Our Carbon Footprint Is Getting Bigger
by John McLachlan
Sad, but true!
We are planning to build a relatively “green” house on Hornby Island. We’ll be doing things like having a green roof and collecting water off of it, using water-efficient appliances, insulating well and using double or triple-pane windows, possibly including some solar panels to help offset hot water heating cost, looking into “waterless” urinals (that’s a post unto itself) and also having a garden to grow some of our own food.
But really, let’s not fool ourselves. Our carbon footprint is going to be WAY bigger than it is living how we currently live.
Right now, we live in a condo in downtown Vancouver. With this mild climate of this city and the construction of towers, we spend about $600 per year to heat our apartment. We drive our car about 3,000 kilometers per year (2,000 miles) and most of that is for longer trips. The car now can easily sit for a week without use. We walk everywhere downtown. Darren uses transit for getting to work. We buy groceries a block from where we live.
We really do want to go as green as we possibly can, but it’s easy to fool ourselves into thinking how wonderful we are doing this when the realty is:
- We will live on an island which means there is even more oil needed to deliver products there not to mention just to get there ourselves
- We will have to drive to get most groceries and other supplies will require a two ferry rides
- A 1,500 square foot house will require much more energy to operate than a condo
- The infrastructure of a house means no shared facilities so I suspect our effect regarding resources (wood, steel, tile, paint, you name it) will be higher as well and all those products need to be shipped there
The good news is, we will live in a place that does make recycling easy, we can cycle to get small groceries if needed and I suspect that over time, Hornby Island will develop more of its own little economy whereby smaller farms can start to supply different products that can be bought on the island.
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I think in time, we will be forced to use more locally grown products and learn to live with less travel off the island to get things. I am a firm believer that, like Canadian economist, Jeff Rubin says in his new book Why Your World Is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller: Oil and the End of Globalization, that we are in for a radical shift in where our products come from, whether that be food or hard items and we will be traveling a whole lot less once oil starts to really go up in price.
Being more self-sufficient is going to be a real asset.
Being more self-sufficient is an aspect of our decision to move to Hornby Island despite the bigger boots we’ll have to wear.
Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink
When it comes to living and building “green,” water plays an important part. In fact, what’s more important than water?
I’ve been contemplating this lately as we will be living on a small island that has “water issues.” Essentially, water is very precious on Hornby Island. Despite being on the coast of BC, the island itself is in a rain shadow. The weather hits Vancouver Island and dumps lots of rain there, then it passes over the Strait of Georgia (where Hornby Island is) before dumping more rain on places like Vancouver.
The land we will be building on has no access to a public water system. This leaves us two ways to get water. Drill a deep well (100-150 feet) and/or put in water collection facilities from the roof. We will likely do both.
Rough estimates based on average annual rainfall (about 50 inches) are that we could collect about 22,000 gallons per year from the roof. This, supplemented by a deep well would be adequate for our needs.
Of course, there’s a cost to these systems that is probably in the range of $30,000 in total. After living in a city off a public system, this figure makes you stand up and take notice and think about how you will use water.
A lesson learned…
Not a scene from Macbeth. This is Nancy McLachlan looking at the ground water well in 1966.
I learned a great lesson as a kid that I am very thankful for now. When my family would spend the summer at the cabin—next door to where we’ll be building now—we had a ground water well dug down about 15 feet.
In April, there’d be about 10 feet in the well and it was no problem using its water then because it filled up quickly each night but in the summer, it was another story. By the end of August there could be as little as three inches left in the well.
We had to be sooooo careful. We would literally turn on the tap for just a flash to wet a toothbrush. My mother would take sponge baths as there was just no way a tub could be run except about once per week. We often did laundry at a Laundromat on the island that had access to a larger water supply, but even washing dishes was a careful affair.
Then there was the toilet (which had a honkin’ big tank as they all did back then). We would follow the “if it’s yellow, let it mellow” routine, but still, that only goes so far. Eventually, you have to flush.
To help out, we got the water rights to a spring that was on a right-of-way next to our property (it’s called McLachlan Spring). My dad dug a shallow well in the ravine and snaked a plastic hose up to the deck where we had a hand pump. We used this water for the toilet and for activities such as rinsing off sandy shoes and feet after swimming.
It took a fair bit of pumping to fill a two gallon bucket and the toilet took almost three buckets to fill. If you flushed, you pumped. This created somewhat of a competition at times to see who could hold it longer so they wouldn’t have to flush (and then pump)!
My home was and currently is Vancouver where fresh water from mountain runoff is in plentiful supply. Except for a few years, the city has never really had to worry too much about water compared to many cities in the world. Even when we have had strict water restrictions, it’s still nothing to what I experienced on Hornby Island.
With luck, we will have a good supply of water for both inside and outside (garden) but only if we implement a large cistern for water collection and are careful with how we use our supply. All I will have to do is remember how little you can get by on if you have to and it should be fine.
In future posts we’ll look at various options and details on the many facets (and faucets) that will need to be considered with making sure we have a good water supply.
