In Consideration of the Whole
Holistic infrastructure design
A necessary part of existence within any ecosystem is, of course, infrastructure. Somehow, water must be moved, food must be produced, shelter procured, shade and other micro-climate needs ensured, energy harnessed and utilized. While we would strive to primarily utilize existing, natural features to meet these needs, the reality of our ecosystem is such that the use and development of "man-made" materials and systems is required. This is not necessarily new or negative: for millennia, humans have created infrastructure which required manipulation of their landscape in order to survive in and steward their environment. We are simply at an unique crossroads, seeking to eliminate reliance on extractive, destructive modern industries while, to some degree, acknowledging and accepting our reliance on these industries as a jumping off point for making our mission of regeneration even possible. I would bet that in some ways you are at this crossroads in your own life, regardless of whether your mission is land regeneration or simply living more sustainably.
Whatever your goal, and whether you live in an apartment, a suburban household, or completely off-grid in a remote location, it is likely that you can strive to improve your progress towards that goal by building or improving existing infrastructure–transitioning to solar energy, creating rainwater catchment systems, developing a compost scheme, creating a garden, building infrastructure to house chickens or other animals–these are just a few examples of common steps that people take when they are seeking to shift their lifestyle in a more sustainable direction. However, developing infrastructure is not always straightforward, and designing your infrastructure systems wrong is an excellent way to create physical, psychological, and economic burnout. We have made such mistakes, and hope to spare you by sharing our process and philosophy for designing infrastructure systems here at the Ranch.
The Philosophy
It is easy to reduce the implementation of a single unit of infrastructure to just the thing that it is. However, it is critically important to consider any piece of infrastructure as a part of a whole organism. Let's consider, say, our water system as we would the circulatory system within the human body: it is a critical part of the whole without which nothing would function, but also which is incredibly dependent on other systems (the lungs, the skin, etc.). Practicing evaluating systems as parts of a whole makes it conceptually easier to consider the intended and unintended impacts of our design in a complete way.
Making it Ethical: Impact
Before we set out to create any piece of infrastructure, we must first observe the ecosystem–including its man-made components (our house, our energy system, etc.): what is working? What isn't? What is present? What is lacking? What will be disturbed by the work? We must consider both our intention, or what we aim to achieve, and our impact, or what will actually occur. Retroactively, we should take notes for next time: what did we do well? What were our blockers? What areas of our implementation were well-designed and function well, complementing the ecosystem as a whole, and which don't?
This may seem daunting, but I promise it is not: let it be a casual, day-to-day taking of stock. We don't need to–and perhaps we really should not–design the entirety of our life and space up front before we take any action. Instead, between each step we should observe our presence, where we are, and the general trajectory towards where we wish to be. As members of our ecosystem, we are evolving and shaping the evolution of the space around us. Let us do so intentionally and with consideration for our impact.
Making it Concrete: The Principles
Once we understand the philosophy from which to work, we can see it as a current which runs beneath and within the concrete principles we use to design our systems. Based on our experience at the Ranch and elsewhere we've sought to make impact, we've identified five core principles that we now consider every time we take on a new infrastructure project. These are the "concrete" principles: the practical ones. They are considered alongside ethical principles like impact, and both kinds of considerations are used to make final design decisions. Briefly, these are: durability, repairability, maintainability, and usability, as well as consideration of the cost of the system over time.
Recently, we had to reroute all of the water lines at Rancho de la Libertad. Not the drip irrigation lines– that would be easy! No, I mean literally all of the pipes buried underground that bring the water into our property from our communal well. Not only did we need to install a new water meter, and move the meter's location from right in front of the house to out by the road, outside of our perimeter fence, but we discovered a leak in an old pipe that had been likely wasting water for a decade. Additionally, the way that the previous owner/builder of the property routed the pipes originally made no sense, and the pipes were inaccessible and laid under concrete slab in many places. These issues of poor original design, and our desire to make the system reliable even in emergencies such as power outages or extreme weather events, meant we needed to completely redesign a system from scratch. As I discuss each of the five principles of infrastructure design, I'll be using this recent project as an example to illustrate how we use these principles to design infrastructure here at the Ranch.
Durability: how long until it breaks?
When we design anything, one of the things we must consider is what materials to use. The longevity and durability of the materials we're choosing is the first concrete principle, which affects all other concrete principles. If the material doesn't last long, then it doesn't matter how inexpensive, reliable, maintainable, or usable the system is. The time and money removing the old defunct system and replacing it will be a headache.
We have a general disdain for plastic: it exists forever, sometimes leaches chemicals into the land, and relies on petrol industries for its existence. When we were designing our water system, we were hoping that copper piping would be a more viable option than PVC. However, given the salinity and mineral content of not only our water but our soil, it was highly likely that copper would corrode and leak much sooner than PVC. PVC is also more cost effective, but this was secondary to the consideration of its increased durability and likelihood to remain intact for many years. The risk of leaks becomes extremely costly (monetarily and for the ecosystem) here, as water is one of our most precious resources.
Durability is the consideration of how long something will last until it breaks and so in addition to choosing materials wisely, we also must consider our execution. If we were to run all of our PVC pipe above ground and leave it exposed to the sun, we suddenly have a system that is much less durable than copper piping, because plastic becomes brittle in the sun.
There are instances where a quick fix may be more desirable than a durable solution, but we've found that the vast majority of the time it is worth investing the time and resources for the solution that will last.
Repairability: what happens when it breaks?
The reality is that we design a system to be as durable as possible, but there will always be repairs to be made at some point. So what happens when we must make repairs?
When we discovered the leak in our old water line, we were astonished at how much water was coming out of it. The previous owner had wrapped the leak in plastic bags and re-buried it, making the leak harder to detect but not necessarily better. For days until we had the time and resources to lay the new lines and connect them, we had to shut the water off to the house except for two select times a day where we would do all of our washing and cleaning up. This helped us avoid excess water waste as much as possible given the situation, but with two babies, a toddler, a big dog, and livestock that need water, it was challenging.
Now, our new system is designed with valves around each critical component: the meter, the storage tank, the pump, the filters, spigot heads, and the float valves that autofill our poultry waterers. Additionally, we routed the lines in such a way that we always have a backup. The well goes down due to a power outage? No problem, we pull from the tank. The tank or pump is damaged and leaking? We shut water off to it and pull straight from the well. Filters need changing? Same thing. Now, if we experience a problem with any primary component, we ensure the water stays on–a critical consideration in our environment.
Another way to consider repairability is to think about whether or not we can repair all of the individual components to a system with our resources and knowledge. If the piping develops a leak, for instance, we know how to fix it and stock the materials (glues, pipe wrenches, etc) to do so. But if our water filters suddenly stop working, it may not be quite as straightforward to fix. Sometimes including complex components is necessary, but sometimes we may want to consider designing a system with components we know how to repair when things inevitably wear out or go wrong. In line with permaculture concepts, we want to privilege fixable components over those we must discard and re-purchase as much as possible.
Maintainability: what does it take to work?
Maintainability describes the day-to-day effort that your system requires in order to function properly. It is important to consider your capacity for periodic intervention in your design, as well as a backup plan should you need to be away. If day-to-day maintenance can be automated, you also must consider the cost of failure of the automation you implement, how you will know if it is working, and the additional cost of implementation, where applicable.
For our water system, we can expect very little day-to-day interference is necessary for it to continue functioning. However, there is a spin-down sediment filter on our whole-property filtration system that needs periodic emptying. While a replacement could be purchased that auto-empties periodically, we've chosen to stick with the filter that we empty manually. It only requires intervention approximately once per six months, and because the filter is functional, it would be both financially and ecologically wasteful to purchase a replacement now. Should the filter ever need replacement, though, we would purchase the self-emptying one as it is not much more expensive than a standard replacement.
An additional example worth noting here is livestock infrastructure. I see many homesteaders and permaculture gardeners add animals to their projects and make their care extremely difficult – or carelessly automate things without systems in place to check their functionality. Chickens, as an example, require very little day-to-day interference with the right systems in place, but should still be checked on – the cost of failure when an automated waterer fails in the middle of summer (or freezes in winter) is enormous.
Usability: how often does it achieve its purpose?
It would appear to be obvious that when we build infrastructure, it should achieve its goal, but it's surprisingly easy to make mistakes that render a system difficult to use or useless. It is also easy to create infrastructure we simply did not need. Usability also encompasses our awareness of its state of function – we talked about this in the maintainability section briefly, but we need to know if our infrastructure is working. Is our water system leaking? Are our solar batteries charging? Are animals getting fed? Is the coop door closing at night?
Critical to creating usable, observable systems is observing the environment we are in and understanding what it is we are trying to achieve before beginning to create something to solve a problem. Then, designing the system with observability in mind: if it isn't easy to check up on, you won't.
One thing we do is build out from central points - usually housing or areas of the property we spend most of our time at. We then expand systems (including gardens, irrigation lines, chicken and livestock infrastructure, water lines, etc.) outwards from these central points in a kind of spiral. Slowly we build into our days the habit of accessing certain locations on the property, and we do not place high-investment infrastructure outside of these areas before we are ready to go there each day, even just in passing, to notice them.
When we first planted trees, we planted several far away from the house. It took weeks to notice a specific tree was dying, and longer to realize why: a coyote had dug in and chewed the end of a drip irrigation line to get a drink. Who knows how much water was wasted, all because we were simply unused to walking that way. This applies to everything: water spigots, valves, and even lines. We plan to run water lines to pasture sites, but why bother until we know exactly where those will be? It takes a lot of work to bury and then re-dig up piping, and it's important that we do it very strategically.
Cost over Time
Finally, it is important to consider how much something costs over time, not just how much it costs right now. Sometimes, it is worth saving and spending more on the materials that will last longer: they cost less per year of use, often, than the cheaper alternative. This concept also relates to effort, whether you do something yourself or pay someone to do it for you.
While we were rerouting the water lines, we were digging up whatever old pipes were not buried under our foundation. We considered saving money and improving our ecological footprint by using sections of the old PVC water pipe, but the pipe laid in the early 1960s was brittle (due to early manufacturing processes) and the cost savings were likely to cost us more later if the pipes began to leak. However, had this not been an urgent and critical project, we could have possibly scoured craigslist or other sources for secondhand piping – something I recommend doing for any non-urgent building projects. It isn't uncommon for others to buy in bulk and then sell off the excess at a discount.
Ultimately, there is a balance between fitting necessary infrastructure projects into your budget and ensuring that we aren't creating more waste by always finding the absolute cheapest option.
Infrastructure design is system design, and it takes a different mindset than most of us are used to utilizing to solve problems. Many things benefit from a holistic approach, but few things quite as critically as the way we build infrastructure.
If you are able to embody the philosophy and concrete principles outlined here, though, you'll be able to build systems capable of supporting your ultimate goals, and which make your life easier rather than harder.