What is the cheapest way to live off grid? I am aware that the easiest and cheapest way to build a house is through super adobe which uses bags full of earth, barbed wire and a dome structure to provide shelter.
But, what about cheap electricity and food? As in, how to generate electricity for the low and what food yields the most while being easy to grow.
Let me mention bio diesel which is a process that turns burnt oil into a type of diesel that can be used with generators and cars.
>burnt oil
you mean water and co2? good luck with doing anything useful with that
>burnt oil
>you mean water and co2
moron
>What is the cheapest way to live off grid?
you morons crack me up. move to fricking Africa if that lifestyle is so fantastic.
every "off grid" youtuber is very much ON the grid
I take a sick pleasure in watching Youtube tree change off-grid homestead permaculturalists ultimately fail.
>"Me and my partner bought acreage in whoop-whoop after deciding on a change from our city lives!"
>A few years later...
>"After spending thousands of man hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars, we've decided to sell up. We really miss just taking spontaneous trips and vacations, and we just can't do that when we have crops and livestock LOL!"
These people are moronic, and I'll wager their paid sponsors won't even cover a fraction of the losses they've taken.
Most people in everything are moronic. I am doing off grid myself but I'm not some permaculture microfarm tard. I'm just doing my own power system because its actually much cheaper than paying the power company $65,000 I was quoted to run new poles to my rural property.
check out betting on Alaska. He just gave up after a summer of cabin building. he has all these monologues about how people who said he wouldn't make it through the winter were wrong, and then when he gave up he had a monologue about how it didn't matter
>he's complaining his cabin is draughty
>leaves it in the winter instead of repairing it
not PrepHole
meanwhile forest anon is still out there through many winters, with just a tarp for a door.
i keep thinking about this homosexual. he quit after going to his mates house that was not draughty, and who had better coffee ... he's such a homosexual
>inb4 rent free hurr durr blasgsdfgasfdgsd
>implying my other thoughts pay rent ????????? stupidest shit i ever heard. thinking about this homosexual pays in that it prevents me from ever being like him. every time i think of his stupid problems i think of a million solutions and grow stronger in wit and will.
people can make a lot of choices in life, and every choice has costs, you might choose one good thing but lose some other things. can't handle the cost? don't choose it then. or choose to man up and fricking fix it yourself.
everything okay, man?
no, i am not. thankyou for asking. i just want to live in the woods and seeing people squander the opportunity ... it's sickeningly wasted on them. I'd have a fricking castle by the time they only have a shitty shack. I regret my life choices but I didn't know any better, no one ever told me how the system works. Then these buttholes have all the opportunity in the world and what do they do with it? squandered. and now it's almost too late for me, I have early onset arthritis.
I look back at all the mistakes i made and time I've wasted and now I'm getting old, if I got a wife and had a kid now I'd be about 55 before they were an adult. that's IF I can even find a woman who's not totally fricked. missed opportunities, stupid choices, paths that lead worse than nowhere. I knew they'd be shit but I thought "no one would be that stupid!" (they were).
I don't want advice or anything, I know where I went wrong, I'm just slogging on in a steel fabricators. eventually I will either find a wife or move to the middle of nowhere or lose my job and get the fast track to living in the woods. I could have had it all so much sooner, but now I will get there, just much later than I wanted. possibly too late.
If your gonna look at what others have, you're never gonna make it.
Theres a whole lotta being happy with what you have at the time to make the system work.
Sometimes that can require a lot of commitment.
Sometimes it doesnt feel great.
Jealousy and coveting what others are doing differently is the first sign of someone who's gonna crack.
You cant just force an entire off grid life all at once.
Takes a bit to keep progressing every day.
Theres no room for a lack of resilience
Works slowly
Slow growth beats quick growth. Slow growth is real.
I dont do youtube, i dont have time for that shit, but if it makes you angry what are you doing watching it?
I dont produce content, dont have time, but i guarantee you there are folks making it out there.
Your phrase of life being "sickeningly wasted" on those living in the woods only is a statement about yourself.
You sicken me. Its people like you who would bring toxicity to anything I would produce, so I dont.
You sicken me
>t. Off grid, no debt, warm and comfy.
if posters here make you sickened why are replying to them?
such a bullshit post, you're clearly managing your own emotions, first trying to play yourself off as the helpful good guy then saying you're sickened? frick off. i don't think you even understood what was being said.
which means you can't read. no wonder you live in the woods.
I would move there right now if the continent wasnt filled with 1 BILLION Black folk
>go to africa, land of black people
>shit my pants when I see one
The black people in africa are much more personable than in the USA and I would rather live in Africa than in the hood in the USA
>But, what about cheap electricity
usb charger solar panel, power bank and head torch
>and food?
chickens, goats, potatoes, corn. or trap vermin. basically see what thirdies do
Homeless people do it all the time and it costs them practically nothing.
I live off-grid in the woods.
My home is made of wood and mud.
Wood for the structure tile's for the roof.
I have 3 solar panels 100w and a car charger for electricity.
1 50w/h battery.
The house cost nothing but time and work.
The land was 5k in 20 Square km.
I grow nothing I only have goat's.
I can buy anything I want with the milk, cheese and meat I sell.
0 taxes almost it's about 50$ a year.
That is enough for an LED light and charging your phone.
Alright read all the stock answers. Only goatanon had enough detail to make it seem like he was pulling it off. Hypothetical well-intentioned suggestions are just that.
There was an unlisted property up for sale a couple years ago. Hillside, hilly area (hardly anything flat unless it was flood plane next to the river). Soil non-existent in general; the moronic flatfarmer approaches, mean the land was cleared on top. What do you think happens to the hilltop when you clear the trees and don't terrace?: right into the river. All your soil, all your organic material.
This property though was heavily green. Chances are good, if you had some heavy equipment, even a mini excavator, you could terrace immediately and hold that organic material.
Besides that, it had a poured pad, a frame, natural gas well (free gas), water well, access to a good road. Low property taxes. A little over $1,000 acre.
Now, fast-forward to reality: you don't have any money, OP. You also don't have skills/experience; not enough. But you'll get it. Search for 'half the clothes wwoof helpx review' you'll find an article well-written, listing the sites that offer opportunities to learn.
Here:
https://halftheclothes.com/wwoof-helpx-workaway-work-exchange-reviews/
I wish you luck. And many anons like you, as we leave the globohomosexual decaying cities, with their abundance of ineffective affirmative action Hirelings.
I dont think you are telling the truth
How do you shitpost here?
nice! can we get some photos?
1. Be homeless
/ thread
Only right answer
I'd say the cheapest is to use economies of scale, regardless of HOW you provide your infrastructure. For example, my HOA has many members and we can collectively negotiate better insurance rates, better landscaping prices, better garbage pickup, water, you-name-it, it can be reduced. Even property purchase and usage can be optimized if everyone splits the costs and the property usage.
Check out Kirsten Dirksen on youtube, she does interviews with people running a bunch of these types of projects in even some very top-tier cities. https://www.youtube.com/@kirstendirksen
she interviews really fricking rich people
The housekeeper we were talking about mentioned his salary and that he never made more than 20k a year. Granted this was a long while ago, but still that has never been a lot of money. Many other videos are similar and I think her focus has always been on the success of lower-income people.
She interviewed a pretty cool old dude who was a set builder in NYC for a while who bought like 100 acres of land in big bend TX for an insanely low price. He basically lives in a tiny little hutch and has a few bigger buildings he put together for cheap utilizing his previous experience.
Not saying she doesn't interview some very obviously well off people, but there's also some really good ones with working class folks who just managed to make smart decisions with their money and leveraged their PrepHole capability to make it work
Lmao stfu and gtfo hogay moron
Hydro is the cheapest and all around best method of small scale power generation, but it's not available on most sites. If hydro is not an option, solar is by far the most economical unless you live in the arctic circle.
yes, i own land and i figured out how,
even in the most regulated area
non regulated area,, buy lot land couple k
just build a cuck shed and make a masterpiece with good materials. put tank solar and own a car . builld 3 ten feet sheds and put bathroom kitchen bedroom, just cuck shed insulation tile
regulated, buy land couple k to few hundred
you apply for 2 year building permit. to start construction, they will allow a permit for a mobile office or a rv. you can live on the property while you build your house, apply for 1 permit, electrical or septic or foundation .
you can probably even build a garage for 15k,
then you keep applyng saying that you diding have enough money to finish, after 3 4 years, you can sell the lot with permits, or one approved, builders will buy it and you can make a few k, by installing lets say 1 septic tank in the span of 3 years. if you get problems from city, just go, i ran out of money. they understand lol
WAYNE
Why would you let the builder make all the profit?
i also remember a story of baller construction guy
he bough lot and was to build garage
the city would not let him, they would only let him if he built a house
so baller applies for housing permit
does all due dillegence, puts in architectual plans, just builds the garage
says he ran out of money, property for 5 years stands with just garage,
sells it with permits makes a killing because garage built and plans all submited for a builder to come in finish
u can very much frick the gov
He wasn't a construction guy, he was a housekeeper in San Fran who did this. The video on him is on Kirsten's channel. She does some very quality videos
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This is good advice. However, I want to add that you do need SOME capital in order to go through with this. For the land, RV/whatever you’re gonna live in, and some extra. And whatever you build, garage or office, needs to be in a plot or in an area where you think builders will want to come in one day anyway and will want to have that specific structure included.
So its little bit of investing little bit of fricking the rabbi. However your living expenses eill be way down and you get quick returns on investments. Also pay attention to the realestate market in general because you dont want to be ready to sell at a time where nobody is buying anywhere.
>puts in architectual plans, just builds the garage
>in SF
He fricked himself, raw.
He didn't build in SF, it was Hawaii. I already posted the video
literally just be homeless
>What is the cheapest way to live off grid?
pull a forestanon
Yurts
pros:
cheap..
can be added on to
mounted on a deck or on the roof of a garage Structure.
cons
They have shit security and are easier to break into unless you have in on top of a garage structure and have some other security measures in place. Have a plan to not keep valuable items in it - have a stash somewhere on property in a vault or something
If near a noisy road - noise
Additional cons of a Yurt - Moisture buildup, lack of insulation in both strong sunlight and cold climates. Lifetime - 10-12 years if you're lucky.
very much depends on where you live
look into what people in your area used to do before like the 20th century
regardless you're largely going to have to look into reducing your consumption though, so instead of a refrigerator, using a root cellar and curing meats. Have a house design that works with your environment to stay warm/cool, lots of rooms rather than a modern open house design, etc.
There are still some modern things you may be able to use to your advantage to make things easier, of course, perhaps something like an underground greenhouse could help and allow a more year round food supply
> underground greenhouse
huh?
build your greenhouse in the ground and only have the top of it above ground to let light in. It'll stay warm in winter due to the ground (as well as a bit cooler in the summer) so you save on heating/cooling costs. Mirrors/something reflective might be able to help you redirect extra sunlight into it as well. Will give a space for year round growing
Why the frick would you not be able to use a refrigerator? Modern refrigerators use barely more than a single kWh of electricity per 24 hours. Any solar energy generation system of literally any size can keep up with that even the moron magic box units on amazon and a $99 Harbor Freight solar panel plugged in and thrown on the ground pointed up. These threads are annoying with the same questions every week but the answers given to the OP are often even more earth shatteringly moronic. Here's the energy usage of the cheapest refrigerator at Home Puerto Rico right now. God damn.
Both of you are kinda right.
If you have any power, keeping food cold is important. Its hard to get enough protein to be active/build muscle without it, especially cuz you work your ass off playing the off grid game
Frick banks though
Hes not wrong though either.
I run a dc plug in 12v cooler off a couple lead acids for refridgeration seperate from my big inverter. Its powered by a single 200w panel.
DC specialty appliances are a waste of money considering their very high premium over AC and the extremely large efficiency gains AC appliances have made in the last 20 years as well as the drastic miniaturization of home inverter setups and lowering of prices. If you got a DC fridge for free by all means but it makes zero sense to buy a DC fridge for $2800 these days when a $599 residential AC fridge like what I posted consumes the 1kWh per day. With the $2000 you saved that alone is enough to buy a premade 5kWh lifepo4 server rack style battery, much more if you DIY with raw cells. I would never recommend lead acid to someone going off grid nowadays. Completely and utterly obsolete technology and actually more expensive than lifepo4 for energy density and what you can actually pull out.
The only DC I run is through a 30 amp capable 13.8v downconverter. That in turn runs the router, the tethered phone, the security camera system (which needs a 48v input but the upper limit is 51v, fairly low wattage <50watts), LED cabin lights, water pump.
Those run-on-anything chest freezers are based on emergency organ transport tech. So yes- they are incredibly efficient, but a good Whirlpool 'dorm fridge' and a medium chest freezer are your major regular AC appliances. At a scratch and dent you can find a whirlpool for $150. And the chest freezer for a similar price off FBM. DO NOT buy magic chef or other big box store brands. They use chinese compressors that fail in a year. Danfoss is one of the better compressor manufacturers - look up the compressor that is in use, because that's the only moving part.
If you want to add a 12v panasonic panaglide medium speed 30db 60cfm 120mm fan, to cool the compressor when it's running, that will cut your costs. Those are about $15 NOB and use about 1.5watts.
I'm not talking about dorm fridges. What I listed was a GE standard home over under freezer/refrigerator 26 cubic foot. As I keep saying it is a waste of time and effort and unnecessarily limiting yourself buying tiny appliances and specialty equipment. Lifepo4 batteries and Inverter/charge controllers are so incredibly cheap now compared to just 5 years ago that trying to save 600 watts a day and sacrificing a real refrigerator is just stupid.
16 cubic foot* the test of the point remains the same.
To your point, of using a common fridge or freezer size at a lower price point for the unit, vs high-efficiency niche equipment, it really does not matter the size of the fridge: I'm rolling out specs in my post, that will work with some of the smaller-sized electrical systems, where there could be a first-thought of using one of the $1,000 chest-type 12vDC/120vDC fridge/freezers.
A full-sized upright side-by-side has less efficiency, because you are dumping all your cold, dry air everytime you open it. A chest freezer is far more efficient, and there's no difference in power use, between a medium-sized one with good insulation, and some rinky, tiny Magic Chef sold at Home Depot I see on sale every year. The latter will fail after a year, and the former will run for decades.
Once at Curtis Stone size systems -medium to large domestic solar- one would never consider a high-efficiency $1,000 chest roll-out made for a van.
A chest refrigerator has already been expanded upon ITT on why its a shitty thing to live with and a massive decrease in quality of life, again, to save about 500-600 watts. I understand the concepts of heat rising and cold dropping. The reason you don't want a refrigerator in the style of a chest for residential use is because food is still decomposing at refrigerator temperatures, just much slower. With virtually no way for that stale air to vent semi-regularly your food will all take on each others flavors, commingle, and get stale. I highly advise against it and its something or you're book-nerding numbers on a spreadsheet "makes sense" but turns out its shit in reality for non quantifiable reasons like what I just described.
>because food is still decomposing at refrigerator temperatures, just much slower.
Sounds like a benefit to me
>virtually no way for that stale air to vent semi-regularly
Fan
Agreed, thats why the one im referring to was 192 bucks brand new from fleabay.
Its not 2005, i have a chest freezer sitting on my porch.
With the dc fridge, i get to turn off my inverter when I sleep or go to work if I want to. Saving nearly a kw a day of just waste while im not there but keeping food cold.
Yes, you have to keep your fridge clean. I like that forced diligence. Thats part of the not easy bit.
Convert a chest freezer to a fridge with a freezer temperature controller and you have an ultra low power refrigerator that you can easily run on solar power
I've done this before and it kinda sucked. It was quiet, electrically efficient, and cheap, but it also turns into a smelly mess if you don't completely empty the thing and clean it completely on a regular basis. It stays so tightly sealed most of the time that it gets really stale and gross inside compared to a stand up unit.
Also, even though I used multiple baskets and milk cartons for the bottom, small stuff like jelly jars or random cheese blocks tended to try to migrate to a pile in the bottom of the fridge. Imagine getting ingredients in and out of a cooler with no ice compared to a stand up fridge with shelves. Also stuff at the bottom tried to freeze and if you turned the temp up to mitigate it, then the stuff on top didn't stay cold enough.
There's a lot of stratification of the temps inside because of how still the air is.
In the future, I'm planning to just use a conventional over/under fridge freezer. Once you have anything more than a minimal solar setup, it becomes very feasible and nbd for the system.
>off grid with 5 kw 12v system now
Kek that's a lot of amps
NTA, but having lived in the mountains before, it's not necessarily out of reach to get a well drilled. It depends on the area and the specifics, but it can sometimes be done for a few thousand dollars. Your other options are springs, creeks, and rainwater.
>creeks
The problem in my area is that animals pee and shit on the ground.
Animals don't pee and shit where they eat, and either way a basic filtration system isn't too hard to make and set up.
> animals don't poop where they eat.
Chickens and ducks enter the chat.
> air stratifies
A very small, low power blower will circulate that air. Same solution with any small fridge which will not have a fan inside the unit.
Remember to add the fan mentioned above.
> NGMI
I'm thinking of Pure Living for Life, a channel I had never heard of. They had never come across my radar; they were no hard-nose Joel Salatin etc types that I'd be interested in. Someone pushed them to me, claiming they had also been harassed in a likewise manner.
Apparently there was an Op at one time by the ziobanker's rainbow globois, to harass youtube homesteaders. Perhaps their paymasters psychosis led them to believe, that by harassing online personalities, it would limit or stop the number of people ditching globohomosexual metro areas. PL4L got caught up in it, but due to being naive city types, they couldn't see it was just an OP and nothing personal. Their last video was 6 months ago... I'm sure youtube is littered with the carcasses of homesteaders. That attrition however, has been going on for years, and it does not require stalking; it's a natural process, by people who have been too softened by artificial comforts.
Oftentimes properties already have a source of water. It's not like no one has ever lived on a pad that's been surveyed before. Getting one with a natural gas well is nice. Look for tax sales, properties that have back-taxes. Don't wait for them to list; then you're competing with zio-speculators and their infinite fake money.
Holy fricking schizo.
>dont wait for them to list
how, this is exactly what im looking for but i know going to an auction is an exercise in futility
Look for the county you want, then check for tax liens. Unpaid property taxes usually is = abandoned property. Usually a homesteader wants a county with no building codes, so you can build how you like and people leave you the frick alone.
Yeah, its a lotta amps. I paid 1500 for everything from the inverter on back, including breakers and wires and 5 200w panels.
4/0 wires dc breakers do be intimidating.
Im looking forward to finding a cheap 48w inverter someday then "having" to buy two more batts.
TLDR above: Cheapest solution is to learn while doing, and let your labor pay for your room and board.
Oh boy, a comment for the audience with zero attention span who isn't going to make it anyway.
> You need some capital
Read 2713169 at 'Fast-forward to reality:'
> How I know you didn't read 2713169 without you saying you didn't.
b*mp
learn to enjoy sleeping on bare ground and staring into the distance for fun
Yikes its gettin bad
I go back and forth with how loud i should be. Im in the appalachians, bought land for 20k in 2013, built this with reclaimed stuff and cash, no banks, off grid with 5 kw 12v system now, wanna buy 2 more batts next year and a 48w inverter, but honestly at this point its more likely i finish than dont. It is possible.
Not easy
Think I've seen your posts on here before
Appalachia seems to check most of my boxes for the place I'd like to go, but how do you get water in the winter? I would assume it'd cost a fortune to drill a well through a mountain, and would be impossible to dig yourself. Do you just boil snow?
Checked.
>how do you get water in the winter?
And the summer?
>And the summer?
I also want to know this, but I would guess collecting rainwater or running surface water.
Yo, nice digits.
Local hippy co-op has very bougie RO, uv light filtered carbon filtered water because the northeast is famous for arsenic in wells. Free with membership. Frickin millionaires are in there filling up 30 gallons at a time cuz their ski houses well water isnt good enough for them. Theres no social stigma to me doing 6 gallons, 2 3 gallon jugs at a time. I usually buy a kombucha and bread, nothing more.
Brush teeth, drinking and coffee that lasts about 2 to 4 days, wash dishes, other water etc is rainwater. I have 2 ibc totes up the hill, one for outdoor water one for indoor. I can haul 55 gallon drums from friends houses on a trailer of well water from friends, but honestly its a pita.
Neighbors well is 525 feet, drilled last year, 15k. Theres a spring i can hear burble all year across the road. Ive never approached the owers about poaching it. Done a lotta looking on my land for water. When the water table is high enough, maybe 6 or 8 days in the spring i have a seasonal stream of springwater that also flowed in july when the east coast got fricked this year
If you couldn't get water from the bougie free water place, where would you get it? Would you be able to get enough water from rainwater collection without needing a square mile of tarp?
Oh yeah. Rain gutters into barrels get you more water than youll ever use.
I mean, i dont wash cars or anything, but its not really an issue.
I have friends houses i can use, but its easier to hide. I could get it at work too, but choose not to.
I end work like 5 blocks from the co op
Im gonna finish the septic running cash out of pocket, then theres a state program you can borrow for 3% for a well, they just put a lien on your land. To qualify you need to have been rejected by a bank, so end of next summer ill prolly have a well.
>finish the septic
Do you have permit? If not then forget about the state funding your well.
I bought the land with plans.
I have met personally with the designer of those plans.
You think I worked got this hard without doing the permitting side of things??
It actually was pretty easy. Turns out when you show an interest in increasing your tax burden, and giving the town and state another occupied property, both are pretty willing to help.
>both are pretty willing to help.
In some cases, yes, but I've also definitely had my share of getting dicked around by local govt. It's NOT a given that they will be compliant and helpful.
I recognize that my experience there may not be universal. In my case, i bought land with plans a logging outfit was offloading. The whole lot size was designed to have a single family home built on it when it was sold, so Im not trying to do anything weird. I just left a lot of the permit application blank, not knowing what to write, (like contractor for the presby system) figuring wed figure it out together but they honestly seemed to not care. Like, it was very clear i wasnt going to be building more house than a 1000 gallon tank could handle, so they were basically like "let us know when you're done"
It is taxed as homestead and my primary residence.
>Turns out when you show an interest in increasing your tax burden, and giving the town and state another occupied property, both are pretty willing to help.
That doesn't apply to the PNW btw. They couldn't give less of a shit and will do everything possible to put you cattle back on the rez in the goypods.
Permit yes or no?
Yes, Im using plans/permit interchangeably there. The plans are the useful part of the permit. You got plans from the engineer, the state will give you a wastewater permit.
That process waa completes prior to my purchase of the land a decade or so ago
Phrased differently, when the plans are aporoved by the state, they assign a permit number, stamp the plans, then those plans literally are your permit. So i call them the plans, not the permit, cuz thats what they are. But permit, yes.
Upon completion, you get the engineer to come look it, verify you built what he said, then yay, you get occupancy.
I get where your coming from, but from the perspective of running as budget as possible, i have less than 3k in my entire system, and while it works and is awesome, over 5 days of clouds and and rain which we got abunch, i can drain my nice lifepos if i leave the big inverter on all the time just to run the fridge.
So i got an under 200 dollar dc thing off the internet, compressor is quiet and it works great, i hooked it to a battery i had and bought another on sale.
So for 300 bucks i have a fridge i dont realy care about running on batteries i dont really care about so i can autistically care about my nice shit.
And when i buy a 48w inverter, and more batts and panels, if i wanna sell the dc fridge i can cuz ppl like you think its 2015 prices on things. My fridge is on a throwaway setup, with that perspective, lead acid is perfect for now.
leaving at a secluded tropical beach just bath in ocean never cold
>a secluded tropical beach
The natives love white tourists, but will never allow a white man to live on the beach permanently. You'll get chased off and beat up at best.
good vid about that only he lives on a boat. What a cool fella. Docu worth the watch too
>video unavailable
fr[3]nsch[4]n[d0t]org/ctw/res/4601[d0t]html
Looking at catalogs from the 19th and early 20th century gives good ideas.