[complianceowll]

Uh, that's absolutely badass...

As an adult, one of the things that fascinate me is self-sufficiency: the idea that you can buy a solar power system, install it, and use your own power -- without getting a bill in the mail every month, many times feeling like a victim of modern day suburban subjugation.

I'm still a good little obedient peasant, but I hope one day I can rely more on well water/rain catchment system, solar power, and propane.

Getting 70% of your electrical usage from your own solar power system has to be a good feeling.

[elevation]

> one day I can rely more on well water/rain catchment system

There are some fascinating youtube videos on digging your own backyard shallow well (12-40'). This close to the surface, the water is considered non-potable, and you should have yours tested, but you can pump up what you need for backyard garden irrigation. Wells like this can be seasonal, as it is essential a rainwater catchment system using the permeable ground as your reservoir. Still, a neat concept for a relatively low cost.

[tpm]

> There are some fascinating youtube videos on digging your own backyard shallow well (12-40').

What's more fascinating is that you would have to dig your own - here in the backyard of Europe you can call a specialised company, they will arrive with a rig and drill a well for you to basically any depth/diameter you want (for heat pumps you can go to 100m) cheap and fast, so it's basically never worth it doing it yourself.

[polairscience]

If you own a home you should genuinely spend time calculating and thinking about it. It's not near as far fetched as you think. You can benefit from the same technical advancements in engineering and manufacturing that have benefited every single industrial sector. It has never been easier. The number of plug and play components out there is unreal.

These days it's very much sun-legos. You decide what you can afford and what you think you need, and then you bolt the stuff together. Anyone who is willing to put time into it is capable.

[complianceowll]

I 100% believe you! We're planning on doing a custom build for our next home, and I'm going to budget for solar. Like you said, it's gotten so much easier these days and I think that we don't take advantage of this because it requires budgeting/saving and because paying a monthly bill can be so much easier in the short-term. But I'm 100% going to do this.

[elevation]

If you're building a place, consider how you could arrange some of your basement for effective food storage.

This family[0] appears to be 90% agriculturally self-sufficient: they occasionally eat out, but grow most of what they eat. They store a lot of food in their basement, critically, with a DIY ventilation system. If you're building a home from scratch, and you're independently minded, it's the ideal time to build in some food storage and ventilation access in your floor plan.

When I showed this video to a coworker who also eats mostly off her own land, she recommended beginning by experimenting with preserving store-bought produce before planting an ambitious garden that yields more food than you know how to store.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uz7OVfaYeSA

[polairscience]

Great, it's a life changing thing being fully independent of external chaos. If you are able to DIY it pays back in less than 5 years.

[ndhbxyd]

They dont talk about rebound effect. When energy gets cheap/free people produce more, consume more, waste more.

[parineum]

Cheap energy is what drives innovation.

You'd never have cheap solar if we didn't have cheap coal first.

The problems of today will be solved by more energy consumption (desalinization or carbon capture, for example), not less.

Innovation is "waste" until it creates something new.