Over the weekend, my apartment lost natural gas heat after the landlord accidentally turned off the burner control power, when he was servicing the boiler in another unit. With the mercury outside dropping and the insulation and so-so in my apartment, the temperature started to drop inside as boiler wasn’t working on Sunday. It was fairly cold my Monday morning, with temperatures downstairs in the low 40s, although upstairs stayed warmer due to electric heat. Problems like the heat or lack of electricity are taken care of relatively quickly by the landlord or the utility company. It’s not my problem, it’s somebody else’s.

I guess that’s what’s important. But I really hate the lack of control over the situation when it comes to heat and electricity. The heat or power goes out, I’m much too helpless, I have to rely on others to restore the necessary services. While I’m not totally helpless — I do have a freezer full of ice, a portable propane heater, electricity produced my truck, and a camp stove. I know places I could head out into the woods, I know at least in the short-term how I could survive. But I still feel like I am much too dependent on others to meet my needs, especially as we face an uncertain future in our country, especially as climate change continues to get worse.

This is part of the reason why when I own land and a home, I plan to burn wood for heat, and have a small house that is easy to heat with good insulation. This way, as long as I have dried wood split and ready to go, I will never have to worry about being cold or running out of fuel. Woodstoves are simple mechanical devices, they don’t fail as long as you keep them stocked with wood. Your not stuck relying on a network of pipelines to deliver fuel, or a single supplier of fuel. In contrast, in cold weather, a pipeline can fail or electricity network go down due to an ice storm or a tree failing under the heavy weight of snow.

Some people heat with outdoor wood boilers, which are good if you have a lot of wood and conventional electricity, but I wouldn’t want to be dependent on having grid power or producing unnecessary amount of pollution. I’d rather focus on having good insulation, as it will really reduce the amount of wood you burn and how often you have to fill the wood stove. Plus, I would want to have it so I could fill the stove up in the morning, and have it relatively warm by the time I got home after work in the winter.

Dependence and living in the city, means I can save money for now, invest and continue to learn, as I work for a better tomorrow. Living in the city I save gasoline and motoring, even if I have to rely on fossil generation for heat and electricity. Things seem for now to get restored fairly quickly, as the landlord is responsible and the power company with a few exceptions rarely has time it’s down. But I don’t know about tomorrow, that seems all the more uncertain.