The earthy, independent life of living off grid
The idea is a pretty romantic one, and for those who live this way, they are often viewed as have a pioneering and self-reliant spirit about them. They are the material for oil paintings of families with their kids on the homestead living in a sort of dream like world of self-sufficiency with the cozy cabin next to the stream, and a thin wisp of smoke rising lazily from the top of the stone chimney. Dad is out with his son plowing the field, while mom is in the kitchen with their daughter teaching her all of the tricks of baking perfect bread while a freshly made pie is cooling on the window sill.
For some, that picture is actually a reality, still even today. For others like my family, living off-grid became a necessity for the simple reason that commercial power was, cost prohibitive. We were given the opportunity to purchase a 40 acre parcel of land that had an existing well on it, a great view of the mountain range and incredible quiet. After a lot of consideration on all of the details of purchasing a bare piece of ground and putting a home on it, we decided it was the right thing to do.
Do your research, be as smart as you can about your decisions and go for it! That’s what we did, we did as much research as we could, considered all of the options and began the task of putting a budget together. We would need electricity so we called the power company and they came out to look at the project. They let us know what they would have to do to get the power in to our home and gave us a written estimate. We put that amount into the budget and moved forward. If you think that it is odd that I am talking about this in an "off grid" story, please read "the cost of not knowing" and it will help explain this further.
There were several obstacles to overcome and many would severely test our patience but those can be covered in other articles. The installation of commercial power proved to be one of the biggest. Based on what we had learned from the power company, we didn’t expect any problems. I guess we forgot we were living on Earth, but still, I don’t think that this was one that anybody would have expected.
The power lines would come down the utility easement on the county line which wouldn’t cause any problems, right? Well, the lines ended up being “just barely” on the property owned by what would be our southern neighbor. This neighbor decided that he wanted many thousands of dollars to allow us to tie into the lines.
Now what? We didn’t feel that we could increase the cost of bringing the power in by as much as would be needed so that really left only one option. Go off grid. The idea itself was not completely foreign to us. We had read a few stories in magazines like “Mother Earth News” about people living this way and it seemed pretty cool. We were going to have the chance ourselves.
Where to begin?
You might think that the question is a silly one but consider this- there are literally thousands of products out there that can be purchased for living off grid, so which do you buy? First we began with the issue of quality. We would need a system that would last.
O.K. so what does that mean, how long SHOULD a system last and what actually makes up a “good” system?; quality products that are made by a company who will stand behind them, who offer a good warranty, and who have good service. One thing I would advise, especially for men is this, when looking for the components of your system; don’t come across like you know everything. We men sometimes have a hard time with letting people know that we are not the final authority on knowledge in the universe. If you will be up front about the limits of your knowledge about what it takes to live off-grid, you will find an amazing number of people who are not only quite friendly, but incredibly knowledgeable where alternative energy is concerned.
I always seem to begin with research, as a matter of fact, I have been told before that I “over think” things. Maybe this can be bad in some cases but I have found that not adequately thinking through things can bring more problems than I want to deal with. I have seen people who end up with a very poor job or complete disasters by not putting enough thought into a project. Sometimes however even putting a lot of thought into something is no guarantee that everything will be problem free.
What my research did for me was to help me get educated. As the education process took place I was able to ask questions that were at least to some degree, more intelligent. I sometimes begin conversations with those that I need help from with this; “treat me as if I know nothing”. That helps them back up a little and gives me the layperson version of things.
In the end, we were able to put a good system together that has worked really well for us. There was a learning curve that we had to deal with but we did get to the place where we understood the nuances of living off grid and how to use and care for our system. For more please read “Our complete system”.