General
The Oakwood Railway Station will be right downtown, with a number of steam locomotive and diesel lines daily! Get in and out of town fast on the Oakwood Line!
Telegram Service
All residents of Oakwood will enjoy access to affordable telegram services. simply visit the telephone company business office or call the telegram office (a special code for Oakwood subscribers) to send a telegram. All local telegrams will be immediately dispatched by messenger, 24/7, at no extra charge. Telegrams are charged by the word, at $5 + $0.10 per word. We can negotiate a special rate for bulk telegram orders.
Oakwood Computer Cooperative
The Oakwood Computer Cooperative will help maintain aging computer infrastructure so we can keep it in place, such as the Windows 9x and Windows 2000 operating systems! Older computer hardware will also be supported. Homes, schools, and businesses will be able to rely on the OCC for computer support and sales.
Oakwood Post Office
The Oakwood Post Office will handle mail for the town of Oakwood. A mail courier will deliver mail six days a week (excepting federal holidays) right to your door or secretary!
A post office is not necessarily guaranteed by the government. The post office has, in fact, closed post offices in rural areas around the country and consolidated service areas. A population requirement may be in place. Sometimes the post office in an area might be done under contract. You might find that the gas station is also the post office. The same person that you pay for gas or your slurpee will also take your mail, etc.
Most rural areas are likely covered under an existing ZIP code. Once there are enough people living in Oakwood, the post office could be petitioned to put in a local office. Upfront, we may inquire and ask what the requirements are for various levels of postal service, e.g. how many people would need to live in this city before the USPS opens a new office.
Oakwood Electric Utility
The current plan is to have a local microgrid of locally generated power throughout the community, potentially supplemented by the national grid if demand requires it. All electric meters will be analog meters. No digital metering of any kind is to be used for any reason on any property. All meters will be manually read by meter readers.
Using commercial grid power may be necessary until local power can be generated, e.g. a solary array and battery plant can be built. The amount of land needed to build a large enough collective solar farm to support town energy needs will need to be considered.
It is unlikely the gas company will put in lines without a guarantee of a certain volume of customers unless existing natural gas infrastructure is nearby. Typically, propane in tanks is the way to go in rural areas either permanently or until you can convince the gas company to do construction.
Solar will not be on homes, but away from homes. A distance of 300 feet with the inverter encased in concrete may be necessary to ensure safety of sensitive individuals. Both solar and wind turbines fleck EMFs off into the air. People living downwind of wind turbines can also have more problems with illness.
Power Distribution
Most utility power at the pole is about 7,200vac to 15,000vac. Higher voltage = lower current = smaller wires. The longer a piece of wire is, the more resistance it has. If you put 240vac in on one end, you might only get 200vac out of the other end, depending on the length and size. The boxes in your neighborhood are probably taking the higher voltage (7,200 to 15,000) and stepping it down to 240 to feed each house. One box can serve several houses (240 consists of two 120v phases and a neutral). The amount of current that passes through the wires (amps) is important. you can run 120v through a string of Christmas lights with no problem, but you won't be able to power a 100watt light bulb with the same wire without the wire getting hot and possibly burning.
Say, for easier math, you have 100V system. And a 1000W space heater at the end of the wire. 1000W / 100V = 10 amp. 100V / 10 amp = 10 ohms. That's the resistance of the heater. Resistance of #14 copper wire is ~ 2.5 ohms per 1000 ft. Just selected for illustration. So say you have 2000 ft run to the load. You have coming and going, so that's 4000 ftof wire or 10 ohms. So now the current is 100V / (10 ohms [wire] + 10 ohms [space heater]) = 5 amps. You'll only half the power delivered to the load. The other half goes into heating upa mile of copper wire.
Say on my street there are 50 houses, and right now it's over 90F and all the air conditioners are running at this moment, perhaps using 30 amps @ 250VSo that's 1500 amps. That'll take a BIG wire to feed the street. So instead, where I am, the power on the top of the poles is 13.8 kV. We'll call it 15 kV to make the math easier. On the secondary side of the transformers on the poles (the 250V side) the total load is 250V * 1500 amps = 375,000 watts. On the primary side of the transformers (the 15,000V side) we have 375,000 watts / 15,000V = 25 amps. 25 amps can be delivered without loss over a *much* smaller wire.
When Thomas Edison built his DC power system in NYC, and was unable to use transformers, the losses were so great they needed a power station with a generator on every block.
For planning and logistical purposes, approximate "average" lot sizes could be estimated using Google Earth. It is envisioned that residential lots further away from downtown may be slightly larger.
Oakwood Water Utility
Water is the most important resource with a property, and quickly becomes a limiting factor as to how many people, plants, and animals a property will support.
In rural areas of the country, it is typical that each home have it's own well and septic system. A typical well has 3 or 4" casing (pipe) in the ground with a submersible pump inside of the pipe. A pressure tank inside the house is used to maintain an even pressure. Regardless if you use a pressure tank or gravity tank, you'll need power to get the water out of the ground and into the tank.
Septic systems are also the standard in rural communities. You'll need to check with whomever the current zoning official is for the area and get an idea of the requirements. In many places in Minnesota, they are now not as low in the ground and require a mound to be built above them. There also needs to be some separation between them, e.g. the well on the "front" lawn and the septic on the "back" lawn.
Gravity Fed
You may have noticed large water storage tanks on the tops of mountains, or water towers erected to be high in the air. Water is pumped from the source to that high storage area, and then gravity is all that is needed to deliver the water to homes. 40 pounds of water pressure is typical. To achieve this pressure through gravity a water tank needs to be 100 feet above the home. The alternative to gravity is an electric pump which must be active when water is used.
At this time, it is our plan to make sure that water softeners can be used.
Laws
Water in California is governed by laws created after decades of court battles. You can buy land and think you’re going to build a house only to find water permits are not available. There are areas where underground water does not exist. There are areas where wells are not successful because once that pocket of water is used there is nothing to refill it. If you buy a property with a water source (spring, creek, river, lake) you usually have rights to that water, but only so much use as the source is shared with others downstream. Illegal wells are shut down as they may take away from the water of legal wells.
The originating water source supplying wells might be hundreds of miles away traveling through underground streams. This becomes a problem when fracking, mining, and chemicals pollute the water along its path.