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Florida woman forced to connect to city water

posted by LaminatorX on Thursday February 27 2014, @12:29AM   
from the This-sounds-like-a-job-for-Florida-Man dept.

Xerxes writes:

"A Florida woman who has been living off the grid has had her home declared 'Unsanitary' and has until March to connect her off-the-grid home to the city water system, or face eviction."

[ED Note: Ordinances such as this are not uncommon. My own father once had a property condemned on this basis while he was in the midst of a billing dispute with a utility.]

• Re:Got any better sources? (Score: 2) by evilviper on Friday February 28 2014, @05:54AM

  by evilviper (1760) on Friday February 28 2014, @05:54AM (#8310) Homepage Journal

  The complaints in your reply seem to entirely consist of misunderstanding what I wrote.

  I disagree with the part that you said people shouldn't live with a stove in their living room.

  No, I said "camp fires in the middle of their living rooms for heat and light". A (modern) wood stove is great for heating. A fireplace is lousy for heating. And both are lousy for lighting. But neither is as lousy, nor nearly as dangerous, as "camp fires".

  If people die from their stupidity, then let them.

  Building codes exist specifically to prevent this, so you can't complain when they correctly do so. Personally, I'm a fan of not dying. You assume only the incredibly stupid will kill themselves, but without regulations, product and construction fraud will take off and keep getting more sophisticated. The level of intelligence and pure effort necessary to prevent getting ripped-off and/or killed will continue to grow ever higher, as there's always more money to be made in hurting people.

  most people that do live "off the grid" tend to live away from city limits

  And I was very specifically talking about off-grid living in very dense cities, since that's the topic at hand. Yes, a good septic system on plenty of land, in an area with a low water table, works great.

  You also mentioned that living without electricity (oh this is funny, my electricity just went out, hurray for laptops!) is something of a necessity.

  Electricity is so much VASTLY more efficient at providing artificial lighting than any other way to do so (not to mention vastly safer), that I don't consider any other methods a viable option. A pretty small solar panel and battery is all you need for a LOT of light. Once you've got that... well, a radio consumes minuscule amounts of power, so I'd opt for one.

  go without electricity for a weekend and see how much better it is to not hear the humming of the refrigerator

  Not long enough... You'd just run down a few batteries, and not realize the expense and difficulty of doing that, long-term.

  --
  Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.

  Parent

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