Off-grid home - different cultures and energy/water use

[Dave561]

We have a high-end, remote and fully off-grid home and are seeing a consistent pattern of guest behaviour on which I would love some hints from the community.

Background:  The house is a luxury home without any grid connection of any kind.  Electricity is from the sun, with battery storage and automatic generator as a safety net.  We really hate to run the generator, as it's burning diesel and polluting the air.  Water is rainwater stored in a 120,000 litre tank.  We have LPG tanks for the cooktop and hydronic under-floor heating.  It all works beautifully and is unobtrusive, as reflected by the fact that reviews have been 100% 5 star despite a fairly expensive rate.

I ask people to use common sense when consuming power and water.  I realise that is perhaps not a helpful enough guideline.  We have a guidebook that provides a lot of tips.  That is shared in advance via email and there's also a hardcopy in the house. Notably, it is only in English, which may be a contributing factor.

The issue, with only one exception over 30 bookings, is that guests from China use far more power and, on average, 4X the water.  As all systems in the house are remotely monitored, I know when people have, for example, turned up the heat to max and left the doors wide open (guests from Asia, exclusively).  Also, without exception, all bookings that brought more people than booked were our Chinese guests.  This impacts resource usage also. 

I don't assume what I'm seeing is intentional, though I am at a loss for the persistent excessive guests.  The record was 12 people when our maximum is six.  That was when I was using a property manager to advertise and manage the booking.  It hasn't been quite that bad since I took back control.

Do you think translating the guidebook into Chinese would help?  Our guests have seemed to communicate with us in fluent English.

 What else could I do without coming across as over-zealous or unfriendly?  

This is a real issue for us and I would like to solve it in a way that is effective while still being welcoming.  I think it is really cool that so many people travel from China to stay on our rugged, remote coast on Australia's Southern Ocean.  I hope my post doesn't come off as insensitive or negative.

[Dave561]

Maybe in America are luxury and thoughtful use of resources contradictory (I'm American), but not in Australia. 

[Helen350]

@Dimitar27  ( @Dave561 ) I reckon it IS an Asian thing, & even more a Chinese thing... As I was reading the post, I just KNEW the punchline would be Chinese! My ex-husband was a Chinese Australian, & I can testify that his whole family used excessive water by British standards. I've seen other posts here in the CC about Asian & Chinese bathroom/laundry use being excessive..... Certainly I remember when travelling with my mother in law, she'd use the washing machine every night, sometimes for 1 or 2 items, & gave no thought to wastage... 

[Sarah977]

@Helen350 Excessive showering is also a thing with teenagers, I have a lot of experience with that 🙂 What they can possibly be doing in a shower for an hour is beyond me, but it seems to be quite prevalent.

[Sarah977]

@Dimitar27  I can assure you there's nothing sci-i about off-grid housing. It's quite common in some areas. There's an off-grid community just around the corner from me- everyone has their own house, but there's a common well, and solar panels for electricity. Some of the homes were built with "alternative" construction, like earth bag, or rammed earth, (but you wouldn't know that to look at them after they are plastered), others are just normal construction. I'm hooked up to the city water lines, but on a private septic, and am on the electrical lines. But if I dug my own well and put in solar for electric, I'd be "off grid". It just means you generate your own power and have your own source of water and septic system, and if the area's infrastructure ceased to function, you'd still be fully functional, because you don't rely on that.

I do agree, though, that "luxury" and "limited resources" are quite at odds with each other, at least in most people's minds, if not actually in reality. To me personally, luxury could just mean the place is huge, modern, has high end furnishings and appliances and a hot tub or a pool, but not necessarily that I could take 1 hour showers and do a load of laundry twice a day.

[Dimitar27]

Using solar panels for covering all energy needs is possible only in some pars of the world. That's the reason I've never seen such a house. The other things are relatively common.

[Dave561]

I assure you that luxury off-grid is possible.  We have 120,000 litres water storage and every 2mm of rainfall  gives us 1000l into the tanks.  Except in the darkest days of winter, we have plenty of electricity from solar and on the dark days, we have a generator that automatically kicks in.  HOWEVER, if someone leaves both reverse cycle units heating the place and leaves all the windows open and leaves our TWO electric ovens on, then it's going to drain the batteries and start the generator.  For no reason except ignorance or lack of interest.

[Marie82]

@Dave561  what a beautiful home, with Chinese guests, unfortunately, u won't get any saving when he comes to energy even if u translate into simple Chinese and put all over the place, asap their check in the 1st things they will put on is Aircon regardless of the exterieur temperature, and that till check out or when cleaning crew arrive the Air cond will be still on.  And same with hot water

I think many of the mainland Chinese guests think ABB is like a cheap version of a hotel, where u can leave the light on, air cond on. I think it is cultural.

We have post it next to Air cond asking guests to switch off when they leave and we remind them the night before check out but many time after check out the air cond still on and all light on.

[Kath9]

@Dave561, I have exactly the same issue. Despite mentioning in my listing and house rules about water shortages and asking guests to keep showers to no more than 5 minutes (which is ample time to wash), my Asian guests routinely take two to three 10-15 minute (or longer) showers daily, using far more water per day than I do myself in an entire week. It is frustrating beyond belief and I can feel my cortisol rising as I hear the water running down the drain. It is a really big issue, especially with the recent droughts we're seeing in this country, and even more so for you with you being totally off grid.

One thing I've found useful was contacting the Water Corp - they were very helpful in sending me water-wise stickers (which I've stuck everywhere - front cover of guest manual, above the sink in the bathroom, in the shower) and also 4-minute shower timers. Constantly reminding guests about it helps them observe the rules. I'm assuming you already have water-wise shower heads? My plumber also told me that you can install a timer into the actual shower head so that it automatically switches off after a certain period of time.

Regarding energy use, same. Lights are constantly left on, I had to take away the electric blanket because I could see it being left on during the day, the heater is left on all night, etc. No clue about cost or climate change. Frustrating to say the least. Imagine the drain on the planet from a billion people routinely doing these things in China.

Anyway, I agree with the others about highlighting your listing as eco-friendly to attract a different type of guest. Perhaps we hosts can use our experience to educate people from around the world about conservation and doing our bit for the planet.

[Dave561]

Thanks, Kath, for sharing.  I haven't put timers on showers but we do have reasonably efficient shower heads.  Water is not our greatest concern, at least until our next drought hits, though it really bugs me when it is wasted with so little regard.  We receive over 1000 mm per year and even in summer will get the occasional heavy fall.  With our setup, each mm of rain puts 500 litres in the tank.  Friday's forecast should give us 10,000 litres, which will go into the drains because the tanks are full.

For electricity, I'm slowly putting remote control units inside every switch driving the outdoor lights.  I won't touch the indoor lights, as that seems very intrusive.  I've gotten the aircon and heat all remotely controlled now and I'll receive the remotely controllable sensors and relays for the ovens soon.  

At that point, I think I'll have done all I can do short of making the listing unattractive and having prospective guests complete a quiz before approving them.

[Kath9]

@Dave561, water has not been our greatest concern down here on the south coast either, until recently. Our nearby forest town of Denmark, which typically gets high rainfall, is running out of water, and our state government is about to spend $40 million building a pipeline from Albany to Denmark. My friends who have a farm in the Porongurup Ranges nearby (which also typically gets high rainfall) just told me their rainwater tanks are almost empty - this at the end of winter - and will have to get water trucked in. So, there is no telling where a drought might hit, and people need to be respectful of water, especially when you depend on tanks. It makes me furious when guests don't respect something so essential.

I just looked at your listing and, wow, it is gorgeous! What a great achievement. I would be putting it up front and centre that you are off-grid (rather than emphasising 'luxury', which people can see just by looking at the photos and which somehow contradicts the off-grid). If you emphasise the eco-friendly nature of your house, you may well attract like-minded people who would naturally be conservative with water and energy. The remote controls are a good idea. Indoor lighting is probably not too much of a concern if you are using LED lights. Your comment about making the listing unattractive is interesting - I feel that over time, I have had to make my listing sound more and more unattractive to keep guest expectations realistic. I'm beginning to sound almost ornery...

BTW,  you can tag people (which will notify them) using the @ symbol.

[Branka-and-Silvia0]

@Dave561 

Unfortunately, our experience with Asian guests is the same + the water is never hot enough. The moment they enter they put on ALL the lights in the apartment. If one of 12 bulbs in the living room doesn't work they immediately complain and will mention it in their comment even if we fix it ASAP. They put A/C on 16 C and heating on 30 C  sometimes in the same time (we have separate systems). It seems they don't use windows to vent or cool, they use A/C for everything the whole year-round.

As someone else mentioned previously - our planet can't survive while billions of people acting like this 😞

Dave, maybe you could include in your welcoming message something about limited usage of electricity and water, something like " our boiler has 80 liters, enough for 2 quick showers,  lights are with motion sensors, laundry machine works on coins" etc...  to discourage such guests from booking even if you don't have such limitations automated. Slow and unstable WIFI could help too :)))

Definitely include "eco-friendly off-grid" in your title, forget a "luxury" thing.

[Dave561]

"Luxury" is now removed from the title and replaced with "Eco-Friendly".  I don't really see this will change much, given the behaviour we've observed, but it is worth a try.  Thank you all for your thoughtful suggestions.

[Lisa723]

There is some fascinating behavioral economics research indicating that what people actually respond to on this sort of issue is information that allows them to compare their own behavior to others'. e.g. in a hotel, "80% of guests in this room reuse their towels."

https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124361795

[Ben3837]

If you have a spare 5 minutes please can you complete my questionnaire if you have ever used the sharing economy (Airbnb, HomeAway, etc) thank you 

https://mmu.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1Apm1wHn3rbfsDc

[Ben3837]

If you have a spare 5 minutes please can you complete my questionnaire if you have ever used the sharing economy (Airbnb, HomeAway, etc) thank you
https://mmu.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1Apm1wHn3rbfsDc