[HN Gopher] Free Land - Living Off Grid With No Money
___________________________________________________________________
Free Land - Living Off Grid With No Money
Author : SQL2219
Score : 337 points
Date : 2021-02-26 23:32 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (offgridpermaculture.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (offgridpermaculture.com)
| spiritplumber wrote:
| "Last of the Deliverers" - Poul Anderson, 1958
|
| Find it and read it
| hyko wrote:
| Everything is free if you don't count the price you have to pay.
|
| In this case, the price is working like a maniac 24/7 and living
| in a tiny shack without electricity.
| porknubbins wrote:
| I'm into nature, diy construction, being frugal and early
| retirement etc so I should be the target audience for this, but
| it doesn't exactly sound great. I'll take living in a house in
| a regular low COL area an direct my energy to something other
| than fighting off cold and scratching out a frontier life.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| We bought an RV, that way when we get the itch we go scratch
| it, then when done we come back home and order takeout.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| Everyone with dreams of the glory of off-grid living should
| first play Oregon Trail.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| What a great article.
|
| I can see the appeal of living in nature, off-grid, but I see a
| few problems that are really hard to solve for such type of
| living:
|
| 1) healthcare access - you might be hours away from medical
| assistance. It's all nice and good until you need it.
|
| 2) social activity - it's nice to be by yourself, or with a few
| people, for a few months; but would you live like that for
| decades? Wouldn't you miss social interactions?
|
| 3) work - not everybody can be a software developer. What kind of
| work you could do if you are so far away from any community?
|
| 4) sense of community, sense of belonging - this is the hardest I
| think. Humans are social animals, there's no way around it. Some
| of us are perfectly fine living in a semi-isolated state; but at
| least for me, that would become a problem eventually. One thing
| that Covid has taught me is how important my social interactions
| are.
|
| Edit: also on HN today you find "What Makes a Community? (2020)".
| Interesting read. [0]
|
| [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26274450
| kilroy123 wrote:
| I completely agree. I'm a big city person myself. I like having
| access to culture, art, music festivals, restaurants, social
| events, economic opportunities, etc.
|
| However, it can wear on you a lot. I would absolutely love to
| own an off-the-grid second home. That's very appealing to me.
|
| But to live like a hermit out in the middle of nowhere full-
| time seems crazy to me in the long-term.
| swader999 wrote:
| A lot of people in cities barely know their neighbors. Living
| rural you'll likely be part of a community where everyone
| knows everyone. I'm seven years in and going to town the
| other day took an extra hour just because I was chatting with
| people I ran into. In a city you are more anonymous.
| Werewolf255 wrote:
| Living rural you're also more prone to being shut out
| without any recourse if you don't meet the community's
| unspoken standards.
| swader999 wrote:
| I don't think it's that extreme. What do you mean exactly
| by shut out? You'll always be able to transact, put your
| kids in school and participate in society. A hard example
| - parents of a teenager that murdered an innocent child
| in a small nearby community still live there and still
| operate a business that services that town. I'm surprised
| by this.
| FourthProtocol wrote:
| I grew up in the absolute middle of nowhere in Africa (bus ride
| to school took 50 minutes one way), so I have some experience
| here.
|
| 1. Most things can be taken care of to a point where a lengthy
| journey to help is possible. In an extreme case you can get a
| helicopter in on the radio. Of course the US makes this
| challenging, because you have to pay for healthcare. That's a
| hurdle for sure.
|
| 2. People that live isolated lives choose it because it's
| isolated. I ended up in London but am still happiest on my own.
| Until I met my girlfriend my most meaningful relationship was
| with my dog. No guile there.
|
| 3. That's the point though, isn't it? Sustaining yourself and
| yours becomes your work.
|
| 4. Again not so hard. The people drawn to this life like the
| solitude. Sure they will find their way to a store or post
| office every now and then where they'll see enough people to
| remind them why they're out there and isolated.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > Until I met my girlfriend
|
| Did you meet her in London, or did you meet her when you were
| a hermit? I'd guess the former. Another good reason why a
| large community provides certain things that living in quasi-
| isolation doesn't.
|
| In any case, thanks for your thoughts; I value them, despite
| my comment above.
| shimonabi wrote:
| The amount of DIY knowledge you need to know to live off grid is
| more than making a PhD in some STEM field.
|
| Living near civilization is far easier, even with a soul-crushing
| job.
| swader999 wrote:
| The time it takes to aquire this knowledge is underestimated
| too. Sure it's all in books and on YouTube but it's knowing
| which advice to use in a particular circumstance and the devil
| is in the details. Much like software development in these
| respects.
| bostonsre wrote:
| A blog about living off the grid seems ironic/oxymoronic (is that
| a word?).
| flobosg wrote:
| Joey Hess, a former Debian developer, has been doing it for a
| while: https://joeyh.name/blog/
| pchristensen wrote:
| Living off the grid doesn't mean never interfacing with it. If
| you have a home with a well and solar panels and satellite
| internet (or you go to town to use wifi at the library), you
| can still write your blog.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Yea, I guess that works. Not sure of what the canonical
| definition of living off the grid is, but I always pictured
| it as complete isolation and separation from all grids, not
| just power. But seems like that might not be right.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| I'd argue it means different to different people.
|
| I'm moderately "off-grid" because I have a septic tank even
| though I have a city sewer connection at my curbside. The
| sewer was run after my home was built, and it doesn't make
| sense for me to dig up my front yard (to run the new line),
| my back yard (to remove the septic tank and drain field), and
| my crawlspace (to reverse the direction of the plumbing) just
| so I can pay money every month to the city for a service that
| I'm currently providing for myself without a recurring fee.
| I'm in a neighborhood though so I'm connected to city water,
| electric, gas, and trash.
|
| My previous home in this area has electrical service only. We
| had a septic tank for sewer and took care of everything else
| ourselves.
|
| There were three homes in a "bunch" in the middle of nowhere,
| with a small plot of land that was technically owned by one
| of my neighbors but served as a community resource. That plot
| had a small pump house for the shared well, with electrical
| service from the neighbor's place. On that same lot I kept a
| semi-enclosed utility trailer where we would all put our
| trash. Twice a month or so I would hook on to the trailer and
| haul it to the dump (a half hour drive) on my way to work and
| put the trailer back when I got home.
|
| Every month or so we'd all sit down for coffee and bring our
| receipts. We'd figure up how much water, trash, and internet
| had cost us that month, split it proportionately, account for
| any expenses, and make everyone whole. Because I took care of
| the trash and was both young handy enough to be the one who
| did repairs on the well when necessary, it wasn't uncommon
| for me to walk away with a few dollars in my pocket. It was
| like our own informal HOA out in the sticks :)
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| /u/lutusp can attest to that :-)
| tomcooks wrote:
| Who?
| kbr2000 wrote:
| https://arachnoid.com/
| [deleted]
| dmje wrote:
| Interesting threads here got me thinking about the fact that "off
| grid" is clearly not synonymous with "not being on the internet".
| There's like "the grid" and then "The Grid". I wonder how many
| people would argue that being truly off grid means exactly that -
| no mains water, electricity, but also no internet. I don't know
| enough about these sorts of communities to hazard a guess.
| ghaff wrote:
| I read off grid in general as being off terrestrial utility
| connections of any sort. So (maybe cell), satellite TV, and
| satellite Internet. But no power grid, water, sewage, or wired
| broadband.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| Plot twist, many of the people dreaming of an off grid
| lifestyle really just need to get away from the stress caused
| by being on line 24/7 and wouldn't find any reprieve by moving
| to the woods while continuing to be jacked in.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| We bought an RV a few years back, scratches this itch for us
| while still being able to come back to society.
| dmje wrote:
| Yeh, that was kind of in my mind.
|
| We spent a couple of years living in the middle of nowhere in
| a corrugated iron shack - it had electricity, borehole water,
| etc - but REALLY slow internet. It was wonderful.
| heliodor wrote:
| "We Are As Gods" is a book about the back-to-the-land
| movement in the 70s. Easy and interesting reading. It will
| make you appreciate your urban life really quickly!
| dmje wrote:
| Oh, ta, bookmarked!
| bachmeier wrote:
| A number of towns in Kansas on the list. I've lived here for many
| years and I've only heard of one of them, and that's because
| they're giving away free lots or houses or something.
|
| I'd be really careful about building the type of house described
| in the article in Kansas. Obviously places in Tornado Alley have
| that to worry about. Not every place is like that - we've had one
| tornado since 1966 - but there's nowhere in Kansas you can escape
| the heavy thunderstorms.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Spent half my life in Kansas, tornadoes never worried me.
| They're so ... focused. (Here I am in California and it's the
| earthquakes that freak me out, so widespread.)
|
| You're correct about the thunderstorms though. Something I miss
| all the time.
| nanna wrote:
| I despair. In the UK land is so parcelled up, monopolised, and
| held for posterity that you need serious wealth to buy anything
| even low grade. And now that we've left the EU it's not like it's
| even possible to move elsewhere. I despair.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| The title of the link is a bit misleading. It might be better to
| say: "Ways to get land in North America without paying" as it
| lists some techniques you can use: committing to building a
| house, taking care of a farm, or via squatters rights to obtain
| land in Canada and the US without needing to buy it.
|
| As there are substantial non-monetary obligations attached (for
| example, the need to build a house), I wouldn't call this "giving
| away land". And as most of these programs have been in place for
| a long time - in some cases dating back to common law - I
| wouldn't frame it as news. Rather, it's another set of life
| hacking tips.
| jeremy_wiebe wrote:
| I grew up near two villages listed in the article (Pipestone and
| Scarth, Manitoba).
|
| Definitely low population but growing up there I never felt I was
| missing out. Spent lots of time outside adventuring around. I
| still sometimes miss how dark and quiet notes out there were.
| carapace wrote:
| Fantastic resource, covers all the bases.
|
| I've tried this a couple of times: move to the woods with some
| like-minded people and start a little Permaculture village. All
| the physical stuff really works: composting, rocket stoves, etc.
|
| In my experience the problems are always people. ("Hell is other
| people." ~Voltaire or somebody.) Drug and alcohol abuse or just
| plain crazy can bust up a venture.
|
| I did meet a group of people who were living very very well in a
| communal village. They did things like holding hands in a big
| circle and singing grace before meals. They are probably among
| the happiest and most fulfilled folks I've ever met.
|
| - - - -
|
| One thing I would add to the list: Aircrete dome houses. Cheap,
| easy, fast, beautiful, durable (fire- and earthquake-proof.)
| Start at https://www.domegaia.com/ for a group that teaches how
| and developed a backyard-scale foamer. There are lots of DIY
| videos and information out there too.
| burnthrow wrote:
| Sartre.
| carapace wrote:
| Thanks. :)
| [deleted]
| 10x-dev wrote:
| Adverse possession is probably not realistic for most people.
| iirc it kicks in after 20 years after you build something on that
| land or surround it with a fence, plus it would take years and
| hiring an attorney to get it through the court system.
|
| So yes, it's technically free land, but after 25 years. I'm sure
| some states have slightly different rules about adverse
| possession though.
| [deleted]
| throwaway8581 wrote:
| It's single digits in some states, but all it takes to end up
| with nothing is for the owner to notice you and file eviction
| one day before the end of the period. Actively hiding from the
| owner also invalidates an adverse possession claim.
|
| The main point of adverse possession isn't squatters. It's to
| give you or your descendants good title after a certain amount
| of time. There's a bunch of reasons you can end up with
| imperfect title even if you think you validly bought or were
| gifted your property. Adverse possession clears up your title
| once enough time passes as long as you actually use the land
| and no one comes along and tries to assert their right.
| csomar wrote:
| It is reasonable if you understand the spirit of the law. It
| was not made to re-distribute land or property; but rather
| for land or property whose owners have "vanished" or have no
| more interest in that property (by even giving it away).
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Actually the main reason is to limit claims of fraudulent
| transfer.
|
| If adverse possession is 10 years in your state, you don't
| need to worry about the seller's grandchildren suing you
| claiming that you defrauded their ancestors when you bought
| your land from them. This also acts as a backstop for title
| insurance: title insurers are essentially off the hook for
| policies older than the adverse possession time.
|
| The main goal of adverse possession has always been to
| protect people who bought the land from ancient+stale
| claims that they bought it through fraud or bought it from
| somebody who wrongfully claimed they owned it. Otherwise
| you'd have to keep documentation and proof for all
| eternity. At some point it has to be okay to no longer have
| evidence and documentation beyond what's in the public
| record. Torrens title systems don't change this: the point
| is to prevent egregiously stale claims of _fraud_. Fraud is
| the explicit exceptions to Torrens indefeasibility.
|
| The much-publicized "squatters got free land" phenomenon is
| just a side effect.
| KirillPanov wrote:
| Another way to think of adverse possession is that it is sort
| of like the "statute of limitations" for land possession.
| stevekemp wrote:
| That reminds me of this story, from the UK.
|
| A guy built a castle, and hid it for four years behind straw
| bales - on the basis that if nobody complained for four years
| he'd be able to keep it. It didn't work out that way, and he
| had to demolish it:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-surrey-35928269
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| There should be exceptions for such well executed visions.
| acd wrote:
| I think it will be interesting the day that a local community
| bans central banks/fractional reserve banking and starts to sell
| houses in Bitcoin/Gold. People will be able to afford houses in
| cash without going into life time debt.
|
| People will be able to remote work due to internet technology,
| local work hubs will appear where you can have social
| interactions.
| Fragoel2 wrote:
| I think what you're describing is an utopia and likely will
| never come
| acd wrote:
| This is probably very true, an utopia.
| rebuilder wrote:
| >People will be able to afford houses in cash without going
| into life time debt.
|
| Well, sure, if the only people buying houses are the ones who
| can afford them without getting loans, you could technically
| describe it that way. But perhaps you could explain a bit
| further how hard currency / ban on fractional reserve would
| make housing affordable?
| acd wrote:
| Agree such a system would make it harder for people who
| cannot afford to save for a house to buy it.
|
| I speculate that house prices has increased mainly due to
| credit expansion. If you limit credit expansion by using hard
| currency house prices would be more stable over time like
| hard assets.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| Remote work is becoming more of a possibility for many workers
| without a doubt, but there are still huge numbers of jobs which
| literally cannot be moved online.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| Looking at so many places from Kansas reminded me of this video
| by a Geography nerd who went down census numbers from every state
| to try to explain patterns.
|
| https://youtu.be/4ZM3UFIt0Xs
|
| Truly remarkable how it takes only a decade to see entire
| counties and states to change completely.
| narrator wrote:
| I once went to an almost deserted town in Kansas because my mom
| was tracking down some old family history in obscure
| graveyards. They had one restaurant in the half deserted town.
| The silverware was mismatched, the food was literally
| microwaved tater tots. It was quite the experience. I rarely
| remember restaurants I eat at, but that one left an impression.
| quesera wrote:
| > The silverware was mismatched, the food was literally
| microwaved tater tots. It was quite the experience.
|
| This made me laugh. This is an extremely common situation,
| from dead zone rural all the way up to ordinary suburban and
| midsize city. And it's not hard to find in hopping metropolis
| San Francisco either.
|
| Unrelated, but there used to be an ironic-downmarket diner in
| South of Market. It didn't last long, but (for a while)
| people packed the place to eat trays of frozen macaroni and
| cheese.
|
| You could get a slightly better version of the same dish (but
| still distinctly microwaved) in a dozen places elsewhere
| around town, but people went to this place for the hipper
| decor and music, and to know that they were eating (and
| enjoying) the same food ironically, expensively, a few blocks
| from work, and just down the street from a wine bar where
| they have _such creative ideas_ of how to infuse a vodka
| tonic!
| jsilence wrote:
| I like the general idea very much. unfortunately in Germany where
| I like it is almost impossible to achieve. outside of city limits
| it is forbidden to build a house, even if the property is yours
| and inside city limits and a permit and that one you can not get
| with off grid concepts. connection to the road, electricity,
| water and waste water is mandatory. even people who produce zero
| waste MUST pay for waste collection. saw an article once where a
| family planted a tree in the waste bin. Still had to pay for
| having it not collected.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Construction permission is different from state to state. At
| least in Bavaria, water and waste water can be independent from
| the grid. Electricity is funny, because off grid is allowed,
| you still seem to have to pay taxes and grid fees (I could be
| wrong here, never dug to deep here). Having a road, yeah, you
| want to get to your house, don't you?
|
| Cabins and such need a permit, or have to grandfathered. There
| is even a way to treat them as a "non-permanent" building.
| porknubbins wrote:
| That sounds quite harsh. It generally fits with the idea that
| "Europe is a museum, the US is a factory". You aren't allowed
| to mess up the museum, you're just supposed to appreciate it.
| However I can't imagine that Germany doesn't allow cabins, lake
| houses, weekend homes etc anywhere?
| jsilence wrote:
| For cabins, the property has to be zoned as a recreational
| space. On agricultural land the structure you build has to be
| with an agricultural purpose and you can only apply for such
| a building permit when you are a registered farmer.
|
| Pretty much everything is regulated in Germany which sucks at
| times, but also this is the reason why things work quite well
| even though we are densely populated.
| tpmx wrote:
| Germany has been very densely populated for a very long time.
|
| At the start of WW2 (82 years ago) Germany had a population
| of ~70M. Now it's 83M.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_U.
| ..
|
| .. illustrates that Europe isn't this densely populated
| everywhere.
| phrotoma wrote:
| It's there in the saltwater electrolysis diagram on the right
| hand side, but probably worth calling out in big scary letters.
| Separating saltwater this way produces chlorine gas as a
| byproduct.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| And hydrogen. Though, a lifetime supply of calcium hypochlorite
| doesn't take up much room, but is also flammable.
| newsbinator wrote:
| I love the idea of an off-grid house but it always comes with too
| much DIY.
|
| I wish there were sellers with fixed affordable off-grid
| packages.
|
| You get House A on Plot A for $50,000
|
| You own the house and the plot. It is fully off-grid (except
| WiFi) and we made smart decisions and installed reliable systems.
|
| You pay your money and you maintain the house.
|
| Unfortunately it's never like that. It's all DIY:
|
| Come camp with us for 4 weeks without a hot shower while we teach
| you how to mix AirCrete and sell you a pump. Get 4 friends and
| spend 4 months slathering cob incorrectly together. Never cut
| down a tree before? Buy a chainsaw and start stacking 1-ton logs-
| you'll be perfectly safe: nobody has blogged yet about having
| crushed themselves.
|
| I realize this is contrary to the spirit.
|
| I just want a convention-over-configuration small off-grid house
| that I can see in models, read specs for, and purchase outright,
| including the land it's sitting on.
| f69281c wrote:
| > I love the idea of an off-grid house but it always comes with
| too much DIY.
|
| Are you seriously complaining that homesteading is DIY? That's
| the point. You belong in SV, just buy a copy of stardew valley.
|
| >I wish there were sellers with fixed affordable off-grid
| packages. (...) I realize this is contrary to the spirit.
|
| You don't get it. It's going to break and if you've got the
| maintenance skills of a disillusioned tech worker, it's never
| going to be anything more than a money pit for you. Stay in
| whatever tech hub you're in.
| rklaehn wrote:
| I would love this as well.
|
| There is a lot of ready made tech for off grid living these
| days.
|
| E.g. you can buy an island capable solar+storage system from
| many vendors, not just Tesla. You can buy very efficient and
| clean log-powered heating systems. "Stuckholzheizung" in
| german.
|
| All the components are commercial off the shelf. So you only
| would need a prefab house contractor to combine these offerings
| into a good package.
|
| Add in starlink, and you can indeed be completely off the grid,
| even including WIFI.
|
| The biggest obstacle for off-grid living is legal. E.g. in
| Germany you can not opt out of grid connection charges, even if
| you do not use the grid.
| raverbashing wrote:
| This only goes to show how "off-grid" is a pipe-dream,
| especially for people who have no experience with it
|
| Hey you truly want to live off-grid and off the land? There's
| plenty of farms like that in the US, other big countries, and I
| guess it's doable even in Spain or France for example.
|
| Off-grid is not a choice in a lot of places, it's how things
| are. Closest "city" is 30min/1h by car. And by city I mean a
| gas station, a pharmacy and a grocery store and one main
| street.
|
| Edit:
|
| > I recommend the book How to Build and Furnish a Log Cabin ...
| that teaches old fashioned methods requiring inexpensive tools.
| No expensive chainsaws necessary.
|
| Oh boy, if you think a chainsaw is expensive and/or not
| necessary I'm sure you're going to have a great time building
| your log cabin. /s
|
| If you're trying to live off grid but has never managed a small
| backyard (some corn, a small orchard, raising chickens, etc)
| you don't know what you're signing off for.
| throwaway316943 wrote:
| A lot of people manage it. It's honestly not that bad but you
| can't be shy of doing the work. The pipe dream is people
| thinking it'll be a turn key solution. "All I need to do is
| buy solar, drill a well, put in septic and build a house, how
| hard could that be?" It's amazing how much you don't know
| until you try it. My recommendation to anyone living in a
| city and looking to escape is to just buy a regular house in
| a rural area, no cabins, no farms, for sure not a yurt. Just
| buy a bungalow on a half acre and try it out, there's going
| to be enough stuff to keep you busy. If you can take all of
| that in stride while improving the property and not be sick
| of it or bankrupt yourself then consider selling in a year or
| two and buying something a bit more daring.
| jessaustin wrote:
| _...if you think a chainsaw is expensive and /or not
| necessary I'm sure you're going to have a great time..._
|
| I'm visualizing OP trying to fell a tree using one of those
| survivalist wire saws. "Should be done some time next week!"
| true_religion wrote:
| I kind of wonder what off-the-grid means?
|
| Does it mean without any normal roads? Well you can find that
| in VA easily if you know where to look.
|
| No power lines? Harder, unless you can accept that power line
| exist but you simply won't use them.
|
| No water pipes? In a rural environment, having central water
| would be rare.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Even in the German country side, sometimes water is coming
| from your own well for ages. Usually houses are connected to
| electricity, phone and maybe TV. Waste water tends to be on
| site as well. My uncle is living between two farms, next to
| my late grandparents house, and that always has been their
| set up.
|
| Edit: Heating used to be oil, replaced by wood pallets. Heat
| pumps are a nice alternative as well.
|
| Today we can generate electricity on site, which leaves phone
| an internet.
| dalbasal wrote:
| It's super-contrary to the spirit of this blog in particular.
| This is a quarter step away from renouncing barter of any kind.
| It's also kind of against the idea in the abstract too. "Off-
| grid," self sufficiency and DIY are pretty closely related.
|
| None of that matters though, and you're right. Punk rock was
| DIY too. That doesn't mean music companies didn't eventually
| produce it like any other pop music.
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| I think two age-old adages apply here:
|
| There's no such thing as free lunch, and not just when it comes
| to monetary payment, but also to due diligence.
|
| and
|
| If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
| [deleted]
| Animats wrote:
| They exist. Search for "complete prefab off grid house". Here's
| an elaborate one. [1]
|
| [1] https://spechtarchitects.com/work/zerohouse/
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Woah. That looks like a mashup of container-based structures
| you'd walk through in Mass Effect games, with Kerbal Space
| Program - the way that oversized solar panel is just glued to
| the top of the structure.
|
| That is to say, I love the design. But I suspect my wife
| wouldn't.
| newsbinator wrote:
| That's the thing- it's an idea of a house, rather than a
| house:
|
| * how much does it cost?
|
| * what's included? What are the specs on the windows? What
| kind of toilet? What's the flooring made from? What are the
| screws that hold on the bathroom mirror?
|
| * how long is the warranty?
|
| * where is it located?
|
| Obviously these questions don't apply to a spec house listed
| on an architect's site.
|
| But more generally you find when attempting to purchase an
| off-grid house or even a small/tiny house, that they leave as
| many question marks up to the buyer to DIY as possible.
|
| I'm advocating for the reverse: sell me the cheap Xiaomi
| phone of houses: something mass-market, with sane trade-offs,
| and all the boxes checked in advance, including the parcel
| where it lives.
|
| Go ahead and put a price tag on the whole package, builders.
| Customization = bad (for me).
|
| If somebody else wants the modular custom-built PC of houses,
| that's fine.
|
| Me, I'm good with mass-market.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "Me, I'm good with mass-market"
|
| So you want mass-market off the grid?
|
| You realize thats kind of an oxymoron?
|
| The mass market is by definition only on the grid. Because
| the grid is predictable and there you can mass produce.
|
| But off the grid allmost always has to be customized. Just
| alone the getting things there and installing them part.
|
| And like others mentioned, what do you do off grid if your
| mass produced solar/thermal heating system breaks in the
| winter?
|
| Order a new one? To be delivered by helicopter?
| Animats wrote:
| There are quite a few tiny complete off-grid houses
| available as prefabs. Larger ones tend to be custom, but
| if you want something that will fit on a flatbed truck,
| that's available prebuilt.
|
| Off-grid power, water, and sewerage do require on-site
| work, and usually more land than the house alone uses.
| chrisdinn wrote:
| You want an off-grid builder-grade house like you'd buy in
| a suburb, it sounds like. Going to be a long time before
| that happens. The builder homes work (both price and
| reliability) because there's hundreds of thousands of them
| virtually identical. Trades know exactly what to do, even
| affordable ones, because they've done it 1000 times before.
| That's a mature industry producing a stable product.
|
| Until there are thousands of these things and the kinks
| have been worked out you can't have that. Every innovative
| architect home has one (or more) secret horror
| story/screwed up detail you haven't heard about. When doing
| something new you need to bear the mental burden of making
| the house work, build yes but also maintenance which is
| also specialized and non-standard.
|
| There will be a lot of customers learning this the hard way
| as the industry catches up with demand.
| bsenftner wrote:
| I can imagine these as a fantastic "lake house" or other club
| house like structure on a larger residential yard or no-
| structure investment property. These are super cool.
| throwanem wrote:
| Those are nice renders. Has anyone built one? If so, how has
| it held up?
| foolfoolz wrote:
| a lot of homesteading projects start by buying a RV or mobile
| home and park it on the land until you've built something. this
| solves the problem of throwing 50k in with your free land to
| get off the ground
| teawrecks wrote:
| >until you've built something
|
| I think their point is that they don't want to DIY at all.
| They want a consumer product for living off-grid.
| fredgrott wrote:
| the guy who came up with concept of off-grid earth-ship offers
| classes in the USA(Colorado).
|
| Earth-ship is built using recycling, ie a concrete thermal mass
| and recycled tires, bottles, etc.
| solidsnack9000 wrote:
| It has to do with risk. You know what you're getting into, or
| if you don't, you're going to have to deal with all of your own
| customer complaints, confusion, dissatisfaction, &c. As soon as
| someone sells something to you, that stuff is their problem,
| and they need to charge a lot more for managing all the risk
| and expectations: documentation, customer service, insurance,
| lawyers to write contracts, lawyers to write letters...
| madaxe_again wrote:
| What you're missing there is maintenance.
|
| I live off grid, I have nothing but reliable systems here.
| Stuff breaks _every single day_. Nature happens - we get
| lightning strikes, floods, fires, freezing temperatures,
| droughts - stuff breaks.
|
| When we moved here, some stuff had been done by the previous
| owners. No plans or anything, just "hunt the burst water line
| under the concrete" and all that fun.
|
| _The_ major advantage of DIY is that you end up being able to
| repair your own stuff, to know how it works, to know where it
| is.
|
| If you have an off-grid home that you can't maintain, you
| aren't going to last long there.
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| Me and my partner rebuilt a log cabin into a year-round house
| over the period of a year. Only bearing walls remained. Re-
| insulated, expanded and changed the roof, added a bathroom,
| sleeping lofts, etc. She did most light work while I was
| holding down the day job to secure the down-payment and
| mortgage, and I would handle the heavy stuff on the weekends.
|
| The zone is not ideal for wind or solar, so we are connected
| to electrical. We had a contractor help with bath tiling, he
| did plumbing and electric hook-ups, an electrician did what
| was required by code for the electric system.
| Every single one of the licensed pros had cut corners.
|
| The electrician did not secure the outlets to the walls
| properly, just enough for them to start getting loose after 2
| years. One weak screw instead of four. I was afraid of
| electric for a while. Only had the energy to read the code,
| some books and watch some youtube videos and re-secure all
| the outlets and set up 2 extra outlets, with channel cable
| dragging, etc, about 3 years ago.
|
| The plumbing had multiple mistakes as well, wrong tank
| positioning, wrong main drain placement, no main cut-off to
| the tank, did not get a filter hook-up or a drain valve, etc,
| and the hot water boiler did not get a proper set-up for easy
| maintenance (the magnesium sacrificial anode cannot be
| removed, too close to the ceiling, you have to dismount the
| whole unit).
|
| If I had the money and not to have to work during the build
| process, I would have built a small house first, learning
| everything about how to do it right and observing the "pros"
| as they go along. But hey, we have a house that total spend
| was 1/3 of the market, enough land to build a second one, and
| I am a different man from the experience.
|
| It was my first experience with engineering outside of
| software. Trust no one, do your own research, plan,
| experiment and verify apply even more in "physical world"
| engineering.
|
| It's nice to become more and more self-reliant with
| construction skills. I just serviced the indoor plumbing,
| changed 3 taps, installed a water-filter hook-up and filter,
| including pipes, and plan to assemble a big water filtration
| system, myself, in the summer. $ 5K to 7K for filter tank,
| controller and installation by contractor, vs $600 for system
| and medium from manufacturer, and install it yourself.
|
| Whether you plan to go off-grid, build, be your own general
| contractor, or even just buy a property, doing things
| yourself, provided you can follow engineering principles and
| values, is always the best bet. You want reliability. The
| pros want to make a profit.
|
| Life pro tip - if planning to participate in construction in
| any way, audit the locality and how strict vs smart their
| code and inspections are.
| perl4ever wrote:
| >the magnesium sacrificial anode cannot be removed, too
| close to the ceiling
|
| I was contemplating what to do about that with my water
| heater, but I think maybe the procedure is that you cut it
| up as it comes out, if it is one long piece, and there are
| replacements that are segmented so you can get them back in
| with limited clearance.
|
| https://images.app.goo.gl/KtLKGEG3h8rfT93k6
| NotPavlovsDog wrote:
| It's so close for me, I cannot get the key in to open the
| lock to the anode. Otherwise, if one has some access
| space, segmented is a good solution. or, alternatively,
| an anode that is part of the heating element assembly, if
| that is at the bottom / accessible.
|
| Some handy individuals have modified their existing
| assemblies, but I don't have the time nor the tools, and
| it's not cost-effective to mess around in my case, as a
| replacement for my electrical unit will be under $300,
| dealer demo unit, with own installation. Just have to
| snag one on sale.
| bregma wrote:
| It's my experience that if you're living off-grid you're
| probably remote, and if you're remote and even not off-grid
| you have to do the DIY thing because you're not going to get
| trades to come out and do it for you.
|
| Few plumbers or electricians are willing to make a 2-or-more-
| hours round trip on the road at any price. If you have an
| off-grid home you're not willing to maintain, you're going to
| spend a lot of time sitting alone in the cold and dark until
| nature finally recycles you.
| christophilus wrote:
| > The major advantage of DIY is that you end up being able to
| repair your own stuff, to know how it works, to know where it
| is.
|
| This sounds similar to the NIH syndrome in some software
| companies. I'm still trying to figure out when it makes sense
| and when it doesn't. In software, I tend to err on the side
| of NIH. In life, I am almost never DIY. I suspect I'm out of
| balance in both regards.
| hef19898 wrote:
| My take on it, for what it's worth, is that DIY can go the
| extreme from building your own tools to just use plug and
| play tech, doing only the "plug" part yourself. Same goes
| for NIH, but I'm no software engineer and only recently
| restarted DIY for certain things.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| A popular guideline that makes sense to me is to control
| the tech that you compete on and outsource everything else.
|
| Eg if "search" quality is a competitive differentiation,
| make sure you implement search yourself. Your goal is to
| beat the rest of the market in search quality so buying a
| commodity search product that anyone else can buy doesn't
| make sense. You are directly rewarded for paying the extra
| NIH cost to go the extra mile for your customers.
|
| For everything else, there's little benefit to paying the
| extra cost of NIH. An excessively fancy/powerful support
| ticketing system, for example, isn't going to help you get
| more customers. Few people might care how much nicer the
| checkout/payment page is than on other products, so you can
| outsource that.
|
| Most areas in real life don't benefit from extra quality
| either. For eg, the extra quality you might get from
| hunting/farming your own own food makes little difference
| to most people, so most choose to outsource that.
| nunodonato wrote:
| This. I live off-grid as well, you really need to be ready to
| DIY. People looking for easy off-grid solutions are fooling
| themselves.stay in your flat
| swader999 wrote:
| Living rural, on grid on an acreage and I'm still amazed at
| how much work it is. Some of it is self inflicted. Redoing
| my footer drains by hand, building a cistern for extra
| water storage, land scaping, finish a basement, gardening,
| tuning teleposts, bobcat, mini excavator, snow fencing to
| reduce plowing, tree planting and protecting, fencing, too
| many maintenance and repair tasks to list. There's always
| another project waiting...
| ryandrake wrote:
| OP might want to go live somewhere sufficiently rural but
| partially on-grid to try it out and see if it's for him.
| I'd suggest something with at least access through a
| gravel road, traditional electric provider, but with off-
| grid well and septic might be a good start. When you're
| at the point where you don't need to call _anyone_ to do
| something for you, then maybe you 're ready to live full
| time off grid.
| blabitty wrote:
| >The major advantage of DIY is that you end up being able to
| repair your own stuff, to know how it works, to know where it
| is.
|
| I have this mentality with my normal on grid tract house. My
| saying is "at least I know what corners I cut"
| tomcam wrote:
| > I live off grid, I have nothing but reliable systems here.
| Stuff breaks every single day
|
| One of HN's most important comments on this subject ever IMHO
| pbourke wrote:
| > nobody has blogged yet about having crushed themselves.
|
| "Hi HN! (waves). It's Johnny from Loggr.me (formerly timbr.ho).
| We're building the world's first platform to connect loggers
| (who can chop down trees) and loggees (who have no business
| doing so). The idea came at me suddenly while I was building my
| off-grid tiny house in the Sierra Nevadas..."
| glsdfgkjsklfj wrote:
| I don't know if I will be more impressed if that is parody or
| real sites.
| ryandrake wrote:
| The best satire is totally believable. He got me for a
| second too. I could totally picture the responsive web site
| and About Us page complete with a picture of the guy's dog
| captioned Chief Bark Officer.
| skeeter2020 wrote:
| I'm not sure if this is a joke or not. It sounds like whaty you
| are asking for is All the benefits, none of the costs, someone
| else that does all the work and you get it for a bargain. And
| nobody has offerred this yet is a mystery?
|
| It sounds like your best bet is to buy a cookie-cutter in the
| suburbs and a generator.
| Thorrez wrote:
| >except WiFi
|
| What type of internet do you think would be best? Cell?
| Traditional satellite? Low orbit satellite? Long range
| wireless? Cable? DSL? Fiber? Actual wifi from a very nearby
| neighbor?
| madaxe_again wrote:
| LTE in most places - we get 80Mbs down and 30 up here, and we
| are a long way from anywhere - having to use our own mast on
| a hilltop to get a signal.
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| LTE is limited to 21GB of higher speed transfer a month, at
| which point you get rate limited down to 2Mbps down and
| .5Mbps up.
|
| Can't have Zoom calls on that garbage.
| burntwater wrote:
| I used 150GB of LTE in the past three days and still
| going strong.
| Shared404 wrote:
| Would that not be dependent on the carrier?
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| Indeed. Last time I was forced on LTE in home at the
| states, the plan I described above was the best in the
| US. That was 5ish years ago when I was living in the
| stix.
| p_l wrote:
| You don't know what kind of contracts are available for
| the GP.
|
| In EU, getting a lot more is usually not a problem
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Yeah, I'm in Portugal, and we pay EUR30 a month for
| unlimited ( _actually_ unlimited - no FUP or anything)
| data.
|
| The ISP does do some traffic shaping, so they'll throttle
| video streaming at peak hours, but a EUR1 a month VPN
| busts around that no problem.
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| Not sure about the EU, but last time I was forced on LTE
| in home at the states, the plan I described above was the
| best in the US. That was 5ish years ago when I was living
| in the stix.
| burntwater wrote:
| Cellular plans from the major US carriers change every
| couple months. Throw in all the resellers and you have
| new plans every week. Describing a cellular plan from 5
| years ago is like talking about a 286.
| throwaway3699 wrote:
| I would say at least 1 TB minimum for a home data plan,
| imo. I've used that much in a month just on Steam games,
| and each member of a family drives that up very linearly.
| Any less and you start "rationing" out something
| fundamentally unlimited.
| throwawaygulf wrote:
| The last time I was forced on LTE at home in the states,
| the plan I described above was the best in the US. That
| was 5ish years ago when I was living in the stix.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you don't have broadband, today, you pretty much have
| to make compromises. You don't play Steam games and you
| don't stream much video--probably get DirectTV. Cell is
| one option in many places. Satellite is another. Neither
| are great but that's sort of where you are until maybe
| Starlink arrives.
| VBprogrammer wrote:
| If you are going to spend hours playing online games /
| watching netflix then I can't imagine why you wouldn't
| just stay comfortable in the city or the suburbs. Living
| off grid you are going to spend a lot of your free time
| just living. If you've ever camped in a tent it's
| probably not dissimilar, by the time you've made
| breakfast and cleaned up afterwards its almost time to
| think about lunch, or at least it can feel that way.
| filereaper wrote:
| Starlink which is taking orders
| twothamendment wrote:
| I have a friend who is off-grid for everything except for the
| fiber to his house. He even has to haul his own water in as
| he doesn't have a well.
|
| I only know people who tried hughesnet, none of them kept it.
| There are lots of mountains and trees here, so a WISP won't
| work. Distances are too great for DSL. Cell service (in this
| area) is lucky to be good enough to send a text.
|
| With starlink this will be a lot easier. I think it comes
| down to fiber or starlink - and maybe a WISP if possible.
| ghaff wrote:
| Things will presumably be better once Starlink or other
| next gen satellite systems are available. But the reality
| today in many rural areas is Hughesnet... or Hughesnet.
| None of the people I know who have it like it but it's the
| only choice some people have. So they just have to live
| with the data cost and performance and just not use
| Internet regularly for things like streaming video.
| leoedin wrote:
| The off grid part is almost orthogonal to the house part.
| There's plenty of companies making prefab or modular homes. An
| off grid home is just a conventional home with a different
| electricity supply. If you build a small, well insulated
| conventional building it's a perfect off grid candidate.
| wsc981 wrote:
| In Thailand one can quite easily and cheaply buy wooden home
| "construction kits". Of course those kinds of houses are
| often not insulated due to the hot climate in most of the
| country, most of the year.
|
| Many of these "construction kits" can be seen and bought in a
| city somewhere on the highway between Chiang Mai and Bangkok
| (probably Phrae as this[0] company is located there as well).
|
| ----
|
| [0]: http://m.thailannahome.com/
| gcanyon wrote:
| Pretty sure the place you linked is high end and there are
| probably much cheaper options. The prices they're quoting
| for 100m^2 / 1100ft^2 houses is about $120k depending on
| the model. They look like _very_ nice houses, but not
| cheap.
|
| For comparison consider that I rent a 45m^2 1 bedroom
| furnished apartment on the 28th floor of a high rise in the
| heart of Bangkok for roughly $600/month. I could have a
| 90m^2 two bedroom in the same building for about
| $1,000/month.
| beauzero wrote:
| As someone who lives in rural Georgia/almost Alabama...trends
| I see here are people having "barn houses" built for them or
| using some of the huge prefab outbuildings from Home
| Depot/Lowes dropped on a piece of property and starting with
| that. The "barn houses" I am talking about are current tech
| barns built with 2x6s and galvilum (galvanized aluminum) for
| roof and walls. Generally take out a barn/land loan and then
| have interior slab and subs come in and turn the interior
| into a home. A home permit would not allow such an
| inexpensive build and if tax assessors only come around every
| five years provides a significant savings...generally 10-15k
| over those first five years.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| We currently live in a old watermill in Portugal - and as it
| flooded badly (over the roof) a bit over a year ago, we
| decided we needed a Plan B.
|
| This came in the form of a prefab log cabin - that is to say,
| the lumber is all cut to shape and size, and you're "just"
| banging it together. "You" in this case being my wife and I.
|
| Total for the structure was just under EUR20k - includes
| windows, doors, insulated walls, floor, ceiling.
|
| Total for water is less than EUR1000 - IBCs for storage, a km
| of water line, carbon and sediment filters, UV-C reaction
| chamber, reverse osmosis.
|
| Total for waste is about EUR200. IBC. Worms. Cheap plumbing
| supplies.
|
| Total for power is about EUR15,000 - most of that cost is in
| a huge bank of OPzS batteries, and then theres victron gear,
| a dozen solar panels, a dinky wind turbine, and an
| experimental (failed) waterwheel. This covers both the mill
| and the cabin, which are about 600m apart.
|
| So, all in all, it's an off-grid house for under EUR40k. That
| of course doesn't include labour, which has been about 1000
| hours of our time, from digging and pouring column
| foundations through to transporting everything to site by
| aerial cableway - so in many cases it'd be much less, as you
| wouldn't be building on a 45 degree slope with zero access
| for machinery.
|
| The thing I keep seeing people getting wrong is energy.
| Literally yesterday I talked someone out of buying used
| lithium ion cells from EVs, as while they were indeed very
| cheap, they likely only had a few years of life in them, so
| the price/kwH stored amortised over the lifetime of the
| batteries was terrible. Can't go wrong with lead acid OPzS -
| 20 year lifetime, easy to maintain - two years in and they've
| lost basically nothing in terms of their potential. For some
| reason you don't often see them in domestic installs - but
| they're super common for battery backups at hospitals,
| battery storage for renewables providers, etc.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Sorry, just to check - the flood came over _the roof_ of
| your house ?
|
| Are you putting the log house further up hill? :-?
|
| Love the idea of the house btw - inspiring once the kids
| get older
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Yeah - we had 10cm of rain in 36h, and the mill is on a,
| uh, dynamic mountain river. It surged from its normal
| winter level by seven meters - our car disappeared
| entirely - it's nowhere downstream of us that we've been
| able to see, so it's probably in the Douro. The drainage
| basin is pretty small, which means that the water level
| is heavily influenced by the weather in the immediate
| area - in summer, it dries to a trickle, in the winter,
| if there's intense rain on already saturated soil, it can
| surge pretty impressively.
|
| This winter the worst we had was 3cm in 24h, and the
| river stayed a good meter below the level of the floor of
| the mill, so we now have a better understanding of what
| kind of weather conditions constitute a danger - the rain
| we had at the end of 2019 was the worst in 70 years or
| more.
|
| The mill itself is ancient, and built out of enormous
| boulders, each weighing tens of tonnes, so the structure
| was entirely unscathed despite being battered to hell by
| both the force of the water and the debris that came down
| - everything from trees to trash to trailers. The roof
| got pretty badly torn up, so we've had a tarp over it for
| the last year, as we intend to take it off and put a
| storey on top this year anyway. Overall, while it _was_ a
| crisis (we waded out in thigh deep water in torrential
| rain, and had to walk to the nearest village as our car
| was already gone, cats screaming in their bag... all a
| bit traumatic tbh), we 've turned it into an opportunity
| - it spurred us into building the cabin, it's shown us
| what the river _can_ do and what we should therefore plan
| for with our projects (for instance, I moved our entire
| battery bank a few meters further uphill), and the damage
| to the roof has encouraged us to think about building
| upwards. It 's also shown us what we can bounce back from
| - lost a lot of posessions, and hosing down the house and
| everything in it was pretty miserable. Oh, and it
| happened a few days before Christmas!
|
| The cabin is about 30 meters uphill, and about half a
| kilometer away, on an old agricultural terrace -
| nightmare doing the groundwork, and getting materials in,
| but it's so worth it - spring is just beginning here, and
| I'm sat in the unfinished structure right now, watching
| birds flit between the treetops at window level,
| listening to the stream chuckling in its bed - very
| different to the perennial roar of the weir at the mill.
|
| It's a challenging lifestyle, but I wouldn't trade it for
| the world.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| Around 10 years ago, I did a bunch of research into battery
| banks for an off-grid solar installation. I looked at
| probably a dozen very different battery types (some of
| which were 'coming to market soon', boy were all those a
| dead end). The option that seemed to be the best choice
| overall was flooded lead acid, which surprised me.
|
| It's very interesting that even after all the improvements
| in battery tech since then, this still appears to be the
| case. I wonder how much longer it will hold true?
| mikeytown2 wrote:
| You can get Lifepo4 for roughly $100 per kWh of storage
| is you do a group buy on 272 ah cells. This is cheaper
| than lead and is a better chemistry from what I've seen.
| Mikushi wrote:
| Interesting, I've been eyeing Portugal with my wife as
| possible place to retire early.
|
| In terms of prefab log cabin, any pointers you could share?
| (Even if portugal specific)
|
| Thanks
| madaxe_again wrote:
| We bought ours from an outfit in Estonia, as the baltic
| states are _very_ experienced log structure builders, and
| the baltic pine forests give a good and consistent
| quality of wood. I looked at portuguese suppliers but the
| offerings were much more "shed" than cabin, and the
| thickest "logs" I could find here were 35mm - not so much
| a log as a plank. Our freight cost down from Estonia was
| about EUR4k - full lorry.
|
| Ours is 70mm milled logs, fit together like tongue and
| groove. Generally really pleased with how it's come
| together, although I need to finish the roof, which got
| postponed by weeks of rain.
|
| Only thing I'd say is that they can be tricky to get
| permission for in Portugal, but it really depends where
| you are. Where we are, in the north, where the fires
| aren't so bad, pretty much anything goes - I have a
| signed note from the local council saying "it's your
| land, you build what you like".
|
| Only other thing is don't underestimate the labour. I
| naievly thought we'd have it up within a few weeks of the
| kit arriving, but it's been more like four months, and
| we're still not quite done. Oh, and don't build in winter
| :)
| MaheshC wrote:
| May I ask you what municipality or general district?
| aruggirello wrote:
| Shameless plug, I'm selling such wooden "sheds" (in
| Italy, but could ship EU-wide if required) with up to
| 45mm thick walls (mostly garden / leisure / party
| oriented though) on my website. I'm willing to give a
| little discount if any fellow HNers are interested
| (sorry, you'll have to use Google Translate - it's in
| Italian :)
|
| https://www.h2oreca.it/cerca.php?categoria=giardino%2Fcas
| ett...
| gog wrote:
| Can you share a link to the outfit?
| oflannabhra wrote:
| I've lost countless hours on YouTube to people building
| their own water wheels...
| lettergram wrote:
| Funny you should mention that. I'm currently in Tennessee
| buying land to build off grid housing in the middle of no
| where.
|
| Plan on buying 60-150 acres, building a house off grid, adding
| starlink, then renting it until / when I'd like to move in.
|
| We'd probably build 2-3 homes and rent out 1-2 and people can
| bring their families. They can learn to hunt, fish, take care
| of cattle, etc for a summer.
| peteretep wrote:
| Isn't this just a regular house with non-grid power and water?
| twothamendment wrote:
| I live "in the middle of nowhere". I'm not off-grid, but have
| friends who are. I think there are a handful of reasons that it
| is difficult to find a turn-key, ready to live in of grid home.
|
| Subdivisions are easy, they are all essentially the same. They
| have a road, electricity, water, sewer are waiting and everyone
| (builders) knows how to hook up to them. As soon as you go of
| grid you have to figure that out, much of it from scratch
| because each site is different.
|
| Electricity- How much solar do you need? That depends on the
| climate and the level of comfort the owner wants. Are they good
| running a generator when the sun doesn't shine or are they
| willing to shell out for a lot of battery? Are the panels on
| the roof or on the ground?
|
| Water - do you want to haul your own water or punch a well?
| That is a big, site specific cost that can be estimated, but is
| also a big unknown.
|
| Sewer- composting toilet or septic system? Septic obviously
| costs not and each site needs some amount of design and
| approval, even here where you don't even need a permit for the
| structure.
|
| Roads - it is likely to not exist in most properties, the cost
| to get that done varies greatly.
|
| Ok, so the price can swing - a lot and it isn't so cookie
| cutter, but why does of grid so often get coupled to DIY?
| Because when you live of grid (at least around here) you are
| the one who will plow and maintain your road. You are the one
| to maintain your solar system.
|
| Your generator carb needs tuned? Do you drive an hour each way
| to drop it off and pick it up next week or watch a YouTube
| video and do it in an hour and have your generator ready and
| available instead of in the shop?
|
| I can only speak about what I see around me, but it is mostly
| DIY, self-reliant, prepared people who live here (on or off
| grid). By building your own systems you are ready to maintain
| and repair them rather than wait for someone to come save you.
|
| Can't cut a tree with a chainsaw? It might be a while before
| someone clears the fallen tree from your road. Even old
| Grandma's around here have a saw and won't let a tree in the
| road stop them. (I keep a bow saw in each vehicle and have used
| it. It is slower, but not as slow as waiting!)
|
| It is a mentality that is so different than my old subdivision
| neighbors.
| TrevorJ wrote:
| Took a look at the New Richland Montana one - they are charging
| you 25,000 for the cost of putting in roads and such. So A: not
| off grid. and B: not free. Not sure how well researched the
| article is.
| torgian wrote:
| I just read an article about this via Trulia. I can't help the
| feeling that these "small towns" sound like a cult.
| dmeeker wrote:
| There's also the issue that it's New Richland, Minnesota, not
| Montana.
| rrmm wrote:
| Tomayto, Tomahto...
| johnohara wrote:
| Article says New Richland, Montana. Link takes you to New
| Richland, Minnesota.
| ttyprintk wrote:
| Shameless plug for https://gigahood.com --- I would run any
| nearby address through it to see what wired Internet options
| are offered in those areas.
| Animats wrote:
| Alaska discourages people coming to Alaska without
| preparation.[1] "You should have a round trip ticket and cash or
| credit card resources ($2,000 for temporary and $3,000 for
| permanent work) to live on while looking for work. Many who
| arrived short of cash encountered serious hardship and shattered
| dreams. Public assistance programs cannot be counted on by
| persons relocating to Alaska without adequate funds. Homesteading
| is not available now. The climate and unpredictable summer
| weather generally discourage camper or tent living for extended
| periods."
|
| [1] https://www.labor.alaska.gov/esd_alaska_jobs/ak_over.htm
| colora-doh wrote:
| Someone should have told that to Chris McCandless.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_McCandless
| hellbannedguy wrote:
| I think Chris knew these things deep down inside, but his
| affluent upbringing clouded reality.
|
| The wealthy think there's a safety net, even in the middle of
| nowhere.
|
| They grow up with the Luxury of taking chances because that
| emphatic family, usually dad, bails them out. They can afford
| to take chances, and buck the system?
|
| I have read Krakauer's book a few time, and watched the movie
| a lot. And thought about Chris way too much.
|
| I think Chris's biggest mistake was not having a partner.
|
| I know a few homeless individuals. The ones that didn't lose
| their mind in a few months, or die; had a reliable partner.
|
| Most of the time the partner was same sex. It was just
| someone to help, and bounce ideas off.
|
| I'm interested in McCandless because I identified with him. I
| didn't have the affluent background, but was unhappy after
| college. The last thing I wanted was to look at a screen, and
| hang around people whom were kinda dead inside.
|
| I think Chris would be alive today if he partnered up.
|
| I'm a complete loner, but the times I had true friends, I was
| so much more successful.
| tomcam wrote:
| > I think Chris knew these things deep down inside, but his
| affluent upbringing clouded reality.
|
| He did not know these things. He died. QED.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| Or he did know them, but choose to go his way till the
| end. Instead of crawling back to the society he tried to
| run away from.
|
| So understandable a bit. (if thats the right version)
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yeah, maybe he didn't know. Or he didn't listen.
|
| "Affluent upbringing" or in more plain terms "spoiled kid
| who always wants to do 'crazy' stuff because he knows dad
| will be there with the check-book/lawyer to bail him
| out". (Of course it's more complicated than that, but to
| the outside, that's what it looks like)
|
| Well, you can't have your dad bail out a bear. You can't
| live off the land if you can't tell the difference
| between an orange and a grapefruit in a supermarket.
| (Edit: the 'theories of malnutrition' on his wiki page
| are a very good summary of theories, and a lot of things
| we take for granted in our day to day)
|
| I don't see any point in glorifying people who died for
| doing something (obviously) stupid who had multiple
| chances to give up and absolutely zero sense of
| foresight.
| jefftk wrote:
| This article gives a decent description of the 'how', but I'm
| more curious about the 'why'. Yes, it is possible to avoid paying
| money for land, food, housing, water, sewer, etc. Considered on a
| basis of how many hours you have to work for a given standard of
| living, however, it's not very attractive.
| JamesAdir wrote:
| Even without living off the grid. What's it's like living in this
| places in the US? I'm looking at New Richmond Minnesota that's
| mentioned on the blog and there are only 1,200 people living
| there. I wonder if you can live there as a single in your 30's as
| someone who grow up in a small country where all cities and major
| places are just very close by.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Sure you can, it's just a cultural adjustment.
|
| I live in northern Arkansas, in a town of <15k people. It's the
| county seat and the largest town nearby, but I grew up in an
| even smaller town nearby (current population 271).
|
| I'm happy to discuss this sort of thing in further detail if
| anyone is interested.
|
| Some thoughts:
|
| I think it's going to be foremost on the minds of a lot of
| HNers, but race/ethnicity isn't as big a consideration as it
| might appear from the outside. If you look like the people here
| it's going to be a bit easier to assimilate, but I would
| strongly argue that this is more of a visible marker of someone
| being an "outsider" than something based on race. In fact, if
| you're white, your accent, mannerisms, and perspective on the
| world will be a bigger deal. For example - pretty much no one
| here is going to care if you're a man who prefers the company
| of men, but if you walk into town with bright green hair,
| covered in rainbows, and have a giant Biden sticker on the back
| of your car you're not going to be well received.
|
| What's more, it seems to me - again, from the outside - that
| people who appear obviously "foreign" have a slightly easier
| time fitting in. Yes, there's the initial "you're not from
| around here, are ya?", but your differences also make you
| memorable. Treat others with kindness and kindness will be
| returned, and your external differences will mean that people
| remember you. Note that my perspective on this is shaped by my
| knowing and having spoken with people who have moved in to the
| area: mostly of Hispanic ethnicity, which is increasingly
| common, but also a family from Iraq that moved here as part of
| a compensatory relocation program after the father had served
| several years as an interpreter for the US Army in Iraq.
|
| The biggest consideration in my mind is that you have to make
| an effort to understand and assimilate to the local culture.
|
| People here wave if we recognize each other, including people
| you only sorta/kinda know. I live in a small subdivision and
| know the vehicles that belong here; if I see them coming in and
| out of the neighborhood I wave. If I see them driving around
| town, I wave. None of this means I know their names.
|
| If you see someone who needs help and you're able to offer it,
| do so. If the guy across the street from me is working on his
| house and I see him sawing a board with a hand saw in his
| driveway, I go out and offer to let him use my power tools. I
| don't stand around and wait for him to return them, either, I
| trust that he'll put them in the (unlocked) storage area on the
| side of my home or in the front seat of my (also unlocked) Jeep
| when he's done. If I'm trimming trees in my yard with a
| hatchet, someone is almost certainly going to stop and offer to
| let me use their chainsaw. If you're borrowing a tool and it
| breaks, you fix or replace it. If you can't afford to do so,
| you politely refuse the offer.
|
| If you have adjoining neighbors, you stop and chat with them
| when you see them outside. Sometimes that's "Hey! How are ya?
| Good, good - I have to run, I'll talk to you later." Sometimes
| that's a half hour of listening to their complaining about
| politics. Whatever. You don't have to agree, you just have to
| listen. Social accommodations like this are the lubrication
| required for our society to operate.
|
| Do all you can not to have disagreements with your neighbors -
| that's never a good time, but it's particularly bad when you're
| far from others. It's better to implicitly agree to mostly
| ignore each other than to be at odds. If you go that route, you
| still treat them like you're good friends in the situations
| where you do have to interact.
|
| In short, your goal should be "I'm one of 'us' now". Thinking
| in terms of "us" and "these people" is counterproductive.
|
| Social stuff aside, living outside a city is different from a
| practical perspective as well. I've heard it said that "One
| hundred years in the US in a long time; one hundred miles in
| Europe is a long distance."
|
| The nearest town to me that I would consider a small city is
| Springfield, MO. It's 75 mi / 125 km away. That seems like a
| long way, but it's about an hour and fifteen minutes' drive -
| basically like driving to the other side of a large city. My
| town has a half dozen grocery stores, but they're very class
| specific: poor people and the elderly tend to go to the old
| Harp's downtown and Cash Saver; middle class people go to one
| of the new Harps' outside of town; upper class people and the
| elderly go to Hudson's. Everyone goes to Walmart. We have
| everything in town that you need day-to-day, and we drive to
| neighboring cities when we want to "go shopping". For clothes I
| usually end up in Branson, MO and for electronics and big-
| ticket items I'll either buy online or go to Springfield, MO.
|
| If you live in an outlying community (like New Richmond), you
| quickly learn to make your trips "into town" count for a bit
| more. You'll find you're not going to the grocery store nearly
| as often, buying more when you're there, and will sometimes
| swing by and pick up a couple of stopgap things that sit on
| your mental list when you happen to be nearby for other
| reasons. In a smaller town like that there is usually a gas
| station or something that also serves as a "general store" and
| has essentials. They're more expensive there, but cheaper and
| faster than driving into town. If you're even further out, you
| learn to buy more than you need of everything and do without
| some things that you used to think were essential. The idea of
| going through a drive through for a cup of Starbucks every
| morning is pretty laughable to me, even living in a town where
| there are a couple of coffee shops. When I lived in a truly
| rural area, it was something that I considered a rare luxury
| for when I was traveling.
|
| ... this has grown to be a much larger comment than I was
| expecting. I'll stop here and go do something productive. If I
| can offer any insights or answer questions, let me know. I'll
| check back :)
| skinnymuch wrote:
| Hilarious. I'm good friends with some one from Springfield
| who does not want to live in middle America. She has made
| Springfield sound like a completely different place. Looking
| at some online maps, it is indeed a typical suburban city.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, as someone who grew up in a similarly rural area (45
| minutes drive to the nearest small city), the above
| description is really accurate. I think one of the biggest
| misconception about people who like to live in these sparsely
| populated rural places is that they're anti-social hermits.
| Quite the opposite. You kind of have to know everyone around
| because that's it--that's your entire support network if
| something goes wrong.
| gnopgnip wrote:
| You are a 30-45 min drive away from a city with a hospital,
| movie theater, full size grocery store with cheaper prices etc.
| Most people will drive to a bigger city 1-4+ times a month
| swader999 wrote:
| This. Forget about living rural if you don't have a reliable
| vehicle. People underestimate the driving involved,
| especially if you have kids.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| Even the poorest people around me have their own
| transportation. It's often old, constantly breaking, and
| inefficient but it's an absolute requirement in even a
| semi-rural area.
| walrus01 wrote:
| There's plenty of places in rural WA state where you can buy 20
| acres for $20,000. In some really beautiful remote places. With
| starlink and much lower costs of photovoltaics, and better
| batteries in the past 3-4 years, a high tech life off grid isn't
| _technically_ hard.
|
| But I would budget at minimum an additional $50k for septic
| system, water well drilling and setup, and PV+wind+battery setup.
| Before you even start with the cost of laying a foundation for a
| house.
| willvarfar wrote:
| In a part of Europe I'm familiar with many families still have
| (often inherited) family cottages in the country that, in
| modern times, serve as summer houses.
|
| Many still have hand dug wells and septic tanks. Composting
| outside toilets are not unknown and were normal within living
| memory.
|
| Modern families often bring bottled water for drinking and
| brushing teeth. No matter that bottled water is expensive, it
| is massively cheaper than investing in a bored well etc.
|
| So I have no idea about "code" and other aspects of the US
| system or WA in particular, but i would put the cost on working
| water and waste at about $100 if you are the kind of person cut
| out for living off grid remote self sufficient and don't mind
| grabbing a spade while the rest of us hang out online :)
| djrogers wrote:
| It's fine to hand-dig a well when the water table is 2-3m
| below grade, but when it's 20-30 or more, you really need to
| have it bored. That said - if you're ok hauling in water, you
| don't need either.
| pram wrote:
| I did SERE school near Spokane during the early spring and it
| was already pretty miserable out in the woods. I literally
| can't imagine camping/living off-grid there during the winter
| lol. I think it would be hard mode personally, compared to a
| winter in like Arizona or something ;P
| ghaff wrote:
| Camping and living are pretty different. Camping for a few
| days just requires the right gear and knowledge of using it.
| Living in a cabin, you'll probably want to have a wood stove
| that you keep fed and some warm blankets. Obviously (most
| parts of) Arizona in the winter are easier though water is a
| bigger problem there.
| cosmic_shame wrote:
| Miserable how?
| djrogers wrote:
| From experience with the area, probably very wet, very
| little sun, and miserably chilly (not deathly cold, just
| the kind of 'ughh this sucks' wet-cold).
| teslaberry wrote:
| there's no such thing as 'free' in america anymore. 'free' is a
| trap, because of regulations, zoning boards, and all sorts of
| newfangled bullshit you have to deal with if you're going to just
| LIVE somewhere on a near subsidence level of income.
|
| you wanna know what's to blame? the idea that america is now one
| giant suburb and with infinitely cheap gas you can travel 90+
| miles a day round trip just to make a living. burning 12+ dollars
| of gasoline a day just to make your bread. the resulting
| development problems turned the u.s. into a massive set of
| parking lots and highways and over-distant suburbs and
| excessively distant rural areas over the last 90 years. and it's
| nearly impossible to undo this in any elegant manner. spreading
| out was elegant and fun. 'coming closer' is going to be very
| unpleasant.
| johnohara wrote:
| I've ridden the RAGBRAI (Register's Annual Great Bicycle Ride
| Across Iowa) three times. Each year, a different route brings you
| and 15,000 of your closest friends through small towns like Marne
| and Manilla. The chosen communities always enthusiastically rise
| to the occasion by providing food, water, beverages,
| entertainment, fun diversions, historical themes, hospitality,
| well wishes and much more.
|
| Riding out of town after having a stack of pancakes at the
| firehouse or a piece of pie from the local Rotary Club, you have
| plenty of time to think about what it takes and how remarkable it
| is for some of those towns to accommodate everyone.
|
| The RAGBRAI is a great way to experience the State of Iowa.
| [deleted]
| rayiner wrote:
| Cool! I thought Sibley, where my wife grew up, was small. Marne
| has under 150 people!
| wiredfool wrote:
| When I did it one year, we went through a town with an
| official population of 6. Everyone was out helping, and
| apparently from neighboring farms/towns.
| bradfitz wrote:
| I was in Iowa visiting my grandparents when RAGBRAI came
| through their town one year: Oyens, Iowa.
|
| Population 94.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oyens,+IA/@42.8198478,-96..
| ..
|
| Marne looks huge compared to Oyens... Marne has a restaurant
| and two stores! Oyens has a grain elevator and a closed
| church.
| mlok wrote:
| Do you know what is the building blurred by google street
| view, in front-left of the grain elevator ? I am curious.
| rayiner wrote:
| Yeah in retrospect Sibley is in a totally different league.
| They have a Subway!
| johnohara wrote:
| Northern Iowa is beautiful. The tops of some of those
| inclines yield spectacular vistas. You completely lose
| perspective of where you are. It is cool.
|
| My nephew's wife grew up in Spirit Lake.
| tomcam wrote:
| Can't figure out what this has to do with TFA?
| swader999 wrote:
| I can't either but it still was a satisfying comment to read.
| zwog wrote:
| Marne and Manilla are two of the towns that offer free land
| in the US mentioned in the article.
| mrzimmerman wrote:
| I love reading these articles just for the fantasy material.
| Camping is one of my favorite hobbies but it's generally car
| camping and not without some fairly straightforward luxuries (I'm
| probably not one to hunt and forage).
|
| Still, it seems like it could be worth it to have some land that
| will be less affected by climate change in the future, especially
| if you have children you can leave it to.
| blakesterz wrote:
| The list includes a decent size city, Buffalo, New York, as well
| as some small towns. Buffalo has an Urban Homestead Program.
|
| https://www.buffalony.gov/306/Urban-Homestead-Program
| leesalminen wrote:
| I lived in Buffalo for years and cannot in good conscience
| recommend that anyone move there. Crime is rampant. Police are
| the most racist I've ever experienced anywhere in the world
| (and I very, very rarely use that word). Oh, and yeah, it's
| cold as shit in the winter.
| dashundchen wrote:
| Gotta defend my city.
|
| While I don't doubt the police are racist, crime isn't
| actually that bad compared to other US cities. I live right
| outside of downtown and feel safe riding or walking almost
| anywhere in the city.
|
| Winter is something to embrace like other cold weather cities
| - easier when you have snow then rain and mud like some
| warmer places. And in my opinion it makes the spring and
| summer all the more glorious.
|
| Buffalo has had faced some hard times but the bleeding has
| stopped and past decade has seen the biggest improvements in
| years. It's legacy has left housing stock, infrastructure,
| architecture and culture that far outpaces other similar
| sized cities, at a similarly low cost.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Buffalo is still suffering from the reputation it got in
| the 90s when it was a high crime city.
| refurb wrote:
| At least for one of your factors anything north of the 40th
| parallel would be excluded (With a few coastal regions as
| exceptions). As a Canadian I'm offended.
| airhead969 wrote:
| Yeah, forget that. Minnesota or Maine would be better
| socially.
| [deleted]
| hourislate wrote:
| You don't have to go that far, once outside of Buffalo
| things get really nice. Niagara Falls is a little sketchy
| but east of that it gets nice real quick.
| [deleted]
| koolba wrote:
| Worst of all, if you make a wrong turn you'll end up in
| Canada too!
| dehrmann wrote:
| Apparently it's closer to Toronto and Ottawa than NYC.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Whenever I see a random example of an American describing
| their local police as really racist, from an outside-of-the-
| usa perspective I mentally translate this as "astonishingly,
| incredibly racist in ways that would make your jaw drop".
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I thought as you did, but a friend in the U.K. tells me
| there are _very_ racist racists there as well. I was
| saddened when he told me this -- but having watched the
| U.K. a little closer over the past decade it comes as less
| of a surprise to me now.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I think the difference comes from the (seemingly, to
| someone who has never been to the USA) generally higher
| level of violence. Here in Germany, racism is usually
| (not always, there are several worse examples) _just_
| racial profiling.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| yes, and a lot of the racism is re-coded to classist
| language - because that is a socially accepted style of
| discrimination in the UK.
| refurb wrote:
| That makes sense though? Do we really believe that some
| countries have a monopoly on racism? Seems more a broadly
| human quality.
| snovv_crash wrote:
| It also means there's an escape if you're willing to
| dress and speak differently. I'm much more tolerant of
| classism for this reason.
| opportune wrote:
| As an American who has travelled through Europe with a
| black friend I think many non-Americans are simply unaware
| of racism in their own counties.
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