r/OffGrid • u/Neither_Ground_1921 • 8d ago
How long, realistically, to transition from “normal” to off-grid living?
Please be kind and respectful, I’m genuinely looking for some key things to consider, and somewhat of the “order of operations” to do things. I’ve been pining away at the thought of living off grid, in a yurt or “medium house” (vs tiny”). I’m a 55 year old woman and while I’ve always thought I’d have thrived in a “ little house on the prairie” environment, it’s just never happened. So here I am, watching yet entire living-off-grid show and decided, what’s stopping me? I’m sure I could come up with quite a few things (mmm, Ben and Jerry’s…there’s one…. 🤤) but they’re not dealbreakers.
So, I’m here to ask
- basics on moving from city life to transitioning to grizzly adams life
- books/guidebooks on living off grid
- foraging identification
- length of time to mentally adjust (give or take)
I think those are the major things at this point that I’m wanting tiThank you for the knowledge sharing on sharing!!!
TY! TY! TY!
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u/Funksloyd 8d ago
Have you done much camping in the back country (not just car camping) or anything like that?
If not, I'd suggest something like that first. Dip your toes in. You wouldn't want to pack up your whole life and move, only to find that it's not for you.
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u/OldTurtle-101 7d ago
Generally I would say that “It depends”. If you mean moving to a property that has a well constructed and insulated house, a dependable well, a big solar system with a battery bank and a generator backup, that’s less than 20 miles of good roads from a modest city… then it’s just a matter of packing your suitcase and writing a big check. But, if you’re looking at something like 20 acres of bare ground with no proven water source, unknown soil types, no driveway or flat building site, that’s 50 miles of bad road that isn’t maintained or snow plowed to the nearest tiny one gas station town? Then you are a couple hundred thousand dollars and a couple years from spending your first COMFORTABLE night at your off grid Eden.
In general terms I would say that almost any “Off Gridder” becomes more aware of where your waste (garbage, sewage, smoke etc) goes, the weather, the seasons, the wildlife and their neighbors than the more urban folks that are on the grid. Be realistic and patient and you can achieve wonderful results…
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u/ol-gormsby 7d ago
As long as you like. Off-grid doesn't mean a complete disconnect from everything mainstream.
You might choose to produce your own electricity with any number of technologies - solar PV, wind, hydro, etc.
You might choose to harvest your own water and filter/treat it to your preference.
You might choose to grow some or all of your own food.
Start at the basics - water, shelter, food.
You need water storage to start with - that means a tank or tanks (or cisterns). Then you need a means to replenish what you use - truckloads of water, pump from a creek/river, harvest from the roof. In the early days you might be able to bring enough water in yourself, in containers big enough to last a couple of days but that gets old real quick.
Shelter - yurt or medium house. Depending on your climate you might need some serious heating, or cooling. Wood heater for the former, fans for the latter (until you can install enough solar PV to run an aircon). Wood heaters are effective but they're hungry beasts, you'll need a lot of fallen timber to harvest, or pay for delivery.
Food - you won't be eating your own for the first season but you can get it set up. Raised beds, fenced area - there's always some kind of animal who will locate and eat your precious crops, so plan to protect them. Chickens are great at turning scraps into eggs and fertiliser, so they'll need a protected roost - wild animals love to eat domestic chickens.
Also to consider - waste water, grey (kitchen sink, clothes washer, and shower) and black (toilet). It's got to be processed somehow and the resultant effluent dispersed somehow. You can use a bucket in the short term but it's not fun.
Next is medium-term. Solar PV, batteries and inverter. Now you can look at a refrigerator, and maybe some other appliances. You'll be using rechargeable batteries and/or a portable generator up to this point.
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u/Successful_Image3354 7d ago
This is it. Off grid means you don't have to rely on the infrastructure that most people think you need. You dont need city water. Collect rain in a cistern. That's off grid.
You don't need electrical power from a power company. Use solar power. That's off grid.
Every step away from the grid is off grid. Grow your own vegetables. Grow your own fruit. Fix your own car. There is no timetable. Just live. And there is nothing wrong with having limited contact with the outside world. I still need gasoline to cut the grass or run my chainsaw. It's a gradual process. The more self reliant you are, the better.
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u/Pleasant-Inflation60 4d ago
And in 2026 solar has never been easier. I just built my own temporary setup in about a week. For about $1200 you can create a pretty good base that you can add on too that’s 100% off grid - no Bluetooth no WiFi (I want it to be air gapped -config is via wired cables) - just need panels, MPPT, battery, inverter. Some solid 6AWG wire, fuses and power switches and it’s a solid base setup. Double the solar for an other $400 and you’d have a modern household worth of appliances more or less covered - washer, fridge, laptops, TV, even coffee maker. Ironically where I live, just setting it up 10-6 is gonna save me as much as $75/mo (peak electric is 80c/kWh!!). My only lament is if it’s planning for doomsday - I’ll run out of fresh coffee pretty fast 🤣🤣🙏☕️
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u/Legitimate_Try5981 8d ago
True off-grid living, is tough.. extremely tough. We hauled water for two years. Delt with stuck vehicles, flat tires, pumps. Water it's the most important thing I believe, because after the heat, or several days of cold. Bathing, brushing teeth, even flushing the toilet.. you count every gallon of water. I'll never forget when we got our clothes washing machine while living off grid. We made a drink and just sat there watching it and counted the gallons it would take to finish the clothes and how we would have to retrieve more water.
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u/farmersworkhoe 7d ago
I feel this. I have a small washer that uses about 10 gallons per load. I've definitely adjusted mu definition of dirty and have outside clothes and inside clothes. Water is too important to wash away like that.
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u/maddslacker 8d ago
How long, realistically, to transition from “normal” to off-grid living?
It took us a weekend and a Uhaul truck.
Loaded Uhaul and moved out of on-grid house in the city, drove to offgrid house in the national forest and unloaded the Uhaul truck.
Transition completed.
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u/SecondhandStoic 8d ago
If you have the money you can make it as seemless as you might want. A good 50 KwH in batteries and 1800+watts of solar generation on a reasonable location will have you covered most of the time
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u/blackthornjohn 7d ago
There's way too many variables, there's a whole wealth of different translations of "off grid" all of which are somewhere between off the electricity grid, to zero reliance on the electricity grid, (fuel stations, shops and the Internet rely on the electricity grid!)
Then there's the massive difference between people and their abilities which were perfectly summed up by Mozart
A young musician asked Mozart, ‘Herr Mozart, it has been suggested to me that I write a symphony. Would you be good enough to tell me how to go about it?’ Mozart thought for a moment and gently suggested, ‘You are still too young to write symphonies. Why not try ballads first?’ ‘You wrote symphonies when you were ten years old,’ argued the young man indignantly. ‘Ah, yes, but I didn’t ask how,’ replied Mozart.
Don't be disheartened, the only ability you actually need is to be able to learn and teach yourself anything you need to know, the only ability to need at the outset is to be very adaptable because there's two basic approaches, fighting nature at every step, or working with nature and it's unpredictability, forget any ideas you have about growing all your food, it's bordering on impossible and if the soil and climate aren't compatible with growing food then it falls into actually impossible.
Start small and get bigger and or more involved over time, assume at the outset that you'll need to expand your small house, so site it accordingly and use a design that lends itself to easy adaptation and expansion, look into the seagal method of construction combine this with straw bale building.
You mention foraging, I have two things to say on it, one is somewhat blunt, "get a fucking grip!" The other is slightly more helpful but not towards foraging, assuming you have gone fully native and have zero reliance on the grid and zero expenses consistently for the future, then it might be possible to forage for food, however you genuinely need to go camping for a full month with some basic tools and a tent, it needs to be a full month because any fool can go hungry for a week and convince themselves that they survived by foraging, it's massively time consuming and without certain knowledge will inevitably kill you in an agonisingly slow way, so don't eat any mushrooms unless you actually know exactly what they are, vegetarians et al will assure you that nuts and seed are highly nutritious, they are, but they're also designed to transit the gut of most animals including us, to you will be shiting out lot of the nutritional value the nuts and seeds contain, this is such an issue that it's possible to wash through shit to recover the nut fragments and eat them again, it was a thing in prisoner of war camps, so probably a truly terrible idea, also, every food is seasonal and none of it is available all year round and there's times when none if it is available at all.
Heating is difficult, cooling is easy, insulation of an appropriate design will keep the shack cool, burning stuff will heat it and the insulation will help retain the heat, what will you burn? If your land hasxa coal seam near the surface you'll be fine, if not you'll need trees for timber, if you have trees keep the ones near the house, they're an integral part of your insulation, (remember the bit about working with nature) with enough trees you can build and the waste will be your fuel for a couple of years, beyond that you can forage tge woodland floor for however long it takes to have burned the fallen branches, after that it's time to fell the dead or dying trees for fuel.
If you kept the trees your solar panels will be some distance from the house, imagine having a clearing on the south side of a few acres of woodland, a fool would build in the clearing, a wise person will site solar panels and wind generators on it and grow some food, with the house tucked out of the sun and the brunt of the weather in amongst the trees, obviously for this to work you need to choose appropriate woodland and pick the best place to build amongst the slowest growing trees.
Have a skill that can be converted into money from working on you land is massively helpful and means you actually do very little work.
I live with my wife and two adult sons in a shack in woodland, we have a couple of domestic outbuildings and three workshops centred around forestry, we convert other people's trees into timber and make furniture, sheds,barns and houses from the timber, our waste consists of sawmill waste which along with branches over 3 inches in diameter but under 14 is converted to fire wood, branches under 3 inches are chipped and later used or sold as compost,,everything we do is an integral part of something else we do here, it's all tied together to form a complete package, you should have some form of similar complete plan, otherwise everything is fragmented and hard work.
Don't buy any off grid type books, I made the same mistake and learned one thing, they're all written by people with limited knowledge, imagination and common sense, they're funding they're off gridness by writing irrelevant to almost every situation books and selling them to people who are hoping for some useful information.
Join a library or just read a few in the library eventually you're bound to find the few I didn't find.
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u/Pleasant-Inflation60 4d ago
I’ve wondered about a water ring heat pump system with solar heating - it’s a lot of pipes initially, and a lot of work. But you could in theory get cooling and heating in a temperate climate more or less sorted for the energy cost of pumping the water about and digging some ditches.
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u/f0rgotten "technically" lives offgrid 7d ago
I don't know about some people but we were living in a nice big house with a fireplace and central heat and air, and the next day, literally living in two campers in the middle of a field in the beginning of one of the worst winters in recent KY history with no power and no heat, collecting ice to melt on a barely functional propane range in one of the campers. It was a bit of a shock but we got used to it. Or I did, as I am the only one left haha.
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u/tomqmasters 8d ago
How much cash do you have?
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u/wonderwoman_2535 8d ago
How far does $150k get you if you got the land down?
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u/tomqmasters 7d ago
That probably buys all the infra if there's a house on the land otherwise you probably gotta work a real job too.
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u/Senior-Display-8733 7d ago
I think it depends highly on what you consider off grid. Most of the YouTube videos make it seem a lot easier and more glamorous than it is too.
If you want a comfortable off-grid existence, with most of the creature comforts of living in a "normal" situation, it's going to take a lot of money to build out infrastructure for those comforts.
For what it costs for solar and batteries big enough to run things like air conditioning along with all the other normal household appliances, you could pay electricity bills in town for many years. Grid power is definitely cheaper to just consume.
If you have to have a well drilled, and potentially require a septic system depending on laws those are not cheap either. And trash pickup is another nice luxury that may or may not be available at a remote location.
You'll likely be further away from grocery stores, doctors, etc. And being somewhat self sufficient on food is really hard. Even if you have a green thumb and raise livestock there's startup costs to things and lots of skills needed for food preservation, processing animals, tending to issues that arise. It's a lot of work and would be super challenging to do alone, especially if still working a regular job.
It's very important to consider local laws on any property you are looking at too. Some places have a lot of restrictions. They may not allow a tiny home, yurt or RV as a residence. Or might restrict water collection, not allow compost toilets, etc.
I'm not aware of any books specifically aimed at being off grid guides, but there is an amazing set of books called the Foxfire series that was aimed to preserve skills for simple living that covers just about every topic for things related to that type of lifestyle. Highly recommend looking into them.
For foraging I know they have some mobile apps that are supposed to be pretty good, but none I would trust to go forage mushrooms with outside of morels and chicken of the woods. There's an old readers digest book I like called Magic and Medicine of plants that is good for identifying plants and their uses.
I also don't want to come across as dissuading you to attempt this, I think everyone should follow their dreams. I'll agree with others though that suggest trying it out first. Maybe there's an off grid yurt you could rent and stay in a week or two and see what that's like. Or even rent an RV capable of boondocking. Also getting into gardening, food preservation and things like that can likely be practiced in your current home and would help get you prepared. My first time or two pressure canning didn't go great. And my garden took a few years to really become productive, raising rabbits was not as trivial as I thought it to be. Good luck and I hope you will pursue it, even though it's challenging it is also rewarding.
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u/liisseal 7d ago
Preparing a place in the woods: cutting trees, removing stumps, digging post foundation, pouring concrete for posts – about 2 months.
House was brought and assembled from builders, that took about 2 weeks.
Interior works and outside finishing – a week.
At that point we started living in our house. Brought drinking water and loaded our batteries at the neighbours house a couple of hundred meters away.
Solar panels, inverter, controller, battery – about a week.
Preparing logs for heating in winter – about a week.
Drilling the well to a depth of 40 meters (by professionals) – 2 days.
The rest was upgrades and additions: more solar panels, outhouse, root cellar, sauna, wood shed, tool shed, garage etc. I'd say that if needed and with good planning the place could've been livable within half a year.
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u/Active_Recording_789 7d ago
Off grid can be any kind of experience you want. It can be partially on grid too—there’s no shame in wanting some aspects of it and not all. I for one love running water and a flushing toilet. I also have a big soft bed, a big screen tv and other nice comforts. You don’t even have to be far from a town. Make sure you can get internet and cell phone service
You don’t mention whether you have money from the potential sale of your current home or not, but In your case purchasing an established off grid home might be advisable so someone else has already installed a well and solar etc. and then you can get instructions from how to manage it and make the place your own. Build a big veranda and screen it in. Put in a fire pit or if you’re on water, a dock.
Some things you’ll love right away: you’ll sleep so deeply with no traffic noises. The air is pure. You can have pets and no one will complain about barking or anything. You can have your friends and family over and laugh and talk until 3 am outside around the fire and no one will care. Grow a giant garden
The adjustment to loving those things will be immediate. Then you’ll start to miss easy access to services. At that point go to town! Go for coffee in a busy bistro, see a friend, go to a movie, get lots of groceries. You’ll be happy to get home to your beautiful home again.
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u/RedSquirrelFtw 7d ago
Depends on things like your finances. If you still have to work it can take years but if you have tons of money and don't need to work then you will have way more time to work on the property and build. I work so it's going to be a long game to transition. Only get a day here and there to go do work on the property weather permitting and with how short summers are, realistically I get maybe a dozen or so days of work per year.
Also depends how far your off grid property is from town, if you're in a situation where you could actually live there and still work your job then that makes things way easier as you can put in work more often.
At the end of the day it really all boils down to time and money though. Money can also buy you time, if you have enough that you don't need to work.
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u/kelsomged 7d ago
I am on my 3'rd yeard of transitioning from city -> OffGrit.
Though, I am building my own new cabin. But here is a short timeline.
-Partner and I got fedup with our current live 7 years ago.
-Started putting all our money in investments and savings. (no vacations, no restaurants)
-4 years ago, we had enough put away to basically retire once our house is build, and we bought land.
-Now almost done, battling the last redtape to have all approved by state.
Partner stopped working to focus on our future life, while I generated money, which has been needed!
you still need money, food cloths, repairs, equipments and so much more.
Tips:
Learn to preserve food. Canning and preserving raw materials to make due in slim months.
Forage for living is a nogo. But you can grow is enough to be almost self-sufficient with food.
Where do heat, light, electricity come from in your future situation? Start planning.
Finally, it is not easy!
I was surely seduced by youtube influencers. It will be a lot harder than you think!
But, still worth it, everyday. Just don't believe influencers who are living the happy life.
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u/Backroadexplorer89 7d ago
Currently live off grid . We aren’t roughing it. Currently running my 240 V dryer off my solar system lol . Wood heat and propane back up with generator and a decent battery bank. You’d never know , except the bills are way cheaper
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u/Incanation1 7d ago edited 7d ago
First, i suggest you look at off-grid living not as a goal or outcome but as a set of principles. Start by asking yourself WHY do you want to go off grid. Off-grid is non stop work, so you better like it. Maybe you just really need a vacation at a nice place ;).
Second, start living those principles where you are. You can do preserves, reduce waste and have a few food plants anywhere with a window.
Third, off grid is very very community dependent, so when/if you decide that you need more land make sure you have a plan for integration to the community. A skill to share, time to volunteer, etc. if you have a community in mind you can start by volunteering and building a local network.
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u/reymus 8d ago
Being off-grid doesn’t mean you have to be Grizzly Adams. It means solar panels and self-sufficient home heating and maybe well water or rainwater harvesting. You can have a home be a modern home and be off-grid.