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"Tis A Gift To Be Simple

I was reminded today of the deep longing that many of us have for simplicity in the midst of our ever more complex and rushed lives. Why is it that so many retirees spend a lot of their time traveling in RV's? I used to own a large 5th wheel trailer. It was 37 feet long and with all three slide outs it was just shy of 400 square feet. Now mind you, this was "street legal" so it was only 8 feet wide.....think about it the next time you see a motorhome or trailer on the road.
Many people become "full timers" and sell their homes and most of their possessions for the pleasure of living in a home on wheel that they can take with them wherever the feel they want to live at the moment. They can go where they want and never leave home. The average motorhome or travel trailer, even for a full timer, tends to be 8 feet wide and 28 to 30 feet long. With multiple slide outs the square footage can get up to between 300 to 350 square feet. The largest one are 40 feet long. That is still going to keep you at 400 square feet or less. If you have ever looked closely at these vehicles, you know that have great design and an amazing amont of storage for their size...but it is still very limited.
While one may be skeptical about the fuel required to move them from place to place, you have to admit that once there, they are very efficient. Many fulltimers only move two or three times a year anyway, prefering to stay in one place for several months and explore the area by car or to work so they can travel to a spot they want to be able to go to and NOT work.
In comparison to most homes, they are very small. Second, since many use propane and have their own generators, their useres tend to be frugal. If you look closely, you will see that some have solar panels.
My question is how we translate this ethos into homes that are NOT mobile? Check out the link to NPR's All Things Considered for some interesting thoughts and examples of really small homes!

What Can You Do Now?

"The energy consumption of most buildings can be cut 25 percent through retrofits and better operation. New construction, too, benefits from energy-efficient designs, effective commissioning and smart operations." This quote is from the Rebuild America website which offers good suggestions on affordable ways to save on energy retrofits. It gives information about federal and state programs that assist with accomplishing the work.Check it out for yourself at http://www.rebuildamerica.gov
Most people already live somewhere. They may choose to simply renovate or add on to their current space if the own it. Others are buying for the first time or may choose to buy a house with "good bones" and improve it. For someone facing a huge winter heating bill or in warmer state a summer cooling bill, 25% is quite a significant savings.
Correctly applied caulking and properly installed insulation combined with the best windows and doors you can afford will go a long way toward getting you that 25% savings.

Green Roofs

Green roofs have been used in some parts of the world for a long time. Today, systems are being developed that will allow us to retrofit almost any existing roof to bee a green roof. Why is this important? Habitat and green space that is being lost to building can be replaced to a dgree by green roofs. Many species of insects and birds who are being pushed out of their native habitat can remain there if there are green roofs.
Research shows that green roofs can also help lower the temperature of urban heat islands.
Plants will assist in controlling rainwater as well. Because they will retain water it eases the stress on drainage systems. Lightweight growing mediums and lightweight planting and waterproofing mediums make it possible to have a green roof without any chaqnges to existing roof structurs in most cases. Some installations will require more structural reinforcement to grow trees or have a rooftop plaza.
According to some studies, the existence of a green roof also extends the life of the roof by as much as 200%. And you never have to mow it.

Small is Beautiful

There is a great opportunity for being creative in a small home. Storage in older homes is sometimes a challenge but there is a plethora of storage systems and organizational systems on the market today and many of them work quite well. Closets are often smaller than what we are used to but those can be easily organized too. Built ins are a great solution.

The most practical solution, of course, is to reduce the amount of stuff we have to begin with. Do we really need that much? Consuming less helps us appreciate what we do have and maybe we will make choisce to have fewer things that are higher quality. What we don't have means that those less fortunate may be able to have something rather than nothing at all.

Creative use of light and color also can make a room seem spacious. Different furniture or different arrangement of furniture can change a room dramatically. Multi use spaces and multi use objects can expand a space many times over.

THE 2030 CHALLENGE

The 2030 Challenge issued by Edward Mazria, Santa Fe architecht and author of The Passive Solar Energy Book is stunning.He argues that this is not a matter of whether we can afford to do this or not but a matter of we CANNOT AFFORD NOT TO. Mazria is calling for all new buildings and developments, starting NOW, to be designed to use half the fossil fuel energy they would typically consume throughout their lifespan.

He goes further, mapping out a plan for a 60% reduction by 2010, a 70% reduction by 2015 and continuing 5% reductions in each 5 year period until in 2030 all new buildings would be carbon neutral.

The good news is that it has been predicted that next year will be the tipping point at which the majority rather than the minority of builders will describe their buildings as having green features. The ability to build homes that meet the standard of using 50% less in energy consumption is available today and has been for decades. It is time to put it to use.

Piano moving to New Mexico

For those of you who may not know it, my husband plays piano and guitar. In a recent post I wrote about buying a used piano at a garage sale for him. Here is some information from the wonderful piano technician whose work has made it sounds great.

"Now that you've had some time to play it, how is the piano working out for you? Thanks for your help with shimming the bottom board. That's not quite the level of craftsmanship they taught us at the North Bennet Street School (!), but in this case I think it's an acceptable field repair.

Since you're both Realtors, I thought I'd share this Q&A with you that I'm adding to my website, to help protect pianos that people bring in from out of state. I'm a big fan of humidity control, because I've seen what humidity swings can do to wood (as you know from your woodworking experience, as well). I was talking to Jim Boren over at the Piano Source the other day, and they heard a loud crack as a soundboard in a new Chinese piano let go. Apparently the wood wasn't seasoned properly.

Q: I've just moved my piano to New Mexico. Will the dryness here damage it?

A: Possibly; it depends. Sudden changes in humidity can damage pianos and anything else made of wood. Even though it's dry, the evaporative ("swamp") coolers we use here can quickly add a lot of moisture to the air. Cycling between wet and dry is particularly harmful. Pianos may sound better at a constant 45% relative humidity rather than a constant 15%. This is both because dry wood shrinks, causing less tension in the soundboard assembly, and because felt hammers change in characteristics such as resiliency with humidity.

Any brand new piano should be okay here; manufacturers typically dry wood down to a lower level than we get here. But if a piano has acclimated to a more humid climate for a year or two, an abrupt humidity change may in fact be harmful; wood cracks when it dries quickly. It's better if the change is slower. A way to avoid this is to use room humidifiers, or better still, to install a humidity control system right in the piano (see http://www.pianolifesaver.comContact me for more information on this.

These systems are available only from technicians, as the installation has to be customized for each piano. Generally they run about $400 for uprights, and $600 for grands (parts and labor), so it's not cost-effective for every piano (and yours has already adjusted to this environment). Room humidifiers can work; I'm not trying to come on with a hard sell here. But as you've heard me say over and over on Pianoworld, humidity control can only prevent damage, it can't repair it, and I sure like to let people know before it's too late. Damage can happen in less than a month."

Recommended Reading List

Even if you have seen the movie, AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH should be required reading for all of us. To be able to refer to this material when you need to or when you just need a good fright is invaluable! Remember, he did win the popular vote. The people usually know the right thing when the hear it.

FIELD NOTES FROM A CATASTROPHE is a further laying out of the scientific and indisputable climate and other changes occurring around the globe on a daily basis. This is not at all strident or polemical....it is just downright chilling.



On a more positive note LITTLE HOUSE ON THE SMALL PLANET is a celebration of the small house movement. It recounts the stories of people who have realizeed the benefits of scaling down.

Home Again

I haven't written anything here for awhile. I've been traveling and celebrating birthdays. In the process, my laptop died which made written communication a lot more difficult. My mother in law turned 92 and I turned 55. My husband's son turned 27 the same day his grandmother turned 92. Great family get togethers!
The best part of the trip to Oregon was the absolute abundance of goods and services oriented to recycling and reuse of products in all kinds of ways. Curbside recycling is a given in the small town where my mother in law lives. No one gives it a second thought. It is just natural to do it.
My husband has begun playing the piano more seriously in the last five or six years, so his Father's Day gift from me was a piano---recycled from a garage sale two houses down the street. For $100 I was able to buy the piano and have the owners move it into my living room. After some research, we found (by tracing the serial number) that the piano was actually a Howard by Baldwin (that will mean something to the muscians out there) built in 1923. When the piano tuner came, we discovered that the piano had started out as a player piano but the mechanism had been removed. The people we bought it from said it wound up in their garage after someone donated it to their small church. After a few years the church disbanded without them ever locating anyone who knew how to play the piano. Long story short with the combination of the piano sitting unplayed for many years and New Mexico's extremely piano friendly consistently low humidity the piano is in very good shape for an 83 year old. Lance is enjoying playing more on a real piano than on the low-end keyboards he's been used to for several years.
In the process of shopping for a used piano, Lance met a piano technician/tuner, Cy Shuster, through an online Piano Forum who was coincidently moving to Albuquerque from Boston in June. So Lance and the 1923 Baldwin got to be Cy's first customers in Albuquerque. The piano got a much needed tuning along with a few other tweaks and adjustments and the piano and Lance are even happier now.