As I settle in to write, it is only mid-September, but everything feels more like the middle of autumn in the high country. When I was last here, just two days ago, the aspens had turned about 20 percent, already ahead of schedule by normal standards. But today, I would estimate that the total is closer to 40%. Some say it is due to the wetter-than-usual August weather we enjoyed, but who knows for sure?
Steady rain again today; forecast says to expect it all day. It sounds wonderful coming down on the metal roof, but there’s not much solar gain. My house is off grid and relies on stored energy, and it reminds me of something my friend Richard Morgan shared about capturing rainwater in theTexas hill country: “When you become a water harvester, you become a water steward.”
The same thing goes for sunshine. You won’t check the charge level in the solar batteries very often on a sunny day, but that changes when skies are dark. It makes you pay more attention to what is in use and burning watts. Each time you reach for a light switch, you’re also making a silent calculation.
Mariposa Meadows is in a naturally beautiful, quiet locale. But solitude comes with a side helping of accountability. That’s why it’s probably a healthy thing to consider compromise sometimes, just like when you’re counting calories.
When it comes to shelter, you want dry, warm, and safe. The fundamentals are obvious, and they haven’t really changed a great deal since our ancestors moved indoors. How many generations passed before we saw running water, central heat, or electric lights? Not to mention the big one, air conditioning?
The rate of progress has since accelerated. Exhaust fans. Smoke detectors. Security and fire suppression systems. Whole-house energy monitoring with automated response. Building science opened the floodgates. The more you know, the more you have to make choices, including on items such as BTUs, kilowatt hours, embodied energy, carbon footprint. Once upon a time, all you had to do was stand upwind of the campfire.
Every new technology, each new solution, all the latest conveniences come at a cost, and these are not just financial (although those certainly can’t be ignored). It might also mean assigning responsibility for assuring successful, reliable operation. Who wants to hear from a customer who is aggravated because the Delayed Start function on the dishwasher is misbehaving? Not me.
The learning curve for all of this new technology looks more and more like a hockey stick. My plumbing contractor has been forced to become part engineer. No wonder he can’t recruit new people to the trade, at any price. NASA pays more and its jobs come with a lot more prestige. Plumbing stopped, a long time ago, just being about getting your hands dirty.
When I got into the homebuilding business, there were people wearing white collars and there were others wearing blue collars. If the size of your operation was below a certain threshold you probably had to wear both. If you lacked knowledge and skills as a builder, you risked delivering an inferior product.
If you couldn’t handle the fundamentals of running a business, sooner or later you would find yourself having to make a hard choice between paying your help, your suppliers, your insurance premium or the tax man.
It doesn’t stop there. Now you also have to wear a green collar. I’m willing to take a certain amount of credit or blame, depending on your point of view, for that fact. When, as an industry, we opted or were forced to acknowledge the footprint that the built environment leaves on the natural one, we entered a whole new reality.
When that train left the station, the cars carried waste reduction, resource management, energy efficiency, and indoor air quality. Before long, we added greater focus on land use, water quality and availability, and proximity to public transportation. That doesn’t even start to become a comprehensive list. Now we’re grappling with environmental, social and governance (ESG), carbon offsets, and regenerativebuilding.
It’s a lot to think about. But the sun just peeked through. Think I’ll go and check my power readings.