The Cost of Preparing for Peak Oil

Investing in self-sufficiency is expensive, both in time and money. At first glance it seems that by the time we’re done building our house, we’ll have no money left over for purchasing so much as a chicken, let alone a barnful of critters. What about including solar panels, a cistern, or a composting toilet?

That’s why I am all about approaching Peak Oil preparations in an organized manner using tools such as Systems Engineering. We must have a structured plan on we risk making mistakes in allocating our scarce resources.

At the end of this post is a rough list I compiled for the cost of many of the major components of a home. This list is by no means inclusive, but serves to give an idea of the cost of typical items you might choose to include in a house. I based the estimates off of the 1700 sq. ft. home size used in the Peak Oil Homestead Project.

The cost of building a home varies greatly depending on your area, how much work you do yourself, the available resources, and the allowable building codes. I obtained great estimates from here, which is the best (free) home construction price calculator I’ve found. It also breaks the end result down in great detail.

If we pick through the options, it’s apparent that it will be very expensive to meet all of our requirements. Let’s take an example preliminary design with the following components: basement ($10k - 15k), greywater system ($500 – 1000), composting toilet ($1500 – 2500), 2 kW solar ($15k – 20k), wood cookstove ($950 – 2500), solar water heater ($200 – 600), wood flooring ($2000 – 3000), metal roofing ($16k – 30k), standard cistern ($1200 – 2500 with pump), and strawbale construction (roughly equivalent cost to standard wood frame construction). After accounting for cabinets, sinks, windows, electrical, plumbing, siding, taxes & fees, the total could be anywhere from $123,000 to $190,000.

Already you can see that a lot of tough choices will be required in order to construct an affordable house.

But yegads! What about the rest of the homestead? The animals, the barns, the fences, the farm equipment, the hoarded supplies, the pond, the crops????? We have to scale down our plans if we are to have any hope of completing the project with the money we have. (Recall for the Homestead Project, the budget is $100k and it’s assumed the land is already owned.)

What are our alternatives? The first and most glaring expense is the sheer size of the house. In the Homestead Project, our acceptance criteria (the minimum acceptable features) allow for a house of no less than 800 sq. ft. (still quite large by world standards). Also consider building an initial small house and adding on later as your time and resource budget allow.

There are many other options available to reducing the overall cost of the house. Basements are very expensive -- a concrete slab of post & beam foundation can sometimes nip quite a bit off of the total depending on your soil, climate, and various other factors. With slab, however, pay careful attention to the layout of utility lines -- a cemented pipe that springs a leak would be a nightmare to fix post-Peak Oil.

Hiring a contractor is a huge cost, but you must have knowledgeable people in order to build a home. Look for people among you community, friends, or family to help you.

Recycling old materials can save mucho dinero, but be forewarned that many contractors won’t work with materials that can’t be certified structurally sound. Look around for old buildings (such as vacated barns) and offer to tear it down for the owner in exchange for the materials.

Metal roofs are lighter and more durable than about anything else, but much more expensive than everything else save slate. Asphalt shingles are cheaper, but don’t last as long and shouldn’t be used for rainwater collection systems. On the other hand, you could accept the shorter lifespan and plan to replace them with wood shingles that you collect (and cure) over the years.

What some might consider a pretty drastic option is cutting out electricity, or at least scaling it back a bit. If you’re psychologically prepared for it, this option could save you a great deal of money. Remember that chances are you’ll have to live without electricity at some point as replacement parts become more difficult to obtain, so accepting the loss now could save heartache later.

If the finances still won’t add up, it’s time for the nuclear option: look at the essentials of food, water, shelter, and energy (e.g. heat). Look into a yurt or similar structure. Consider the fact that Native Americans and other lived comfortably for thousands of years in low-impact structures. It’s a reality for which we should all be prepared in case our post-Peak Oil plans don’t work out quite as well as we hoped.