For reference, I don't live off grid in that we have power (plus regular deliveries of propane) and a decent gravel road in, but I do live in an area where we get isolated by storms and where power outages are a fact of life. This area only got power in the year 2000, and there are remoter areas where there is no power.
These are the problems you'll face if you plan to live "off grid" and considerations you need to make.
1) Creating shelter.
-- Is there a building code to worry about? If you're building a place from scratch, you may have to be concerned about this. Don't bet on flying under the radar if you're building something as big as a cabin. They use satellite these days to look for structures.
-- How are you going to get materials and tools in? Is there a road? If there isn't a road, do you know how heavy building materials can be? Bags of cement, bundles of shingles, buckets of nails and paint, and big beams weigh a lot. (If there's a building code, don't plan on cutting timbers for everything. My father tried that. They let us cut logs for the walls, but we had to have the roof trusses commercially engineered, because snow.)
-- Are you going to do everything with hand tools, or do you have a way to charge up power tools? A generator or solar? What if you need to weld something, or deal with rocky ground?
-- How are you going to get really heavy or bulky stuff in? Wood stoves, water heaters, etc.
2) Generating power
-- You're likely going to need power for a few reasons I'll elaborate on below. How are you going to generate it? You may want more than one method.
-- Wind only works when the wind blows. High winds can damage the works, too.
-- Solar may work fairly well, but put your solar panels somewhere that you can clean snow off them. They don't work if they're covered with snow.
-- Hydroelectric is an option if you have running water on your property and can get around the usual EPA rules.
-- You'll probably want a generator + fuel (propane stores better than gas) for backup when the green stuff fails.
-- All methods prone to fairly frequent technical difficulties. Batteries fail, inverters croak, stuff just breaks. You'll need to learn to fix it, and have the cash to order replacement parts (and if you're really remote and can't get online, you'll need to have spare parts.)
3) Water
-- You're going to need water for cooking, for cleaning, and for watering your garden when the rains don't come.
-- If you're really lucky you either have surface water running across your property, or you're in an area with enough rain to catch sufficient quantities from your roof. Do not count on the latter, have a backup plan or one heckuva big cistern. (Se above about getting supplies in. How are you going to get the concrete for a cistern in, or lug in a several thousand gallon size tank?)
-- You may need a well. How are you going to drill it? How deep do you need to go? How are you going to pump water from the well? (If you answer, "Windmill," check the prices on windmills, and compare the up front cost of a windmill to the cost of buying gas for a generator for the well pump.)
-- How are you going to get water to your dwelling? In a bucket? Trust me, this gets old, fast. If you want running water you'll either need to pump water up to a tank high enough above the house for gravity feed, or you'll have to have a pressure tank. You'll probably need power for either option.
-- How are you going to heat the water? Your options are solar, electric, propane, or a wood stove with an attached water heater. Propane heat is probably easiest year-round solution.
-- There will be droughts, and if you're growing your own garden, you'll need to be able to water it. Figure out how you're going to do this. I really do not recommend trying to water a large vegetable garden with a bucket.
4) Winter heat.
-- A wood stove is the warmest, most efficient, and cheapest way to heat an off-grid home.
-- Who's going to stoke the wood stove when you're not there? Yeah. You need a backup plan for heating the place when you're not around. Propane or electric. Propane's probably best if you're entirely off grid. A propane through-the-wall furnace works well enough, and is reasonable safe.
-- You do not want to let the house freeze. It's not really about having a cold house. It's that your pipes (if you have plumbing) will freeze. Also, a lot of other things don't like freezing temperatures either: smart phones, anything with an LCD screen, batteries, canned food, bottled water, etc. Freezing isn't good for any of it. So figure out how you're going to keep the house above freezing when it's -10 out and the wind's howling 40 mph and you've got to run into town for supplies.
5) Electronic gadgets & communications
-- More and more, you NEED a computer or at least a smart phone. It's not just a luxury anymore. There are a lot of things you just can't do without one, plus the internet is so incredibly useful for figuring stuff out. I look at Youtube videos all the time for helpful tips, and there's all sorts of how-to blogs and sites and forums, including this one.
-- Weather forecasts can save your life.
-- A cell phone can save your life too, if you get hurt. It happens.
-- Ordering supplies online can save you tons of money, and lets you order stuff that may not be available locally. (Here, it's seeds. The local nursery only has the bare basics, and not all the seeds they have are suited for our local climate.)
-- When it's been below freezing for a month, the wind is howling, and it can't decide if it wants to sleet or snow, and everything's covered in a crust of ice, that Walking Dead marathon can save your sanity.
-- Figure out how you're going to power your gadgets. Solar, wind, hydro, or a generator. Pick one (or more).
6) Tools
-- You'll eventually end up with a small hardware's store worth of odds and ends. Figure out where you're going to store them -- a good tool shed or a weathertight garage is important. (Everyone I know who lives in a rural area hoards odds and ends. We don't just have a junk drawer, we have an entire shed full of junk.)
-- Tools. Buy quality. It sucks if you're half a day's round trip from the hardware store and an important tool breaks on you and you can't complete your project.
-- Take care of your tools. Figure out how you're going to keep them protected from the weather, from rodents, and in the case of anything that might be damaged by freezing or extremely hot temperatures (anything with batteries!), keep them from extremes of temperatures.
-- Figure out how you're going to charge batteries
7) Cooking
-- Figure out how you're going to cook. I do not recommend "over a campfire" as anything but a very short term solution. Also, camp stoves have a tendency to leak and I have personally witnessed a cab-over camper go sky high because of this. Don't use cheap camp stoves inside.
--- Wood cook stoves are problematic in that they are really hot (nice in winter, not so much in July) and somewhat difficult to maintain a steady temperature with.
-- Propane is probably your best bet for stuff you can cook quickly -- frying the bacon and eggs up in the morning, a steak for dinner, that kind of thing. Cast iron over a hot wood fire also works, but meh. Then you have soot everywhere and your food tastes like smoke.
-- For roasting or crock-pot type meals, you can use a solar oven in summer, and stick a dutch oven on top of your wood stove in winter. (In theory, you can use a solar oven on a sunny winter's day too, but around here, you'd be picking the pieces of the solar oven up from all over the yard after it went flying during the first big windstorm. Plus they don't work when the sun's not shining.)
8) Lighting
-- Electric LED lights don't actually use that much power, so they're a decent solution.
-- If you need really bright light (fixing equipment after dark, etc), a propane coleman lantern is a good choice.
-- Battery operated solar garden lights are good for night lights
-- Oil lamps and candles are fairly dangerous and should only be used when you're sitting right there to watch them, particularly if you have pets. (You'll probably want a cat or three. I've yet to find a cabin without mice. And you'll probably want a dog, to warn you if there's predators or strangers around, and to deal with the varmits too big for the cats.)
9) Sanitation
-- Is an outhouse legal? Do you want to risk black widow bites to your dangly bits in summer, and frostbite to the same parts in winter? If not, can you put in a traditional septic system or does it have to be engineered? (Around here, they won't even allow you to try to perc anymore. They just require engineered systems, period, full stop. I'm reasonably convinced that the county inspectors and the companies that install septic systems are in cahoots, but it is what it is. An engineered septic system runs $30K.)
-- Alternately, there's a composting toilet, or a holding tank (and a honey wagon that visits every few weeks.)
-- You could also try to install your own septic by the light of the moon on a weekend, but this only works in areas where they don't require building inspections and/or if you install a composting toilet, point the inspector to it, and then rip it out and put in a real toilet as soon as the inspector leaves.
-- Pick one. You are not a bear.
10) Crops
-- Are you going to grow a garden?
-- Have you ever grown a garden before? There's a learning curve, and it's specific to an area (or even the specific microclimate and soil of your property.)
-- What are you going to grow?
-- How are you going to preserve it? Think twice about what you're going to grow. Some things are easier to preserve than others. Some *varieties* are easier to preserve than others of specific crops. Winter squash keeps for months. Zucchini, a few weeks at best. Heck, some varieties are easier to HARVEST than others -- I grew a year's supply of green beans this year, but I swear I'm growing purple beans next year. The green ones are a PITA to pick because they're hard to see against the foliage (particularly if your vision is as bad as mine!)
-- Where are you going to store your harvest? Canned goods and most long-keeping vegetables can't freeze without being ruined, or the jars broken. Basement? Root cellar? Pantry? Figure it out.
-- How are you going to keep the animals out of your garden? Electric fencing works but requires a ton of maintenance to keep going. Figure out how you're going to power it, and plan on checking it and walking the fence line daily. Deer and elk can jump seven or eight feet and will stand on and shove a wimpy fence down -- we keep the elk out with a very sturdy seven foot fence here, and a dog on the inside barking at them.
-- What are you going to do if your crops fail? Hail happens. Untimely frost happens. Windstorms happen. Plagues of locusts happen.
11) Meat
-- Can you hunt for meat? (Around here, it's not viable to plan on hunting for your meat, unless you like bunny and are better at finding bunny than I am. I haven't been drawn for an elk tag in 10+ years. That leaves javelina and deer. There aren't many deer, they're tiny, and you still have to be drawn, you'll only get one tag if you're drawn, and you won't get drawn every year. And I don't eat stink pig.)
-- Raising animals is the other option.
-- What are you going to raise?
-- What predators are there locally, and how are you going to keep your livestock safe from predators?
-- How are you going to protect your animals from weather? What are you going to do if it snows three feet, or if there's a 70mph wind and 5 degree weather, or if it's 110 and it hasn't rained in a month?
-- Do you have enough water? Animals (particularly dairy animals) need a ton of water.
-- If you're raising dairy animals (cows, goats, etc) do you have the time to milk them 2X a day every day with no exceptions? Do you know how to make cheese, yogurt, etc. and do you have the supplies?
-- Eggs need to be picked up before they freeze in winter. They do keep well, though, and are a great source of protein. What are you going to feed the chickens? They won't lay well if you just throw them a few scraps and expect them to forage for themselves.
-- How are you going to preserve the meat? Freeze it? Is it cold enough in winter to freeze stuff outside, or is your winter broken up by thaws? What about summer? Can you can it? Dry it? Smoke it? Salt it? Combinations thereof?
-- Canning it is a reasonable approach for year round meat, but do you have enough cans and pressure canners and (and likely, helping hands) to can an entire animal before the meat goes off? Pressure canners take a long time to reach the right pressure, and then cool off again, and only do a few cans at a time. You'll need multiple canners and a ton of propane. Canning over a wood fire is possible, but it's difficult to get the fine control of the temperature you need for pressure canning.
-- What are you going to feed your critters? Hay and grain cost money, and livestock needs to be supplemented in most areas in the winter. Chickens don't lay very well unless you feed them at any time of year.
Finally, how are you going to pay for the supplies you can't grow, make, or scavenge? What about property taxes? Medical bills? Gas, propane, and repairs and upgrades to whatever you're using to make power? Tools will break and equipment will fail and vehicles will need repairs. You'll either need a job, a business of some sort, or a ton of savings.
Okay guys -- what am I forgetting here?
Living Off Grid -- Assorted Considerations and thoughts
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