When we found our off-grid compound, I assumed that I’d have to give up just about every power-consuming modern luxury. We went through our kitchen cabinets and tested each appliance with a kill-a-watt electricity usage monitor and put just about everything in the moving sale pile. We assumed our off-grid system wouldn’t be able to support 1000 watts for a dehydrator or 1200 watts for grandma’s antique waffle iron.
At the last minute, we packed them anyway and figured we could always get rid of them later.
The reality of living off the grid turned out to be quite a bit different than we expected. Instead of the chronic electricity shortage we expected, more often than not we had far more electricity than we could use. We moved in October and each morning by 11 am our batteries were fully charged. The rest of the day’s production and peak production levels throughout the afternoon were just going to waste.
Not only were we able to use high electricity usage appliances, we actually felt like we had to use them to consume all the excess “free” electricity our system was producing. We bought a countertop electric oven and a countertop induction burner to save on oven and burner propane and make use of our free electricity.
We experimented with an electric chainsaw for our wood cutting, hoping to be able to turn the extra sun energy in the summer into cordwood. In the end, we found that electric chainsaws are built for people who cut up 1 tree a year, not homesteaders who are trying to put up 8 to 10 cords of wood. Back to the trusty gas saw.
We make all of our income living off the grid without desk jobs (here’s how) but we don’t make much. Living off the grid is surprisingly affordable, and we’re living on well below the median income for an American household. It’s enough to get by, and enough to stay happy, all while enjoying our time in paradise.
Still, without a lot of extra money laying around, we have you use up every last bit of “free” we can get, and this house gives us a lot of free electricity. Here’s how we use it…
1. Unlimited Free Hot Water
Traditional solar hot water doesn’t use photovoltaic panels. They’re stand-alone systems where the water actually runs through it and is heated by the sun. They can be hit or miss on cloudy days or in northern climates.
Our system is a bit different. Our water heater is a standard household electric water heater, and it functions as our solar dump tank. Once the batteries are full, the charge controllers are programmed to dump excess solar production into our electric water heater.
For cloudy days and during the winter months, we have a loop of our radiant floor heat system run through the water heater so that we can make wood-fired hot water. Our external boiler runs on anything we can harvest here from our land, including pine and hemlock that can’t be burned in a traditional wood stove.
There’s a remote thermometer that runs from the electric water heater in the basement up to the first floor, and during midsummer, I’ve seen that tank hit 160 degrees. Honestly, that’s dangerously hot and we’ve had to be careful turning on the tap. Some days, we have “mandatory” bath time just to draw down our hot water supply.
2. Whirlpool Bath Tub
If you’re going to have to take mandatory baths to use up your oversupply of hot water, you might as well do it in style. My husband and I can comfortably sit side by side in our whirlpool bathtub, and our feet don’t even reach the far end.
I love baths, and after our tub, I’m ruined for any other normal suburban bathtub. Sure, we can’t run the jets at night or midwinter, but that’s not exactly a tragedy…
This is our one totally gratuitous extravagance. Does a house really need one? Of course not. But you’re only going to install a bathtub once.
A whirlpool tub is only $300 to $400 more expensive than a normal tub (if you bargain hunt) and you’ll be soaking your tush in that thing for decades, powered by free electricity.
It’s worth it. After a long day hand splitting wood or digging in the garden, you’ll thank me. Seriously.
These days our big tub is mostly full of baby toys, but the kids love their wintertime “pool”
3. Radiant Floor Heat & Super Insulation
In our last home, we never felt warm. Our heat worked perfectly fine, but the floors were always cold. You could feel the cold seeping into your bones, even through rugs and socks.
Places where rugs were impractical, like the kitchen, were especially bad. Who wants to feel cold in the kitchen? It dampens the spirits.
Radiant floor heat has really improved our quality of life, and it’s all run using off-grid power and DC electric straight from our batteries.
Since keeping the inverter running full time can be taxing on your power resources in the winter, having DC electric pumps that circulate the fluid from our external boiler means that our house and floors are toasty warm no matter the weather. It often hits -30 here, and in January it’s not uncommon to go a whole week where highs never come above zero.
Around here, good heat is essential for both health and morale in the wintertime. I’ve never been warmer than since we moved off-grid. It just goes to show you, if your house is built right and well insulated, you might actually be warmer in the long run, even if you’re off the grid in the sticks.
4. Dehumidifier or Air Conditioner
To me, nothing says gratuitous and wasteful electricity usage like an air conditioner. I never had one living in town, it just seems so wasteful in the long run. Using so much electricity to stay cool, and contributing to the bigger problem of climate change, in the long run, to allow for just temporary comfort.
Unlike suburban living, where peak usage can cause brown-outs on hot summer days, we actually have the most electricity to spare on those brutally hot mid-summer days.
Sure, we turn them off at night, but being able to take the edge off during a mid-day siesta before going back outside to enjoy the garden once things cool down is a welcome break. Off-grid, I don’t have one shred of guilt about it.
5. Dishwasher
We’d never had a dishwasher before moving off-grid. Normally in our house, after dinner each night the dishes are done before bed, but off-grid, the evening isn’t exactly the best time of day to run the water pump. Now dishes are loaded into the dishwasher, and it’s kicked on mid-day the following day.
While a dishwasher seems like a bit of an extravagance, it actually helps us use our electricity during peak production without having to give up daylight outdoor working hours. Midday we’d rather be out cutting wood or working in the garden, not stuck inside catching up on dishes. This way, we’re out working and our house is busy putting our free electricity to good use.
6. High-Speed Internet
Since we both make our full-time living off-grid, remote work online is essential to making ends meet. We assumed we’d be commuting to some form of co-working space, but there are actually a surprising number of options for high-speed internet even for rural off-grid homes.
Satellite internet is generally pretty dependable if you’re not completely closed in by trees. Others we know use cell signal internet that plugs directly into an adapter on their computer.
In our case, we have a tall tower for our wind turbine that extends above the treeline. That same tower serves as our antenna for radio internet. Most times when power and internet are out in town from ice storms or bad weather, we never even know it.
Our Bergey XL1 wind turbine with a radio internet receiver on an 80ft tower.
7. Fully Stocked Summer Kitchen Powered by Free Electricity
In the summertime, most people don’t cook for fear of heating up their house and making it unbearable. What if you could take all that outdoors, keeping it cool inside? Sure, you could set up a rickety camping setup with a small propane burner, but what if you actually want to cook real food?
Since we have so much surplus electricity in the summertime, it made sense to invest in electric appliances that we operate in an outdoor summer kitchen. We run a small electric oven and an induction burner for much of our cooking. We’re also really fond of our instant pot, which we can load up the night before and program to run during peak production the next day.
Who would have thought an instant pot would be practical off the grid? It actually makes managing our electricity much simpler because we can cook electrically using a timed cycle that utilizes peak production and allows us to prep ahead so we don’t waste daylight cooped up inside cooking.
For half the year we cook with free energy and don’t heat up the house. The other half of the year, we either cook indoors on a propane stove, or during the really cold months we cook on our wood stove. That means we use hardly any propane, and the vast majority of our cooking is done with free energy, either solar or wood powered.
Often enough, just for fun, we go camping about 100 feet from the house and bake in our dutch oven. Now that’s some truly “off-grid cooking” no electricity required.
We do that by choice and for fun, not because we have to. Much of the year we’re kicking on our solar-powered instant pot.
8. Attached Greenhouse
I love our greenhouse. Solar energy is a magical thing, and even in February when it’s 30 below outside we can sip coffee in our PJ’s toasty warm at over 90 degrees on sunny days.
It’s set up to vent into the house during the winter, providing ample free heat. We actually don’t run the heat for weeks at a time mid-winter sometimes, even in our northern climate.
It also makes it simple to grow herbs, cooking greens and veggie starts any time of the year. The ability to grow food at any time of the year saves us money, but it also enables us to grow crops we otherwise wouldn’t.
Rosemary is cold sensitive and can’t survive Vermont winters, but our plant is huge and gets bigger each year. Other crops like ginger, figs and lemons also grow well in our greenhouse in the winter and are then put out in pots for the summer.
9. Passive Solar Heating & Cooling
It makes sense that an attached greenhouse would be great for passive solar heating in the wintertime, but doesn’t it get really hot in the summertime? Nope.
The very top of our greenhouse is our solar panels. As the sun angle changes and the sun gets higher in the sky in the summertime, our greenhouse solar panels shade the whole side of the house. Opening the doors and top vent means that the house stays shaded and cool, and the greenhouse itself stays the ambient outdoor temperature.
As a result, our attached greenhouse and solar panel setup provides for both passive heating AND cooling year-round.
10. Access to Nature
I hear all the time about urban food deserts, where people simply cannot access clean healthy food. In that scenario, they definitely don’t have access to even the most basic nature experiences. Nature is outside our doorstep, and with it ample space to grow our own food and acres of woods where we can forage.
Deer visits are a daily occurrence, and a flock of 20+ turkeys overwinters outside our back door and sustains themselves on nuts and crab apples that we leave intentionally to support “our” turkeys.
This is why we’re here. Sure, a hot tub is nice. But this, waking up literally to the birds singing (or occasionally to an overzealous woodpecker…) is why we’re here.
This is where we want our kids to grow up. This is where we want them to come home to. Living in and breathing in fresh air.
Cheryl
Great article. Is your refrigerator and freezer DC or AC? Since you mentioned not running the inverter 24/7 then DC appliances would be helpful. How many watts of panels and size of inverter?
Ashley Adamant
Good question. Our fridge and 2 chest freezers are DC, and our entire house is wired for DC lighting and DC outlets. We have 12 panels, plus a wind turbine. We just replaced our inverter and I can’t off the top of my head remember what we went with, but our old one was 4000 watts (Xantrex/Trace SW4024).
Sarajoy
It would be great to read in more detail your solar/wind power system 🙂 details on how many watts, how many batteries etc etc 🙂 the ins and outs of your set up! Thanks, beautiful home
Rita Jennings
We’ve had good luck with an LG Inverter type refrigerator. It’s big, beautiful, and we swear it uses almost no power. We sometimes run a generator. The switch from solar to generator power is seamless to the refrigerator. We’ve had DC refrigerators and find this LG is so much better. Including being much quieter.
Ann
May I ask what kind of antenna you used atop your wind turbine for an Internet connection? Was it provided by your provider? Are you using an unlimited LTE plan for your connection? (I am building in a rural location but I don’t know if I’ll be able to get a Internet connection with the first cell tower 5 miles away. Although I do seem to have line of sight to it.)
Ashley Adamant
It was provided by the provider. Our internet comes from a local company called Cloud Alliance that services a lot of rural Vermont (http://www.cloudalliance.com/). For this type of internet you’d need a local provider. Check and see if you have a local provider where you are.
If you don’t, then try satellite. The last place we lived we used satellite internet, because it’s available almost everywhere. It works well most of the time, except during intense storms. The main thing to watch out for with satellite is the daily bandwidth cap. Be sure you understand their “fair use policy” which basically means if you use too much internet in 24 hours, they penalize you by turning it off for 24 hours. Usually they have plans with higher caps, but they’re expensive…
Hanna
It’s kilowatt, like a kilogram or a kilometer. Just FYI, you have a typo there at the beginning. It says “kill a watt.”
But I loved the article. I’m not full on homesteading, but I’ve been thinking about some small solar panels for my south-facing balcony. And an herb garden. Starting small:).
Ashley Adamant
Ha. Yes, the measurement is kilowatt, but that’s the brand name of a handheld electricity meter that in theory helps you “kill a watt” or lower your electricity usage by being conscious of how much your appliances are using. You plug them into the “kill a watt” and it tells you how many kilowatts they’re using.
Ashley Crockett
I love this article and pray for this life one day! Great information in a well written article! Thank you for sharing!
Mary
Watch what you pray for!
Janie Woods
Love this article. I so long to go off grid. My electric bills are outrageous!!! Thanks so much for the info.
Administrator
You’re very welcome. We are so glad you enjoyed the post.
Jayne
That sounds amazing. If I were you I would build a combo hot tub (electric and wood burning)
I can’t wait until I get up on my land next year and get started.
Alicia
What a great article! We are just starting our off grid homestead journey with 3 little kids. How did you plan your house to work so well? A green contractor/designer? Would love to hear your thoughts on must haves and what you might do differently. Thanks so much!
Ashley Adamant
Our house was the homestead of a green builder and solar designer, and he’s since gone on to bigger and better things. If I could do it differently, I’d add bedrooms. We have 2 kids, and our house is cabin style all one room with a loft above the first floor. It makes heating easy, but it makes quiet hard…
In site selection, I would have tried harder to find a place where a gravity well would work. One of our biggest electricity users is the well pump, and at a previous homestead we had water without electricity on a gravity well. If you can, try to find a place where the land is right and there’s a spring somewhere up hill from your house.
The only other thing I’d change is land selection. Our land has very shallow soils, and clay hard pan underneath which makes growing anything difficult. We use a lot of raised beds and soil building techniques and are still able to get good harvests, but it really shouldn’t have to be this hard.
The Beard + The Bohemian
Your house is amazing! and that greenhouse is to die for! Great article!
Jenne
This sounds prohibitively expensive for the average American,. Kudos for you, but this isn’t attainable for most people.
Ashley Adamant
Believe it or now, our income is well below the median US income (and we’re supporting 2 children…). All of this is attainable on substantially less income than the ‘average American’ brings home. Though it may sound ‘expensive’ when you actually look at this list, each of these things is about good design, rather than buying something expensive. Heating water with surplus solar electricity actually saves money, and the extra electric water heater used to do it is salvaged.
Cutting heat costs by adding a solar greenhouse is an investment, but just in heat costs alone it has a payback of about 4 years, and then you also get to cut your food costs by growing more of what you eat.
Everything on here is about using free surplus solar electricity to live in luxury, and to allow you to live in luxury that you could not afford if you had an electric bill.
I will admit, the one serious luxury on there is a whirlpool tub. That is totally gratuitous, but a whirlpool tub cost just a few hundred dollars more than a normal tub and it’s a one time investment. The real cost is in the electric to run it over decades of use, which as I mention, is the perk. That part’s free!
I think I need to do a write up on how ‘attainable’ this life actually is.
Mary
That would be sooo awesome. I’ve been looking into going off grid. I would like to do it right the first time. And have your luxuries too… could you please help point me inthe right direction in ataining this.
Marci
We recently replaced an ancient and dying 12V system (it was about 40 years old) with a 48V 4KW system. The whole thing cost us about $15k for the panels, wiring, batteries, and inverter – the only additional costs were for labor and the frame for the panels on the roof. Since we didn’t track that cost separately, I don’t know how much that was exactly, but I know that the whole install came in far under $20k. 4KW has kept 2 homes and several outbuildings up and running, and each home has its own AC fridge. We also run a deep freeze and a powerful modem for internet, as that is required for employment. Less than $20k, and we have ample electricity for a lifetime. With proper maintenance, our batteries will last around 10 years or so (that’s an estimate). Yes, that is a big up front expense, but again, we’re talking electricity for a lifetime here, folks! We’ve had our system up for about a year, and haven’t run out of electricity once! If our new system lasts as long as the original system did, we’re looking at an average of about $20 per month per house for electricity plus occasional battery replacement.. Thinking long term, this is cheap power!
Ashley ~ thanks for some great ideas for dumping power. I have to admit to retaining the thinking we had when living with our old 12V system. You’re right – some of those high energy consumption devices are perfect for maintaining a balance on the system!
Chris
Hi, Ashley! Do you have any extra source of heating in your attached green house, besides the sun? Do you have radiant heat on the floor there? Thank you!
Ashley Adamant
Yes, our radiant floor heat runs a loop through the greenhouse and we have the option to turn that on in the winter if needed. We also can just open the door or windows that connect to the house to exchange heat, but usually, we do that to get heat from the greenhouse rather than the other way around.
Christiane Kokubo
Thank you, Ashley! This is super helpful.
Dorothy Small
For the most part, my almost finished house sounds like yours. I used SIPs panels for three walls and the roof. Keeps the warmth in and the hot out. I have a summer kitchen outside my inside kitchen, a whirlpool tub, solar hot water with evacuated tube collectors and radiant hot water with woodstove and masonry heater backup in the middle of 52 acres. I am located in southwest VA. My organic garden is on the south side of the house next to the 7500 gallon rainwater collection tanks. My roof is metal and is my collection of rainwater. I plumbed the house to have a greywater system and the blackwater goes into a septic system. I love my house and my serenity. I am thankful that my Dad was always interested in renewable energy and I have been my whole life as well. We are the lucky bunch.
Ashley Adamant
I love it! That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You can have an absolute paradise in the middle of nowhere. Your place sounds amazing, and I definitely want to add some huge rainwater collection tanks to our place to supply the garden. Water pumping uses up way too much electricity, even when it’s plentiful in garden season.
Oh, to have a masonry heater! *swoon*
Your place sounds like heaven. If you’re at all interested, I’d love to feature it in a post. I’ve been thinking about writing a series on “inspiring off-grid homesteads” and I’ve started contacting others I know to get the series kicked off. It’s slow going because as a rule, most of us like our privacy. If you do have any interest, let me know.
Either way, thank you so much for sharing your sweet setup!
Erin
Are you about to run a washer and dryer? We live off grid and I’m about to go search your blog to see what kind of solar setup you have. I can’t imagine having so much electricity to be able to do what you can do! Our solar panels produce so little in the winter that we end up using generators way more than I would like, and my husband says that we just will never be able to run a washer and dryer at home without a generator (which is still cheaper than the laundromat–and of course we do a lot of hang-drying, especially in the summer). Anyway, I loved reading this post because it makes me feel like we could actually improve our solar system and have some more conveniences off-the-grid than we currently have…. it’s pretty rustic here now but it IS worth it, and we are able to do so on a lower-than-average income as well.
Ashley Adamant
We do have a washer and a dryer. For about 3 months in the winter, we have to run the generator to use them, even on sunny days. Up here in Vermont the days just arn’t long enough to charge the batteries and run major appliances in the winter. If only we actually got power from our wind turbine, things might be different, but maybe not. But 9 months of the year we don’t have an issue running the washer/dryer.
One trick…get an old model. I know that sounds counter-intuitive because in theory the modern models are supposed to be more energy efficient. The problem is that many of them have electric water heaters built in to warm the water coming from your well. Modern detergents don’t work well with truly cold water, so they try to get around that by heating the water as it comes into the machine. For an off-grid system, that’s a huge power sink. Old models, like 15 to 20 years old, actually work better and use less electricity without that feature.
Our dishwasher is also an old model, and we’ve repaired it many times, and it’s cost more to repair than buying a new one. Still, I’m not sure our power system could handle a new one.
Believe it or not, the appliance that uses the most electricity is our gas oven…because it’s a modern gas oven. Modern ovens, even gas ovens, use a lot of electricity, as much as a clothes dryer. They have an igniter that is supposed to keep the temperature more constant, but in reality, it just uses a lot of electricity without much improvement in the quality of your baked goods. We’re hoping to switch it out to an antique soon so that it doesn’t even have an electric plug.
Paula
I’ve purchased new appliances . Old ones can be great. But it is possible to get new ones.
I started out with a used gas stove. IT died. I loved the size of it. It was just a bit bigger than a standard stove, It had a cabinet side door great for sheet pans. So I searched the internet and found one like it new.
Features that make it work for me. No clock, no electric timer, no light in the oven. it actually doesn’t have a power cord. (I just went and checked. ). I found it, took the model # up to lowes. They ordered it for me. Not sure how much it was. $550-650.00 range. I love it,
I have a dishwasher. I made a list of what i had to have, and what to avoid.
What i wanted-
Energy star rated
low electric usage
low water usage
air dry option
What i avoided-
Heat dry only
the food waste grinder thing some models have now.
Clocks or light up displays.
basically any thing extra that will suck power,
I ended up with a lower cost model.
I use the one hour wash setting. It does have an eco wash setting. i tried it and it took 2 hours to do a load.
I get the water hot coming out of the sink. Then i turn on the dishwasher. That way the heating element doesn’t have to draw so much heating it, So far so good. When my solar system is humming along good. between 10 am -2pm I run it.
Washer n dryer. Washer yes. Dryer No. My system can not support a dryer. I now Have a used propane dryer. It works fine. I have also used drying racks by my wood stove in the winter and an outside line in the summer.
My washer is a new one. Same thing goes. Energy star rated. Avoid energy sucking features. It does not use a lot of electric. MY machine has a quick wash setting. Its done in 30mins.
I also have an electric pressure cooker. i love it. It does draw quite a bit of electric to start. When it it comes to pressure, the load its using drops right down.
So I have 5, 330 Watt Panels. And a gas powered generator. I have trained myself to pay attention to the weather. That way i plan when i can run my appliances with solar. We make it work.
Nichole
What models did you get for all these appliances? I’d be curious to know!
Ashley Adamant
Hi Nichole, Thanks for asking, I get that question a lot. I just went through and wrote it up in a post here: https://practicalselfreliance.com/off-grid-appliances/
For more information on our system in general, you can find that here: https://practicalselfreliance.com/off-grid-solar-wind-tour/
K T
Great article, thanks for sharing…it sounds like heaven! 🙂
grasya
i live in the rural area and work online too.. once i go travel, i hope to visit your home and learn more about how to be off grid ^_^
Crystal
Very cool information! I really like your entire blog. Very survivalist. I was wondering if you could shed a bit more light on your transition from on-grid to off-grid; specifically, like how you initially were able to finance your off-grid homestead before switching to 100% remote work and off-grid living, or if you and your husband were already working remotely 100% before you selected the house. Reply much appreciated! Thanks!
Admin
Hi there. We saved up at our on-grid jobs prior to moving off-grid. Once we had our property, we did whatever we could remotely for income. I talk about this a bit here: https://practicalselfreliance.com/homestead-extra-income/
Katie
I enjoyed reading about the luxuries of living off grid. It’s a lifestyle we hope to adopt some day when we are able to buy some land.
Just a heads up, most of the images aren’t loading for me. Opened it on Pinterest, then also tried on Safari. Neither would load the images. 🙁 I’m not sure if it’s just me.
Ashley Adamant
Thanks for the heads up Katie! I’ve had a couple of people mention that in the last few days and I’m still trying to track it down, but I’m sorry it’s not working at the moment. Hopefully soon!
Nayyef
Excellent article and beautiful home. It would be interesting to see how much the “free” electricity is actually costing. Taking in to consideration the initial investment of the solar system, the cost of maintain the system (cleaning panels, wiring, batteries, inverters, etc.) against how much electricity is consumed. This way you will be able to calculate the cost of of your kWh ($/kWh) and compare to the cost of a similarly sized house on the grid.
Ashley Adamant
Good question, and one I honestly don’t have an answer to. We bought the house with the system in place, and it was MUCH less expensive than similar on grid places without pannels, simply because it didn’t have a line in. So in some senses, we saved tens of thousands of dollars out the gate. That said, there is maintenance and at some point, we will need to replace our batteries. Looking at it for the first 7 years, it’s definitely a savings, but in 20 years as we come into more maintenence I can’t say for sure.
Bob Jennings
I enjoyed your article very much. My wife and I live in a desert town of Pahrump, Nevada where we get a lot of sunshine. The house we bought has solar hot water panels installed by the previous owner. A non freezing fluid is fed through a heat exchanger inside an 80 gallon hot water heater located in the garage. It works so well. We have to be careful sometimes using hot water as it is scalding. Since we’re on a well here, we have virtually free hot water. We even use the hot water supply to fill the hot tub after cleaning saving on electrical usage.
Our plan now is to invest in photovoltaic panels eventually getting off the grid, Many homes in our area are already doing that.
Holly Magnani
THIS!
Reading this blog pretty much sealed it for me. I’ve got to make this happen for my kids and myself.
When I read the part about the solar panels on top of the greenhouse and that the greenhouse passively heats and cools, I had a *moment* because I don’t think Engliah has the words.
German does. I felt both Zielschmerz and Ferweh at the same time.
Your idea was my idea, too, except I thought to have the greenhouse downhill from the house a but since hot air rises.
At our latitude, we still have quite a bit of sun in the winter. You are doing pretty much everything I need/want to do.
I am so jerrliches Gefühl!
Charlie
Thanks for the information. I am 90 years old and have been working to be independent for years. This past summer I spent changing from a regular garden to raised beds. I started with 40 acres on a steep hillside but after a fall and collapsing 3 vertebras I moved to 3 plus. I would enjoy articles for we ‘seasoned” off gridders. I do have solar but no battery system so I am still tied some to the grid. Thanks for listening Charlie Wolfe
Administrator
You’re welcome. So glad you enjoyed the post. I think it’s fantastic that you are making some adjustments to the way that you live rather than allowing your circumstances to discourage you.
Darlene A Gormly
Would love a more-in-depth article on how you went about having all these things and if you and your partner are just really handy and did everything yourself or you hired certain companies. Resources would be great for people who have no idea about this kind of thing, although it sounds great to hear all that you have — I keep thinking “how do you do it?. Thank you!
Jenn
Hi I was wondering what was the approximate start up cost for your power, heating, green house system?
Administrator
It’s hard to say since everything was already in place when the property was purchased.
Marci
You sent me an email with an answer to that question. Thing is, I’m not Jenn, and I didn’t ask this question.
Letting you know so you can sort our your database or find why I got linked with this question.
Somewhere, a person named Jenn is waiting for your reply!
Note: I did post about converting our old 12V system to a new one.
Hope this helps!
Administrator
Thank you for that. I’m not sure what happened there. Hopefully, it was just a random fluke.
Fran
So much of this reads like the 10 year plan I have for our house we just got last year. We’re firmly Vermont-suburban (Close enough to Burlington to be on the bus line, but far out enough that there’s room to breathe), but with most of an acre of land and a house that’s aligned pretty perfect for solar. We’re still in the early stages of our plan (just got the electric upgraded so we can get a heat pump before next winter, separating the stone from the actual soil in the back yard so we have a hope to get a garden started) but we’re hoping to get everything solar powered in the next few years. With luck, soon we’ll be getting the best of both worlds
Administrator
It sounds like you have a wonderful plan. You will have to keep us updated on your progress.
Lisette
Sooo inspring! Thank you for sharing!
Administrator
You’re very welcome. So glad you enjoyed it.
Sasha Densikoff
This was a great article!
Often, “off the grid” living is so ramped up to use as little electricity as possible.
No one talks about what you do when you have an excess of electricity to use up, lol!
It must be wonderful to only have to worry about the cold. 😛
Often, it is easier to keep warm, or to heat a place, rather than to cool it.
I am in Australia, on the SE coast, and here in the height of Summer, we get to temps of about 104F (which is about 40C) so actually, air conditioners are not a luxury, but a very real necessity!
In addition to that, not only is the cooling needed, but the moisture removal from the air too, as without it, everything starts growing fuzzy mould. Not great, lol!
But your setup sounds great though!
Even though we live in suburbia, I still want to set up SOMETHING to cook with in case of no electricity.
I have plans for a pizza oven, which of course, you can cook anything you like in there, and I do have a movable fire pit (a hanging agricultural tilling plate) so I can cook with fire, but it’s still not the best setup.
We’ve just had solar panels fitted to our roof recently-ish, but any excess just goes back to the grid.
It’d be nice to have them fitted to some actual battery banks, but that’s another expense we can’t do yet, lol!
Thanks for writing stuff like this.
It might just be your normal, boring everyday life, but to those that haven’t got there yet, it’s a valuable source of knowledge from someone who is living it!
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You’re very welcome. We’re so glad you enjoyed the post. Thanks for sharing.