy anti-ecological there?

That being said I can understand his desire to live as far from Muslims as possible, even if it means living away from the power lines. It is worth burning some fossil fuels in the atmosphere. I can't wait for his next preach to tell me that i have to live with Muslims and make my country Sharia-compatible in the name of Multikulturalism while he lives in his little shielded community.
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