 We're all familiar with the idea of a retrofit. The original word comes from the U.S. Air Force in the 1950s when older installations were updated to reflect modern innovations. But what about when we update modern installations to reflect future conditions? Can we call that a future fit? This is the Low-Tech Podcast. Hello and welcome, I'm Scott Johnson from the Low-Technology Institute. Your host for podcast number 61 on December 16th, 2022, coming to you for a special episode from outside Tampa, Florida. Thanks for joining us. Today I'm going to walk through how I would think about future fitting and otherwise modern subdivision for a future without fossil fuels. And don't forget to follow us on Twitter. Our handle is at low underscore techno. Like us on Facebook. Find us on Instagram. Subscribe to us on YouTube and check out our website lowtechinstitute.org. There you can find both of our podcasts as well as information about joining and supporting the Institute and its research. So some podcast distributors put ads on podcasts unless you hear me doing the ad, someone else is making money on that advertising while all of our podcast videos and other information are given freely. They do take resources to make and if you're in a position to help support our work and become part of this community, please consider becoming a monthly supporter for as little as $3 a month through our Patreon page, patreon.com slash low tech Institute. Another way to support us is to donate your used car. Anyone in the US can contact us and your used car will be picked up, sold and the proceeds will come our way. If you're interested in helping us out like Brian and Marvie did this two weeks ago, get in touch with us at info at lowtechinstitute.org. If you'd like to sponsor an episode directly, please get in touch with us through our website lowtechinstitute.org. Today I'm interrupting a vacation to record a quick field episode here in Tampa, Florida so forgive the background noise. Here I'm visiting family for a week. I've been enjoying exchanging the 10 and 20 degree temperatures back in Wisconsin for the 70s and sun down here. We're visiting my partner's parents at a brand new subdivision. It's so new that half of the houses are still being built as you can hear in the background and you can also see behind me if you're watching this on YouTube. My initial impression of this newly built house is that it's really comfortable for right now but would struggle in 20 years as oil becomes wickedly expensive and we transition away from other fossil fuels. But I changed my mind or at least thought more deeply about what this subdivision could represent in a new future if proactive changes were made. So today I'm going to take you on a tour of this house to give you a quick idea of what the baseline is which is pretty average for the US right now and then I'll invite you to get into my imaginary time machine to jump 20 years forward and visit this subdivision to take a tour of what could be possible if the right changes were made now. The house I'm staying in was just built in the last couple of years where a dozen miles from the coast of Florida so surviving a hurricane means with standing winds not flooding and that's reflected in the architecture. The house is reinforced cement block on a slab foundation. Single story with cement roof tiles. Windows are recessed with studs for metal storm shutters and although the roof structure is wooden rafters the great weight of the roof tiles should be pretty resistant from even the strongest winds. So in terms of withstanding the worst weather of the region it gets pretty high marks. If we look at more mundane day-to-day concerns endemic to Florida and any other hot muggy places in the US south we run into a few problems. First let's take a walk around the house. The biggest use of energy is cooling. Now when we look at the house we see these high roof vaults and outside there's no real attic storage as this upper space is meant to insulate the house from the heat. Obviously the color of the concrete roof tile could play a big role in how much solar radiation is turned into heat. With the colors ranging from tan to dark gray a better choice might have been lighter colors. The house's stucco-like exteriors have lighter color choices which is good. The house though essentially depends on a 14 seer AC unit for summer cooling and dehumidifying. Windows are modern and efficient with multiple panes to increase insulation value. But right now power comes from the local electric grid which is approximately 15% renewable 30% natural gas and the rest is coal or gasified natural gas also comes in through a main and runs the stove and clothes dryer. Currently the water and sewer system are run by the county in a pretty typical setup waters pumped in the aquifer and selected surface sources including Tampa Bay treated and piped through the water district. The wastewater is treated and about two-thirds of that is then returned to form irrigation and uses. Food comes from nearby grocery stores of course and here everybody is an obligate driver as public transportation is essentially non-existent although many people have electric golf courts to scoot around with as well as bikes as well as dedicated paths for each one of these. So now let's hop into my well-used imaginary time machine and jump 20 years into the future and let's say that we've come to our senses and have remade our infrastructure to be as locally self-contained as possible. In this case we'll imagine that the HOA underwent a radical transformation in 2023 that sowed the seeds of a self-contained community in 2042. Instead of a 55 plus community, young families from a wide varieties of backgrounds started buying up houses as the older residents passed away bringing with them the skilled trades and diversity of experience and food ways to create a unique community 20 years later. Luckily the strong houses are hurricane resistant and have stood up well. Surprisingly the buildings can be maintained with local materials Florida is a big limestone shelf and that calcium-containing stone can be burned to create the base material for lime plaster and concrete as long as the neighbors are careful not to over harvest their surrounding lamp through firewood they can repair the cement work of their houses basically forever. One change the citizens have made is staining and bleaching the dark roof tiles to lighten them as much as possible. Trees have been planted and moved to the south sides of buildings providing dense shade for the buildings in the summer heat. Hurricane shutters have been modified to function as retractable awnings which now adorn every window to keep the sun out in the summer. As power is now at a premium whole house AC units have been scrapped or modified instead now they dehumidify at night pulling in cool air at night to dehumidifying it and then dropping the temps in the houses as much as possible through the night. Some have adapted to sleeping in hammocks which are cooler than beds and during the day as it warms up the larger thermal mass of the concrete buildings stays cool through much of the day. Fans help move air in the buildings also of course and since people can't change the indoor conditions as much as they had back in 2022 they've modified their summer schedules working outside just until lunchtime and then keeping cool in the shade in the afternoon and then going out again in the evenings to enjoy the afternoon or the evening cooler temperatures. If the climate here starts to dry up evaporative cooling might be another option to help keep interior spaces cool although it comes with the downside of then using more precious water. You should look up evaporative cooling it's a really clever use of passive cooling more or less as opposed to the really active force that is our modern AC units. Power generation is a big change in 2022 only a handful of the houses here behind me had solar panels but shortly after the change almost every single house added panels. A few neighbors learned how to install and maintain the panels but even still 20 years later their efficiency is really starting to wane but because of the large amount of panels installed early on enough power is still generated for this new less energy intensive lifestyle. Thanks to the extremely sunny climate solar panels are even providing plenty of power in the winter. As I film this it is a couple weeks from the winter solstice so it's darkest part of the year and it's still plenty bright to power everything we would need here in Florida. It's lucky in that way it's very sun rich. The natural gas hot water heaters in 2042 have been adapted in addition to PV solar panels hot water solar panels have also been put on each house using the old hot water heaters to store the hot water for use during the darker time at night. Water has become a bigger issue than power and this surprised many of the neighbors local municipal water has been gone for years now instead of gutters running water out to the lawns which are also gone every square inch of roof collects rain water into cisterns. Tampa is very rainy with 51 inches per year meaning each roof here gathers an average of 81 thousand gallons per year. In 2020 the average american used 36 thousand gallons per year but with an average of four people per household now in 2042 this neighborhood has to cut back on extra water use. Some water is purified in solar evaporators for drinking and the rest is used very carefully. Without access to the sewer system the neighborhood has started a system of local waste recycling. Urine is collected in 55 gallon drums and stored for six months before being diluted and used for fertilizing the gardens. Flush toilets have been replaced by composting ones which collect solid waste and five gallon buckets which are brought to a central location for monitor composting where the managers make sure that the temperatures get hot enough to render any harmful bacteria and germs dead before the compost or waste can be used for boosting garden fertility. Water from showers and sinks has been routed into gray water ponds which hold the water for a short time allowing a settling of any solids and filtration through sand and cattail beds before flowing out into the lagoons. Every house here is clustered around about a half a dozen different artificial lagoons. Originally these were installed as ambiance and a draw for wildlife for the enjoyment of residents but these features have become the absolute saving grace of this community. Shallow ponds are some of the most biologically active spaces on earth. The lagoons have been modified into a complex food growing machine. First rectangular raised beds called chinampas in central Mexico and if you don't know what these are take a quick moment and google chinampa c-h-i-n-a-m-p-a-s and you'll see these they have been feeding central Mexico for 500 years. These raised beds in the in lagoons were created using wooden retaining walls and filling them with green matter from the nearby swamp. Between the rectangular beds then is a grid of canals. Aquatic plants were brought in as well as a variety of fish especially those that eat insect larvae to keep the mosquito population low. The plants are occasionally harvested and dumped into the garden beds to replenish the nutrients and with their growing surface just a few feet above the water capillary action draws up moisture into the roots of the plants growing there. Windmills turn the surface of the water introducing oxygen to help support the aquatic life. The water from the canals can even be used in emergencies to water terrestrial garden beds or put out fires but cement buildings so it's not a big deal and they've replaced the lawns around every house but with gardens the subdivision is very dense and without the lagoons the small lawns would not provide much growing space and although they can't grow all of their food within these neighborhoods they can grow almost everything that wouldn't survive out in the surrounding areas which are becoming more and more wild. So they grow things like tomatoes, okra, greens, fruit trees, peppers and so many other heat loving crops right here in the neighborhood. In addition foraging brings in plants, fruits and acorns to make meal as well as fish and other sources of protein. They bring in corn, beans and other crops from fields that they've produced outside of the settlement here. People have made kind of a game also out of maintaining their golf carts and bikes. Of course the golf carts are electric and so they can charge them with their solar panels but they're not getting new parts so maintaining those motors and batteries and kind of coaxing them along is really important and people gain significant social status from resurrecting otherwise defunct motors and batteries. This fairly typical suburban community took what seemed like drastic action in the early 20s and that paid dividends as everything around them became more unstable as electricity and oil became more expensive and eventually faltered food system destabilized collapsed at least for long distance provisioning. This community with a diverse set of skills and backgrounds had the foresight and ability to create a self-contained island of adaptation in an otherwise chaotic world. As work got out about their community representatives came to visit and learn here and some of the local systems managers took time to go to other sites and communities to help them create their own local support systems. So now as we get back in the imaginary time machine we have to remember that this is all imaginary in multiple ways. It's really a joke for me to say we're getting back into a time machine. It's just a way for me to discuss this thought experiment in kind of a fun way. It'd be really hard for this to actually happen for many reasons. Number one breaking covenants built into HOA agreements is extremely difficult. Local codes don't allow for experimentation and alternative systems. Finding a committed group of people who are willing to invest upfront in the systems that would allow people to create these self-sustaining communities would be really hard as it seems in this world matching funds to ideas like this are often very difficult. And now we come back to the word that I wanted to define. Future fitting. Instead of just bringing old buildings and systems and ideas into the modern age let's bring today's building systems and ideas into the future by understanding the changes that are coming and meeting them proactively instead of waiting to adapt after the fact. If retrofit is a verb meaning to modify old models so as to incorporate changes made in later versions then future fit is the verb that quote modify current models so as to incorporate upcoming anticipated changes. That's it for this week it's a little short because again I'm on vacation. The Low Technology Podcast is put out by the Low Technology Institute. The show is hosted and co-produced by me Scott Johnson and co-produced and edited by Hina Suzuki. This episode was recorded in a subdivision outside of Tampa, Florida. Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, YouTube and elsewhere. We hope you enjoyed this free podcast. If you'd like to join the community and help support the work we do please consider going to patreon.com slash Low Tech Institute and signing up. Thank you to our Forrester and Land Stewards level members, Sam Braun, Marilyn Skirpon and the Hambuses for their support. The Low Technology Institute is a 501c3 research organization supported by members, grants and underwriting. You can find out more information about the Low Technology Institute, membership and underwriting at lowtechinstitute.org. Find us on social media and reach me directly at scott at lowtechinstitute.org. Our intro music was Blue Skies off of the album Lazy Summer Lo-Fi by Halizna. That song is in the public domain and this podcast is under the Creative Commons Attribution and Share Like license, meaning you're free to use and share it as long as you give us credit. Thanks so much and take care.