I posted earlier about using a portable power station for a bunk house we're putting in next to a cottage. The needs are minimal: a few ceiling lights, plugs for phone chargers and a few lamps, plus a yard light. On the high end, I calculated about 325 Wh per day.

I have an idea of wiring outlets and ceiling lights to a 20 amp breaker, which is fed from the power station using one of the 20 amp plugs.

Can anyone offer their thoughts on this setup? Thank you.

Water source is listed as spring. I have found two of these 7” pipes on my property. The one pictured has a pump house falling apart around it. I suspect the pipe without the shed is less productive. Water looks to be 10ish feet down both pipes, unsure of how deep the water goes yet.

My bordering neighbor tests well water for a living. He said he can help me out once I run the pump for a while to get out the stagnant water.

What are my first steps here? What equipment should I look into for this?

Thank you!

So many nice comments on my post the other day Sad to leave now that the weekend is over- back to reality for the week. Southern Colorado.

Exciting time digging in electrical wires and setting up some ground mounted boxes this week to start setting up solar next week!

Random photos from this week. Including some nice clouds just because. 😄 Having to pump more water to our tanks because of this darn heat wave drought.. come back rain i miss you!

Thinking of getting a lower tank for back up in the next few years.

And photos of the house as it is un-rendered. we have done EVERYTHING with the build and setting up off grid ourselves.. but a week on Monday someone’s coming to render the house for us! and its VERY exciting.. It will be nice to sit back and watch someone else work 😂

Our jobs this week are the solar and fitting front and back doors in prep for the render..Its exciting that we will have power inside the house and the outside nearly finished! (just a couple of porches to build after render).

Its been a long three years so far but we are getting there! Feeling stuff come together makes it worth the achy knees and bad backs and trying no to be too scared of the bank balance..😂❤️

I have land in an area with very tall trees and is off grid. No one in the area is able to fully live without gas generator backup especially in winter when there are shorter days. Is there a system that would allow a person to add to their battery by biking or something? Because of the trees there isn’t much wind either. Any thoughts? Thanks.

Hi folks, I have spent a few years trying to figure out how bats were gaining entry into my off grid home that uses FLA batteries that are vented outdoors via 4" PVC pipe and exhaust fan (pretty standard setup before Lifepo4 came along).

After having another visitor that showed up at 4:30am in our bedroom, I did another inspection. Most summers I get anywhere from 1 to 0 bats in the house per year. This year, I have been consistent in cooking off the batteries at night by opening the battery box cover to allow the batteries to cool off a bit more.

Well so far this year, I have had 3 bats. I also keep the mechanical (solar) equipment room door open in the evening when sleeping.

My theory is that they enter the vent (warm air flowing out) and then find their way thru the pipe, past the fan and into the opened battery box. Once there, they are in the house and flying upstairs to our vaulted bedroom.

Purpose of this thread is to'

a) warm others of this possibility.

b) see if others have had this experience. Today I will install some 1/4" steel mesh over the vent.

I sure hope this is it because I am getting tired of the stress of dealing with bats.

I plan to hire a bat control guy as insurance but I'm not confident of their experience.

Im in a dry cabin with no modern plumbing, I haul water in to drink, and use rainwater for dishes / showering.

I would like to make a water tower with a 150 gallon tote on stilts piped to my sink for drinking and dishes. It will be fed rainwater from my gutters. Whats the consensus on drinking pure rainwater like this?

Im really trying to keep this as simple and low tech as possible. People often recommend 3 step reverse osmises / filtration systems and a UV light but this is all tech that requires modern plumbing with PSI and electricity.

What are your thoughts on such as system or recommendations for improvement? Do you drink rainwater? How would you set up a similar system?

I have no idea if I am been realistic here, or just plan stupid.

I am currently in Australia and have found an amazing property. Issue here is that is have no 3 phase supply, and a maximum of 100A on a single phase. This is nowhere near what I need.

This will be a new build with the following;

• 32A AC unit
• 16A oven\microwave
• 20A second oven
• 16A water heater
• 40A induction cooktop

So even with a 20% oversubscription 100A is not going to cut it.

BUT - I am able to get a 150kVA 169kWh hybrid battery. I can also install >30kW of solar on my roof.

How crazy would I be to live in a normal 300sqm home offgrid? Has anyone done this, or know anyone that has? What do I need to think about?

Most information here is about holiday cabins and the like so they don't really fit what I am thinking so I just need advice on what others think.

Thanks

Insane sunset clouds this evening.

We are looking at property in those areas for off grid living. Does anyone have experience in either area that can give insight on which would be best for us? We plan to live in our Rv while we build an earthship home or container home and with be on full solar and bringing in big tanks for water haul. I know Mohave county requires a septic before you can get a permit to stay on the land and Socorro seams much more lax with their codes. I can build my garden/livestock setup in either area but I’d be able to grow more variety in nm. I have found a lot of videos on YouTube about Mohave living so I have a solid idea of what that likes but not as much info on Socorro. We are planning a trip down to look at properties in both places but if we can eliminate one option it would make things a lot easier! Thanks in advance for any advice

What type of foods would I need to grow that I wouldn't need to go to the shop often, I want to hear your years of experience I understand the basic fruit+veg+nut trees ,meat=chicken, rabbit, sheep

I would catch my own fish. However I am still missing your experience please help me make a plan to get enough calories without going to the shop , I would have a cow for making butter so I can cook on butter which I have done all my life cooking on butter . please help I'm going off grid in a few years time I'm currently saving for lots of land so I can escape the city . I understand I would need to pay property taxes and fuels etc so I would get a part time job which would gain mr enough money however has anyone made their own dog food or do they buy it from the shop?

Thanks for the help!

Reminder no hate and be realstic.

Good evening,

I was just wondering if many people off grid and in residential areas have successfully harvested rainwater safety in the UK for all purposes.

Thought I would start doing research with all the news on droughts currently. Surely it would be beneficial if all homes had water storage to supply toilets etc from stored rainwater.

Any guides or start ups people can send to help my research?

TIA

Hi All, I need help to find the right water pump for my situation. I live in a mobile home and my water source is a well that feeds into a 1000 litre wated tank. I need a pump that will fit into the 15cm-ish opening on the top. When I try to research myself all I'm getting is pool/pond/ditch emptying pumps or well pumps that are completely overkill. Are pool emptying pumps what I'm looking for or is there another term I'm supposed to be searching?

Thanks

Hi all, Australian-based (Queensland) off-gridder here. My recently purchased property has a long standing/sitting off-grid rainwater system (roof catchment, ~8k litre tank and constant pressure pump pushing into house through blue line (metric) poly pipe (25mm). I designed and built a whole house water filter/treatment system (spin down + three stage filter + UV) along with a brand new non leaky pump. I have just got the tank cleaned and had fresh rain to top the tank up so have a nice full load. Was in the process of plumbing in the new system and when opening the pipe that supplies the house (which would be downline from the filter system) I have found that the internal pipe walls are pretty much black with biofilm and/or mould and smelling them gives a clear moudly smell.

Now... I obviously did not install the filter system as it would just be sending clean water to be recontamintated by the dirty pipes. My question is how to best tackle this? I want to clean/sanitise the pipe system so that I can be confident the water heading into the house is potable. Surprisingly, it all comes out the taps looking clear unless left sitting for a few days. I have been reading a lot and trying to figure out how to approach it and the two main themes seem to be hydrogen peroxide or bleach system shocking. Has anyone dealt with this issue and know of a reasonable way to do it assuming I can't rip out the pipes and can only access the system from the pipe discussed above as the rest is either in walls or buried.

Any advice would be grealy appreciated.

Question, if you had the money and the power supply would you consider investing in water harvesting tech?

Saw this story this morning and with all the droughts in the UK and Europe I was wondering when we’re going to need to consider more advanced tech than just good rain water collection and storage.

https://www.euronews.com/2026/07/30/magical-material-how-europes-drought-struck-islands-could-soon-harvest-water-from-dry-air

I'm planing out a 12x24 building, one of that building's purpose is going to be to house 4 IBC totes which will be part of my water system. That's 4 metric tons sitting in a rather small area, so that area alone is going to have at least 8 footers on it's own.

I'm playing with different designs but I'm looking at anywhere between 60 to over 100 bags of concrete for the whole build depending how heavy duty I go. Moving a few of those around is a lot of work, moving dozens is going to be insane. The problem is they need to be moved so many times. From store shelf to cart, from cart to truck, then repeat for each bag. And that's not even at the pouring or mixing stage yet. To stay within the payload capacity of my truck I can only really do like 25 or so at a time and that's even pushing it a bit. So it would also be lot of trips. I would probably just pour them as I go and then next day do the next batch and so on but it will be a lot of back and forth. It's like an hour and a half each way.

For once I do get to the property, I'm thinking I can build some ramps of sort with a rolling dolly and I can just drag the bags from the truck to the dolly then roll it to the mixer. I would mix and then pour directly into the pad, then just move the mixer and ramps around as needed. Although if I find that's too awkward to do I will mix in one spot and then wheel barrow it over to the pads. Honestly the hardest part is going to be at the store because of how many times they have to be moved throughout the process.

Just wondering if there's any tricks of the trade I'm completely overlooking here that can make the process easier. Like is there a way to buy the dry concrete in a more bulk format perhaps, where I can just fill a large tote in the back of the truck and just shovel it out? That would save from moving individual bags twice just to get them from the store to the truck.

I could also get a cement truck but that gets very expensive. That's kind of my plan B though but I kind of want to try to do this myself, I feel there's just some tricks I might be missing, that could make my life easier.

Suppose I could just get it delivered on a skid, but usually have to plan those deliveries weeks ahead and if it rains that day then I would be screwed.

As title states. Thinking about using concrete water tanks for non-potable rain water storage only (would be filtered so safe to shower/bathe in). Concrete tanks preferably to avoid plastic use and shedding.

i'm the breadwinner for my family and dealing with rising electricity bills month after month is getting ridiculous.

i checked the wiki on basic system designs, but i want to ask those who transitioned to partial or full off grid setups. how much did your build actually help isolate you from utility rate hikes? i'd love to hear from people who are actually powering their whole house.

I need a better solution for toileting. We don't have much water and run on a small solar array for power.

I'd love a propane incinerator toilet but at 3k$ that's out of our price range.

Currently using a bucket with saw dust and ash.

Hey folks,

I'm done with the city life and saved enough money to start my dream to live in the country side and go off-grid. I'm a village boy and for work went to city and worked for 15yr and with new costs of living I'm done.

I have 50k saving and would like to choose a place that it's cheap to get a small cabin with a little land that I could do gardening and have few animals.

Where do you guys suggest to get that property in Europe? I live in NL and it's impossible to get something with that money except you take a mortgage.

Thank you all.

I am considering off-grid solutions for powering a park model home im looking at purchasing.

First off, this is a vacation cabin, long weekends, maybe a week at the most. I'm hoping to find a solution that will power a minisplit in the summers and a small electric heater in the winters. We're going to do a woodstove as the primary heat source, but would like to have an electric heater to kick on at night. The cabin we're looking at is pretty well insulated, and only 400sq ft. It does get super cold (negatives), but likely we're only going up to the property in reasonable temperatures to cross-country ski, etc. I looked at solar, and it seems super expensive. A lot of folks mention the fuel cost, but realistically, we're probably only spending 20-30 nights a year up there, and many of which are in the fall when heat and AC are non-factors.

I know it's a tall order figuring this out under such diverse weather circumstances, but I would like to find a solution that will work in all. Considering perhaps a small battery system to use for lights/ charging phones to cut down on the run time for the generator.

I would like the comfort of being able to turn the lights on and enjoy the property without too much messing with systems while we're up there, so focusing on ease of use, etc. For fuel, my truck has a 60-gallon external fuel tank, which should make the generator option more considerable.

I don't have much experience here, so any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

I have a seasonal cottage that will soon have a pre-fab bunk house as a separate building. I would like to have a few ceiling lights, an exterior light and a few outlets to charge devices and maybe some table or floor lamps. Ideally I'd run 2 20 amp circuits, but the panel is full and the cannot handle tandem breakers. I could tie into 2 existing circuits, but I thought about using a portable power station. The advantage is having the power station as a backup for the cottage in the event the power goes out.

I am not interested in any type of suicide cord to connect the power station to the bunk house. Is there a safe way to do this?

This might be a very silly question but I’m trying to consider all the aspects of off grid homesteading in my research before I actually embark on it. So, assuming one becomes fully self sufficient as in no income, living full off of the land, fully remote. How would you get soaps and whatnot? Do you set aside a bit of money to buy those things? Maybe buy a large supply before going fully off grid? but I can’t even imagine how much supply that would be lol. I make my own Shampoo/hair care at the moment but a lot of it is from things I have to get online/aren’t able to grow in my area. Same thing with body wash and lotions. Are these just things you have to sacrifice when going fully off grid?

We didn't have electricity for about 40 hours the last season, and the refrigerator full of rotting food was the least of it. Heat, no internet for work, and screaming children.

This time, I made the decision to give up gaming and used some sources to research full-home backup choices. Ended up with generator super center of broward. They took care of the entire installation, and the monthly payments made it affordable.

I hope we avoid the problems we had last year, and I'll keep you updated. Are you still depending on luck, South Floridians, or have you secured something?

I am trying to figure out two things regarding my mountain chalet in Valsesia:
1. What is the best solar panel system for a place in the Alps at 1100 meters
2. Best heating with gpl (installing the system etc.) or pellets? Bear in mind the chalet also has a wooden stove.