Can you really live without electricity?

[leclerc]

I suspect some bloody workman down the road hit the cable which shut down my electricity supply(as it runs the fire alarm in my house then it meant that the fault button was beeping so an early morning alarm call for me so lack of sleep).
My usual routine is coffee.....no electricity for the kettle and the oven is electric. Hot Water, was my next thought....no electricity which mean the pump on the heater doesn't work so a lovely cold shower was had by me this morning.
No TV today, No Internet today(yesterday as it is after 12pm).
In fact, I had no books to read, couldn't afford to be out so listened to the radio on my mobile, was more excited than usual about the post(and of course, I got absolutely nothing, not even a bill).

Thank God I work in a hospital cos I defrosted, had a hot meal and some coffee......

Can you live without electricity? I can't.

[pompeyfaith]

Re: Can you really live without electricity?

well if they could years ago im sure with a bit of imagination we could now just think no more leccy bills now where is my tree house

[Caspar]

Re: Can you really live without electricity?

Interesting question. Do you mean can you live without electricity or can you live without mains electricity. We have a motorhome which is entirely self sufficient in terms of producing electricity for us - doesn't cost us a penny. We need it, but we don't need it supplied to us as we produce it ourselves in more than sufficient quantities for our needs which in the motorhome are basically lighting when dark, watching TV, charging mobiles and running laptops if we can get a signal. As we tend to go to very remote places to escape, we rarely have a signal for the internet.

A friend of mine in Cornwall works for a company that builds off shore wind farms (you would have thought a very green industry!). He's just finished one project and they had five huge generators being thrown away (literally going to landfill). He took a senior member of staff out for a pub meal and hey presto, one of the generators gets delivered to his house (3 acre of grounds with a main house and a smaller house). He now uses this to produce all his domestic electricity for both houses - and it was going to landfill (very green for a company building wind farms).

[The Debt Star]

Re: Can you really live without electricity?

Our whole civilsation is dependant on the flick of a switch.

Think about it. All those banks, offices and businesses that use computers for their record keeping, word processing and logistics. Pull the plug and they can't do didd;y sqwat. I know, it happens. When the power goes down at work people sit aroubnd twiddling their fingers and can't even brew a cup of tea.

Now, translate that to airlines, ships, supermarkets, the fuel industry, Government, the armed forces etc.

What's amazing is that 20 years ago hardly anyone relied on computers and typewriters were common. Also paper filing cabinets. How its all changed!

I do think that at home its possible to live withoyut electricity but it would quite a hard life. The only lighting would be candles and parafin lamps and no hit running water. Heating would be a fire and possibly, if you're lucky, the aga could be set up to heat the house.

Didn't that Tony Martin chap live in a farmhouse without electricity? I think he did. So there are people that do it. Although it may not be the best example in the world

[Amethyst]

Re: Can you really live without electricity?

We regularly have a few hours without electric, by virtue of having an electric meter. We have candles and play board games if its going to be the next day before we get paid. Mostly miss the kettle. We tend to keep laptops and phones charged up and the landline phone is just a wall plug in job so no issues there..and we can work or do offline stuff on the laptop till the battery runs out (which is a good few hours on this netbook).

Its better in the Summer as we have all electric heating and cooking facilities, so hot water disappears with that, but we have an old gas fire we can put on if we have some gas in the bottle.

I don't mind it, its annoying but if it is only a short period then its actually nice and makes for a more peaceful,famility orientated evening, which is sad really that we don't do that so much when we have power for the wii, tv and t'internet.

We could live long term without electric if we had gas for cooking/heating, we have just gotten far too used to having it, its made us lazy. Fridges and Freezers not being available might also make us a bit more economical with shopping and more self sufficient, as we'd probably have a bit more time and inclination do things for ourselves rather than watching corrie or plonking about on facebook.

A while back there was a series of programmes about the NAtional Grid I kept bugging people to watch, very interesting and covers this subject qute well. Shows how we were kinda engineered into having such reliance on electricity to enable to expansion of the grid and increase manafacturing etc by the government.

[Caspar]

Re: Can you really live without electricity?

The Caspar Household has had a transformation over Christmas. We were burning candles each night, and liked them and the heat they give out so much we bought a shed loaad in the sales and still burn them every night (it's lovely and romantic!). We have one small lamp on so I can function as I can't sit still for more than 10 seconds at any time and have to have something to do, otherwise the candles produce our light and after about an hour we switch the heating off and the candles maintain the temperature till we go to bed.

We didn't do it for this reason, but it will be interesting to see how it alters our bills.

[Lokibakb12]

Very interesting