October 16, 2008 • 14 mins
If you're tired of paying utility bills or relying on fossil fuels, it might be time to consider living off the grid. Check out this HowStuffWorks podcast to learn more about the techniques and strategies used by people living off the grid.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. Chuck's here. I'm here. I'm Josh Clark. This
is Chuck Bryant. We're both here. Yeah, we are, Chuck. Um.
You know, Chuck, I've been really getting batted around by
(00:22):
my electric company lately. Man. Do you know that, for
the most part, electric utilities just kind of guess how
much you've used, how much electricity you've used like now,
I think maybe once every quarder they send somebody out
to actually check. But I don't think they ever go
back and say, oh, we owe you some money because
we were wrong. They just guess how much you're using
(00:43):
so you can conserve as much electricity as you want.
It's actually good if you're doing that, you know, environmentally speaking,
but financially it may not help you at all. You
you may actually pay more. Basically, it's a lot of
times it's based on the previous year's usage. And uh,
I went to do some nightmares with the water company here. Man,
Oh yeah, that'll happen. Boy, ridiculous. You want to give
(01:04):
us details about your your nightmare. Uh yeah, I could
give you some quick details. We moved into uh this
house we bought and after being there a month, we
got a five thousand dollar water bill. Holy cow. Yeah,
so that you know it's set off a chain of
phone calls for just months. And that's not when you
just kind of swallow hard and go through with right. Yeah,
(01:25):
now that was bad. They're not fun to deal with
you and did you finally get it knocked down? I'm
not afraid to say that either they're not fun people
to deal with. Well no, And you also have to
think about it with the water company specifically or the
water utility. Um, you have no competitor to go to.
You can't just be like, oh, yeah, I have a
five grand how about this, I'm gonna go to your
competitor because they'll say we don't have one, so good luck.
(01:46):
You feel like you have no no power? The power
is all you know what this makes me want to do? Man,
go turn on a faucet. Now. It makes me want
to just live off the grid, scrap it all, get
the heck out of town, and shun public utilities altogether. Okay,
so I've I've heard of this. It's um, it's the
back to Earth movement, generally living off the grid. What
(02:08):
is it? It's well, yeah, it's one name for it,
back to Earth movement. It's basically people that I want
to take the solar energy and wind energy and conservation
a step further and completely be not tied to their
their power utilities and their water and their sewer gas. So, Chuck,
I'm pretty excited about this prospect of you know, not
(02:30):
having a power bill anymore clearly, or a water bill.
And I'm quite sure other people are, maybe even some
of our listeners when we talk a little bit about
living off the grid, because it's it's not it's pretty precise. Actually,
that has a very a very precise definition of what
it entails, right, and they starting starting usually with electricity. Yeah,
there's a plan, it's not you just don't go into
(02:51):
it all willy nilly, like what do I do grid? Um,
I don't want to get a bill anymore. Uh, now
that's not how it works. What happens is, um, there's
a few major bills. You know, cutting your phone is
easy because if you just decidy you don't want love
with the phone, you can cut your phone off because
your cable same deal. Have you ever actually lived without
(03:12):
cable TV? Yeah, yeah, it's but it's odd, isn't it.
It takes a little a little getting used to, and
then all of a sudden you can find reading and
having conversations. Did too. I went out cable for a
couple of years, and um yeah, the same thing happened.
I didn't miss it after a little while at all.
So it takes a little game used to, huh yeah,
but eventually I did cable. It's not all it's cracked
(03:32):
up to be. Although I do love my reality TV,
so this might be a little hard And now I'm
just kidding. Um Brett and Michael's Rock of Love. Sorry,
uh yeah. The grid basically refer to the power grids.
So you're talking about power, water. Your major utilities are
the ones that you're really going to have to work
to get around if you want to cut those off.
And you know, the obvious um answer for power is
(03:54):
solar power. It's it's obvious, but it's also fairly expensive,
isn't it. I mean, this is this is kind of
a financial obligation one is making here too. It's one
of those deals where it's you you pay some upfront,
but in the long run it pays itself off and
then you're making money basically. Yeah, there was a Bronan
article um once where I came across this company called
(04:16):
sun Power. They're out of California. They make these things
called sun tiles, and they're actually roof shingles that that
are individual solar cells. And they look just like roof shingles,
are just as durable as roof shingles, but they actually
connect to a power grid on your roof and apparently
they provide are they convert like more electricity or convert
(04:38):
solar power into more electricity than a traditional solar cell. Yeah, so,
I mean, I I don't know how expensive they are,
how much mass production they're in yet, but it seems
like a pretty good idea to me. That's a great idea.
And wind power is another awesome idea. A lot of
people are getting their their energy from the wind. It's
kind of the same concept at work, except the wind
(04:58):
blows a turbine instead of collecting the energy from the sun,
and that produces energy that's converted to usable energy. And
a lot of people are kind of hooking these things.
You don't need batteries. They're hooking these things into the grid,
but you're technically not off the grid then right, well, yeah,
there's a couple of uh ways here. If if you're
(05:19):
if you have solar power and that's pretty much all
you have going on. Uh, it's stored. The energy you
create a stored by the power company. And this is
actually kind of cool and not I don't think many
people know this. If you create more power then you're
using and you're still hooked up to the power system.
You get a check from them every month instead of
having to write a check. How cool does that? That
(05:40):
would be very cool Georgia Power sent you a check
for like a hundred bucks every month. It would be nice,
it'd be great. But at the same time, you'd still
be you're still in the grid, on the grid. Yeah,
if you want to completely cut ties, that means you
need to uh store the power yourself. And um you
do that, like you know, most people have like a
shed or a garage and just a huge uh supply
(06:01):
batteries all hooked together. Basically, it's it's really a pretty
simple system. And how do they how does the electricity
stored in the batteries as like DC right, and then
there's like a converter, right while an inverter and it
converts the d C to a C, which is what
you can use in your house. Hey, so quick fact
about a C and d C. Not the band, but
(06:21):
actual electricity. When you're being electrocuted, you're actually if you
see someone being electrocuted, you can tell whether the being
electrocuted by a direct current or an alternating current. You
know how, I can't wait to hear this. With a
direct current, you're frozen in place because your your muscles
are are seized up and it's just electricity running through.
With an alternating current, you'd be shaking from the the
(06:45):
spasms and contractions and and your muscles spasming and relaxing
over and over again as the current alternates. Wow. Yeah,
I would say that's the complete opposite of living off
the grid is dying dying on the grid. It's good though.
I like that. You're welcome. Um, all right, so we've
covered uh, your your power. Then there's water. You gotta
(07:07):
get your water somehow, and you do that through um.
You can have a well, or you can have a
cistern system. Cisterns basically like a slightly more sophisticated system
of rain barrels, right, increase of pump and just tying
into the plumbing in your house where rainbarrel might just
have a spigot. Yeah, it's basically just a big, big
water collector and um a lot of people you can
(07:29):
have them under your driveway. It's just like a big
cement tank. Yeah, not always cement. They can be plastic too,
but but it runs off of your roof. Yeah, it
runs off your roof. And the I wonder if the
sun tiles are good for allowing water to run down
them and collecting them, because I know you said in
the article just regular tile shingles not not that good
(07:49):
because you get all the little litttle eally, you don't
want your asphalt. I think it's made out of asphalt. Yeah, yeah,
you don't want that. And I think they've talked about
clay shingle and stuff like the metal metal shingles. Right. Yeah, Okay,
so so you got water. Most people who are living
off the grid as far as water goes, have a
well though, right, Like fifteen million Americans have a well. Yeah,
(08:12):
that's that's the number. And wells aren't cheap like three
grand to fifteen grand depending on how deep you have
to go, and the deeper you have to go, the
more expensive. And it's cleaner water though better water because
you're hitting like an aquifer or something, right, Yeah, groundwater
basically okay, But what do you do with your waist?
I mean you get a septic system, right, okay, And
(08:32):
a lot of people have septic systems as it is,
a lot of people are on septic and well and
might not realize that they're partially living off the grid
right now. They just don't live like in the city
right now. They moved into the trailer that or the
house that had the aseptic nan But I guess the
question is the question that was on my mind until
I figured the answer out, um was it's a good
(08:52):
idea to have a septic a septic system which uses
a leach field, which is basically the waste just goes
into the soil, right and a well. Isn't that like
the ultimate and recycling where you're like drinking your own
waste over and over again. You know, that's a good question.
You find an answer that, Yeah, the the it's actually okay,
And I think that is kind of what's happening to
(09:13):
a degree, Um, But the soil acts as a natural filter. Again,
you know the the microbes that all the all these
things in the soil that eat all the waste products
and basically all that's left is purified drinking water, right,
so and really green grass exactly Apparently if you have
the septic system and it goes out in your yard,
(09:34):
it's like incredibly rich soil. Yeah, exactly. Kind So then
you can grow your own Uh. That's part of the
living off the grid thing too, is a lot of
these people on the back to the Earth movement, they
grow their own crops, so that eliminates the need for
the refrigerator. And another big thing if you want to
be off grid, is your your garbage pickup. Not many
people think about that. So if you're growing your own
if you have chickens and you're getting your eggs from
(09:55):
your chickens and you're growing your own vegetables, you're not
dealing with egg cray it's and uh. Or if you're
milking around cows, you're not dealing with milk gut containers
and just a lot less waste is produced. So is
that an essential aspect to living off the grid, no
garbage collection. Yeah, I mean, if you really want to
be completely off grid, then um, you're gonna have to
(10:16):
get rid of your your waist pick up. But the
people that are into it can recycle enough and limit
their waste and composts enough to where they say they can,
you know, limit to like a bag of garbage a month.
And I learned something new. I didn't realize that you
could compost um animal waste or by products like chicken
skin or something like that. I thought it putrified and
(10:36):
that's not what you were supposed to do with compost
that it was just supposed to be plant matter. But
I looked it up and found out that you can,
and you have to just you have to turn your
compost a lot more. It can't just be a pile
that you throw stuff onto. Else all of a sudden,
you do have rats in that kind of thing. I haven't. Yeah,
that's cool. There's all kinds of things you can compost
if you go to like websites about composting, is pretty
(10:58):
cool to look into. So Chuck, I mean, I mean
I realized a lot of people are doing it because
they want to get away from the power bill, or
maybe they're getting back to earth. But is this like
a trend you're seeing, maybe not complete living off the grid,
but at least partial living off the grid. Well, I
mean I lived in Los Angeles before I came back
here to Atlanta, and uh, it's a lot bigger in
l A. If not completely off the grid. UM solar
(11:19):
and wind power and uh sister and systems. Really yeah,
so people trying to augment and not pay as much.
I think in okay, were you doing that? But I
click rainwater now just because out of your A C unit, right, yeah,
and my air conditioners water and we use that the
water plants. It's mainly just because we're under a watering
(11:40):
band and yeah, we don't want everything to die. Yeah, essentially.
But the final one that we need to cover, I
guess is gas. Um if you if you get your propane, uh,
you'd have to switch to propane sorry, Yeah, gas has
to be piped in through the grid, right, but you
can just have a big old truck come and fill
up your propane to there were some other backup power
(12:02):
supplies like electric generators that run on biodiesel. Yeah, that's
pretty cool. That's the augment. Like if you if you
are off grid and it's like not it's overcast for
like a week straight or rainy, you might not be
getting the energy need. So most of these people have
like backup systems and those those steps that seem you know,
minute and almost useless to people like us on the grid.
(12:24):
Like you know, if you if you make sure your
windows are sealed in colk properly, you can save a
hundred bucks. And you're like, who cares about a hundred
bucks over a year, But really, electricity is so cheap
that that hundred bucks equals a lot of a lot
of electricity, right, Um, So I imagine that if you're
living off the grid, it's best to take steps to
steal your home's envelope or you know, use passive solar construction,
(12:47):
which is the placement of trees to kind of keep
your house shoes and what color you paint your house
and where the windows are placed. Yeah, a lot of
people do that because then you won't need your lights
as much. You have more natural light. And the way
they have it set up with the windows is you
open some during certain parts of the year and others
and other parts of the year, and it encourages either
cool air or warm air to flow through. And uh,
(13:09):
I know that a lot of these folks when these hippies,
when when it doesn't rain for a long time, you know,
they'll like take really quick showers or not shower, or
you know, not flush the toilet if it's yellow, let
it mellow, and they'll do like just conservation techniques like
that help. You know, water is the next oil. These
people are gonna be down with it when when the
(13:30):
when the grig goes down, Yeah, it might be nice.
I'd love to night get bills. I'm with you. Great. Yeah, Well,
before you cut off your garbage service, first, go on
how stuff works dot com and read how Living off
the Grid works body Charles W. Bryant for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com? Let us know what you think. Send
(13:52):
an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousands twelve Camery.
It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from house Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. Chuck's here. I'm here. I'm Josh Clark. This
is Chuck Bryant. We're both here. Yeah, we are, Chuck. Um.
You know, Chuck, I've been really getting batted around by
(00:22):
my electric company lately. Man. Do you know that, for
the most part, electric utilities just kind of guess how
much you've used, how much electricity you've used like now,
I think maybe once every quarder they send somebody out
to actually check. But I don't think they ever go
back and say, oh, we owe you some money because
we were wrong. They just guess how much you're using
(00:43):
so you can conserve as much electricity as you want.
It's actually good if you're doing that, you know, environmentally speaking,
but financially it may not help you at all. You
you may actually pay more. Basically, it's a lot of
times it's based on the previous year's usage. And uh,
I went to do some nightmares with the water company here. Man,
Oh yeah, that'll happen. Boy, ridiculous. You want to give
(01:04):
us details about your your nightmare. Uh yeah, I could
give you some quick details. We moved into uh this
house we bought and after being there a month, we
got a five thousand dollar water bill. Holy cow. Yeah,
so that you know it's set off a chain of
phone calls for just months. And that's not when you
just kind of swallow hard and go through with right. Yeah,
(01:25):
now that was bad. They're not fun to deal with
you and did you finally get it knocked down? I'm
not afraid to say that either they're not fun people
to deal with. Well no, And you also have to
think about it with the water company specifically or the
water utility. Um, you have no competitor to go to.
You can't just be like, oh, yeah, I have a
five grand how about this, I'm gonna go to your
competitor because they'll say we don't have one, so good luck.
(01:46):
You feel like you have no no power? The power
is all you know what this makes me want to do? Man,
go turn on a faucet. Now. It makes me want
to just live off the grid, scrap it all, get
the heck out of town, and shun public utilities altogether. Okay,
so I've I've heard of this. It's um, it's the
back to Earth movement, generally living off the grid. What
(02:08):
is it? It's well, yeah, it's one name for it,
back to Earth movement. It's basically people that I want
to take the solar energy and wind energy and conservation
a step further and completely be not tied to their
their power utilities and their water and their sewer gas. So, Chuck,
I'm pretty excited about this prospect of you know, not
(02:30):
having a power bill anymore clearly, or a water bill.
And I'm quite sure other people are, maybe even some
of our listeners when we talk a little bit about
living off the grid, because it's it's not it's pretty precise. Actually,
that has a very a very precise definition of what
it entails, right, and they starting starting usually with electricity. Yeah,
there's a plan, it's not you just don't go into
(02:51):
it all willy nilly, like what do I do grid? Um,
I don't want to get a bill anymore. Uh, now
that's not how it works. What happens is, um, there's
a few major bills. You know, cutting your phone is
easy because if you just decidy you don't want love
with the phone, you can cut your phone off because
your cable same deal. Have you ever actually lived without
(03:12):
cable TV? Yeah, yeah, it's but it's odd, isn't it.
It takes a little a little getting used to, and
then all of a sudden you can find reading and
having conversations. Did too. I went out cable for a
couple of years, and um yeah, the same thing happened.
I didn't miss it after a little while at all.
So it takes a little game used to, huh yeah,
but eventually I did cable. It's not all it's cracked
(03:32):
up to be. Although I do love my reality TV,
so this might be a little hard And now I'm
just kidding. Um Brett and Michael's Rock of Love. Sorry,
uh yeah. The grid basically refer to the power grids.
So you're talking about power, water. Your major utilities are
the ones that you're really going to have to work
to get around if you want to cut those off.
And you know, the obvious um answer for power is
(03:54):
solar power. It's it's obvious, but it's also fairly expensive,
isn't it. I mean, this is this is kind of
a financial obligation one is making here too. It's one
of those deals where it's you you pay some upfront,
but in the long run it pays itself off and
then you're making money basically. Yeah, there was a Bronan
article um once where I came across this company called
(04:16):
sun Power. They're out of California. They make these things
called sun tiles, and they're actually roof shingles that that
are individual solar cells. And they look just like roof shingles,
are just as durable as roof shingles, but they actually
connect to a power grid on your roof and apparently
they provide are they convert like more electricity or convert
(04:38):
solar power into more electricity than a traditional solar cell. Yeah, so,
I mean, I I don't know how expensive they are,
how much mass production they're in yet, but it seems
like a pretty good idea to me. That's a great idea.
And wind power is another awesome idea. A lot of
people are getting their their energy from the wind. It's
kind of the same concept at work, except the wind
(04:58):
blows a turbine instead of collecting the energy from the sun,
and that produces energy that's converted to usable energy. And
a lot of people are kind of hooking these things.
You don't need batteries. They're hooking these things into the grid,
but you're technically not off the grid then right, well, yeah,
there's a couple of uh ways here. If if you're
(05:19):
if you have solar power and that's pretty much all
you have going on. Uh, it's stored. The energy you
create a stored by the power company. And this is
actually kind of cool and not I don't think many
people know this. If you create more power then you're
using and you're still hooked up to the power system.
You get a check from them every month instead of
having to write a check. How cool does that? That
(05:40):
would be very cool Georgia Power sent you a check
for like a hundred bucks every month. It would be nice,
it'd be great. But at the same time, you'd still
be you're still in the grid, on the grid. Yeah,
if you want to completely cut ties, that means you
need to uh store the power yourself. And um you
do that, like you know, most people have like a
shed or a garage and just a huge uh supply
(06:01):
batteries all hooked together. Basically, it's it's really a pretty
simple system. And how do they how does the electricity
stored in the batteries as like DC right, and then
there's like a converter, right while an inverter and it
converts the d C to a C, which is what
you can use in your house. Hey, so quick fact
about a C and d C. Not the band, but
(06:21):
actual electricity. When you're being electrocuted, you're actually if you
see someone being electrocuted, you can tell whether the being
electrocuted by a direct current or an alternating current. You
know how, I can't wait to hear this. With a
direct current, you're frozen in place because your your muscles
are are seized up and it's just electricity running through.
With an alternating current, you'd be shaking from the the
(06:45):
spasms and contractions and and your muscles spasming and relaxing
over and over again as the current alternates. Wow. Yeah,
I would say that's the complete opposite of living off
the grid is dying dying on the grid. It's good though.
I like that. You're welcome. Um, all right, so we've
covered uh, your your power. Then there's water. You gotta
(07:07):
get your water somehow, and you do that through um.
You can have a well, or you can have a
cistern system. Cisterns basically like a slightly more sophisticated system
of rain barrels, right, increase of pump and just tying
into the plumbing in your house where rainbarrel might just
have a spigot. Yeah, it's basically just a big, big
water collector and um a lot of people you can
(07:29):
have them under your driveway. It's just like a big
cement tank. Yeah, not always cement. They can be plastic too,
but but it runs off of your roof. Yeah, it
runs off your roof. And the I wonder if the
sun tiles are good for allowing water to run down
them and collecting them, because I know you said in
the article just regular tile shingles not not that good
(07:49):
because you get all the little litttle eally, you don't
want your asphalt. I think it's made out of asphalt. Yeah, yeah,
you don't want that. And I think they've talked about
clay shingle and stuff like the metal metal shingles. Right. Yeah, Okay,
so so you got water. Most people who are living
off the grid as far as water goes, have a
well though, right, Like fifteen million Americans have a well. Yeah,
(08:12):
that's that's the number. And wells aren't cheap like three
grand to fifteen grand depending on how deep you have
to go, and the deeper you have to go, the
more expensive. And it's cleaner water though better water because
you're hitting like an aquifer or something, right, Yeah, groundwater
basically okay, But what do you do with your waist?
I mean you get a septic system, right, okay, And
(08:32):
a lot of people have septic systems as it is,
a lot of people are on septic and well and
might not realize that they're partially living off the grid
right now. They just don't live like in the city
right now. They moved into the trailer that or the
house that had the aseptic nan But I guess the
question is the question that was on my mind until
I figured the answer out, um was it's a good
(08:52):
idea to have a septic a septic system which uses
a leach field, which is basically the waste just goes
into the soil, right and a well. Isn't that like
the ultimate and recycling where you're like drinking your own
waste over and over again. You know, that's a good question.
You find an answer that, Yeah, the the it's actually okay,
And I think that is kind of what's happening to
(09:13):
a degree, Um, But the soil acts as a natural filter. Again,
you know the the microbes that all the all these
things in the soil that eat all the waste products
and basically all that's left is purified drinking water, right,
so and really green grass exactly Apparently if you have
the septic system and it goes out in your yard,
(09:34):
it's like incredibly rich soil. Yeah, exactly. Kind So then
you can grow your own Uh. That's part of the
living off the grid thing too, is a lot of
these people on the back to the Earth movement, they
grow their own crops, so that eliminates the need for
the refrigerator. And another big thing if you want to
be off grid, is your your garbage pickup. Not many
people think about that. So if you're growing your own
if you have chickens and you're getting your eggs from
(09:55):
your chickens and you're growing your own vegetables, you're not
dealing with egg cray it's and uh. Or if you're
milking around cows, you're not dealing with milk gut containers
and just a lot less waste is produced. So is
that an essential aspect to living off the grid, no
garbage collection. Yeah, I mean, if you really want to
be completely off grid, then um, you're gonna have to
(10:16):
get rid of your your waist pick up. But the
people that are into it can recycle enough and limit
their waste and composts enough to where they say they can,
you know, limit to like a bag of garbage a month.
And I learned something new. I didn't realize that you
could compost um animal waste or by products like chicken
skin or something like that. I thought it putrified and
(10:36):
that's not what you were supposed to do with compost
that it was just supposed to be plant matter. But
I looked it up and found out that you can,
and you have to just you have to turn your
compost a lot more. It can't just be a pile
that you throw stuff onto. Else all of a sudden,
you do have rats in that kind of thing. I haven't. Yeah,
that's cool. There's all kinds of things you can compost
if you go to like websites about composting, is pretty
(10:58):
cool to look into. So Chuck, I mean, I mean
I realized a lot of people are doing it because
they want to get away from the power bill, or
maybe they're getting back to earth. But is this like
a trend you're seeing, maybe not complete living off the grid,
but at least partial living off the grid. Well, I
mean I lived in Los Angeles before I came back
here to Atlanta, and uh, it's a lot bigger in
l A. If not completely off the grid. UM solar
(11:19):
and wind power and uh sister and systems. Really yeah,
so people trying to augment and not pay as much.
I think in okay, were you doing that? But I
click rainwater now just because out of your A C unit, right, yeah,
and my air conditioners water and we use that the
water plants. It's mainly just because we're under a watering
(11:40):
band and yeah, we don't want everything to die. Yeah, essentially.
But the final one that we need to cover, I
guess is gas. Um if you if you get your propane, uh,
you'd have to switch to propane sorry, Yeah, gas has
to be piped in through the grid, right, but you
can just have a big old truck come and fill
up your propane to there were some other backup power
(12:02):
supplies like electric generators that run on biodiesel. Yeah, that's
pretty cool. That's the augment. Like if you if you
are off grid and it's like not it's overcast for
like a week straight or rainy, you might not be
getting the energy need. So most of these people have
like backup systems and those those steps that seem you know,
minute and almost useless to people like us on the grid.
(12:24):
Like you know, if you if you make sure your
windows are sealed in colk properly, you can save a
hundred bucks. And you're like, who cares about a hundred
bucks over a year, But really, electricity is so cheap
that that hundred bucks equals a lot of a lot
of electricity, right, Um, So I imagine that if you're
living off the grid, it's best to take steps to
steal your home's envelope or you know, use passive solar construction,
(12:47):
which is the placement of trees to kind of keep
your house shoes and what color you paint your house
and where the windows are placed. Yeah, a lot of
people do that because then you won't need your lights
as much. You have more natural light. And the way
they have it set up with the windows is you
open some during certain parts of the year and others
and other parts of the year, and it encourages either
cool air or warm air to flow through. And uh,
(13:09):
I know that a lot of these folks when these hippies,
when when it doesn't rain for a long time, you know,
they'll like take really quick showers or not shower, or
you know, not flush the toilet if it's yellow, let
it mellow, and they'll do like just conservation techniques like
that help. You know, water is the next oil. These
people are gonna be down with it when when the
(13:30):
when the grig goes down, Yeah, it might be nice.
I'd love to night get bills. I'm with you. Great. Yeah, Well,
before you cut off your garbage service, first, go on
how stuff works dot com and read how Living off
the Grid works body Charles W. Bryant for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
works dot com? Let us know what you think. Send
(13:52):
an email to podcast at how stuff works dot com.
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