Living Off The Grid
How to move off grid now! 14 Things You Need To Move Off Grid Now! These are the things you need for living off the grid in the modern age. First you need the basics, and that is money. Then you need land, a good source of water, a place to grow your own food, a place to build your log cabin, a way to power everything with renewable solar energy, the tools and equipment necessary to install and maintain all this. You’re also going to need all the materials to build your cabin, install the solar power system with a battery backup, the knowledge and the skill to do it yourself, or hire a professional to do it for you.
Lastly, but perhaps most importantly you’re going to need the will to live off the grid. This is a completely different lifestyle than city or suburban life. It’s not as easy as people make it out to be. It takes a lot of work and some people just aren’t up to the task. Be real with yourself, and if you’re married, make sure to discuss all of this with your partner to make sure you’re both on the same page.
How To Move Off Grid Now
Read Our Article featuring Proenneke’s cabin as The Perfect Off Grid Survival Cabin: Living Off The Grid The Way It’s Meant To Be
Understand that it’s going to take a lot of physical labor to make the move to off grid living full time. It will likely take years to save the money to start, and that’s where we start this list. Money. You can’t start without money unless someone gives you the land or you inherit it.
1. MONEY
You need money to start! Save every penny, invest if you can. Make your money work for you. Put everything you can toward your goal to move off the grid. Sell off everything you’re not going to need on your homestead. Start a small side-hustle business. Sell T-Shirts, do anything you can (legally) to get the money you’re going to need. Figure a budget and try your best to stay within your budget. Once you have your budget laid out, double it, then perhaps triple it. Because it’s going to cost more than you think it’s going to cost, and while you’re saving inflation is eating away at the value of your money. This is why you should invest in something you’re comfortable with. Live as frugally as possible while you’re saving to go off grid. If you already own a home and have equity, you’re way ahead of the game and have money you can tap into if you absolutely have to. But don’t do that until you’re ready to make the move off grid.
2. LAND
You need a place to go! It starts with money, and your foundation is the land. You need land to build your off grid homestead. This usually means remote land. Choose a parcel of land that has all the building materials you’re going to need (trees, rock, sand, gravel, water, etc.) Make sure the land you pick is free from any covenants and restrictions that would prevent you from building your own cabin or growing your food or raising your own livestock. The idea of living off the grid is about self reliance and self sufficiency. You can’t be self-reliant if you’re dependent upon an arbitrary set of rules that won’t allow you to live the off grid lifestyle you want to live. Never buy land in a subdivision or land that’s governed by an HOA; the ONLY exception to this rule is if this subdivision and HOA is an “OFF GRID FRIENDLY” HOA and democratized. Most are not off grid friendly, and they prohibit certain building types, have other restrictions on livestock and gardens. Make sure the land has low annual taxes; this is usually land that is zoned agricultural. Which in turn usually allows for livestock like chickens, cows, pigs, etc. All these things mean remote land in a small county with a small county office and low or no building code enforcement. Which is getting harder and harder to come by. Read our article Buy Off Grid Land Now Before It’s Too Late for more information on buying your off grid land.
3. WATER
The land you choose should have a well (at the very least). Preferably with a natural clean potable water source like a natural spring, lake, pond, stream or river. Meaning this all goes back to choosing the perfect off grid land. Think like a pioneer. They had to be self-reliant and 100% self-sufficient. They didn’t have all the modern luxuries we have today. When they chose a piece of land to settle, it had to have everything they needed to survive, and you can’t survive without a source of clean water to drink.
4. FOOD
You need food to eat. That means a garden and farm and the ability to grow your own food on your own land. Some counties and areas prevent you from have a backyard garden or raising livestock. This could be in the form of covenants and restrictions in a subdivision created by a private landowner/corporation, or it could be governed by the local county and city municipality which has over restrictive regulations which prohibit a garden and/or livestock like chickens, pigs, and cows. Some will allow horses, but you can’t eat horses. (well…technically speaking you could…but we don’t do that in the Western world). The point is you need food to eat. That means a garden and livestock. Make sure you can have both!
5. SHELTER
You need shelter from the elements! This means your off grid log cabin. Everyone wants a log cabin or tiny house nowadays. Some folks are content with living fulltime in their RV and traveling from place to place throughout the year chasing 70 degree weather. 😉 This is a form of off grid living called VanLive, RVLife, or Nomad Life. A lot of people are choosing to go mobile and live full time in their travel trailers, RVs, tiny houses, and vans. If you want your own homestead on your own piece of land, then you’ll need your own cabin. This article assumes you’re going to build the cabin yourself. If you’ve got the money to hire a contractor, architect and engineer then you can skip reading this part of the article. For the rest of us, building our own off grid cabin is a dream and we all know what that looks like in our minds’ eyes. We all have this vision of what our cabin looks like and that’s what we want to build. The quintessential log cabin is ubiquitous in it;s design and aesthetic. It’s practical and it’s the kind of home that most off gridders and homesteaders dream of.
6. POWER
You need electricity! This means solar and wind power with a battery backup system. The modern world demands it. You could live primitively if you want, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But most folks want electricity to run the minimal electronic devices and modern appliances like a washer and dryer, big screen TV and a modern electric stove and oven.
My advice to you is to build a solar panel array of at least 1500 Watts, with a large battery backup system complete with a high-end charge controller, high wattage inverter, and the addition of a 1000-2000Watt wind turbine to add supplemental power when the sun’s not shining.
Peak sunshine differs all over the world, but the average time per day that most areas get is around 6 hours. This means you have 6 hours of peak time (depending on where you live; it could be more or les) to charge your battery system. You’ll run your homestead off the batteries, not directly off the solar panels.
The solar panel array and wind turbine(s) are simply to charge your power system which is your battery system. I would also advise housing your solar power system, all of it, inside a 20’ to 40’ shipping container for portability reasons and safety in case of fire. Set it far enough away from other buildings that way it’s not a danger to your cabin or barn in the event there is an electrical fire. Unless you’re an electrician or know what you’re doing, have a professional install the system for you.
You can buy all the necessary equipment, just make sure you have a qualified person install the power system. Most of it is getting simple enough to install now it’s almost plug and play, and there are some portable solar/battery combo-packs that you could run a remote cabin on and never need anything like a 20’ foot container filled with batteries. The power system is vital to your being off grid and generating your own electricity. Jut make sure you take proper precautions and you hire a professional if you don’t feel comfortable doing all the wiring yourself.
7. SEPTIC
You need proper waste disposal. EPS requires it. Some areas allow vault toilets (basically outhouses). But you might be able to get away with a composting toilet. You may still need a drainfield and some counties require it. You may also be require to pay for a perc test before installing the drain-field. Call the local city planning and zoning office or look up their zoning information online for the septic system requirements for the county/area you’re looking at purchasing land in. If the regulations are too restrictive, move on.
Find another piece of land because you will likely have problems later with this. This is one of the main problems people face when trying to move off the grid; a legal and proper septic system, or rather, the lack of one, is what could result in lots of fines, court costs, and worse, condemning of property. I’ve read too many stories of people breaking the EPA regulation and not having proper septic systems and waste disposal systems and it causes major problems later on down the road. Do your homework. Check the local regulations.
8. TOOLS & EQUIPMENT
When living off the grid you’re going to need lots of tools and equipment! We made a huge list of all the tools and equipment you’ll need to move off grid here. Suffice it to say, you’re going to need a list of hand tools, power tools, and farm equipment to run your off grid homestead. Fortunately we made a list of tools and equipment here.
9. MATERIALS
Building materials, lumber, rock, brick, clay, mortar (whether you make it yourself or buy it). Nails, screws, connectors, the list goes on and on. However. If you’re building a simple log cabin, then you can literally build it with no nails or screws by following the old ways and learning the log cabin building techniques of the pioneers who first settled the lands.
10. KNOWLEDGE
Study everything you can about what it takes to run a homestead, farming, ranching, read all the articles and information you can. Watch all the videos on Youtube. All this information is freely available online, and what’s not online already you can buy a book on Amazon to learn the skills you need. You’re going to need to know basic carpentry if you are going to build your own cabin. You need to know when and how to plant a garden if you plan on growing your own food.
11. SKILLS
Dick Proenneke Cabin – The Perfect Off Grid Survival Cabin
You’re going to need basic building and mechanical skills to go along with the knowledge. You can learn a lot from watching YouTube videos and reading everything you can on old building techniques, modern building codes, electrical and plumbing, concrete and carpentry skills . Then when you’re ready to build your cabin you’ll have this knowledge. There’s going to be some trial and error, just be safe and if possible get the advice and help from an expert. I’m sure you have some friends and family in the construction field, and folks who know a lot about gardening and raising livestock. You’re going to need all these skills. Learn them.
12. WILL
You’ll need the willpower, discipline, commitment and work ethic to see it through to the end to build your off grid dream. The reward at the end is the best feeling. To stand back and look at your creation, that feeling of accomplishment is unparalleled. That takes commitment and wit willpower to get it done. Watch the video, linked above of Shawn James building hid off grid cabin for inspiration and what the kind of discipline and willpower it takes to build a cabin like this.
That’s it. Now you’re ready to live off the grid. Not really.
13. SEEDS
You’re going to need seeds and cuttings to plant your garden and start growing your own food on your own land. For very litte upfront cost invest in some heirloom seed varieties of the most popular and common fruits and vegetable for your starte garden just to get started. As you grow more food and gain more experience you can add varieties of vegetables later.
14. GREENHOUSE
You need a greenhouse when living off the grid! You can grow food year round in a greenhouse. Build one. The cheapest easiest kind of greenhouse to build is a hoop house made from roll plastic sheeting, PVC pipe, and some rebar. You can build a hoop-house greenhouse for about $100 in materials. It’s not going last long, but it’ll get you started and last a couple seasons while you build a more permanent greenhouse.
Off Grid Living Is All About Freedom
It’s not really that easy. It’s a simple concept. But by no means is it going to be “easy”.
Living off the grid requires a lot of money, planning, hard work, tenacity and the will and motivation to do it. Most of all it requires the one thing I think we all have in common.
The desire and want to live free, on our own land, in our own way. To be self reliant. Free from the confines of a system that has gone crazy.
That’s what off grid living is all about.
Freedom and independence.
Never forget that!
That’s why we live this way.
That’s what it’s all about.
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References:
Off-The-Grid – Wikipedia
Self-Sufficient – Wikipedia
Sustainable Living – Wikipedia
Natural Resources – Wikipedia
Sustainability – Wikipedia
Solar Power – Wikipedia
Richard Proenneke – Wikipedia
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Featured image Credit: Dick Proenneke Building His Off Grid Cabin in the Alaskan Wilderness
Alone In The Wilderness
