Hey Nick,
A quick word of warning for you and/or anyone else that wants to ever live
in a solar powered house:
In 1991 I build a solar powered dream house in a remote area of the
Tehachapi Mountains in California. It was three miles to the power lines and 15
minutes to town. I seemed like paradise. I soon learned some harsh realities.
1. A person that moves to the mountains for peace and quiet in a solar
electric house can get neighbors that run Briggs & Stratton generators 24 hours
a day. One neighbor had an air cooled 2 cylinder diesel generator that ran day
and night.
2. A person that moves to the remote mountains because they love the trees
and wildlife gets neighbors that move there so they can illegally poach
firewood and shoot deer out of season.
3. I heard gunshots daily and machine guns weekly. Law enforcement would
refuse to respond to almost anything. Sometimes when they did, they would
arrest the victim and let the perpetrators go. Firearms and firearms threats
were routinely used to settle inter-neighbor disputes.
4. One year, 4 out of the 28 full time residence households in my little
community had family members sent to jail or prison.
5. My neighbor would turn packs of pit bulls to roam freely at night. He
wasn't the only one.
6. All of these hellish people moved in after I built my house. It was a
nightmare where you never wake up. When you move off of the power grid to a
remote area, you can run into a really undesireable set of people if you are
not careful. My list of nightmarish stories is unending and I choose to try not
to think about them.
I sold my house at a loss to a guy that had 666 tattooed on his eyelids. I
would consider living in a solar powered house at Lake Tahoe or somewhere, but
not too far off of the beaten path where the weirdo's are trying to hide out.
Bill Brewer
Now living in the gated community of Bear Valley Springs, California
*****Original message*****
So that's where I stand. I recycle whenever possible, I hope some day to own
a solar-powered home, and I hug trees, but I intend to keep driving cars from
the 60's and 70's until the day I die (presumably behind the wheel of one of
them).
- -Nick Wolf
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