An off-hand remark to me several weeks ago about wanting to make a gingerbread house from scratch with the kids, somehow led to Chris and the kids elbow deep in ginger and icing sugar while I ran around Barriere on last minute errands!

Stephen had every intention of writing the step by step directions but bedtime came far too early!  I think he took most of the pictures, though.  The recipe came from What’s up Kids magazine and the design from an online pattern that Chris found.

So here’s the photos!

I am enjoying a lazy start to the day this morning …

As I write I am reclining on the couch sipping tea, happy that I am not outside in the -14 degrees celcius weather this morning.  To be completely honest I am still wearing the shorts I slept in last night … it is difficult to control the inside temperature where we are staying … even after opening the doors occasionally to cool the place down.  I am watching the steam escape from the outdoor hot tub on the porch.  The cover was not put on tightly last time it was serviced and the escaping steam is puffing up past the window.

I do not imagine I am alone this morning enjoying this.  The small community of 1500 homes I am visiting this week has a whopping 800 (I am estimating) outdoor hot tubs.  There is a lot of steam being let off this morning!

Our Vacation

Sandra and I have been on vacation at the Sun Peaks ski resort this last week.  As Sandra described in an earlier post …

Chris and I are going away for a week (all by ourselves, no less!) and we had planned to use our airline points to do so.  Chris, however, had been having some misgivings because of the terrible environmental impact of airline travel.  And yet….we have an obnoxious number of points at our disposal.

 …

So we traded in about a third of our points and rented a condominium at Sun Peaks Resort (one hour drive away) and we intend to ski all week (nordic; we have season passes).  We intend to cook our own dinner a fair bit and I’ve been gathering a lot of Indian ingredients (our kids won’t eat Indian food) and we will sample the wonderful cooking of the resorts many restaurants, for about half our dinners.

We’re loading up on books, DVDs, CD’s and plan on relaxing for most of the time.  There’s even a  private hot tub…not very environmental, but I will force myself to enjoy it every day after coming in from the trails…

We both feel pretty good about this decision.  What we really wanted all along was a chance to simply spend time together without the usual distractions.  The bonus is that it is a frugal vacation money-wise, but rich in value to both of us…as long as Chris still does his share of the dishes!

It has indeed been a wonderful week. 

There are however at least two flys in the ointment. Its not that I feel guilty because I should be working, nor that we have left the kids with their grandparents.  I have been struck by how this winter wonderland is a mirror of the society we live in; both in its construction and its on-going life it is overly complex and unsustainable.

Let me explain …

Complexity

Sun Peaks Resort bills itself as a four season getaway; skiing in the winter, golf and mountain biking when there is no snow.  Sun Peaks Resort was formed in 1993, and was started with the purchase of the already existing Tod Mountain ski resort.

In the early 60’s the Tod Mountain ski hill was built.  This resort was locally owned and catered to the local communities. Tod Mountain offered fabulous downhill skiing with limited amenities.  Lift facilities consisted of 3 principal chairlifts, and in 1988 the first subdivision (49 lots) was started to accomodate increasing numbers of skiers from outside the local area.

In 1992 the Japanese Nippon Cable Company Ltd. purchased Tod Mountain, renamed it Sun Peaks Resort and embarked on a long term development plan to turn Sun Peaks into one of the premier ski resorts in Canada.

From these humble beginnings Sun Peaks has grown to offer;

• the third largest downhill ski area in Canada (11 lifts),
• extensive cross country trails,
• an 18 hole golf course,
• a village boasting at least seven hotels and 18 restaurants,
• about 1500 residential properties (fewer than 500 full time residents)

In less than 20 years Sun Peaks has grown from a ski hill catering to the Kamloops area to an internationally recognized resort community that will vote this January on incorporation as a distinct municipality.

In his book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed,  Jared Diamond examines the reasons that societies collapse.  He argues that successful societies become increasingly more complex as they grow in population in order to solve issues associated with societal growth.  These issues include habitat destruction (including climate change), food production, water management, overpopulation and energy depletion.  Unfortunately, as addiotional layers of complexity (administrative overhead or government centraliztion) are introduced to deal with these issues, this overhead become less and less effective at implementing solutions.  Eventually, there is no accrued advantage to additional overhead, and the society starts to break down as it can no longer maintain or add to its existing infrastructure.

Many ski hills have closed or have difficulty staying open each year due increasingly to the weather being too warm or too dry to allow for sufficient snow fall.  Increasingly, people who want to ski who do not live in an areas where it snows, and more importantly they have the economic wealth to travel to a location that does.

What started as a small, local ski hill has expanded to satisfy the recreation wants of an increasingly complex society.  Due to its high elevation it is guaranteed consistent cold temperatures through the winter.  Other local ski hills that are at lower elevations are struggling with consistent snow fall, and some seasons have to shorten their seasons as a result.  Even if it does not get enough natural snow it can make it own, in 1995 Sun Peaks Resort completed a 35 million gallon snow making reservoir.  To meet the needs of skiers travelling from far far away, the community of Sun Peaks offers hotels, 1500 residences and the amenities of a small village.  The Sun Peaks Resort mirrors the rapid increase in complexity of North American society in the last three decades. 

Sustainability

It seems fairly obvious to me that the Sun Peaks Resort has indeed become increasingly complex.  So, in thinking back to Jared Diamond’s premise that overly complex societies fail due to their inability to sustain this increased complexity … is Sun Peaks an example or symptom of this?

At first glance Sun Peaks has boosted the surrounding communities.  The construction of 1500 residences, numerous hotels and other businesses has resulted in a massive local building boom over the last decade.  Construction companies operated for years, largely on work in the Sun Peaks area.  Also, this does not include work generated for all of the lumber yards, window and door manufacturers … well you get the idea.  Also, now that the village of Sun Peaks is a reality there are additional jobs available; from the seasonable jobs associated with operating a massive resort, to on-going jobs required to support any community.

The construction of Sun Peaks over the last two decades has required the investment of significant financial resources.  The large scale projects (hill infrastructure, hotels …) have easily cost 100’s of millions of dollars, and individual property owners are also investing significantly when their cumulative land purchases are considered.  This investment has been leveraged by the assumption of debt.  This assumption of debt is usually viewed as a safeand profitable investment, and it is in an economy where available credit and the money supply is expanding as ours have since the second world war.  However, if available credit and the money supply starts to contract (economic deleveraging) then real estate investments quickly become unprofitable, and difficult if not impossible to secure new loans against when existing ones mature which can lead to foreclosure.  This painful process has been going on for the last two years in the United States.  So far the Canadian Real Estate market has been largely immune to this contraction, but will that last?

The actual construction of Sun Peaks required a wealth of physical resources; concrete, timber, appliances, finishing materials …  Having spent the last week at Sun Peaks there is no indication that minimizing envronmental considerations played a huge role in site selection, construction methods and materials or building design beyond what was required to meet existing codes.

The on-going maintenance and operation of this community seems to require the same commitment of resources as any similarly sized community in Canada.  Again, no significant effort was made in design or construction to minimize the on-going costs (financial, environmental, energy use) necessary to maintain this community.

In one significant aspect this community has a much higher maintenance complexity than other communities.  Because it is a destination resort the vast majority of the residential properties are second homes and are vacant for a significant portion of the year.  All of the initial costs and on-going full time costs associated with this infrastructure are associated with a much lower occupancy number than would be associated with a town where all of the residents (as opposed to roughly 1/3rd) live there year round.  In the week we were there at the beginning of the ski season Sun Peaks was a ghost town, yet every where we walked we could hear the jacuzzi pumps moving the water in the hot tubs, and see steam escaping from poorly covered tubs.  The maintenance of all of this infrastructure is performed by various companies, requiring Significant financial and energy goes into maintaining this village regardless of how many people are actually there.

Ironically, Sun Peaks will hold a vote on incorporation as a community this January.  This community has a significant, and wealthy tax base but wants to control how its taxes are spent.  Two thirds of this community do not reside in it full time, leaving only approximately 500 full time residents.  There is no school, and no desire to have one, as no kids are going to school, raising the question as to why school taxes are collected.

The Embodied Cost of Construction

The Embodied Cost of Maintenance

What is Lost

Perspective

Sharon Astyk

But the major problem isn’t whether Coke is good or bad, it is whether we can afford, in a world of rapidly increasing water scarcity to prioritize resources for something as non-essential as sugar-water. Can we afford to ship water mixed with a few other ingredients around the world, using fossil fuels? Moreover, what happens when Coke’s eternal need to expand its market runs up against material limits? Can we expect Coke to voluntarily say “ok, enough growth, enough market share, other people need that water for agriculture and drinking?”

Commercial property values fell by more than 40 per cent in markets such as the UK, the US, Spain and Ireland, posing problems for boomtime investments made largely with debt.

Check out Les Stroud’s series of YouTube videos documenting his move to off grid living and tell me if it’s just me who’s irritated by the melodrama.  For those of you who don’t know, Les Stroud gained fame in Canada for his reality based TV show Survivorman, where he has himself dumped in a remote location with only an empty plastic bottle, a parachute tarp and 1/2 a snickers bar and then chronicles his journey back to “civilization” through dangerous territories.

Les Stroud Off Grid Living YouTube videos
There are seven segments.

I’m particularly irked by his mid-winter fit of “gotta have more space” that leads to what I consider a ridiculously expensive (and unenvironmental) mainstream solution.  Also, choosing to move an entire cabin kit into his remote location in mid-February (leading to hiring a helicopter!) would be amusing if it weren’t a sign of the gotta-have-it now mentality.  As many could have predicted the pre-fab cabin only gets partially built before the rest of an Ontario winter shuts it down to spring.  On top of this, he and his family are only living part-time in the original cabin anyway, leading one to wonder if rushing into an expensive, ill thought out plan to expand living quarters could have been left to the next season.  I’ve heard building is a lot easier when there’s no snow…

I also find is unsettling that Stroud is insistent that for his children to “buy” into the off grid concept they’ve got to feel just as comfortable as they do in mainstream living.  In fact, the purchase of an additional pre fab cabin by Stroud was to allow his children to continue dance and other activities while living off grid.  In fact, one of the underlying themes of these videos is that if off-grid living doesn’t allow children to have all that they have been accustomed to in “mainstream” living, that we are somehow lacking as parents. 

In itself, I don’t have issue with wanting to provide children with the things we feel are important to their development, but was it necessary to their well being to have the extra space mid winter, especially since the Stroud’s were only living part time in their off grid home during that winter?  

Good planning?  Nope.  Good video?  Yup.

Ultimately I think what really bothers me is that when Chris and I decided to build an earthship we moved into a tiny space to conserve money and energy, hopefully lowering our footprint and making some philosophical statements about where we thought our lives were headed.  Although most people have been supportive, there were many comments about how we couldn’t possibly do “this” to our children, that they needed more space, that somehow we might damage them by our unusual choices.  I’ve heard this also from other friends with children who are pursuing similar routes.

We believed (and have witnessed) such a process of learning in our children in the last two years.  By setting an example for them (with no apologies) they have discovered with us that moving to a more sustainable lifestyle is not about deprivation but about learning really cool stuff.  They have begun to realize that all their choices have an impact.  We’ve taught them that to live sustainably, they won’t have certain things; a microwave for example, and that we scrub a bit harder with natural cleaners because to use chemicals means poisoning our food growing areas in the earthship.  And, despite my hardline position on giving up pantry space…that too would be up for grabs should we deem the house needed to change.

We continually assert that anybody can do what we are doing and that is why we have been sharing our process publically.  Watching Stroud’s videos one is left with the impression that it is only stuff of reality TV, that doing right by the environment is a personal life and death struggle that only the “survivorman’s” of the world could or would attempt.

It really is pretty easy and you don’t have to live three miles from a ploughed road to do it.  It takes good planning, a belief in what you are doing and the ability to stick to it.  That’s it!

Pleas watch the videos and tell me what YOU think!  I have yet to read comments on these videos that agreed with me!

on the 10th of November 2009 mom and dad picked us up from school for an very boring four and a half an hour drive. that night we arrived at our uncles house at about 7:00 we had some dinner then played video games for about an hour. we went to bed at about 8:30 because we had to get up early in the morning to catch the fairy at 8:30. the next morning we were up before my uncle and aunt in the morning we had breakfast. and drove to the fairy terminal. once we had our tickets we had about half an hour. once the fairy came we got on and went upstairs. we went straight to the decks and then mom went to go get some coffee. we went to the gift shop for a while and then we sat a bit then finally we got off.

Tom and Steph:

Alan:

Before I start laying out tires for the earthship I want to make sure I’ve accounted for all of the services entering the building.

1. Electrical from/to BC Hydro grid

Last year we installed a 200 amp residential service on the assumption we would build a log show home. The underground cable from this service is sufficiently long enough to enter the earthship into the services room from the north.

This cable needs to be run under or through the first round of tires.

2. Electrical from renewable sources (solar panels, wind turbine)

A cable needs to be run from the renewables to the storage batteries or a grid intertie with BC Hydro (if this is possible)

The solar panels will be on the south edge of the building roof and as such a cable from here would be run underground/along the ceiling to the services room.

A wind turbine (and possibly solar panels) would be attached to the shop. An underground cable needs to be run from the shop into the north end of the services room.

3. Sewage disposal

The septic tank is south of the earthship.
Septic will need to be run under the south edge of the building.

4. graywater distribution outside

5. potable water from well to services room and throughout house

3/4″ potable water line from the well needs to be run under/through first round of tires at north edge of services room.

6. harvested rainwater into the services room and to the planters/cistern?

7. Telephone cable

8. Ethernet cable

9. Hot water lines from roof to bathrooms/kitchen (does this need to go to services room via ground level or is it not a concern from a foundation/initial round of tires perspective?

10. Woodstove air intake

11. OUtdoor furnace in and out

12. Sevices inside the building

Lay electrical conduit through the tire walls to make wiring easier
I should come up with an electrical plan over the next little while to help in this …

13. French drain around building

french drain
–4” rigid PVC drainage pipe (perforated)
– gravel
– permeable landscape cloth
– fabric drain pipe sleeve
– fittings

1. For underground applications, Type K copper tube, plastic-covered Type G/GAS or plastic-coated Type L tube are required.

We finnally finished our chickenn coop on good Friday. Our Chick’s finnally get to explore the big worid at last. But they did not want to explore at first. we used worms as bait, that sort of worked, they went out, grabbed a worm and went back inside. it was probably too cold.

a short essay in the New Yorker offered this useful observation:

“The world’s financial and energy crises are connected, and they are similar because credit and fossil fuels are forms of leverage: oil, coal, and natural gas are multipliers of labor in much the same way that credit is a multiplier of wealth… Fossil fuels have enabled us to leverage the strength of our bodies, and we are borrowing against the world’s dwindling store of inexpensive energy in the same way that we borrowed against the illusory equity in our homes.”