Living Offgrid - Anyone Here Into It?

Off Topic
21

Congratulations on deciding to change your life in this way.

Otherwise, on the subject, I will say that I can live Offgrid as much as Agent Smith can live off the matrix.

22

Minnesota. Maybe I am just efficient. My house isn’t very big though (1300 sqft). Also, we have natural gas which powers my furnace, water heater, stove and grill. That might be a big part of it. In the winter natural gas can be close to $100 a month.

My biggest uses of electric are AC, refrigerator, and cloths drying. The other stuff doesn’t use all that much.

In the winter I use like $100 of natural gas and like $30 of electric. Those numbers flip around in the summer. Fall and spring, my utilities are low.

23

These are almost requirements to live ‘affordably’ in CA. I almost bought a Tesla because the monthly payment would be ~$750 for the car with almost nothing in “gas” bills. Meanwhile I’m shelling out $6.30 per gallon and driving 100 miles a day for work (about $450 a month in gas).

Buying a Tesla was *this* close to saving me money lol. If I hadn’t already paid off my daily, the Tesla would have literally saved me money.

BTW, I have 3 pane windows, an efficient gas furnace and a brand new 5-ton Air Conditioner… This is what I get for living somewhere that regularly hits 110 degrees in summer.

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24

From what I remember (it’s been at least a year since I went down this rabbit hole) the panels, batteries, charge controllers, etc might give you 25 years pf service, and they might pay for themselves around the 20 year mark. So yeah, don’t expect to profit.

One way the power companies will fuck you if you try to sell power back to them is forcing you to upgrade equipment, like your inverter which cost thousands of dollars and would be perfectly functional for years for a new one.

The one good thing solar offers, in my opinion is a degree of independence and self sufficiency. In my area it’s not uncommon for people in the country to lose power for days or weeks at a time from a storm. I also have friends who had to pay the power company 50 grand to run power to their house because they had built half a mile off the road.

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25

I completely agree with the self sufficiency part. I just think that some of the solar ads are misleading.

I saw one a couple of days ago that said you can run your house on 5 panels, it’s simply not true, not if you want to live like a “normal” person. A/C, heat, refrig, freezer, washer/dryer etc.

Now, if you want to live in the woods and shit in hole in the ground, hand pump water, wash your clothes on a rub etc, sure you can do it.

26

FWIW, I think you made the financially better decision to stick with your paid off commuter.

The Tesla would depreciate massively with that level of driving (assume close to 30K miles a year). You would be paying $750 a month, and also your car would be worth $500 less every month. Your car likely isn’t depreciating at nearly the same amount. Electric cars in general drop quickly, because how much is a new Tesla battery? I bet it is at least $15K installed.

If I were you, I would seriously be thinking about finding a job closer to home, or moving closer to work. Your time is worth something, even if we don’t consider the cost of commuting.

So for this one, I have a friend that recently upgraded his furnace. He replaced the original in his house that was built in the 1940s. This is in a cold climate. His old furnace was in the ballpark of 75% efficient, his new one closer to 95% efficient. The thing is pre upgrade his natural gas bill was only like $150 a month. Lets assume all of the natural gas went to the furnace (ignore hot water, stove, etc…). He still only saves like $30 a month best case, and that is for like 6 months a year. So he saves maybe $200 a year, but spent $4-5K after installation.

I didn’t bring this up to him. He brought it up to me. He didn’t want to replace the old furnace. He had to. The parts were just worn out and he couldn’t keep it running anymore. He was really trying though (he made brass bushings for it in the company machine shop for a repair at one point).

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27

Until the daily commuter dies, it will be the better option lol. As for Tesla cost depreciation - their batteries last a LONG time… like estimated 1mil miles long. Value may depreciate, but I’d be in it for the long haul so this wouldn’t bother me.

I abused a home waranty policy into revamping my entire HVAC system… the workers said they’d normally charge about $7500 for the work they’d done. Best $35/month I ever paid lol

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28

I thought that was the motor?

A google search does indicate they last a lot longer than previous EV batteries though (see Nissan Leaf). Musk claims between 300-500K miles. That is very good even if on the low end.

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29

Teslas use lithium ion battery cells, and they are good for about a thousand charge cycles. Their battery pack is actually a shit load of 18650 wired together. So if it has a range of 300 miles it should be good for around 300,000 over the life of it’s battery pack.

The Nissan Leaf is interesting, apparently it had a shitty battery system from the factory and you can get one used for around $4000. But, allegedly, there are people who will install an aftermarket battery system for 10 to 12 grand that has a range of 250 miles.

30

Generally speaking, a definition of offgrid (or off the grid) you’re very likely to read is to disconnect from the utilities. That’s the least common denominator. Building on that, YMMV.

To us, offgrid living means to

  • reduce the impact society has on us wrt individual liberties
  • and still retain most of the modern amenities we’re used to (as our preps and infrastructure permit)
  • all the while giving us the means to exert a great degree of control over how we want to live

** INCOME **
At the moment, we still have jobs: we’re self-employed, operating a tech consultancy. We do this out of necessity (we need money) as opposed to out of passion. It’s not that we’re dispassionate about our fields of work. On the contrary, I’ve even published books and lots of trade pubs. It’s more that we’re more passionate about the whole offgrid living endeavour (motivation, planning, implementation). It’s like our professional expertise - and our company, for example - are mere means to and end, now. Of course, we need Internet for this (via LTE and Starlink). The reason we’re doing this is fivefold: (1) generate income; (2) the return on time invested is very good and unparalleled to anything else we could be doing in sustainable and repeatable fashion; (3) we enjoy the work; (4) we can set our own hours (both schedule-wise and volume-wise); (5) it’s remote work, so there’s no overhead wrt commuting. Clearly, we’re no technophobes. But we’ve become very conscious of the ways technology can take the focus off the more important things in life. Also, technology is crucial for providing us the creature comforts of modern live (think A/C; hot water; Internet; streaming; ease of information access etc.).

** LIVING OFF THE LAND **
To be somewhat self-reliant (see above: reduce the effect society/geopolitics might have on you), you need to grow your own food. Especially if you love/need lots of animal protein and culinary diversity. Would we love to be able to have goats to produce goat cheese? Sure. Would I love the ability to have access to steak producing cows? You bet. But since we love our privacy (as opposed to growing the homestead to a veritable farm which would entail hiring farm hands), we’re limited in what we can produce ourselves. So, for animal protein, it’s going to be meat rabbits. Tastes similar to chicken, but is way easier to maintain. Steak, goat cheese and other delicious foodstuffs we’ll have to either keep sourcing from super markets and/or local farmers markets. I hope this example could get our vision across. Also, we shouldn’t rule out that our expectations and goals might change, someday. In my OP, I’ve touched on the importance of community, even for a nouvea-recluse such as I ;). Even a curmudgeon needs the occasional social interaction, after all. And once kids are in the mix, I expect we’ll have to enmesh further within the community. Children need a broad range of proper stimuli, after all.

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31

Thanks for asking. All I feel comfortable sharing in this regard is that we’re living in the New England area. And also, that we split our time between the US and Canada (we have properties in both countries). We are permanent residents of both countries.

I know you haven’t asked, but I’d still like to put it out there: our values are more congruent with the US than with Canada, but we also like Canada. Although it’s more the nature and low pop density part than the cultural one with Canada. We had been looking at North Idaho (panhandle), Wyoming and Alaska, too. For Alaska, we don’t have the skills, yet. Not by a long shot. Wyoming - wow. But still too tough for us, at the moment. North Idaho? Maybe someday.

Also, to clarify: when I’m talking about what I like about the US and Canada: I’m referring to the non-urban parts of each country.

32

Would strongly recommend thoroughly investigating these resources before relegating yourselves to them, considering your line of work. It is worth mentioning that homesteading is a full time job for many people who do it, so one of you may need to work for finances while the other tends to most homesteading needs (or however you would decide to share duties).

I respect this sentiment.

In your plans, it would likely be wise to include financial bandwidth to afford both catastrophe and viable financial stability for children (think college and hospital fees).

33

Thanks for sharing. No need to divulge more than you wish to. I live in South Dakota, and usually recommend the Dakotas (and maybe Montana and Wyoming) when people want “rural.” Our winters are tough though.

You mention rabbits for protein, but are there other ways to access (somewhat free) protein sources, like hunting or fishing? In my area, if you can get a deer or two (depends on the size of the animal and how many mouths you’re feeding), you can be good on meat for a while. I know a guy who gets one elk a year and fishes in the summer, and rarely, if ever, has to purchase meat, be it from a store or a farmer.

34

Solar is absolutely reliable. In the end, though, the bottom line reliability comes down to the overall system design, meaning: (1) identify your power needs based on location (daily sun hours, weather/climate) and power consumption profile; (2) buy tried and tested products; (3) solar panels are cheaper than batteries, hence: run high power draw consumers (well pump, washer/drier, dish washer, water heater etc.) during day hours; (4) buy long-lasting and low-maintenance batteries (LiFePo4 as opposed to LI-ION, AGM, FLA); (5) install an easy monitoring system; (6) build in failsafes (fuses and breakers between panels and the solar charge controller, for example; (7) don’t skimp on wiring and mounting; (8) have spares/backups for the most important components; and of course, do proper system sizing.

Also, what @Uncle_Gabby said, mostly.

35

I don’t know about living a ‘Spartan’ lifestyle. If that’s what you’re after, I’m sure you can find ways of making that work both on the grid and off the grid. I bet some folks would deem living in a dry cabin without electricity as ‘Spartan’. From my POV, the offgrid/ongrid discussion is strongly associated with at least two parameters: (1) how much you’re willing to rely on the government and state (and subsequent infrastructure contractors) to take care of your infrastructure needs; (2) how congruent your definition of living a self-governed life is with the way the mainstream does it. If one were to be happy living a typical urban lifestyle where services (e. g. grocery and food delivery) are practically ‘instantly’ available, loves going out a lot and feels well represented by his local and state governments, then I’d expect them to be happy with an ongrid lifestyle. And I’d be happy for them.

Having said that: where would you fall on this spectrum? Do you see further deciding factors/parameters in addition to the two I’ve mentioned above?

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36

Here’s my 2 cents regarding the solar power discussion:

  1. Please refer to my reply to @jshaving:
    Living Offgrid - Anyone Here Into It? - #34 by FattyF4t

  2. I mostly agree with @Uncle_Gabby, especially regarding my disdain for grid-tie systems. This comes down to my personal values and goals, of course:

  • independence and self-reliance (as much as I can afford, that is) are very important to me; so I’m not looking at it from an economic point of view (other than that I have to make smart purchase and design decisions to afford the solar system, of course)
  • in the same vein, I don’t want to have to deal with utility companies
  • solar panels are cheaper, than batteries; this fact alone should heavily factor in your solar system design (see (3) at: Living Offgrid - Anyone Here Into It? - #34 by FattyF4t)
  • @Uncle_Gabby: unless you have a multi-storey building, using a telescoping rod cleaner, you can easily wipe off snow from roof-mounted solar panels
  1. How much solar do I need? This depends on a few things:
  • Do you want to maintain your current way of life?
  • If so, there might be a few tricks to achieve similar effects (e. g. A/C, hot water etc.) in a smarter fashion. For example: run your most power-intense appliances during sun hours; invest in a water storage system that allows you to pump lots of water into during sun hours (sun hours = free energy as opposed to using energy stored in batteries); increase thermal efficiency of your water heating system, e. g. insulate your water heater; add thermal mass)
  • Use solar air heater panels in addition to solar PV panels. Solar air heater panels can allow you to cut down heating costs by 30% - 40% if you do it right. They’re not very expensive, either. Also, you can use them to heat water.
  • Make your solar panels (both PV and air heater) tiltable. That way, you can increase efficiency by a whole lot. E. g.: if you don’t tilt your solar panels according to your local latitude, you can severely lose out on harvesting solar energy. It’s a very simple concept, you can quickly read up on it here: https://www.solarpaneltilt.com/

Last, but not least: yes, a solar system that provides effective self-reliance can become quite expensive. But there are a few ways to go about it that can save you lots of money:

  1. As outlined above, be smart about your system design. This means: know your requirements, know your constraints and read up. The info is out there and it’s free.
  2. Design for extensibility and start small.
  3. Source used components. And source solar panels locally. You can save a lot of money this way.
  4. Last, but not least: if you don’t have or don’t want to spend money, you can make up for a lot of it by sweat equity. Sure, manufacturing PV panels might not be feasible for most of us, but building solar air/water heating panels is easy and not that expensive. You can find many DIY builds on YouTube, for example.
37

Just be careful with the chainsaw, if necessary.

Those things will wreck a lot more than just a tree or two.

38

I appreciate your comments and you’re spot on with all of them.

Regarding:

LTE and Starlink
When we started out, we had to rely on LTE. There just wasn’t an effective alternative. So, for the better part of 18 months, we had to do with 6-8 Mbit. We got around that by buying multiple phones and plans. To get around this bandwidth limitation, we setup our local ‘office IT’ consisting of a strong WiFi router (don’t skimp on this), a reliable LTE modem and good WiFi repeaters (don’t skimp on these, either) and a NAS file server that would act as an intermediary and file mirror between our local system and the cloud. The same went for our office applications: we had setup a private cloud in the Internet that run our crucial applications. But we have the same applications running locally. This allowed us to (1) own our data (zero-knowledge encrypted, of course); (2) keep being productive even in case of LTE outages, very low bandwidth situations (e. g. me having a video call while my wife wants to use our CRM or project management systems).

Splitting time between homesteading and generating an income
I couldn’t agree more. My wife the homestead CEO and I’m the business CEO, each assuming an assisting role in the other’s ‘house’. To give an example: we both decide on where we want to take our homestead and what ‘capabilities’ we want to achieve. Then, we decide on a budget. This is where I usually have the final say, because I have a better overview over what income we can expect for the next 6 - 9 months from which clients/markets/products/services. If I’m opposed to a certain expense, but she has the better argument (e. g. ‘if we skimp on buying X, it’ll cost us way more in the short-to-mid-term’), we usually come up with a compromise (e. g. downsizing; delaying other mini-projects). Sometimes, I shuffle our project pipeline to acquire more lucrative (but extremely demanding) short-term projects to provide for her budgetary request, if there’s no sensible compromise to be made. Within these constraints (agreed on capabilities to be implemented; budget), my wife has free reign to achieve the outcomes. Regarding hands-on work: I assist her with heavy stuff and grunt work as time permits.Where she spends at least 20 hours from Mon - Fri doing homestead work (and at least 10 hours on weekends), I do about a third of that.

Business-wise, I set the strategy, but she has some say in what clients we take on. Sometimes she’s way better than I in sniffing out clients early on that are very likely to prove troublesome down the road and I usually defer to her judgement. She is responsible for her part of our service portfolio, but due to the nature of our business (and the homestead as her main focus), her service portfolio has a contributing character. About 3/4 of her service portfolio contributes to my service portfolio.

After we had finished our home and the septic system had been installed, we’ve been building our property and our homestead for the better part of a year, now. This distribution of responsibilities made the most sense, since it makes best use of both of our abilities and temperaments. My wife is more of a COO type, I’m more of a CEO type. Luckily, we knew that beforehand and we both love our roles. Having said that, that is merely the status quo. The goal is to scale down the business hours and to use this freed-up time for homesteading.

This is a setup that works pretty well. I think that comes down to it being a natural extension of our relationship. We have a classic dynamic going on where she knows that she wouldn’t respect me as much as she does if I were to let her walk all over me. We both believe in equality of rights between men and women, but also acknowledge that women and men are wired differently and treat each other accordingly. We’ve been together for more than a decade and I consider myself to be pretty lucky having met her. Before I had met her, I’ve been in relationships with toxic women that had bought into the false promise of feminism. This never worked out, because I’m a facts guy who usually keeps his cool in most conflicts, no matter how heated. Since my late teens, I’ve been very passionate about living up to classic masculine standards. The same goes for her wrt classic female standards. We see marriage as a commitment where both pitch in to the best of their abilities (and temperaments) to make life better for the family.

Failover Resilience
The end game as we’ve been envisioning it for quite some time is to generate income via product sales instead of by billable hours. And to transition our homestead (and our skills) to where we could 100% comfortably feed ourselves, live with modern creature comforts and maintain enough financial flexibility to allow for dealing with surprises and disasters. We’ll strive for maintaining a good enough financial cushion for this. This also encompasses healthcare and what our kids might need one day. Of course, this financial cushion isn’t only comprised of money.

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39

Long time, man. I still remember your posts - and that I liked them. Nice to see you still posting here.

Yeah, I had never handled a chainsaw before in my life before coming here. We had eased into using chainsaws by self-educating beforehand. I had let myself go very much in 2020 to the point where I had become too fat to put on the protection chaps we had bought. That’s why she got to be the first to cut down some of our logs. I was able to recover my male supremacy by handling an axe to split the wood, though. :wink:

I’ve lost a lot of the blubber since then and am ready to cut down some logs instead of just splitting or laying some.

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40

Thanks for the tip. We haven’t done enough research on the Dakotas, I’ll look into it. Can you recommend any good property listings for South Dakota?

Regarding rabbits for protein:

  • Sure, there are other ways to harvest protein sources. But from an efficiency POV, meat rabbits are very good.
  • Fishing is definitely an option and processing fish isn’t much of a hassle. But you need to invest time in fishing and enjoy the process. And, of course, you need to enjoy eating fish, too. I’m not much of a fish guy, my wife is, though. I like the occasional salmon and tuna, but that’s about it. I can’t stomach it more than once or twice a week, if at that. I’m aware that I might be forced to reconsider in the future, though. We even have a lakefront property, so there’s no excuse not to fish.
  • Hunting is definitely a skill we need to pick up. But we’re not there, yet. While I have no trouble harvesting small animals on our homestead, I will have to learn the skill to put down game animal humanely. In our native Germany, acquiring a hunting license is a very long process. That’s not necessarily bad, since you get a good education on what hunting is all about. The problem stems from being assigned game reserve licenses: in our circle of friends back in Germany, many hunters only received licenses to out-of-state game reserves and as such couldn’t accrue the requisite hunting experience. They simply lacked the means (time, money) to drive out of state, secure lodging and go hunting in regular fashion.