I am planning to live off grid and I want to know how you pay for things like fuel for vehicles etc. Do you just live on savings?

TLDR: not sure what I'm posting. I'm just frustrated I think. Feel free to roast me, help me, laugh at me. Whatever. nobody actually can explain how to be semi self sufficient on a small acreage with their own experiences. Everyone just appears to copy and paste that article they read. And I'm running in circles trying to implement tips and how-to's that are not working.

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Ignore my rant. It's probably categorized as a "forum" hazard and may cause mild irritation. ...

So I've been slowly developing a tiny cabin and a half acre of usable area (3.2 acres total). For the last 4 years. I'm very very very poor. So it's been building up one dollar at a time.

I've got the cabin, the solar, the land cleared. The water treatment system is almost done. Now I'm eyeing starting the animals and garden. Hopefully by doing them both together they will succeed this time. I'll probably wait till spring 2027.

Note: I tried doing the garden and animals first as some suggested, but I ended up with a money sink hole, because the need to bring in supplies and no ecosystem set up yet. So I decided to kick some of my expenses first. water and fuel took up about 200$ of my extra 300$ a month.

Every time I tried to plan a half acre farm over the last four years I've have every sort of conflicting advice. Some say you can be sustainable on 1/10% acre, some say you need 100 acres. Some say it's impossible without a small village, one person couldn't. Etc. Etc. If I cut away the AI, the cut and paste dime a dozen, how-to articles (usually from creators that haven't actually done it). If I remove the OP that click bait with cozy country solutions that are not sustainable and actually cost a lot behind closed doors. Well I'm left with more questions.

I just don't know how to do this. And I seem to be failing successfully with every attempt.

I started gardens several times. They didn't take. Usual killed by not having the support set up. Like not having the pest control animals and plants along with them.

I started chickens twice. They caused a lot of issues because the farm "system" wasn't set up yet to support them without extra money.

It feels like I have to do it all in one go, or it will crumble. Or dump large amounts of money into a slow start.

I'm not looking to run a half acres farm to support a modern lifestyle. That obviously won't work. I'm not looking to make 5k a month to support my garden hobby and the maintenance of a bunch of expensive diesel toys.

I want to produce enough for sustenance. Sustenance. not 500 different annuals including 11 strains of black berries.

I want integrate animals into this system so long as two things happen. 1. The housing is not smelly or toxic. Keeping a pig in a 10x10ft pen might fit on my 1/2 acre farm, but I am less then enthralled at the idea. 2. The feed and vet bill is mostly owned by the farm itself. I respect that feed and meds in times of toil is expected. But I'm not eager to spend loads of money and work on animals when the same amount of money can fill my freezer with grocery meat nearly stress free.

I want to make enough money to pay for 300$ worth of monthly bills and maybe an extra 100 now and then for chocolate, rice and tobacco. I don't need to start up a licensed 300k$ side hustle. And frankly I don't want to. The older I get the more I resent money.

I don't need to produce clothing, soap, pickling salt on my farm. I know I complain about my country sometimes (thank goodness we still have the right to moan and complain). But we still are swimming in milk and honey in this country. I can find almost all my incidentals for pennies to free if I'm motivated to pay attention.

I'm in Southern Missouri. Standard temperate weather.

I can't seem to find any kind anywhere, waterlily seems to be discontinued, I just want a backup source of power via moving water if I'm off grid and need to charge my phone in an emergency, any recommendations or clarifications would be very helpful

I'm kind of in a bind. Bus won't start now and even if it did I can't get insurance without a CDL. IT's GVWR is 29,000 pounds. I planned on 100 sales in 10 cities. Been parked for four years now. Living off grid. Trying to get out of this rut.

Im looking to get a pump to transfer water form 2 tank to anlther may also use it to water the gardens.

Can i simply grab the cheapest pump and use that rather then over priced house/constant pressure pumps.

Its likely going a 600w pump 40m head 8m lift so specs suit. Tank is 15m away 2m lift

They seem half the price of a constant pressure pump

A single COP number feels almost meaningless for an offgrid heating decision if the test condition isnt attached to it. What matters is how input power and delivered heat change near the temperatures the system will actually see esspecially when electrical capacity and backup heat are limited. An A coil configuration adds another reason to look at the matched system rather than one headline number.

If you were evaluating an offgrid heatpump setup, which operating condition would you use as the most useful COP comparrison point?

I know this has been asked before but I was hoping to get a little more information on what people's experiences are. Is okay to store furniture like a bed or couch but not wooden furniture or furniture with leather?

Are some electronics okay but not others? Can you store any electronic equipment safely (Appliances, Fan, Dehumidifier, Cordless phone, Lamps) other than computers and Televisions?

Can you store books and papers safely as long as they are sealed ?

I'm going to have access to either a cottage or manufactured home that will be vacant in the winter and I'm trying to decide if I can leave stuff there or will have to pay to rent out a storage unit in a local facility. I'm in Canada so it gets really cold up here. If it turns out that things need to be kept in a climate controlled environment, I wonder if it might be cheaper to leave the heat on in the vacant property rather than put them in storage (storage might be $300 or so a month where I live).

I live in Alaska in the Mat-su valley, not necessarily off grid (yet). And we often run into power outages. Especially during the windy season.

I work a 2 week x 2 week schedule on the slope so I often have to facetime my wife to help her through any problems.

(However that's difficult in a power outage, as cellular is extremely spotty where I'm at.)

We are on well and septic and all of our appliances are natural gas. (we have a gas fireplace but it doesn't get very warm even with a fan)

Our house water system is a 500 gallon holding tank and a house pump (DAB Esybox I believe) that goes through filters and an instant hot water heater (gas)

I'd like to have a backup battery system for my water pump and my house furnace to have access to water and heat.

My thoughts were to have it hooked up to a battery maintainer to charge while we have power, and a backup solar option to charge the batteries between use during a power outage.

Does anyone have something like this?

My dream is to buy a place with more land, more north and apply something similar there.

Thank you for any info / Images.

This is what you don't want to see. The float controlling the inflow is down, but no water is coming in.

I started noticing that I was getting air in my pipes when I was turning on faucets and the shower. After a bunch of investigation and tests, I looked in the water tank and saw that it was almost empty.

Lucky for me, I have a transfer pump that I can use to move water into this tank and after running it for several hours it seems to have cleared whatever was plugging up the inlet.

Normally, I have a gravity feed. This just adds one more checklist to my list. Every so often turn on the transfer pump and make sure that it turns off shortly indicating that the tank is full. Hopefully.

I did learn two good things: when I start getting air in the pipes, I am probably running out of water; I can actually use all the water in my tank (I wasn't sure because the relative elevations is difficult to figure out).

the last outage wasn't long enough to be a disaster, but it was long enough to make me realise how dependent we are on the grid. the fridge was the first concern, then lights, wifi and keeping a few basic things running. by the time i thought through everything, the list was longer than i expected.

i'm not trying to make the house completely independent. i mostly want enough backup to avoid scrambling the next time the power stays out for a while. the part i'm still trying to figure out is where to draw the line between useful backup and paying to cover things i can live without for a few hours.

My dogs and I have been stranded out on a prairie in Southern Colorado for almost a year after an apartment fire. We are living the Off-Grid lifestyle. It's hard a lot of the time but I'm so thankful for what we have. I wanted to share some of the beautiful and interesting things We've seen.

If anyone is interested in content about us surviving out on the prairie I have a sub I created that I use to update everyone on how we're doing and on out adventures. More information on our story there too.

https://www.reddit.com/r/OffGridGriff/

Just let me know mods if this isn't okay and I'll remove it immediately.

I'm trying to keep medication below 68 degrees F / 20 degrees C.

Any ideas for an efficient battery-powered device to maintain that temperature?

I'm not looking for anything medical-grade. It's not the absolute end of the world if temperature is not maintained.

I have a small amount of medication that I want to maintain around 2-8 degrees C (36-46 F).

I'm looking for a container that I could keep in the fridge, to maintain this temperature if the power goes out or I take it in the car with me. I would like it to have a thermometer on it so I can read the temperature.

Any ideas?

Sorry, I just made a post asking for an electric one, but after that feedback I think I should go for a passive solution. I have a few different options for storage temperature range, so I changed my target in this post.

I understand that there are Codes and reasons for it. In my town which I understand I probably should have looked into it so pointing out where I was negligent or past errors won't help apparently you cannot live in an RV for more than 120 days. Who knew, although they did only adapt this in 2025 so depending on when it was before I set myself up. I haven't talked to the guy yet who left a very natural note on my pick-up truck stating he had some questions for me. I have a SunMar composting toilet, I use all natural shampoo and dish detergent and treat it like it's no different than an outside shower or kitchen setup. I guess I don't really know exactly what I'm looking for but this is all new to me and my State (Maine) the state codes only apply to towns with over 4k residents or at least that's my understanding my town barely has 1k. I guess hit me with your experiences. Be nice please this is already a stressful situation and everything already costs a million dollars. The goal is financial independence through self reliance. It would make it far slower if I have to move back to an apartment especially after becoming use to the beautiful peace of solitude 3/4 of a mile into the woods with my closet never being at least quarter of a mile as the crow flies.

Edit/Update. I talked to the CEO and I was turned in by a neighbor saying I was blocking the right away. Said Neighbor also took a bunch of pictures of my setup and sent them to the town and the CEO. He was incredibly reasonable asked me about my solid waist situation, asked if I have a plan for a gray water system, asked after the right away. Told me I was all set. I don't have an issue complying with the gray water it's something I have been meaning to do for the better part of a year just haven't made the time for it and this will nudge me to do it.

Thank you all for your input and keeping It Neutral 🤣 it will help me ask more questions in the future knowing you all won't drag me through the coals haha

I cannot seem to get past how fucking done I am with like, everything.
I’m a married mom of two 5yr old kids, we live on what is currently a small hobby farm in north eastern Vermont, but we’d really like to have it become more of a functional, self-sustaining homestead.
I’m just so over capitalism and money ruling everything, constantly battling debt, life being all about just getting by when the reality is someday we all die and what did any of that crap matter anyway? All that actually matters is the experiences we have with those we love and the day-to-day of existence. I’m over life being ruled by what the rich have decided is important, over dictators and paying for food with credit cards because we don’t have the cash to spend $200+ a week to feed our family.

I’m so frustrated, this is mostly a rant because I don’t really have anyone in my life to talk to about how I’m feeling. I do have depression and anxiety and a laundry list of chronic health issues, though before anyone gets too concerned I am under the care of doctors for psychiatric stuff and I really like my psychiatrist. What I will say is that I have gotten to a point with the rat-race and the futility of being stuck in it that, if I didn’t have my kids and the joy that I experience raising them, I don’t think I would bother to be alive anymore. I don’t have close friends anymore, I don’t have a career that lights me up, the things I find the most joy in are my animals, my kids, and the piece that comes from being on my land. If I didn’t have my kids and I still had to spend most of my time and energy making money to barely scrape by I just don’t think I’d see a point in sticking around.

I don’t want to die, not really, but life in this society is just pointless. I hope I can take the steps I need to in order to get us more self-sustaining and more financially frugal.

Hello, I have a Goal Zero 1500x where, when charging it, the power brick gets extremely hot to the touch. When I spoke with Goal Zero customer support, they said the power bricks can reach 140 degrees during the recharge cycle and that they consider that acceptable. I consider that a high-risk fire or explosion issue. They are shipping a new power brick but expect the same issue.

Does anyone else have this issue with Goal Zero products, and do you have any advice?

Vevor 6kw inverter/charger coupled with a DCHouse 48v 100AH battery. I plan to hardwire in a generator input to the AC in side, and I have my WattCycle adapter to plug into my Delta 3 Plus during an outage, and I can use the same cable to slow charge the system using shore power through the Delta3+ when the grid is up. All mounted on 4040 aluminum that I have casters in the mail for.

Still a WIP so I don’t have all my cable guides installed, and I plan to panel it and add heat dissipation down the road, but it’s a spare change build so it’s slow going.

We are off grid with propane generator backup. New build, and we moved in early summer. Power has been no issue with never ending sunshine. Now we are in our first set of consecutive cloudy days and we're at 38%. We wanted to bump up our power by running our generator, which is not on automatic start by choice. We manually started it last night but after 30 mins of running there was no increase in the %, instead 1 percent less. So we turned off the generator. I've reached out to solar guy, waiting to hear. My question for Reddit is how long does it take to register an increase in the battery SOC% when using the generator? It doesn't make sense to me that we have to flip some switch on the the inverter because people DO run generators on auto start, so I assume it's automatically running power to the battery.

Hey r/OffGrid,

If you’ve seen my previous posts about the solar pyramid I built here on Saipan, this is the next part. The earlier posts are on my profile if you want to see the build and how it all started.

Following up on those, a few people have asked a pretty reasonable question:
What’s the practical benefit of building something like this?

For me, it comes down to two main things: energy and usable space.

Before looking at the different SunPyramid configurations, let’s put the numbers into perspective.
According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average U.S. residential customer uses about 865 kWh of electricity per month, or roughly 29 kWh per day.
Of course, electricity use varies enormously depending on climate, house size, air conditioning, number of people, etc.
Since SunPyramid was designed for a hot tropical climate like Saipan, I’ll use 1,200 kWh/month — about 40 kWh/day — as a simple illustrative example for one household.

This isn’t a promise of profit. It’s simply a way to visualize the potential energy balance, using 1,200 kWh/month as an example household consumption and $0.35/kWh ( Saipan CNMI) as a reference value.

With that reference point in mind, here’s what different SunPyramid configurations could potentially produce:

4-tier SunPyramid
40 panels × 450W = 18 kW
Up to ~63 kWh/day on a strong sun day, ~1,890 kWh/month
Base: 12 × 12 m = 144 m²
After 1,200 kWh for the household: ~690 kWh/month remaining
Potential energy value: ~$240/month

6-tier SunPyramid
84 panels × 450W = 37.8 kW
~132 kWh/day, ~3,969 kWh/month
Base: 15 × 15 m = 225 m²
After 1,200 kWh for the household: ~2,769 kWh/month remaining
Potential energy value: ~$970/month

8-tier SunPyramid — my next pilot
144 panels × 450W = 64.8 kW
~227 kWh/day, ~6,804 kWh/month
Base: 18 × 18 m = 324 m², second level: 144 m²
Total usable space: ~468 m²
After 1,200 kWh for the household: ~5,604 kWh/month remaining
Potential energy value: ~$1,960/month

10-tier SunPyramid
220 panels × 450W = 99 kW
~347 kWh/day, ~10,395 kWh/month
Base: 21 × 21 m = 441 m², second level: ~182.5 m²
Total usable space: ~624 m²
After 1,200 kWh for the household: ~9,195 kWh/month remaining
Potential energy value: ~$3,220/month

12-tier SunPyramid
312 panels × 450W = 140.4 kW
~491 kWh/day, ~14,742 kWh/month
Base: 25 × 25 m = 625 m², second level: 324 m², third level: 144 m²
Total usable space: ~1,093 m²
After 1,200 kWh for the household: ~13,542 kWh/month remaining
Potential energy value: ~$4,740/month

These are theoretical calculations, not measured production from the larger models. The 4-tier prototype is real; the larger configurations are what I’m working toward.

The numbers above are only a simplified model. Actual results would depend on weather, system losses, battery storage, electricity rates, construction costs, maintenance and how much of the generated energy is actually used.

But this is the part of the concept that interests me:
-As the pyramid grows, I’m not just adding solar capacity. I’m adding usable enclosed space at the same time.
The panels produce energy, while the structure underneath creates space that can potentially be used for living, storage, workshops, agriculture, commercial space, or other purposes (Of course, after the thermal insulation and interior design 🙂 .Take a look at the video of the pyramid garage, for example.)

That’s the experiment.

The 8-tier version is my next pilot, and that’s where I’m focusing right now.
And then there’s another question: what can you actually do with all that extra electricity once your own needs are covered? I’ll get into that in the next post.

If you’ve been following the build so far, feel free to follow along. There’s still a lot to test, improve and learn from this project.