Living Off Grid? Not as easy it sounds

Battling the Ibiza summer, water shortages and family air con reliance to stay steady

In London I live in a terraced house built by the Victorians to house workers for the nearby cattle market (now a park, clock tower and café). Living snugly together, my neighbours and I share heat, views, glasses of wine in the garden, the occasional noise dispute, dog, cat and goldfish sitting, and lots of gossip as we see each other on the street all day every day and our windows look directly into each other’s lives.

I turn on the tap and water comes out, I turn the dial on the thermostat when I want to be warmer. I open the windows for a through draft in the summer, but it’s not enough as our summers are getting hotter. I pay about £220 a month for water, £400 for energy and £150 to the council for which I get our lovely bin men coming every week and some street lighting. The money comes out of my account without my noticing until there’s nothing left at the end of the month. We fitted one of those smart meters and realised leaving the lights on made no difference whatsoever, it was the tumble dryer that did it.

Here in Ibiza, I am house sitting an old finca up in the hills for the next month. It is off grid, which means it relies on its own solar panels for energy, the farmer at the bottom of the valley who has a well, a septic tank and Gaia’s own weather system. It’s a lesson in the past, and the future, and I think all city dwellers should be forced to do this.

Finca style. Heaven

Firstly, it’s very hot here at the moment, there are no fans but the two bedrooms have air con units. The nights are sweltering, with little to no breeze. Running both AC units bleeds the solar reserve dry, which means the generator kicks in. if the generator isn’t full of diesel, it can break (expensive). So I drive to the garage with jerry cans to fill them up, and end up with diesel all over me and the car. (By the way, no electric charging stations for cars on this island - electrification a long way off).

Water is short, because the government stopped funding the desalination plants years ago, so they no longer operate and the island is dependent on a very low water table. When it doesn’t rain, there is no water. (What is it about government and water management?) There is also no system of water outside of Ibiza’s main towns, so you must call up a private water supplier and have them drive a diesel-fuelled truck to your house to fill up your tank. I once watched one of these trucks negotiate an extremely precipitous cliff edge to reach a house on a tiny peninsula that was by Mick Jagger. I hope he was only flushing his loo once a day.

Or you can siphon off water from a neighboring well (a few houses have these), but you need the sun to be shining so the pump works, and the neighbour needs to remember/be around to do it. Showers are 2 minutes max - one mum I know makes her kids do it in the garden with a hosepipe so she can water her plants at the same time.

Meanwhile the sceptic tank needs to munch through all its waste three times a week (must remember to switch that on, do we have enough energy?), the dog needs walking twice a day (but only before and after 9am and 9pm otherwise its too hot), the stray cats need feeding and the ants need managing. One breadcrumb on the floor and your house is colonised.

Solar panels: not operating due to morning shade

The solar panels are also problematic: staggered rows of black mirrors, that will only operate if there is full sun on each row. If the shadow of a tree branch falls on one, or a cloud passes, the whole row ceases to operate. Would better design be possible here?

Wifi comes from Elon Musk’s Starlink, which is the only available resource for internet signal, much to the annoyance and frustration of my artist hosts. But we must have internet, at all costs. Mustn’t we.

Add to this we live on an island, so resource is limited to what we can grow and what can arrive by (diesel-fuelled) ship. Back in the day Ibiza grew all its own produce, but when the tourist boom arrived farmers abandoned their subsistence living and built lucrative hotels on the sea shore. The land was left untended. An enlightened group of regenerative farmers are trying to get everything going again, but Ibiza still only produces less than 7% of its food needs. Come the apocalypse, we’ll be alright for cacao, olives, lemons and maybe a few almonds. There will be one feast day for goats and that’s it.

It’s a lesson in resource management and the fragility of our systems. In the last 150 years we have become so removed from the extraction and production of our daily needs that we have no idea of their cost. As readers of this newsletter know, we are consuming our resources at almost twice the rate we can afford them, so that day of resource reckoning is coming, and it’s really not too far off. Add in hot summers, water shortages, a breakdown in energy systems and no internet - imagine! - and well, its lemons and olives for tea. That’s putting it kindly.

Clothes wise, there’s no need for anything other than cotton and wool. People don’t wear much here, just a few flowing robes. Ibiza town has all the horrors of Zara, Bershka and the like to dress the clubbing massive in one night only polyester. Which is a shame as there are some amazing island artisans and markets, (the Agora Mercado Artisanal is a wonderful edit, last Friday of every month at Six Senses Ibiza).

I’m learning a lot. I’m learning how precious all these things are, and the labour and the cost to keep them running. I’m learning that nothing is a given, not water or energy, and the only thing I can rely on here on this island is the sea. I can see the sea (just) form the finca, and the sunset and the sky. I can smell the pines in the air and listen to the cicadas’ frenzied cries. It’s a long way from my north London terrace, and there’s absolutely no need for a tumble dryer. I’m very grateful for the education.

I hope you all have some different living ahead of you, holidays or not. I hope you get to see life from another angle, push pause on your daily anxieties and change your perspective. Because that’s what’s needed here.

See you next week,

Tiff