Maintenance is the most time consuming activity at a homestead, but it could also become one of the most enjoyable. Feeding the animals, tending the garden, or patching a hole doesn’t have to be a burden, but only if you plan ahead.
Some requirements that may help ensure happy maintenance for the life of our example Peak Oil Homestead are discussed below.
The homestead shall require no more than 40 person-hours/week for maintenance.
This includes standard repairs, animal, crop care, etc. Your personal allowable limit for the amount of time spent maintaining the homestead (not including time spent on your livelihood) may vary, but trying to keep the amount of time low will be good for your mental health.
The homestead shall require no more than 1 year of training for an adult to reach proficiency in standard maintenance.
This requirement ensures that operation of the homestead is not so complex that a person (e.g. your child, your spouse, you!) can’t learn how to maintain it in a reasonable period of time.
The homestead shall allow maintenance with a minimum of stress for the occupants.
Here we’re trying to emphasize that maintenance should be low-stress for everyone on the homestead. During design, you can try to satisfy this requirement by taking a survey of all who will live there (including kids) for each design solution you develop. Have them rate each design on a variety of factors including ease of use.
The homestead shall allow maintenance using standard unpowered tools.
Keeping an eye toward designing for Peak Oil, we want to ensure that we can continue to maintain the homestead with using electricity-dependent tools.
The homestead shall allow maintenance using replacement materials available no more than 10 miles away.
Again looking toward Peak Oil, we want to ensure that everything we will need is available nearby. It may be difficult to predict what will be available in your area in the future, so to meet this requirement you might need to stockpile or learn how to manufacture a variety of parts.
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Minimizing Toxic Inputs
I'd want to further require that toxic chemicals be minimized, but that might conflict with availability of materials in some instances. A good example of that would be using cedar products when available, rather than other wood products with preservatives.
I absolutely agree, Jade --
I absolutely agree, Jade -- I have a slew of sustainability requirements coming up in the next couple posts that I believe cover that aspect.
Yah, Boo! to "pressure treated" wood -- if you value your long-term health, avoid it completely. Cedar is an excellent example of a good alternative for vulnerable areas like exterior siding.
Something else we'll get to before too long is the idea of prioritizing requirements when there's a conflict, so that you have a structured approach to dealing with mutually exclusive requirements.