OFG-HowToFreeYourself.svg

ChelseaMendez

Energy

Top-end batteries for off-grid living

 

A good off-grid battery can cost you anywhere from $70- $2000 and last between 4-10 years, if you look after it right. And the best buy is NOT a Tesla.

Experienced off-gridders know how crucial it is to have good energy storage capacity, to ensure comfortable living. We’ve gone ahead and broken it down for you, so you don’t have to.

 

  1. Deep-Cycle Lead-Acid Batteries
    Lifespan: 4-8 years

    Price: $69.99 for a 35Ah 12V battery.  These are probably the best you can get right now, in terms of price vs quality. This is a battery that you can charge to a significant amount and which can provide a steady amount of useable power for extended periods of time. They are designed to be regularly deeply discharged using most of its capacity and can be stacked. Lasting around 20 hours per charged use and 4-8 years, this battery is a low-cost favorite for the outdoor lifestyle.
  2. Sealed Lead-Acid Batteries
    Lifespan: 2-4 years

    Price: $60These beauties use gelled or absorbed electrolytes and although bearing some resemblance to the ones above, there are a few distinct differences between the two. In some ways, the sealed alternatives are better than deep-cycle lead-acid batteries. They require no maintenance other than charging, work well with small solar arrays and can be charged to lower voltages as lower charge rates, don’t leak or suffer terminal corrosion are easily stackable so will take up less space in a battery bank which is a big plus when you’re pushed. They are extremely sensitive, meaning that they can be damaged easily if they are overcharged, and may not even work if they are undercharged. Also, they are similarly as priced as their competition but their life span is only half as long. So that’s a big thumbs down for reliability and being cost effective.
  3. Tesla, Powerwall
    Lifespan: Over 10 years

    Price: $3,000-$3,500Now this battery was designed to power your entire home using renewable battery power, indefinitely. CEO of Telsa, Elon Musk refers to it as changing the “entire energy infrastructure of the world.” and you can watch him unveil it here. Powerwall comes in 10 kWh weekly cycle and 7 kWh daily cycle models. Both are guaranteed for ten years and are sufficient to power most homes during peak evening hours. Multiple batteries may be installed together for homes with greater energy need, up to 90 kWh total for the 10 kWh battery and 63 kWh total for the 7 kWh battery. The only downside is the price. The 7 kWh model is priced at $3000 and the 10 kWh at $3500. So if you can afford to splurge, this is the battery to break the bank!
  4. LG Chem, New Generation System
    Lifespan: Over 10 years

    Price: $2,000. The South Korean company has released a new battery system in Australia which offers
Read More »
houseboat, canal, london, liveaboard
Community

Biggest off-grid area in Britain – on the water

 

British Waterway authorities have unveiled the largest off-grid community in Britain – on the canals of Hackney.

Yes, living aboard is booming in the UK and maybe they are onto something. It seems like a happy medium for some. You have the freedom of not paying rent or a mortgage, plus the very rewarding chance to be self-sufficient and independent. But instead of being isolated on a mountain top (which to some may be heaven), you could be doing all this whilst still living in a 24/7 hour city like London. A humble abode that is unplugged and all yours, inside the hustle and bustle of urban city life!

What you need to know about living on the water before taking the plunge:

 Firstly, it’s not as easy as just buying a boat, finding some water and setting up camp for the next 30 years. Everyone using canals and waterways needs to have a boat licence, an up-to-date boat safety check and valid insurance. Once that’s all done, you then you have two choices of lifestyle. You can either get a resident mooring, which enables you to stay in one area for as long as you like. A permanent mooring is ideal if you don’t want to move around, but can be expensive and hard to come by. While a mooring of this type can be had for around £6,000 annually in less popular areas, staying somewhere like the Docklands or Islington will cost over £20,000 a year.

 The other option is to cruise continuously – in which case all you need is the boat licence, which ranges from £510.62 to £1,110.32 annually, depending on the size of your boat. Boats are allowed to moor almost anywhere alongside canal towpaths. The main rule with this type of lifestyle is that you need to be moving at least every 14 days and can’t go back and forth between two spots. The recommended cruising range is at least 20 miles a year. It isn’t the most secure way of living, but it has to be done this way to consider all ‘liveaboards’.

 Canal and River Trust (CRT) have taken over from British Waterways the job of managing our canals and some rivers. For many years BW publically discouraged ‘liveaboards’, but did little about it. Living on a boat was seen, rightly or wrongly, as a way of avoiding paying rent and rates or of getting to the top of the council house waiting lists. The freedom of living afloat with low overheads was thought to appeal to many people who wanted to ‘turn their backs on consumer society’. Equally, though some of the most desirable London properties float on the Thames or Regents Canal, and many people retired, sold the house and moved onto a canal boat to explore their own country.

Recently, possibly partly because of a shortage of economic …

Read More »
Eddie the eagle, off-grid, shed, living
Community

Which 1988 Team GB Olympian now lives in a shed?

 

As the Rio Olympics draw to a close, it’s nice to think of the medalists returning home to praise and honour. But that is often not the case.

Although he came in last in his competition, accident-prone skier Eddie the Eagle returned to England after the 1988 winter games in a blaze of glory. They even made a Hollywood movie about him.

He was the only Briton to qualify for the ski jump. But now he’s hit the skids – living off-grid in a shed in his family’s back garden, eating sandwiches for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, following a ‘wipeout’ divorce with ex-wife, Samantha Morton.

He revealed in an interview that the split had cost him about 85% of his wealth, and the £180,000 that he had earned from the recent movie about him, he had to give to his ex-wife whom he had met whilst working as a radio presenter part-time alongside his law degree. She was his co-host and they were married for 13 years, raising two daughters, Otillie, 11 and Honey May, 8.

Trying to rack together all the money he can get, he explains his current plan: “I had to sell my flat in Bedford, which I got about 30 years ago, to pay my anticipated tax bill. I got £175,000 for it. I’ll also have to pay capital gains tax from the property sale. At least 90% of the money in my account is earmarked for tax.
“I’m trying to save up from all my work now. I moved into the shed in my garden about a year ago while developing my new house; I’ve lived off sandwiches ever since because I don’t have a kitchen. Egg sandwiches are my favourite.”

Okay, so his off-grid lifestyle is only temporary whilst he gets back on his feet and his new home is built. But still, he’s been living unplugged for about a year now and doesn’t seem to be complaining! When asked how it feels to have lost essentially everything, he preaches that “It’s just one of those things. If you think about it too much, you get depressed, so I think: I made it once, I made it twice, I can make it three times. You have to be philosophical.”

Shocking as it may be, Eddie (born Michael Edwards) lived out his Olympic days in a similar fashion. Being poor, he slept in his car in between events and lived off scraps whilst training, all to compete for Great Britain. So living in a shed couldn’t be too much of a shock to the system. I mean, despite becoming a global celebrity from his skiing, in 1992, he was declared bankrupt. Claiming the trust fund into which he had put his earnings had not been properly managed. Years later, he bounced back and earned a law degree from De Montfort University in Leicester and …

Read More »
Community

Even RUSSIA is boosting off-grid living

 

You can get many things for free when you live in a good off-the-grid community. You can get your drinking water for free, from converting rainwater, you can get your energy for free from converting solar power.

What you can rarely get, in the USA or most other countries, is your land for free.

A good plot of land is essential to living unplugged comfortably, it’s helpful if you can grow your own food out of it and that can be costly.

Unless you are Russian.

Yes, the Russian government have launched a new programme giving away parcels of land in their Far East region for free. The scheme was put in place as an attempt to boost settlement in the thinly populated area, but it could give birth a new wave of Russian off-gridders?

The Russian Far East is two-thirds the size of China and only holds 6 million residents, compared with the 100 million who live in the Chinese provinces across the border. Sounds like the region is so unpopulated, you could get a plot of land almost anywhere – live peacefully – and still have enough room to build everything you want. Living off-grid in a place like Russia might not sound too attractive at first, but there are actually already some off-grid communities, such as the Kovcheg Village and the Rainbow Gathering.

The number of “eco-communes,” in Russia, has grown dramatically in the last decade, and the movement back to the land is drawing professionals weary of the country’s corruption, pollution, and new consumerism. Giving them a simpler, back to basics lifestyle that we all hope and dream for.

So, could you take the plunge and live off-grid in Russia?

By Chelsea Mendez

Read More »

Real Estate magic – a yurt in your backyard

 

By Chelsea Mendez

 

Living off-grid implies nature, tranquillity – perhaps in a deep forest or a lonely mountain top, unplugged from the rest of the world. But have you ever thought about your own back garden as a place to unplug? As long as it has a side entrance or some way of entering without going through the house = you could have yourself a free home.

The bit of green that your kids may have dug up when they were little, and where you would host the annual family BBQ, could be the golden location you’ve been hunting for. For various reasons, we’ve had to hide the identity of the (English) subject of this story, but *Brendan fills us in on how he’s not only living in his own garden in a lush southern suburb – but he has actually sold the house to someone else, and by keeping the freehold, and selling only the leasehold, he has retained ownership of his garden and the right to live there – all perfectly legally.

 
“I came to be living ‘off-grid’ not so much from any long-term intention or planning as from finding myself a couple of years ago in a situation where I had sold my apartment, applied most of that money to various projects and good causes and was therefore unable to buy outright a new bricks and mortar dwelling. I am strongly against mortgages, having spent ten years paying one off and seeing all too clearly the vast power the practice of buying housing using borrowed money has given to the banks these last few generations.
 
  What I did still retain was the garden land attached to my house, near the centre of a small city, with a water supply, a south facing slope and good fertile soil for growing most crops. At the same time, friends who had bought and moved into a woodland were being told by the local government that they must take down the yurt in which they were living because it fell foul of the regulations for forestry land. They offered to sell it to Me at a good price.
 
   I have always been drawn to the idea of living ‘off-grid’, my favourite fantasies having been either a houseboat or a gypsy caravan. The combination of this opportunity to acquire a good yurt and my then circumstances easily persuaded me to move into my own back garden.
 
  Erecting the yurt, a remarkably stable, wind-proof structure made from ash and cotton canvas, was the work of only a couple of hours. Compare that with the months, even years, of labour expended on modern bricks and mortar housing! A couple of hundred pounds bought a small wood-burning stove and flue whilst another small expenditure bought enough bees’ wax, from Payne’s Bee Farm, to waterproof the whole structure, having first been melted on the wood-burner (an
Read More »
off-grid home in California desert to rent
Community

3 Taster Locations To Try Unplugging

Curious about what living off-grid would be like but not quite ready to give up the mortgage? Thinking where to live out the rest of your days in idyllic peace but not quite sure?

Not to worry, if you’re considering the big leap into the unknown, you can try a short break disconnecting from the big brother system — renting an off-grid home from Airbnb.

In Chelan, Washington State, for example, there lies a hobbit hole which any Lord of the Rings fan would die for a night in. Upon a mountain hill, surrounded by rabbits and deer is the perfect place for someone on a quest for off-gird living to start their journey.

Kirstie Wolfe built the 288-square-foot rental into a hillside on a five-acre tract of land she bought in Orondo, a small town between Chelan and Wenatchee along the Columbia River in central Washington. After burying the structure, she went all out decorating the space with an obsessive attention to detail. “I try to make it as authentic as possible,” builder Kristie Wolfe explained. She succeeded with flying colours, visitors walk past a small outdoor garden through a big circular door — just like in the books and movies. The rustic interior uses reclaimed wood, hanging lanterns, and circular arches and windows to evoke a fantastical feeling, a point underlined with small charms like a cobbler’s workbench and several subtle “Lord of the Rings” touches inside.

As well as being the perfect place to let your imagination run free, it is also a fully functioning off-grid home with its own septic tank and solar panels, you can unplug in style and comfort. To see the photos and more details on the hobbit home, click here!

 

For those in Europe – nestled into the mountains on the quiet North-West side of Mallorca it is the perfect place to turn off from the outside world and relish nature as it is.

It is a 30-minute drive down the mountain to a beach or an exhilarating hike away, which in turn, gives you the most breath-taking views of the blue Mediterranean. It’s located inside a national park which means you will live side by side with exotic birds and wild flowers. The house comes complete with a water tank which collects 40,00 litres of rain water which you can then filter into drinking water and use to flush the toilet and wash with . Also, it is furnished with two flushing toilets, solar panels a shower, a gas fridge and hob and a fireplace and wood burner for the winter months. There is an outside kitchen with a BBQ so you can cook cooley in the breeze whilst taking in the glorious views.

If you’re not so keen with the cooking, you can hire a cook who will show you how to use the outdoor facilities and make …

Read More »

off-grid.net

Join the global off-grid community

Register for a better experiencE on this site!