[OKC] Designing to meet the extreme: Thoughts on the feebleness of fossil fuels in the face of extreme weather

[Bob Waldrop]

I am always struck by the "feebleness" of human-harnessed energies when confronted by extreme weather.

In my 11 mile, 2 hour trek to work during the 2009 Christmas Eve blizzard here in Okie City, I had to stop three times to break ice off the windshield wipers and  scrape the windshield.  I had the defroster running on high, but it could not keep up with the snow and ice even though it was pulling heat from 8 cylinders of internal combustion, which has to be a lot of btus.

It took a lot of gasoline, diesel, propane,  natural gas, and electricity generated with nat gas and coal, for OKC to survive that winter blast. The heating in the church at Epiphany, which has a lot of glass, was running constantly on Christmas Eve, and those are some powerful heaters, the room is designed to seat 800.  My Chevy silverado pickup was barely adequate for the task of navigating the blizzard, and as of yesterday remained stuck in a snow bank in the Epiphany parking lot.  My Geo Metro, on the other hand, seems pretty nimble getting around in the aftermath, even though it has only 3 cylinders to the Chevy's 8.  My house did not take any natural gas, and only a little electricity, and later once I was home some wood, to make it through just fine thanks to extreme insulation and the sun.

This experience reminds of the permaculture strategy of designing to meet the extreme.  One of the things necessary to do permaculture design  is adequate climate records.  In compiling such, "average" data is not as useful as the monthly minimujms and maximums.  That tells us over time what is needed to deal with the climate extremes.  I suspect that is another problem with gov-recommended levels of insulation.  They aren't designed for extremes, they design probably for the means or maybe even the averages.  The unstated assumption is that there will always be plenty of fossil fuels to "make up the difference when (e.g.) in central Oklahoma, instead of temps in the mid 30s or mid 40s, the temps decline to the single digits or mid-teens.  So far so good a strategy for the "Ascent" face of tech civilization, not a very good bet on the Descent side of the hill.

Going forward, yesterday's extreme may very well become the next decade's "new normal" or "mean".  That has implications for all of our design decisions during the "Descent" years.  

One final note -- really cold weather is a GREAT time to look for air leaks.  I found two BIG ones on my sun porch before I left on Christmas Eve.  We used a lot of caulk and foam on the sun porch but as local sustainability-oriented builder Tom Temple said to me when I asked him about some cracks in the brick exterior of my home, "Nothing stays where you put it."  Last year's nicely caulked seem can become this year's air leak. Yes, the tube says "20 year caulk", but "nothing stays where you put it".  Everything moves around a bit, and it doesn't take much to open up a new air leak. Not coincidentally, both were under the doors (under the frame, not the seal between the door and the frame).   "Eternal vigilance is the price of internal comfort in your home."  Which is to say, "you're never finished," when it comes to weatherization and etc.  

Bob Waldrop, OKC
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