Lets talk about off grid simple living

People seem to get hung up on off the grid. For me if you are lessening the hold that the grid try's to put on you you are headed in the right place.
Something to think about. The grid is like a river croc. And you are in the river. Most people are in the middle and are easy prey. The more self dependent you are the closer to the edge and the less likely you will be dinner. In the river has advantages but I want to be in a position to get out

Everyone is free to chose their own path.

I agree. It's become a vague term and seems to signify some kind of dream scenario. We did it mostly because it was too expensive early on to bring grid power to our building site and because my EE husband saw it as an engineering adventure. Life is much simpler now being grid tied.

Many new conventional full size houses are built slab on grade. Water lines, heating - hot water lines and wastewater run then a concrete slab is poured. Slab on grade is very common now days. People that heat the slab with hot water swear by it. Concrete floor durable, comfortable in winter if heated, cool in summer, easy to sweep/mop.

Your systems could be set up with low point drains and even air fittings to blow the water out if you are going to be gone during the winter and have the place unheated. Most new water, wastewater lines are plastic. You do have to plan for cleanouts in the wastewater lines.

I have seen many houses with only one water wall. Kitchen with sink on one side of the wall bathroom with toilet, sink and shower/tub on the other. Very little piping no long runs. No line longer than 4 feet.

A simple crawl space foundation can be constructed out of blocks or large stones, I would rather have a poured foundation but I have used blocks.

Current house was a 1960 2 bedroom 900 sf with full basement I added a 40 by 40 addition. Used the front loader bucket on the tractor to lower the ground under the addition then hand dug a perimeter foundation. Rebar and concrete then laid 5 courses of block to make a crawl space wall. I hate the crawl in crawl space so I made it so I can get in and around. Could have done the same with a shovel wheel barrel/buckets and time.

Look for construction how to books in the library.

Obviously Grandma12703 you arent living your dream right. Ignore the negative nancys and keep doing your thing and posting about it.

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www.salmonslayer-simplelife.blogspot.com

Often times it is the skill set you gain in your quest for independence that is most enjoyable.

It's weird... I just actually don't care about electric very much. I would like a fridge powered by solar... That's in the future. I'm not trying to be green, or trying to be a survivalist, either. Just read a lot of stories as a kid about the old times, and I always ask myself.. What would grandma do? If she had to keep cold the milk, for example. I don't miss the "electric hum." When you were a small kid, if you lived in town, could you hear the hum? No one knew what I was talking about... They couldn't hear it.

I think it is important to remember that some of us live off-grid because there is no grid power available to our properties. We all do the best we can.

Cindy, as you might already know, there are dozens of Amish shed manufacturing companies located in the Lancaster county PA. area, and some that are spread out as far as Lycoming county. Several of them build skid mounted cabins for use by campgrounds and folks looking for inexpensive, turn key vacation cabins. I have rented one, and they are really sweet. They are fully self contained, with a standard bath and kitchen, and sit on a gravel pad like any other shed. The trick with the bathroom is a double floor. The entire bathroom sits up on a platform about 8" high. this gives plenty of room for drain lines. The sewer line can have an expansion coupling, which will allow for frost movement, or a few of the couplings can be "Fernco" type rubber couplings. This type of raised bath is easy to plumb and pretty common in basements where jackhammering a big patch of floor out isn't an option. As a family we do tons of camping and traveling. It's now common to see a row of full bath and kitchen cabins sitting on existing campsites in a privately owned campground. There is plenty of demand for them, and they go for $80-125 a night. Don't know where in PA. you are, but it should be pretty easy to drag the hubby to one, and spend a night. Good luck.

I started this thread to encourage others to talk about what they are doing on their homesteads. It is exciting and fun to me to see the ideas that others come up with. There are so many reasons people go off grid or semi off grid or natural (as someone told me awhile back). Money, time, health, happiness, availability of grid tie. Whatever your reason I hope you are having fun with it. Keep posting on what you are doing. I get some great ideas on HT about the animals and the farm.

grandma12703 - please ignore the downer posters, some have a view that is not as positive as yours.

Just read right over them and please keep on going.

Doing something, is much better, than pulling someone else down.
And your way is your way, and the downers are not perfect either.

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"Live your life, and forget your age." Norman Vincent Peale

I like Cindy in PA's point that grandma12703 has a spouse that is working towards the same goal. I'm not so lucky in that dept. We live in a house that was built in 1835 that we are renovating ourselves. It's on 4 acres in the country. Uncontrollable situations led me to retire at 51, and we have come to this place in our self sufficient life by necessity. We do both agree that getting back to basics is a better way to live, but he has a hard time making simple adjustments like the compost crock on the kitchen counter! I am jumping in with both feet on self sufficiency-but going off grid would probably land me in divorce court!

Excellent posts, Thanks Grandma12703 for opening this thread about off grid living and sharing your own off grid situation. I hope to soon become more detached from the grid, but first I have to expand and improve the other parts of my homestead.

A-friggin-men.

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“I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Barry Goldwater.
III

I don't understand the negativity. We all have our ways of becoming less depenent on the "Grid". Some more than others for different reasons. Sounds like the OP is doing what she/they can. USE LESS and still enjoy it at the same time. She didn't say she was completly off grid or even trying. Just enjoying less dependence....James

I just bought a piece of land that is off grid. I intend to build a house and live off grid. I bought off grid because our fearless leader has told us that the price of electricity is going to go through the roof and I don't choose to participate. He seems to be attacking the coal industry and much of our generating plants are coal fired.

Living off grid is sort of like an extended camping trip. You can go as basic as you want or try to have all the modern conveniences. I intend to camp over there a lot this summer. I will set up the tent trailer. It has a propane cooktop and furnace. I also have the grill. I will do a bit of baking with charcoal and the dutch oven.

I have to get a solar panel and charge controller for the battery. I just found this; http://www.banggood.com/Wholesale-Li...r-p-26654.html . The leds use a lot less power that an incandescent bulb. The adapters Fit the lamp sockets on most 12 volt light fixtures. I plan to use them in the camper, ice fishing house, and the outhouse. I am also buying a small pure sine wave inverter so I can run the TV a bit.

I am going to buy a couple of the 350 gallon containers that dairy chemicals come in. They are plastic and have a steel cage around them. They are about $50 each, I am going to rinse them well, put one on the flatbed trailer, take it down to the lake, use a 12 volt RV transfer pump ($25), to fill it, and bring it back to camp. This water will be for watering the orchard I hope to put in this summer and showers. There are propane fired, on demand, water heaters fairly cheap so hot showers, Woo Woo. I hope to put in a sandpoint well this summer. Then the plastic containers will be filled by a 12 volt pump powered by solar and the transfer pump can draw from the containers.

I have a propane refrigerator I salvaged from an old camper. Can you say food storage and cold drinks. It even makes ice for the cooler when I want to go fishing. It will run for over a month on a 20 pounder.

I bought a valve and hose assembly that lets me refill the 20 lb to 100 lb propane tanks from the bulk tank. I no longer have to take the tanks into the propane refill station and pay $3.75 a gallon for propane. The propane in the bulk tank cost $1.25 a gallon. He He.

Great topic!

My family is also pursuing the goal of reducing/eliminating our connections to the "grid".

While i would have chosen to build the house and outbuildings quite a bit differently, we live in an area that a lot of building codes (and enforcement). Being close to family is what brought us here, so choosing to live somewhere else wasn't much of an option.

We're in our second year of construction now and will be working on finishing the exterior and installing the utilities this year.

The main goal is to have a house that maintains a temp of 50F+ without supplemental heating and doesn't require any active air conditioning. Thick concrete for the slab and walls will help keep the temp swings even. Lots of insulation in the ceiling and outside the concrete walls and slab should help. I expect a temp range of 60-80F without much work... we'll see!

We've also designed the plumbing (drains and intake lines poured in to the slab) for gray water use and solar pre-heating of the hot water lines. An on-demand propane hot water heater will be used to supplement if the water coming from the solar tank is not hot "enough".

The roof is metal (required for fire code compliance in our area) and makes harvesting water easy. We just finished putting in two 5000 gal cisterns. That brings our total water storage up to about 15,000 gal. It's a bit late in the season, since our rainy time has past, but they'll be ready for the fall rains. I'm hoping this will be the last year we need to use our well.

Potable water will be pumped (solar eventually) to tank that is uphill from the house to provide pressure for the house lines.

The power system will be solar panels with a generator as back-up. It would cost ~$20K just to get lines to the house, plus there would be a $200/month end-of-line charge before we even used any grid power. No thanks! I'm hoping to get the solar panel system up this year, but we'll see how far we get.

The orchard and gardens are already in (planted in spring 2011) and coming along nicely. Wonderful to see the blooms this spring. The garden produces more greens than we can eat. We'll be working on boosting the calorie crops this year and next.

I'm holding off on getting animals until we can provide more of our own feed/fodder. I am expanding my plantings of autumn olive, grape vines, black locust, mulberry, comfrey and other perennials that have a high quality feed value along with naturalizing vetch and clover. Eventually I'd like to get back to raising meat rabbits and maybe add in a couple goats and chickens/ducks.

Every year is more fun, but I'm not sure it is very simple

jwal -- can you post pictures of your wood stove set up? Specifically the coils and how you plumbed it all? I have been interested in doing something like this with our wood stove and don't know where to start.

I think that some people are substituting the term "off grid for “self sustaining”.

The definition of OFF GRID is living in a self-sufficient manner without reliance on ONE or MORE public utilities. A public utility is an organization supplying a community with electricity, gas, water, or sewerage.

If you want to be pedantic and need to make comparisons I suppose you could use terms such as "low level off grid" and "high level off grid" or "trying to get the heck off grid" but does it really matter? Grandma12703 and anyone else who is searching for a way to be more independent derserves to be commended.

IMO If you have a septic tank and field or an outhouse you are off grid. If you have a well or a catchment system you are off grid. If you have wind generators or solar panels you are off grid. Most often these are deliberate life style changes and choices but you can also be off grid simply because you cannot afford the $4000 per pole to bring electricity to your place. You do not have to have it all to call yourself off grid.

I have been told in the past that we were not actually off grid because we had internet access. Of course, the people who try to make these determinations were always doing so from their lazy boys in the suburbs, it seemed.