Well, things certainly got lively there…going to riff on a few posts here…
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Nels, the wood pellet stove is something that I have heard about. Are they a lot more efficient than a traditional wood burner?
Supposedly the only thing more efficient in heating technology is electricity which has a 100% use rate (but we know about generating electricity)…check it at
http://www.pelletheat.org/…tial/compareFuel.cfm
http://www.sbcfiremaster.com/pelletstoves/index.html
the second link is a place in BC.
The trick thing about pellets is they are not only efficient but they are made from wood waste and burn much cleaner than regular wood. You can burn this stuff in woodstoves for heat all winter long and have about as much ash/waste as you would after a weekend of regular wood burning. To make the woodstoves work best I believe a small amount of electricity is needed to regulate the drop flow of the pellets, but this is certainly in the solar generated electricity range, and there are totally mechanical feeds available as well.
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reducing the size of the typical (or desired) family (i.e. leading to RPG, ZPG, or NPG). From a selfish point of view for surfers, while the acerage devoted to parks may be increased by going to higher density housing, it’s hard to envision how the number of surf breaks could be expanded in the same manner as the population density increases in an area
-MTB
Population reduction from lowering birth rate gets trumped by immigration and in-migration, especially if people relocate to minimize road travel for environmental/philosophical/ethical reasons. I was recently interviewed as part of a survey and in answering some questions and asking others found out that California is now considered to have 37 million official residents. Illegal/undocumented immigrant residents are considered in the 2-4 million range. Forecast for I think it was in 2015 California would have 45 million official residents. God only knows about the invisible people, who aren’t all that invisible.
As to higher desnity ocean area housing creating more parks, I don’t think that will happen. It will just allow more people to cram in and hopefully eliminate the need for individual automobiles. Surfing will not be like we know it today, but then again it probably wouldn’t be anyway. I’m not sure I would want to go in the water anyway…
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The thought process has to begin long before the house is actualy built to fully take advantage of the local conditions…
So many different aspects to the whole Ecological footprint thing, but starting with our own dwellings is where we can make the biggest and most immediate impact.
Urban sprawl, McMansions, etc. are everywhere in urbanizing coastal environments…California, Florida, Gulf, East Coast, other countries (think Surfer’s Paradise, although there is much vertical living there). Lawless is absolutely right on this but now for TBB (The Big But)…part of the Eco Insanity is relentless building of new homes. This certainly is part of the insanity of the U.S. economy, when “new housing starts” is a key economic indicator. The waste involved in tearing down an exisiting structure seems enormous to me, and the cost of doing that, relocating for construction, and the cost of building a new custom home is staggering. Retrofitting is the “affordable” option but even that is a sketchy financial move. The most frequenty done move is adding solar panels, but they rarely pay for themselves in their lifetimes once aquisition costs and whatever construction costs are for bring the home up to building codes to support the panels are factored in. To build a new home in a coastal area to be run off the grid…you would still be required to have it hooked to sewer lines if available, I suppose you might be allowed to not hook it to power but that would probably be a detriment should you later choose to sell it, and everything else I can think of at the moment would still be required by building codes. You would still pay much more to have less.
Don’t get me wrong…passive solar design is a great thing when you can. From what I know that usually applies to low density living spaces though…short of nuclear population control I don’t see alternatives to higher density living in the future…does anybody know of examples of high density residential properties with passive and active solar capability? A very interesting area there…
My personal talley: maximum reasonable low eco-footprint living in modern urban to semi-urban surf/coastal world is still most feasible for the wealthy. Or college students…