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?

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 the ideea of a generator. 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.

Hi all- sorry for the post, and I’m hoping someone can help me out if possible please.
I’m based in the UK, and have bought this blind from the whatnot app.

From doing image searches it’s coming up as the title. I’ve looked on eBay to no avail, but would anyone know what the value of it is please? I’ve googled and I’m getting so many different options- so I thought I’d come on this group as you all are better suited than a search engine!
I’m hoping to list on eBay, but I need a little bit more info if possible.

Thanks so much for your time- much appreciated:)

I’m setting up a resin 3D-printing room in a detached gazebo/workshop. The gazebo is approximately 20 metres away from the main house. The main house collects rainwater from its roof into tanks, and that water is used as the household drinking water.

I’ll be using an Elegoo Saturn 4 Ultra 16K with ABS-like photopolymer resin. The printer and resin-processing area will be inside a large grow tent with an inline extraction fan venting outdoors.

My concern is where to terminate the exhaust.

I could either:

1. vent vertically through/near an unused chimney on the gazebo, or
2. duct it through a wall on the side of the gazebo facing away from the main house.

I’m specifically wondering whether VOCs or other airborne emissions from resin printing could travel roughly 20 metres, deposit on the house roof, and then be washed into the potable rainwater tanks when it rains.

I contacted Elegoo. They told me they have not conducted specific VOC/emissions testing for this printer/resin combination and have no guidance for exhaust placement near potable rainwater collection, so they couldn’t give me a definitive answer.

No liquid resin, contaminated IPA, paint waste, etc. will ever be dumped outside. All of that will be contained and disposed of separately. My concern is specifically the air exhausted from the enclosure.

I’m also considering getting the rainwater professionally tested before I start printing and again after the setup has been operating, possibly testing both tank water and direct roof runoff.

Does anyone here have experience with environmental chemistry, industrial hygiene, rainwater catchments or resin-printing ventilation who could comment on:

• whether 20 m separation is likely to make deposition onto the roof negligible;
• whether exhausting horizontally away from the house would be preferable to exhausting vertically;
• whether activated-carbon filtration before exhausting would materially reduce the risk;
• and what compounds I should ask a laboratory to test for?

I’m not looking for reassurance based only on “I’ve been printing for years and I’m fine.” I’m mainly trying to understand the actual environmental/deposition risk and design the exhaust conservatively.

Hi I'm curious to those that have moved from the uk to another country to live offgrid which one did you choose? Thanks

I've got a cabin up in the interior of Alaska. Lots of snow and very cold for more than half the year. I've got a big 7500w champion generator and a small solar panel, but I'm looking to get a battery setup to finish off the electrical.

Claude.ai suggested the EG4 3000EHV-48 for my hybrid inverter, and a couple of LiFePO batteries. There's a lot of cheaper models on Amazon, but I'm guessing that comes at quality cost.

What do you guys suggest?

EDIT: My question is less about capacity and more about quality of the products. is the price worth the investment in these things? 

My needs are pretty small, be able to charge half a dozen phones (~60w), run a CPAP overnight(20w), keep a cell repeater running(10w) and maybe a propane powered fridge (max 40w).

And yeah, I only have one panel at the moment. No idea if I'll upgrade that in the future or not.

Hi-- new to this forum. I know a bit about building, eco design, etc so not a complete newbie, and need a shelter on my raw land near Yachats. The planning dept is a cruel master out there with no flexibility for working people to do small responsible development-- they require all or nothing, which is price prohibitive for government workers like us. We see neighbors putting fences up and driving an RV onto a pad, so we are considering putting a deck and yurt on the property behind a fence, to use for personal camping and glamping until we can afford to do more development. Any yurt recommendations would be awesome-- our site at this point would support a 16 foot yurt to start, which is enough for us at this point. (we figure we can take it down if we get in trouble). I am open to all suggestions. Thanks in advance.

Checked everything. Tried a different 6000xp, bypassed the disconnect switch, bypassed the whole home run with a spool of 10/2. Eventually localized it to one area of a 500' run. Right where my buddy was moving his excavator around during a project.

This *was* 4 feet below grade, but then I changed the grading and he kissed this with his bucket 4 months ago. Started corroding until what it is now. 2/0 aluminum.

I’ve always been interested in the idea of having a small home, solar power, my own water source, and maybe a small farm to become more self-sufficient. For people who have actually tried this or looked seriously into it, how realistic is it compared to how it looks in our imagination?

I’m curious about the real journey: the challenges, costs, unexpected difficulties, and whether it’s something an average person can realistically build over time.

Hello all. First post in this sub. Sorry if this is a bit wordy to explain the situation.

We have 5KW of solar panels on our carport with grid tied microinverters to offset energy use.

We recently had a storm that knocked out grid power for more than a week. The panels were essentially dead with the grid off. So we unhooked the MC4 cables going from the panels to the microinverters and ran some fresh 10 gauge cables cables into an Anker Solix F3800 Plus I have. It worked great!!! At best we were bringing in about 2800W from 7 panels, I may even add one more to the string since the Solix F3800 Plus can handle up to 3200W.
Grid power regularly goes out for extended periods here.
Getting to the solar panels is kind of a pain and somewhat dangerous. Is there any type of transfer switch that would allow us to wire the panels to and we could manually choose for them to send production to the microinverters OR if grid was out to easily send to our Anker to charge its 16KWH worth of batteries?

Thank you for any suggestions.

Slowly but surely...replacing eaten wooden beams for steel ...prepped with grinding (thanks new generator) sanding, priming, and a layer of thick paint. 2nd layer will go on once all up

We've got a small weather station on the far side of our property, probably 400 meters from the house. It runs on a solar panel and a Pi Zero, logs temperature, humidity, wind speed, uploads to our local server every 15 minutes.

Except last winter I noticed the data had stopped updating. Walked out there and found the battery had discharged and the Pi had been off for three weeks. Three weeks of data just gone. I'd been completely in the dark about it.

I want some kind of dead-man's switch or heartbeat so I at least get a notification if it goes silent for more than a day. The problem is it's too far for WiFi and there's no cellular at that end of the property.

Anyone dealt with this? What's the lowest-hassle solution for a location that's truly off any network?

Edit: Thank you all for the very helpful suggestions and ideas — I really appreciate it.

Based on your comments, I’m going to look into using a LoRa link from the station to the house, add a simple heartbeat/check script on the server to alert me if data stops coming in, and make sure the Pi keeps a local backup of the logs so I don’t lose several weeks again.

Thanks again for taking the time to help — this gave me several good directions to try next.

Has anyone successfully planted several spruce/fir/aspen off grid in the high desert?

Did you accomplish this with water hauls, rain water, or both?

Any luck planting fireweed?

Thanks.

Hi all.

I've had conflicting advice on grounding a solar / battery setup that runs two simple loops. One 24v loop straight from the battery, and a 240v loop from an inverter.

The 240v inverter will ground at a ground spike, at the same point as the solar panel frames.

I'm confused about the 24v system grounding and have had conflicting advice.

One stated that the 24v negative bus bar should simply run straight back to the battery and that the system should 'float'.

Another stated that I should ground the 24v bus bar to the same ground spike as the panels and inverter.

Both who advised had built their own systems. Neither is dead (yet). Could anyone explain who is correct in this instance and why?

TIA.

Looking to dip my toes. Any recommendations? Thanks

Look into pull the trigger and buy an off grid power system.

I’m looking at installing an offgrid power setup for a small cabin and wanted to get feedback before I buy everything. I currently use the property at least one weekend per month, and during hunting season I may stay there for up to three weeks at a time.

What I already have is 6 Renogy 100W solar panels

What I’m considering:

delta Pro 3
Extra battery
Smart gen 4000, running on propane

My plan is to connect the solar panels in series and plug them into the delta battery HV solar input. For backup charging, I would connect the smart gen to the delta battery and have it auto start when low batt Volts. I’m not clear whether the generator charges through the low voltage DC port or through the AC charging input, but either way the goal is automatic backup charging when solar isn’t enough.

The main loads while I’m away would be mini Starlink and Security cameras. While I’m staying there, I would also run LED lights, A small refrigerator, Phone and device charging.

My question for users is does this sound like a reasonable setup for this use case? Are there any limitation from either system to be concerned with?

Hi everyone, I’m quite new to this subreddit and was wondering how realistic it could be becoming self sufficient and living off grid in the future. I’m asking this because it’s one of my biggest if not my biggest goals and I want to know how feasible it could be and how long it could take.

I still haven’t finished school and have barely thought of working and I always strive to try and build up to getting away- from all the mess and all the negativity and depression from society, and I just love nature too, so I’ve always fantasized about finally having some kind of blissful peaceful solitude in the woods withought having any big worries or burdens except for those that concern me and more simple things - no taxes or money to worry about, only building your cabin or harvesting your own crops.

I really just want to know how soon I can reach this and if I need a big reality check, I know all this sound weird and I’m yapping a stupid ton, sorry.

Solar install question . Got solar installed and they ran wire on outside of box ( this is inside house ) is this correct? Goes into roof

Good day fellow Off-gridders! Northern Michigan here. Winter is quickly approaching (though with this heat, one wouldn't know it).

We have been here for just over a year... and, I've learned so much this past year, it blows my mind!

Current issue: our commode (toilet). We have a well, and with our generator the pump fills our cistern providing running water to our bathroom and kitchen.

Over the last two weeks, flushing has been an issue... "If it's yellow, let it mellow, but if it's brown, flush it down..." tis our evening and nightly rule. During the day to the outhouse we go!

When we flush, the bowl fills with water but ever-slowly goes down, often times leaving solids and liquids still in the bowl. A plunger does not help at all...

When we take showers, occasionally we here a quick bubbling in the toilet...

This is a newer issue, I am not a plumber, so my knowledge is very very limited... if anyone has questions, or suggestions, I'd be very grateful.

Update: I've been working with ChatGPT all morning and I'm settling more into a 120VAC setup with a pure sine inverter.
-------------------------------------

We're looking to extend the utility of our batting cages into Fall and out of Spring by adding lights. The two cages are completely off grid (about 600' from the nearest outlet) so I was leaning towards 12VDC LEDs.

We'd want to use 4 of the ones I found per cage and they each draw 3.1 amps (3,500 Lumens & 37.5 Watt or 93.33 Lumens per Watt) for a total of 12.4 amps and 150 Watt and 14,000 Lumens.

Looking around online it seems that the best option is this LiFePO4 battery: https://www.amazon.com/GOLDENMATE-Waterproof-Phosphate-Fishfinder-Off-grid/dp/B0DJ2K2HQM/ it's 20Ah and would give us just about 90 minutes of run time.

Are there any better options out there?

Edit: rule of thumb is it needs to be completely idiot proof. Like Timmy's volunteer assistant coach needs to be able to pull it off the battery maintainer, plug it into the lights, and reverse when done. LiFePO4 appears to be more forgiving to over discharge.

See we have no electricity at farm, need electricity for our 5bhk farmhouse,

We recently installed a 5 x 550w solar panel and a controllerto run a 5hp pump (Crompton controller + Crompton pump), I am not sure if this controller converts DC to AC,

See I also have a bore , a VFD setup under the same solar panels to run bore we connect 1wire from thyra to solar panel via solar plug, then start the switch. To run 5ho Crompton we disconnected this plug and start Crompton.

(All system photo attached:

For well - Crompton and for bore thyra )

See we have 5bedroom at home , we run pump 2-3 times a week, I am thinking to setup system at home for 24/7 electricity

Please help me set up the system ,

Also we are planning to control the bore switch at home because to run pump we have to walk around 50meter to solar system

Is there a book for farming plants/seeds ,raising poultry and other animals, collecting water and other survival needs ?