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    Off the Grid: Getting Started
    Off the Grid: Getting Started
    Off the Grid: Getting Started
    Ebook141 pages1 hour

    Off the Grid: Getting Started

    By Wayne J Lutz

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    About this ebook

    What are the essentials you’ll need to begin an off-the-grid lifestyle, and how do you get started? This practical how-to guide considers all aspects of remote living, including site selection and the creation of your own utilities. Investment and ongoing costs of backwoods living are evaluated, based on the building-block approach to solar power and other readily-available technologies. This book is designed for those who seek an extensive evaluation of basic remote lifestyles and a realistic approach to getting started.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWayne J Lutz
    Release dateJun 27, 2017
    ISBN9781370952731
    Off the Grid: Getting Started
    Author

    Wayne J Lutz

    From 1980 to 2005, Wayne Lutz was Chairman of the Aeronautics Department at Mount San Antonio College in Los Angeles. He led the college’s Flying Team to championships as Top Community College in the United States seven times. He has also served 20 years as a U.S. Air Force C-130 aircraft maintenance officer. His educational background includes a B.S. degree in physics from the University of Buffalo and an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California.The author is a flight instructor with 7000 hours of flying experience. For the past three decades, he has spent summers in Canada, exploring remote regions in his Piper Arrow, camping next to his airplane. The author resides during all seasons in a floating cabin on Canada’s Powell Lake and occasionally in a city-folk condo in Bellingham, Washington. His writing genres include regional Canadian publications and science fiction

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      Book preview

      Off the Grid - Wayne J Lutz

      Preface

      Defining the Basics

      By definition, off the grid implies living in a location where there are no public utilities, usually in a remote locale. In this book we’ll concentrate on living in the backwoods, where we’re willing to accept compromises in the limits of self-created services.

      Electrical power isn’t the only public utility, making the grid a broader concept than we sometimes consider. To move off the grid, we’ll need to create the resources essential for everyday life and carefully select our amenities.

      In the United States, consumers are routinely installing solar panels as a financial investment, even in urban areas where electrical power is readily available. This allows these enterprising residents to sell surplus power back to the public utility, while maintaining access to the electrical grid. Thus, homeowners can seamlessly continue unlimited electrical consumption to meet their personal needs. Such arrangements are not the subject of this book, since only an elaborate and expensive solar system will suffice in this case. However, this financial strategy is one of many examples that prove we can create solar systems that can do anything desired. You just need to throw enough money at your objectives.

      In comparison, living off the grid in a remote region is a continual challenge involving on-going constraints and limitations. It’s an enticing trade-off of factors faced daily, but a confrontation that usually includes considerable self-satisfaction when you’re able to achieve your goals. Total self-sufficiency, although nearly impossible to achieve, is an exciting part of the overall concept. Food, for example, while not technically a grid utility, is certainly a major part of the challenge. You’ll almost certainly need supplemental runs to the nearest grocery store, introducing constraints regarding appropriate transportation for access to a remote home.

      Before we get too engrained regarding how to accomplish our aspirations, it’s important to define some broad boundaries regarding how bare-bones basic is when it comes to remote living. Even in isolated locations far removed from the rest of society, we can mimic the urban advantages of unlimited electrical resources. If we want a microwave oven, we can have one, but this is far beyond the basic lifestyle I’ve chosen. In my limited electrical environment, producing enough electricity for a microwave would be impossible. At the very least, to allow microwave cooking, I’d have to sacrifice other conveniences I personally consider more essential. Additionally, it wouldn’t be feasible during winter months when my reserve of solar power is substantially reduced. We’ll talk more about the seasonal limitations of solar power (and how to handle those challenges) in a later chapter.

      When I discuss basic off-the-grid living, you can be sure I’m talking about a more austere life than most people would be willing to accept. After all, if living so basic appealed to everyone, we’d all be doing it. Instead, the vast majority of the world’s population choose on-the-grid living, and for very good reasons. We love our electronic devices and the concept of limitless electrical power, hot running water, interior climate control, natural gas appliances, and modern sewage systems.

      In third-world developing countries, many people live off the grid, but not by choice. In developed nations, over 99 percent of the people choose on-the-grid living, but the world’s total off-the-grid population remains at nearly 2 billion when third-world populations are included.

      As an example of the direction we’ll be going in this book, let me tell you about my personal remote situation. I’ve lived full-time in a floating cabin on Powell Lake in British Columbia, Canada, for over 10 years. The lake is about 50 kilometers (30 miles) long, with arms stretching out in all directions, so the shoreline is immense. Approximately 200 floating cabins (plus about 50 land cabins) are situated on the lake, although these are mostly summer retreats. From typical locations on Powell Lake, residents see only a few other man-made structures in the distance. (I can see three other cabins from my water site.) Besides my wife and I, very few cabin owners reside on the lake during the colder months. In 2016, my personal tabulation showed only one other cabin on the lake occupied full-time during the winter, decreasing to only my abode in 2017. Though I view other cabins in my surroundings, these dwellings are uninhabited most of the time.

      Since my floating home is small and simple – only 600 square-feet – I usually refer to it as a cabin. It’s my full-time home, but like most people throughout the region, I disappear for a few weeks at a time during the winter season, soaking up the sun in the southwestern United States. During a typical year, I reside overnight at my home more than 250 days out of 365, which isn’t much different from those who live in the nearby town of Powell River.

      My cabin is only accessible by boat. There are no roads. Everything that comes to and from my cabin must travel by water. It’s a half-hour trip by powerboat from the marina in town, an enjoyable way to travel. Fortunately, the lake is very deep and never freezes, even on the coldest winter day. The biggest problem with this mode of transportation involves winds that sometimes plague the lake, making travel unsafe in any boat, especially during the worst of winter storms. So the rule of thumb is: When in doubt, wait it out.

      I occupy my floating home with my wife, Margy. If there’s a more off-the-grid person than me, it’s her. I’ll admit to occasionally getting cabin fever, always quickly remedied by a trip to town or to a warmer climate during the winter. But I’ve never seen Margy ready to leave our cabin, even temporarily. She’s as happy tending her floating garden as city-folk might enjoy their favorite television program. Since our first day on the float, Margy has been that way, and she’s a significant reason why remote living has worked well for me. An essential consideration regarding whether such a lifestyle change will work for you is to candidly evaluate every member of your family who will be joining in this major change in your way of living. If even one person is hesitant, it probably won’t work, so be self-critical when it comes to making such a big leap. Or maybe make such a major change in a series of baby steps, as we did, testing things out along the way.

      Prior to living on the lake, I was a contented resident in the gigantic city of Los Angeles, so Powell Lake was quite a change. Margy and I eased into cabin life during the last years of our employment in public education, where Margy served as a school district administrator and I was employed as a college professor. For five years, while we continued to work in Los Angeles, we travelled north to Canada as often as possible (including several tests in the middle of winter), spending at least 50 days each year at our float cabin, mostly during the generous summer vacations provided by our jobs in education.

      I remember many instances when I’d leave Los Angeles for a three-day holiday, travelling all the way to the cabin via two airlines, a pickup truck, and a boat, leaving little time for enjoying off-the-grid life. In fact, it wasn’t unusual to spend nearly a full day travelling on either end of a three-day weekend, typically getting two nights in my beloved cabin for the effort. By the time I returned to Los Angeles, I was exhausted. You need to really love a place to dedicate that much time, effort, and money for such a brief visit to a part-time home. But then there were those wonderful summers on the lake.

      After this period of part-time living on Powell Lake, Margy and I took an early retirement from our jobs, obtained Canadian permanent residency, and moved into our cabin full-time. Since then, we’ve continued to work at a leisurely pace – Margy as an educational consultant and me as an author and publisher. Both occupations can be effectively conducted in an off-the-grid residence with occasional Internet access, which is a reminder that all of us require activities we value when living in a remote location. For both Margy and me, these constructive pursuits form part of the reason such a remote lifestyle has worked so well. Consider your intended goals when you ponder life off the grid. Ventures in your new home will be activities you create yourself, and it’s important to consider them before you end up in a remote area and find yourself asking: Now what?

      In our case, we’ve chosen a very basic lifestyle, and at first it was with considerably less amenities than we now possess. For example, we started with an outhouse, which served us well for many years. But when full-time occupancy began, trips across a bridge to shore and up three flights of stairs to the cliff (in the winter) became old very fast. We built a small extension onto our cabin for a bathroom and added a compost toilet and bathtub, to be discussed in

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