Wisconsin PHC Contractor Winter 2018

along and it will be adopted not because it is mandated, but
because it’s simply a better solution.
Some of these changes may take decades, but I suspect that
the desire to be less reliant on a utility grid will increase. As
people work more remotely, the need to commute becomes
less important. The result is to open up more and more land
to smaller residential communities and by “smaller” I mean
fewer houses – think fewer than a dozen – and houses that
are not as large.
The sharing economy
(Uber, Airbnb, etc.) will
likely continue to expand
and possibly include
things like lawn mowers,
snow blowers, power
tools and more.
To make this work, people are going to have to connect to an
existing utility grid or, more likely, I think, make do without
the grid. Yes, there will always be a trend toward vibrant
downtown areas, but they’re not for everyone. Schools,
churches, and government services will all have to respond
to larger and larger areas where they will provide services
and a whole lot more will rely on high-speed internet
connections.
Building electrical towers or burying cables to serve a
dozen homes probably doesn’t make economic sense and
shifting the costs to a dozen rate payers will be too expensive
just as shifting the cost to the larger base of existing rate
payers won’t be tolerated forever. Gas lines and water lines
create the same sorts of cost issues. These are expensive
investments by utilities and it may simply be better to let
these small communities develop off the grid.
Geothermal heating and cooling seems to present an
opportunity. Water wells and POWTS systems also fit into
this model. Recently, I read an article about a device that
uses solar power to operate fans that can be used to extract
water from the air – even in a desert – and store as much
as 30 liters per panel. That may not be a lot of water, but
the technology will get better and less expensive and the
water industry could experience something similar to what
happened in the phone industry, when cellular technology
simply bypassed the existing infrastructure.
The sharing economy (Uber, Airbnb, etc.) will likely continue
to expand and possibly include things like lawn mowers, snow
blowers, power tools and more. Sharing these lightly-used
items (relative to their cost) can open up the potential for the
additional income that can fund other shared resources, such
as wind turbines, solar panels, and small water/sanitary
systems rather than ones used by each home independently.
Even loop fields for geothermal systems can be shared to
create an economy.
Also in this issue, we talk about some of the technology
that we have at our fingertips and how it compares to what
was available for the Apollo space program some 50 years
ago. The fact is, there is more computing power sitting idle
than we might realize. Some are trying to use this capacity
by “leasing” their processors when they are not in use (think
laptops and cell phones that are not being used while you
are sleeping). One current use is to allow cell phones to make
complex computations at night to earn credits that can be
used to buy things like digital subscriptions or music.
And at the core of all of this is you – the plumbing-heatingcooling
industry. Whether my guesses about the future are
right or not, there will be a future and it will certainly involve
all of you. Our safety, our health, our comfort (and even that of
all of our gizmos and gadgets) will all be front-and-center in
any discussion about the future.
So maybe someday you’ll need to toss this magazine away
to downsize for your new, tiny home. With all due respect to
recycling programs, maybe toss this copy in the trash instead
and let it become a part of our collective “garbage dump.”
If we’re lucky, the archeologists will find it and read about
some of the things we are doing today that helped build the
strong industry that took us into the future.
Worst case scenario, they can read my predictions and
quote something I said that couldn’t have been more wrong.
I’ll take my chances, but I’ll always bet on our industry’s
future.
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WINTER 2018
The Wisconsin PHC Contractor
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