path: root/upgrades.txt

I dislike upgrading things. This is why I have, at the age of, ahem, forty plus let's say, owned only 4 cars (two of which I still own), have more than a few t-shirts that are over a decade old and am typing this on an eight year old, ridiculously small laptop. 

This is less a testament to my frugality than my deep-seated belief that if it ain't broke, not only is there no need to fix it, but change anything at all risks upsetting the not-broke equilibrium the object in question is currently enjoying[^1].

We're about to be itinerants of sorts though some of my dislike for new things does lie in a necessary, and I would argue natural, frugality of both space and time. 

To upgrade things takes time, which a yardstick of life energy. Since you have to earn money to obtain things, that means things take time. I prefer to have more time and less things. 

I've been thinking about this a lot while rebuilding the bus and what I have realized is that a lot of the things we use every day are conveniences, not requirements. There's nothing wrong with convenience exactly, but it has costs and those costs become much more costly when you take away endless energy and large spaces. 

It's hard to articulate this next part without coming off as either a ridiculous crank or a sanctimonious asshole, but I'm going to try anyway. Let me say upfront though that while I do think you should think about this stuff deeply, I do not think everyone should live like me.

Rebuilding the bus has required some deep research on a number of things that up until this point I had largely taken for granted. Eventually, to find a solution that I liked, I had to step way back and change the way I was defining the problem. Probably the best example of this is refrigeration. 

Unlike [the generator](/jrnl/2016/09/autumn-bus-update), which I tore out because I hate it, I didn't tear the 2-way propane/12v fridge because I hate refrigeration. I did tear it out in part because I wanted to learn to live without refrigeration, but also because I backed up and looked at the problem refrigeration is trying to solve.

No one needs a refrigerator. What we need is a way to keep food fresh for longer than it would normally be fresh. In our case, in the bus, that means a way to keep food cold, ideally, for convenience sake, indefinitely. But wait, what food? And how cold does it need to be? Which foods actually need to be refrigerated? 

At it turns out almost nothing in your refrigerator needs to be there. A lot of it is even better if you take it out. Fruit is better when not refrigerated, ditto most vegetables. Some veggies will keep long when cool though. Leftovers need to either say hot or cool. Meat needs to stay cool. So then, after starting way back at the beginning -- what needs to be refrigerated -- I realized we didn't need a fridge at all. 

What we need is a way to freeze things and then keep them cool as they thaw, before we eat them. The best way to do that, in my opinion anyway, is with an icebox and a 12V freezer. The freezer only needs to run when making ice or freezing food so it uses far less energy and can be powered entirely by our solar setup. The solution looks like this; freeze foods that need to say cool when you buy them (e.g. proteins like meat, fish, chicken, etc) and make ice when you need it. Then put everything in the icebox. Eat the food as it thaws. 

The rest, vegetables, condiments, etc can be stored in a cool dry place, in mesh baskets and so on. The problem gets solved without the excess energy draw and in less space.

I should note that just buying an icebox and slapping it in place will not be sufficient if you want your ice to last more than a day or two. I added around 4 inches of insulation to all sides of the icebox which will greatly improve performance (I put in roughly the equivalent of R 30 isnulation) and make it possible for block ice to last 4-5 days even when it's in the 90s outside.

Like so many experiments I've done through this site, I will keep you posted on how well my theory holds up in real world experience. But I think it'll do just fine because we're far from the first person to exist this way. In fact its the default way of living aboard sailboats until about the mid 1980s when suddenly a refrigerator of became a "necessity". It's also considerably posher than what most people around the world get by with right now. If most of the world can survive on less, I suspect we'll find a way to manage.

[^1]: A lot of my don't upgrade stance also comes from worrying that all these things we buy are implicated in a web of destruction that shatters lives and destroys the planet so we can [have a nice rug](/jrnl/2015/04/the-poison-youve-been-dreaming-of).