What is living off the grid? Essentially, it means that you live your daily lives without connection to water, electric, gas or any form of sources outside to function. These kinds of homes have to be sustainable on their own, fulfilling your needs while being able to maintain a comfortable shelter for a reasonably long period of time.
Moving towards off-the-grid living does not only mean that you are on your way to survive a disaster, that is only one aspect of it. Off-the-grid living has many meanings to different individuals, where some want to treat this as an attempt to achieve a greater goal known as self-reliant living. Some just want to reduce economic burden while others may want to move towards rural living.
Do you want to have continuous supply of electricity anytime no matter what happens outside? Want to have more autonomy over what you consume into your body because you got tired of eating processed food? How about keeping you and your loved ones safe although there is an economic downturn or a terrorist attack? If you say ‘YES’, then it is time to do what it takes to live off-grid.
However, before discussing about the best way to live off grid, I thought it would only be proper to discuss why living off-the-grid is beneficial. That is what I would delve in next.
Benefits of Living Off-the-grid
Benefit 1: The feeling of security that comes from self-sufficiency
The amount of security that is enjoyed from being self-sufficient is tremendous, and this draws many people to come to this self-reliance journey. Why can we be said to be self-sufficient? Basically, it’s because we are moving towards being a ‘Producer’, rather than a ‘Consumer’. Producing our own clean water, producing our own electricity and growing our own food.
Going off-grid is a lifestyle of its own, where instead of using an electric heater, you take the effort to build a fire using tinder. Instead of going to the groceries whenever you do not have enough food, you go to your backyard to see if there are any fully-grown vegetables.
When you are tied to the grid, there are many kinds of variables that can disrupt your daily living. Most people chose to live off-grid is because they want to eliminate such risks, creating our own electricity and learning to live without it too.
Another aspect of independent living is to plant your own vegetable garden and possibly rear animals so that you can get your own supply of food. Usually, we would opt for chickens to provide fresh eggs.
The thought that you do not need to rely on other producers is liberating! You do not need to worry if the clean water supply gets cut tomorrow or your electricity supply gets disrupted, because you know that you can go through those adversities with ease.
Benefit 2: Save you some money
If you want to learn how to go off the grid with little money, you can check out this post. For this point, my focus is to illustrate how offgrid living can save you some dough by saving money on utilities and living rent free.
When you are relying less on producers, your bills for utilities and food would decrease significantly. The most obvious form of savings is the reduction of your utility bills because you finally are able to make your own clean water and electricity.
For example, the fact that you used wood to warm up your house during winter times and less reliance towards the electric heater can help you reduce cost in the long run. Throughout this journey, your aim is to explore different alternatives for power and clean water, reducing not only your cost of living but also your carbon footprints.
Benefit 3: The power to choose the life you want
There are so many options you can choose to live instead of living in the urban cities. You can choose to bug-out in an RV or even move to a house that is located out in the woods. If you are self-sufficient enough, you have the choice of moving to that big house on top of the hill which is far from the electric grid.
Of course, if you are free from an electric grid, you would be able to position your house in any place which you desire (with sufficient safety of course). You want to live near the waterfalls? You can only do that if you are knowledgeable in going off the grid.
Benefit 4: The self-fulfillment that comes with it
An off-the-grid lifestyle is a kind of lifestyle which is cost-effective, health and eco-friendly. The amount of benefits you get for your health from getting home-grown healthy food to reducing your utilities cost would give you a sense of fulfillment.
Usually, you see people who live off-grid to live in green homes which they built themselves. As you rely less on suppliers, you would naturally be more conscious of how you impact the environment as well. Furthermore, when you are truly able to live by your own, the fulfillment that comes with it is tremendous as you become the master of your own destiny.
You can get different opinions about living off the grid here.
How can you live off-the-grid?
After considering the reasons why a person actually decides to live off-the-grid, we are ready to delve into the question: how to get off the grid? All of the steps and suggestions are ultimately made to prepare yourself mentally, emotionally, physically and financially so that you can make a shift to your preferred lifestyle.
To have what it takes to live off-grid, you need to fulfill the following steps. Here’s how to move off the grid:
(1) Research
(2) Reducing the amount of energy you use
(3) Getting out from debt – living a frugal lifestyle
(4) Obtaining sufficient food and water by yourself
(5) Building your own source of energy
(1) Research
When you are living off-grid, most of the things you do has to be your own work (what some may call DIY). Before stepping out from your usual on-the-grid lifestyle, it would be wise to do a whole lot of research beforehand.
You need to find out what are the kind of systems that would work optimally in your location and what kinds of things you can do to get your basic needs fulfilled in the best possible way. You can ask other off-grid enthusiasts to help you design your self-sufficient living system and get the most convenient way to make things work for you but ultimately, you have to decide.
Concerning this first aspect, it would be better to look at this as a quality which you have to develop rather than a step which you can achieve. The need for research and the desire to learn must be continuous because the knowledge that is obtained, and more importantly if it is PRACTICED, it can bring you immense benefits.
(2) Reducing the amount of energy you use
Only when you are less reliant towards equipment that requires energy, then you would be more comfortable with going totally off-the-grid. Unplug all of those unnecessary appliances and shift all of those electrical appliances to manual ones. For instance, change your electrical opener to a manually operated opener instead. Instead of using a blender or a mixer, learn how to stir using a whisk.
It is a fact that many electrical appliances continue to consume electricity even when they are switched off. There must be methods employed to overcome this problem such as unplugging the appliances totally or utilizing the power strip to cut off all power to certain areas of your home.
In addition, more than 50 percent of electricity used for electronics are used by these devices when they are turned off! This would add up the amount of cost you need to bear.
To mitigate this problem, only choose appliances that have Energy Star ratings and those which can function efficiently. If the electronics you own are too old, get a new one! Even if you have to keep your old appliances, make sure that they are in good condition where the gears are intact and are capable of functioning smoothly.
(3) Getting out from debt – living a frugal lifestyle
To be able to move to the place you want to live in, you must first be free from debt. Reducing the amount of energy consumption would directly contribute to this factor.
Nowadays, the amount of people that are caught in debt are increasing, which makes this point even more important to stress. Credit card companies are intensifying their efforts in campaigns to promote spending. (but they are not to blame of course, since they are merely doing their job).
Moreover, to effectively get out of debt, you need to understand several concepts including how interest are not helpful for you, what are the difference between a good debt and a bad debt. Other aspects include how you should create a budget and you need the discipline to stick to that budget.
Good debts are usually those items that will increase in value over time. The most obvious bad debt is your cars because the rate of depreciation is really high. As for building your budget, you need to track where your money is spent by keeping the bills you pay every month and recording them. Only when you have more money to spare, only then it would be wise to move into a new budget with higher spending capacity.
(4) Obtaining sufficient food and water by yourself
Food
There are 2 aspects which you can look at for obtaining clean food, which is (a) steps to get raw food and (b) learning how to cook your food.
Obtaining raw food
To obtain your own raw food, one aspect you must explore is how you can plant your own garden. Ideally, you get to plant more things in a limited amount of space. Find an empty spot in your yard or get some containers out to find ways to grow healthy plants.
There are a whole lot of aspects to look at including deciding what gardening style you want, what kind of plants you want to put, how to create the optimal condition for the plants to grow and knowing how crop rotation works.
As you select your gardening style, you can look into container gardening, in-ground gardens, raised-bed gardens or window box gardens. Having all these knowledge would put you at an edge, which is why I put ‘Research’ as the first step towards off-the-grid living!
Getting cooked food
Concerning how you can cook your food, you can start off simple by making a habit not to eat out. Most urban dwellers would find this difficult because we usually eat out because it is more convenient. However, if we want to really be committed to a self-reliant lifestyle, we need to learn how to make our own food. If you are successful at this, the benefits are numerous where you have more autonomy on what you put into your stomach which will directly lead to you living a healthier lifestyle.
Rather than ordering that pizza, you make your own pizza using fresh ingredients from your homegrown garden. Doesn’t it sound satisfying?
Water
There are similarly two aspects to this as well, which are obtaining raw water and how you can process raw water into drinkable water.
For how you can obtain water, it would be much more convenient if you can get geographical perks such as living near a well, having access to an underground river where water flows or having other means to obtain natural sources of water. The bug-out water skills that I have written in my previous post would be relevant as well. You have to know the principles of how water flows and how animals are attracted to water sources.
Concerning how you can obtain clean water, you need to explore different ways to kill existing germs in your water. You can explore different filtration options by buying filters from your nearby camping stores. Do note, that most of these filters are not capable of getting rid of viruses.
(5) Building your own source of energy
Sometimes, you need power source for your family’s survival such as situations where your home acts as a shelter for the cold winter. For instance, the ice storm which hit Canada in January 1998 had caused freezing rains to pour over Ontario and Quebec, where power outages lasted for long periods. In such a situation, you will need energy to keep your family safe and comfortable.
Besides, there are many alternative sources of energy you can look into such as Geothermal Power and Solar Power.
Geothermal power
Geothermal power basically means that you are using the heat from the earth. If you dig deep enough into the ground, the temperate would be much hotter as compared to your current surrounding temperature.
Furthermore, geothermal heat pump systems utilizes this form of energy where pipes are buried deep in the ground while fluids are constantly circulated through the heat pump system. Also, these heat pumps uses much less energy as compared to our modern-day heating systems.
Since geothermal heat pumps utilizes the heat of the ground, you can effectively maintain constant warm temperate in your house without using much energy.
Solar Power
As for Solar Power, you can harness it either passively or actively. Passive solar energy means that you are not utilizing a device to harness the energy from the sun for your own use. One good example is where you have a sunroom that has brick floors which are tailored to absorb heat during the day, and it will release it during the cold night.
For obtaining solar power actively, it means you are using a device to actively obtain solar energy for your own use. This would include solar panels and inverters which are made to convert heat energy to electricity.
For an off-grid solar electrical system, there are five important components you need to know. First, would be the solar panels (photovoltaic panels) which stores the light and heat energy. Next, would be the mounting rack which are the support structures you need to hold the solar panels in place.
Third, is the charge controller which monitors and manages the electricity – basically it manages the conversion of such energy. Fourth, would be the battery bank, which is a group of batteries that would store the energy that is obtained from the solar panel. Finally, the inverter would convert the battery power (Direct Current) to AC power so that you can use it for other electrical appliances.
If you want to get a taste of living off grid, you can check out this awesome video. It explains how a normal American lives off the grid.
Conclusion
These are just the basics for getting off-the-grid, where there are many more subtle aspects to cover.
Other aspects that we can explore include finding out the best home-schooling options for your kids, how to get income even when you are off-the-grid and so much more! If you are a beginner, getting yourself involved with living off the grid communities can be beneficial.
Now, can you live off the grid?