5 ms·

I Lived Off the Grid – and I’m Still Broke

13 points by onychomys 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago
> [Rain] made our diminutive solar-power system effectively useless and leaves us paying for diesel to run a noisy, exhaust-spewing generator for daily power. ... you're not very far "off grid" then, are you? As to the "composting toilet"; how about an outhouse? Or bury a 55gal barrel and make your own septic system? Buying firewood because you don't have enough time? The whole point is to do things yourself instead of buying from others, isn't it? It was a big point for the hippies founding communes in the 70s. I suspect this person meant "off grid" as some amorphous notion that would confer Moral Cachet, and never intended or considered the actual "live with less" part of such a lifestyle. "Let's go camping the Northlands in Winter" is likely to be literally, deadly stupid. At least try it somewhere with better weather.
- theluketaylor 5y ago
  Agreed; despite the article stating a lot of research was required I don't think the author really put in the time or understood what would be required of them to live off-grid, especially at the beginning. Going truly off grid requires either a breathtaking amount of labour, massive upfront capital, or both. It sounds like the author had none of those things. My grandparents heated their house in northern Ontario with only firewood for decades. Grandpa could cut down and haul all the trees he needed for a year in a week or two, but if you didn't want to pay for a kiln then it needed to dry for at least a year, so you were always working a year ahead. The house was designed with a massive brick chimney as huge thermal mass to absorb heat all day and slowly release it overnight as the fire lessened. Even then Grandpa would still stoke the stove before going to bed at 10 and he was always up at 5 to re-stoke the fire and do his exercises. Grandpa had to put labour into cutting trees, splitting logs, hauling wood into the house, and keeping the fire going. He also invested capital and labour into the house, making sure it was sufficiently insulated, designed for wood heat, and then he built it himself. Once he turned 85(!) he decided the labour was no longer worth it and they installed propane hydronic heat. The author complains of their solar not being sufficient due to rain, but didn't mention the size of their array or battery storage. Going off grid without much sacrifice requires a really well insulated house, an array probably at least 8-10 kW, and likely 10+ kWh of storage. That all doesn't come cheap, but since panels and batteries have come way down it's likely cheaper than the cost of getting BC Hydro to run a utility line to the property, which starts around 30k for rural properties and I've seen quotes over 200k. Their "composting toilet" was just a bucket, but there are great composting toilets out there that don't smell and do a fantastic job, they just cost money. Sounds like they were not happy investing labour into composting, and didn't have the capital for a low-effort tool.
- sigmaprimus 5y ago
  I believe they are renting, this may create difficulties in building outhouses and septic systems. I also suspect there are regulations regarding ground water pollution given the Salmon bearing streams and shallow wells in the Shuswap area. I cut my own firewood but also buy it, I find that after fuel for saws and hauling equipment. My hourly wage based on savings for cutting my own wood rather than buying it works out to around $5 per hour. A cord of wood is a lot of wood and I typically go through 4 to 6 a year. I do other things that have a greater time to savings value so rather than spend a month and a half cutting and hauling wood I find the price of $180/Cord including delivery and stacking is a bargain. Living off grid is definitely not about doing everything yourself, that attitude is probably the first thing people let go of when they leave the "Selfish City" and find themselves depending on their friends and neighbors in the country.
  - h2odragon 5y ago
    > not about doing everything yourself Good point. I'm a child of a hippie commune, "Back to the Land" was a more common phrase then and still doesn't convey well what many people meant. When you compare the costs of cutting your own wood to buying it; you touch on the central conflict: "Modern" life is actually a win on efficiency for individual effort. What's needed to make an off-grid / less social / variant lifestyle work is a slightly different value system; where being out in the forest cutting your wood has a value to you that is something you can't buy. I know a lot of "small farmer" types who spend way too much money on pursuits that will never return a monetary gain. They may not be able to articulate and assess the non-financial gains the perceive; but they do exist and it's a worthy choice for many. I don't think its something you "go off grid" to find, tho. You find something else, first, that outweighs being so "on-grid" as you currently are. then you'll be able to remind yourself why you're elbow deep in a cow in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve rather than sleeping off an office party bender, and stay sane.
    - sigmaprimus 5y ago
      I think You are right and glad to see You put Modern in quotes as people have been buying and selling firewood for a long time. Selling wood might actually be the second oldest profession! (No pun intended!)
sigmaprimus 5y ago
Reading this article made me smile, I think the authors experiences are something everyone who leaves "The Big City" goes through, it is a sort of right of passage. I doubt there is a single person that uses wood for heat that hasn't questioned their life decisions when they find themselves slipping and sliding down a narrowly dug path through deep snow, in their housecoat, half frozen and hauling wood into the house early in the morning before the sun is even up only to spend the next hour fiddling with a smokey fire that refuses to get going. Some people make it, some people give up and head back to the city but all of them become better people from gaining a respect through hard times for the people living outside of the cities and a possibly become less arrogant in the process. I hope the author and his partner tough it out over the winter, there are few places more beautiful than the Shuswap region and the people who call that area home are the same.
- theluketaylor 5y ago
  My grandfather heated with wood in just about the easiest way possible apart from the german self-filling pellet stoves. He designed and built the house specifically for wood heating with some very clever ideas. The back wall of the attached garage has built-in sturdy shelving that holds months of firewood neatly stacked, eliminating the cold walk to a shed for something to burn. The basement wall shared with the garage he built a cold room outside the insulation envelope of the house. The room has a chute from the garage you can slide wood down, but since the cold room isn't part of the insulated envelope you're not losing heat to the garage. The woodstove is only a few feet from the cold room exterior door, so adding wood to the fire is just a few steps and the chute only has to be re-filled every few days. Still had to haul ashes out from time to time, but overall I've never seen a better setup.
- liveoneggs 5y ago
  should have spent more time consulting this old-timey documentary about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres
Const-me 5y ago
Off the grid is too extreme, IMO. I have relocated to a small town, under 10k urban population. The grids are OK, for the electricity the average downtime is couple hours / year.
- sigmaprimus 5y ago
  I agree, try to have the best of both worlds if possible. I also live near a smaller city/town with a population of ~10K, I live just outside the city limits and have watched the services expand out to my property. I am very happy to say that I just got a fiberoptic connection which has 400Xed my internet speeds, provided my with 4K television service and reduced my Satellite TV and LTE Internet bill by $75! I can only imagine how much these new services have added to my property values, but I am certain it has made it easier to sell them if I chose to do so in the future. The smart play if You have the patience is to get "affordable" property on the fringes of a small city or town and benefit from it growing up around You. My property still doesn't have city water or sewer but expect that is coming in the near future, then the sub divisions will come, strip malls next, finally office buildings and condos....until eventually I'll pack up and move with my big bag of cash from selling and do it all again. I was lucky to have had parents who did this also so when I was looking to relocate from the big city, I visited a number of smaller towns and when I found my current hometown, it reminded me of my childhood one from ~40 years earlier. PS: Having a Walmart in or near the town if You are buying in is also a good thing IMO. I know lots of people feel they push out small businesses but IMO they keep the small town sharks honest and prevent gouging.
mikestew 5y ago
"Well, you need a lot less fuck-off money if you’re living off-grid,” What a load of (albeit, compostable) shit. Who goes "off the grid" to save money? Sure, the house/land cost less. The rest of it misses out on economies of scale. You think you can generate electricity for less than the company with multi-megawatt generators? Sure, use solar panels...in British Columbia...in the winter. Okay, fine, you're off the grid and it kinda sucks. Hey, wait a minute, what's the giant propane tank in the picture? How in the hell is that "off the grid"? Propane tanks are for places that are way too far out to run a gas line, but in my book you're "on the grid" and the part where the grid carries energy is being done by a big truck full of propane. I grew up with a propane tank in our yard. Not once did anyone think we were living anything but a normal life. Same with the diesel generator. Same with the wood that was purchased, for that matter. All of them reliances on some other part of society to do the work for you. Perhaps it's semantics, but I consider "off the grid" to work even after society collapses. In the end, it sounds like someone should have done a few more camping trips before leaving the big city to go live in the woods. Be it tent camping or even a 40' Class A tour buss RV, one quickly finds out that just about everything is more work and more expensive if it doesn't come out of a water tap or electrical outlet.

13 points by onychomys 5y ago

> [Rain] made our diminutive solar-power system effectively useless and leaves us paying for diesel to run a noisy, exhaust-spewing generator for daily power. ... you're not very far "off grid" then, are you? As to the "composting toilet"; how about an outhouse? Or bury a 55gal barrel and make your own septic system? Buying firewood because you don't have enough time? The whole point is to do things yourself instead of buying from others, isn't it? It was a big point for the hippies founding communes in the 70s. I suspect this person meant "off grid" as some amorphous notion that would confer Moral Cachet, and never intended or considered the actual "live with less" part of such a lifestyle. "Let's go camping the Northlands in Winter" is likely to be literally, deadly stupid. At least try it somewhere with better weather.

theluketaylor 5y ago
Agreed; despite the article stating a lot of research was required I don't think the author really put in the time or understood what would be required of them to live off-grid, especially at the beginning. Going truly off grid requires either a breathtaking amount of labour, massive upfront capital, or both. It sounds like the author had none of those things. My grandparents heated their house in northern Ontario with only firewood for decades. Grandpa could cut down and haul all the trees he needed for a year in a week or two, but if you didn't want to pay for a kiln then it needed to dry for at least a year, so you were always working a year ahead. The house was designed with a massive brick chimney as huge thermal mass to absorb heat all day and slowly release it overnight as the fire lessened. Even then Grandpa would still stoke the stove before going to bed at 10 and he was always up at 5 to re-stoke the fire and do his exercises. Grandpa had to put labour into cutting trees, splitting logs, hauling wood into the house, and keeping the fire going. He also invested capital and labour into the house, making sure it was sufficiently insulated, designed for wood heat, and then he built it himself. Once he turned 85(!) he decided the labour was no longer worth it and they installed propane hydronic heat. The author complains of their solar not being sufficient due to rain, but didn't mention the size of their array or battery storage. Going off grid without much sacrifice requires a really well insulated house, an array probably at least 8-10 kW, and likely 10+ kWh of storage. That all doesn't come cheap, but since panels and batteries have come way down it's likely cheaper than the cost of getting BC Hydro to run a utility line to the property, which starts around 30k for rural properties and I've seen quotes over 200k. Their "composting toilet" was just a bucket, but there are great composting toilets out there that don't smell and do a fantastic job, they just cost money. Sounds like they were not happy investing labour into composting, and didn't have the capital for a low-effort tool.
sigmaprimus 5y ago
I believe they are renting, this may create difficulties in building outhouses and septic systems. I also suspect there are regulations regarding ground water pollution given the Salmon bearing streams and shallow wells in the Shuswap area. I cut my own firewood but also buy it, I find that after fuel for saws and hauling equipment. My hourly wage based on savings for cutting my own wood rather than buying it works out to around $5 per hour. A cord of wood is a lot of wood and I typically go through 4 to 6 a year. I do other things that have a greater time to savings value so rather than spend a month and a half cutting and hauling wood I find the price of $180/Cord including delivery and stacking is a bargain. Living off grid is definitely not about doing everything yourself, that attitude is probably the first thing people let go of when they leave the "Selfish City" and find themselves depending on their friends and neighbors in the country.
- h2odragon 5y ago
  > not about doing everything yourself Good point. I'm a child of a hippie commune, "Back to the Land" was a more common phrase then and still doesn't convey well what many people meant. When you compare the costs of cutting your own wood to buying it; you touch on the central conflict: "Modern" life is actually a win on efficiency for individual effort. What's needed to make an off-grid / less social / variant lifestyle work is a slightly different value system; where being out in the forest cutting your wood has a value to you that is something you can't buy. I know a lot of "small farmer" types who spend way too much money on pursuits that will never return a monetary gain. They may not be able to articulate and assess the non-financial gains the perceive; but they do exist and it's a worthy choice for many. I don't think its something you "go off grid" to find, tho. You find something else, first, that outweighs being so "on-grid" as you currently are. then you'll be able to remind yourself why you're elbow deep in a cow in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve rather than sleeping off an office party bender, and stay sane.
  - sigmaprimus 5y ago
    I think You are right and glad to see You put Modern in quotes as people have been buying and selling firewood for a long time. Selling wood might actually be the second oldest profession! (No pun intended!)

sigmaprimus 5y ago

Reading this article made me smile, I think the authors experiences are something everyone who leaves "The Big City" goes through, it is a sort of right of passage. I doubt there is a single person that uses wood for heat that hasn't questioned their life decisions when they find themselves slipping and sliding down a narrowly dug path through deep snow, in their housecoat, half frozen and hauling wood into the house early in the morning before the sun is even up only to spend the next hour fiddling with a smokey fire that refuses to get going. Some people make it, some people give up and head back to the city but all of them become better people from gaining a respect through hard times for the people living outside of the cities and a possibly become less arrogant in the process. I hope the author and his partner tough it out over the winter, there are few places more beautiful than the Shuswap region and the people who call that area home are the same.

theluketaylor 5y ago
My grandfather heated with wood in just about the easiest way possible apart from the german self-filling pellet stoves. He designed and built the house specifically for wood heating with some very clever ideas. The back wall of the attached garage has built-in sturdy shelving that holds months of firewood neatly stacked, eliminating the cold walk to a shed for something to burn. The basement wall shared with the garage he built a cold room outside the insulation envelope of the house. The room has a chute from the garage you can slide wood down, but since the cold room isn't part of the insulated envelope you're not losing heat to the garage. The woodstove is only a few feet from the cold room exterior door, so adding wood to the fire is just a few steps and the chute only has to be re-filled every few days. Still had to haul ashes out from time to time, but overall I've never seen a better setup.
liveoneggs 5y ago
should have spent more time consulting this old-timey documentary about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Acres

Const-me 5y ago

Off the grid is too extreme, IMO. I have relocated to a small town, under 10k urban population. The grids are OK, for the electricity the average downtime is couple hours / year.

sigmaprimus 5y ago
I agree, try to have the best of both worlds if possible. I also live near a smaller city/town with a population of ~10K, I live just outside the city limits and have watched the services expand out to my property. I am very happy to say that I just got a fiberoptic connection which has 400Xed my internet speeds, provided my with 4K television service and reduced my Satellite TV and LTE Internet bill by $75! I can only imagine how much these new services have added to my property values, but I am certain it has made it easier to sell them if I chose to do so in the future. The smart play if You have the patience is to get "affordable" property on the fringes of a small city or town and benefit from it growing up around You. My property still doesn't have city water or sewer but expect that is coming in the near future, then the sub divisions will come, strip malls next, finally office buildings and condos....until eventually I'll pack up and move with my big bag of cash from selling and do it all again. I was lucky to have had parents who did this also so when I was looking to relocate from the big city, I visited a number of smaller towns and when I found my current hometown, it reminded me of my childhood one from ~40 years earlier. PS: Having a Walmart in or near the town if You are buying in is also a good thing IMO. I know lots of people feel they push out small businesses but IMO they keep the small town sharks honest and prevent gouging.

mikestew 5y ago

"Well, you need a lot less fuck-off money if you’re living off-grid,” What a load of (albeit, compostable) shit. Who goes "off the grid" to save money? Sure, the house/land cost less. The rest of it misses out on economies of scale. You think you can generate electricity for less than the company with multi-megawatt generators? Sure, use solar panels...in British Columbia...in the winter. Okay, fine, you're off the grid and it kinda sucks. Hey, wait a minute, what's the giant propane tank in the picture? How in the hell is that "off the grid"? Propane tanks are for places that are way too far out to run a gas line, but in my book you're "on the grid" and the part where the grid carries energy is being done by a big truck full of propane. I grew up with a propane tank in our yard. Not once did anyone think we were living anything but a normal life. Same with the diesel generator. Same with the wood that was purchased, for that matter. All of them reliances on some other part of society to do the work for you. Perhaps it's semantics, but I consider "off the grid" to work even after society collapses. In the end, it sounds like someone should have done a few more camping trips before leaving the big city to go live in the woods. Be it tent camping or even a 40' Class A tour buss RV, one quickly finds out that just about everything is more work and more expensive if it doesn't come out of a water tap or electrical outlet.