If you’re not involved in the construction trade or industry, how do you go about planning and building your off grid remote home? Many times, the amount of energy, finances, and courage that it takes to “break free” can be daunting. The luxury of a standard contractor construction project is often not possible. In our case, waiting until we could hire contractors to build our dream house would have us still in the city waiting for our move (or retirement)!
You’re really going to do it?
So, you’re going to make it on your own or with some help? Get ready for for how some people will react, “that’s crazy”, “you’ve never done that before”, “will it hold up under the snow?” and a wide variety of statements. They will rattle off a dozen different fears, ones that probably hold them back in some area. Some of them will be so comical that you need to bite your lips to remain polite and serious. This stuff usually comes from family or relatives who don’t want to see you live differently from everyone else. That is, one who breaks out of the box.
Getting over the head trips
If your plans and aspirations don’t fit the mold of your city friends, don’t worry. Use wisdom to listen and learn what is useful from everyone. Your plans are just that – yours. You’ll be dreaming of that lifestyle still when you retire, but the strength required to do it then is even greater.
Don’t let fear rule
You will have two different sources that resist your move, internal and external. The external come from other people with influence that you internalize needlessly. Yup, I had plenty of that too. Don’t bother repeating stuff over in your head that has no merit in reality. For example, a relative visited briefly during my construction phase. I was putting on OSB on the first story roof, and was told that I’d never complete the second story and the house without getting hurt.
I let that fear spook me for a couple months of construction. I made sure I double checked my climbing gear whenever on the roof. I was going to prove that fear wrong. Looking back, I really wish that I could have ignored it, and let it roll off my back. Instead it just took more of my energy to overcome it.
Do your homework / Have a Plan
One certain way to overcome fear and uncertainty is to have a plan. Do your homework, 
find out how others before you have done this. That’s part of our purpose here. The more you can learn about what does and does not work from others, the less of an experiment it will be for you. Nothing will remove the adventure, and that’s part of the draw.
Faith
For my part, I would be remiss if I neglected the role of faith in making the change. Growing up in the suburbs of Columbus, OH my first nineteen years did not prepare me for the real challenges of moving to a remote off grid location. My faith in the Lord’s leading, and someone wonderful and trusting like Jackie were major elements in the courage to choose something different, to move and take our 2 and 4 year old children with us.
Anyway, that’s my soapbox for now. An encouragement for those who desire a different lifestyle. Its funny, this whole post came when I just started thinking about early construction details, what people said, and all these emotional challenges of those years came flooding back to my memory. I thought they might be useful to you.
What do you think? What are the challenges you face in making your dreams real? Stick with it and share it with those like minded below!
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I began what was intended to become an off grid energy efficient house back east and experienced similar negative fear driven comments. Well the good Lord had other plans for me but the learning experience of building that house has stayed with me. Recently I found one of my reference books from back then. It was titled Approaching Free Energy and was published by the Rhodale Press. Oddly enough when they talked about solar it was with reference to house heat not photo voltaics.
Thanks to the mass of articles and news items dealing with photo voltaics directed mostly at the south west and California because that is where the sun shines longest and strongest and the government incentives most available. Other parts of the country with long perods of cloud cover huge snow loads and what have you seldom see as much good press.
The truth being most energy consumption involves home heating or cooling. I have a friend who would love going off grid but living in Baltimore zoning restrictions limits his options severely.
He studied the climatology records and realized he would not be able to derive sufficient benefit from the solar array he planned to install.
I too had trouble finding a suitable contractor and ended up doing it myself including the drawings that had to be submitted to the building department for permit approval. Thank goodness I had once worked for an architect as a summer job and had four years of drafting in school. Sadly going off grid is still mostly a DIY operation.
Here in the BC interior off-grid is not really a big topic of conversation but as I meet and talk to more and more people; I learn that many homes are already off-grid. With close to six months of winter and noon sun angle above the horizon at only about 30 degrees, solar power California style is not really cost affective. The early settlers tended to seek sheltered locations close to water. That means most inhabited places and the transportation routes such as roads and train tracks follow the bottom of river valleys. Seldom do you see homes built on ridges or high places. The bottom of creek beds are sheltered from most winds making wind power a questionable effort. And the Fish and Wildlife authorities strictly forbid any sort of construction or development 100 meters either side of any creek or stream bed so that rules out any kind of hydro electric installation.
Despite these limitations people do build homes not connected to any grid. The huge cost of drilling 400 foot deep wells means many do not even have wells so community wells assume a greater significance. I used to wonder why so many pickup trucks large ‘fish’ tanks in the back. I had seen these down on the coast used by commercial fish hatcheries but in the interior mountains? Turns out this is how many of these off-grid and even some on-grid homes get all their water. They truck it in 150 gallons at a time. Around her 4 wheel drive is not a luxury it is the only way to have reliable transportation.
Marshall how about sharing more about your house construction details as it relates to energy conservation etc. From bits and pieces you have mentioned in passing I suspect your house incorporates a lot of design elements that help minimize dependence on outside energy sources?
Hi i’m going green n continer housing the Virgin Islands. no winters. I want to install a recording studio also.Would you suggest solar panels,and what kind of water system /grey? what else ? thanks
For a recording studio you really need a quality pure wave sine wave inverter. While I was still working for Xantrex we learned that the 74 step sine wave from the Trace model would produce small amplitude but noticable noise in sound systems like Bose. The Prosine model did not produce any noticable sound in the amplifier. The distinction between the two lies in the fact the trace model was a line frequency switch mode and the Prosine was a high frequency switch mode type inverter. Easiest way to tell is line frequency switch mode has s big heavy iron core transformer and the high frequency switch mode has ferrites and weighs about half as much.
Since you are solar I suggest looking carefullly at the idling current which is the basic draw when the inverter is on but not actually delivering AC power to a load. The control board still draws some power which could amounts to many watts over the night.
Sunboy brand has good low idling current from what I hear but I do not know if it is high frequency or not.
Jameson,
Arild is right, for a recording studio you must use a true sine wave inverter unless a 50-60Hz hum is part of all your music!
I am forever indebted to you for this information.
Jameston if I understand you correctly, do you mean you will be using a shipping container converted to housing. Good idea but keep in mind the heat pick up from the sunshine hitting the metal shell as well as the PV panels. This heat is enough to degrade output performance. My recommendation is to mount the PV array away from the metal shipping container and have lots of room all around it for cooling ventilation. I have heard that mounting the array on the roof of the container has proven to be problematic in some onstallations. I know someone in the Panama area doing the same design /install work as myself and this is what a couple of his clients encountered with their container housing.
Regarding grey water and sewage disposal. I know several people who have had good success with composting toilets. For grey water look carefully at where and how any waste water would percolate down into the ground. A holding tank and a shallow evaporation basin might mitigate the effects of dumping soap and grease laden water.