Feature from Environmental Building News
May 1, 2006
Sidebar: Marc Rosenbaum on passive survivability at his own house
EBN Advisory Board member Marc Rosenbaum shared with us how he has addressed passive survivability in his New Hampshire home:
On my own house, I wanted a highly robust product. I have a drilled well and a submersible pump, but I also ran a second pipe into the basement that can be used with a hand pump. Because the static level of the well is close to the ground level, I can have water without electric power. The house is heated by a woodstove, and water is heated by either a passive solar water heater (thermosiphon) or a passive heat exchanger in the woodstove. Daylight illuminates all rooms. I use an electric range for air quality reasons, but I have a single-burner gas cooker that I can use in a power outage. A root cellar in the basement provides some level of food storage.
One challenge I haven’t solved yet is power. I have a grid-tied photovoltaic system, but when the grid goes down I can’t get power from the system. I want to set things up so I don’t have a battery bank but could use the power when the sun shines regardless of the grid being operational. This feature doesn’t need to be automated—it could be a manual changeover. I think that having power a few hours every other day would allow much of life to be fairly uninterrupted. In many places around the world, electricity is not available at all times, but provided for a known period each day. One could pump water, operate tools and computers, freeze ice, etc. during those times.
Then there is the matter of where food comes from after the first few days . . .
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