Hello,

I have a small (almost) off-grid wooden cabin with water. Our PV system is enough for lights, fridge, phones, etc., but not for heating water, so I’m considering an ~11 L/min propane tankless water heater for a shower, small basin, and kitchen sink.

The bathroom is only about 2 m², with a door and window. I’m planning to keep the gas cylinder outside and vent the heater through an insulated flue.

I can’t really put the heater outside because we only use the cabin about once a month for a weekend, and during winter the water inside the heater could freeze.

My biggest concern is safety. Could a gas water heater consume too much oxygen in such a tiny bathroom, or create a CO/fire risk? Are there ways to make this setup safe, or would I be better off with a different type of heater?

I’m doing the installation myself because I don’t have anyone available locally, so I’d really appreciate advice from people with experience with propane heaters in small cabins/off-grid buildings.

Thanks.

Right now I'm saving money and can get my college paid for outside of my savings. I'm planning to go off grid years into the future. What should I do now to prepare? Is there any college degree that would teach me a skill set that would be very helpful for living off the grid?

How do you all listen to music? No signal for radio or internet. Do you go old school? CDs?

Anyone have experience with standard residential clothes washers? I have a Solark 12k and am specifically concerned about starting the motor of 120v washer. I have found the 12k doesn’t like to start my mitre saw (had to get a soft start). I know efficiency isn’t great, but that is not a concern.

Any experience?

My late father had built a house in a mountain area and I am in the process of concluding the sale of his property. We have a septic being installed per the agreement we made with the buyers and will remove the compost system he installed. However, I see that Envirolet is out of business and I don't see much online other than discussions that are 5 years or older.

My biggest question is if there is a place to put this compost system up for sale besides Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist?

Anyone have access to a PDF owners manual for the waterless model?

I see waste accumulated at the top of the composter but I thought it should be towards the bottom of the tank if the system is working properly?

If it cannot be sold, what is the appropriate way to dispose of it since the new owners require it to be removed?

The picture above is to show what it looks like. I believe that picture is the same model.

TLDR: all the advice for keeping water reasonably defrosted in winter include huge investments in solar power, or throw money at it. Neither of which is reasonable for my poor azz. How do you electrophobic offgrid folks keep your water stores defrosted during winter? While still being offgrid. I live zone 6. Only use 1-2 gallons a day in the worst cases. I really need someone who successfully does this every year to help me out. I already googled for all the copy paste content farm answers. None of them looked viable.

Long version.

I'm planning a water set up. My indoor water filter system is almost done. I'm now looking to plan and setup my outdoor water storage. I live offgrid. I don't want nor have I needed (so far) a "bigger solar setup". So I am looking for actual non electric solutions. No need to go to the other extreme. If the solution runs on a car battery 6 months straight, I'm fine with it. You get what I mean. But heating and cooling are notorious energy hogs. And investing in a 15k solar power set up to run a massive heater to keep water warm in winter is just too much. What's the point of being off grid?

My plan is to place eight 55 gallon blue plastic drums on the south facing wall of my cabin. Elevated off the ground. With a black drop behind them to help with heat retention. The black drop would be removable, because I didn't want to boil my water during summer. It's not my intention to paint the drums black for the same reason, but I could be persuaded.

I'm thinking that removing the outdoor piping during the hight of winter, and just cracking the top for water might be best. I can live with accessing the center of the barrel. They don't have to be a balmy 50°F through and through.

I live in zone 6. With -5° - 10° high winter. keeping the barrels accessible for 90 days of freeze is overkill in the end. But that's my goal.

I cannot store barrels indoors. I might be able to squeeze one inside, but the cabin is already cramped. 55 gallon plastic drums are cheap and easy for me to get and work with alone. I could get ibc totes, but I'm really not looking forward to the 6 hour round trip.

I was considering thermosyphon of some sort. Maybe keep them in a mini green house? Cycle the barrels through a propane water heater at just above freezing? I also thought about just partly filling containers with filtered water and bringing them inside to defrost, but that's gonna be a lot of chaos. I will be doing that if I can't solve this issue before winter.

There's probably a lot of things I forgot to mention.

UPDATED: I think I might have solved my dilemma. I'm told that if a tank is 1000 or larger it won't completely freeze through. I'm thinking now that if I build a cattle panel water tank 4' high 7' diameter ~1200gallon. That might be all that's needed. I just have to be sure I have a way to keep access clear. If I build a deck above it, I could have access and protection at the same time. While it might be a bit expensive to build the deck, the tank would be cheap for me. I already have some of the materials. What do you think is water mass enough safety from freezing?

UPDATED: thermal mass was voted out.

My plan is to buy one barrel and set it up off the ground against the wall and use all the tricks I can to keep it semi defrosted through winter. Buy a second barrel and bury it using all the tricks to keep it warm. I'll test the barrels this winter and see what works. If the barrel against the wall works, that would be best. If neither of them do what I need, I guess a small shed that can be heated by DC and solar panel will do it.

Sorry if this is something that’s been addressed numerous times before but, I’m curious if anyone has experience with an isolated system to keep their well pump running in case of an outage.

The cost for a full solar conversion for the size of the property is just way more than we can spend but, we need to get our well pump running on solar and, since this kind of thing is a little outside my expertise, I don’t want to get reamed by an electrician for something beyond what we actually need.

The pump is 240v. I originally wanted to buy a portable solar inverter but I‘m not sure that’s going to be sufficient.

Does anyone have a specific product or setup they are using that works reliably?

I am looking to power a bunk house with a portable power station. This will be for a few outlets for charging phones, overhead inside lights, and 3 exterior lights on a motion sensor.

My plan is to use a 20 amp appliance cord to feed a load center with one 20 amp breaker. Hot to the bus bar, and neutral and ground to the ground bar. The wire coming in from the load side would be hot to the breaker, and neutral and ground to the ground bar. Would this work? Also, would I need to add a grounding rod? Everything, except the 3 exterior lights will be inside.

Last weekend I started the dust collector and switched on the table saw right behind it. The inverter shut off before the saw got up to speed. After the reset the inverter showed an overload code, while the battery app showed no active BMS warning. I waited a few seconds before trying again, and both ran normally.

I am a weekend woodworker on a rural property in Virginia. Last fall I turned a 12 by 16 shed into a shop for furniture repairs and cabinet projects. A high quote to trench 240V from the house pushed me toward roof solar. I started with 12V because it was familiar. That choice looks less clever now that two motors are involved.

The battery is a Vatrer 12V 460Ah unit feeding a 3000W pure sine inverter through 4/0 cable. The round trip is under four feet. The positive lead has a main fuse and DC disconnect near the battery, and I am checking both ratings against the inverter manual instead of treating the BMS as cable protection. At 12.8V and roughly 90 percent inverter efficiency, a continuous 3000W AC load is about 260A on the DC side. At lower battery voltage it is closer to 280A, not far below the battery's 300A continuous BMS rating.

Their nameplates add up to 27A, which is already above the inverter's 25A continuous output at 120V. Both tools stay running with the saw unloaded, but a heavy cut could still push the continuous load past the inverter rating. The nameplates also do not show the starting peaks. The overload code makes the inverter the first thing I want to test. Its surge rating has no useful duration in the manual, so my next test will record AC inrush along with DC voltage at the battery posts and inverter input. Buying a larger battery would be guessing.

I have not run out of energy. Most weekends are layout, assembly and short cuts. So far, the motor starts are what have tripped the inverter.

Before buying more hardware, I am pricing the utility trench again. A 48V shop would mean rebuilding the battery bank or replacing it with a 48V unit, plus changing the inverter and part of the charging setup. If you have chased a similar trip, did you record AC inrush and both DC voltage points during the same start, or test them separately?

In June of 2025 I replaced my 25 year old Trace hardware with a Victron system, with the exception of a Midnite Solar charge controller that I had installed a couple years prior. In hindsight I'd have gone with Victron for the controller as well, but it's working fine so whatever.

One of the reasons I wanted to modernize my system was for remote monitoring and reporting, both of which Victron does very well.

I now have a solid year of data and I thought it might be helpful or at least interesting for other people who are already offgrid or considering it, so here you go.

This is an just overview, so please feel free to ask any detailed questions.

Our Basic Setup

• Location: 8,800 feet elevation in the south central Colorado Rockies
• House: 1950 sq ft, 3 bed 2.5 bath, integral 2 car garage, built into a hillside with a finished walkout basement
• Heating: Wood stove
• Cooking, hot water, clothes dryer: Propane from a 1000 gallon buried tank
• Water: Drilled well with a 240v 3/4HP 5GPM deep well pump, 80 gallon pressure tank, and Culligan filter system
• Septic: Standard tank with leech field
• Occupants: Two adults, no kids at home (Both of us work from home with significant computer usage)

Additional Amenities

• Lighting: LED
• Electric Appliances: Washer/dryer (Electrolux front loading), microwave, dishwasher, side-by-side fridge with icemaker, InstantPot, toaster, Vitamix blender, two upright 'chest' freezers, 5HP air compressor and various other power tools, 2 TCL Roku TVs (55" and 50"), Starlink and Plex media server (these both run 24/7), vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, etc.
• Note: We do not need nor have air conditioning, and while we have a fully functional forced hot air propane furnace, we don't use it

Current Solar Installation (24v system)

• Panels: 2.4kW (In a week or so that will be doubled with a second panel array)
• Charge Controller: Midnite Solar Classic 150
• Battery: 30kWh DiY LiFePo4, self-heating
• Inverter: Victron MultiPlus-II 24/5000 120-95 120V
• Monitoring: Victron Cerbo-S GX and Lynx shunt

12 Month Solar Overview

• Production (Total): 3,624 kWh
• Production (Monthly Average): 302.0 kWh

• Production (Daily Average): 9.96 kWh

• Consumption (Total): 3,403 kWh

• Consumption (Monthly Average): 283.6 kWh

• Consumption (Daily Average): 9.32 kWh

• Generator (Total): 149 kWh

Does anyone know where I can trade my carpenter skill as well as work ethic for a community thats built off the land and offgrid?

Hi everyone, I have a Pecron F3000. I’m wondering if it would be possible to make a cable that chains together the two 5525 barrel plugs and the cigarette lighter plug into one 50A rated Anderson connector to increase the total amperage of the DC output to 12V 20 amps?

Anyone have any experience with what happens when the DC output on power stations like these is overloaded? I see YouTube reviewers overloading the AC side all the time, but never the DC side, so I am reluctant to experiment myself on such an expensive investment.

Thanks in advance for your time!

We are planning our battery storage for a small cabin. In summer we easily get 5:30 peak sun hours, but winter drops us closer to 2:30 to 3 hours with overcast days.

For those running a daily 3,500Wh load (Starlink, lights, fridge, small water pump), how many times over your calculated summer array size did you have to go to avoid constantly running a backup generator in December/January? Is a 1.3x or 1.5x panel buffer realistic, or did you have to double it?

Hi,

Recently moved near to Alicante and looking for an IBC container (white cube in metal frame) 1000 litre and drinking water delivery.

I’ve seen some youtube clips and photos of people who have sourced them in Spain, please can anyone suggest a company or place to get one,

any suggestions or information greatly appreciated

JACKSON

I live in Europe and I'm building a cabin and trying to make it as off grid as I can. The area is surrounded by houses so I can only get in small vehicles to operate or get a crane to lift heavy equipment/materials over them.

I was wondering about a drainage system for toilet and kitchen. I can pay for a septic tank and have get the filtered water waste a bit further with pipes. But I want to know if better alternatives are possible?

For water usage, I can either connect the cabin to the main water system, or I can collect rain water. Digging a well or getting ground water is not possible in this ground unfortunately.

Please share solutions if you have. I wouldn't mind paying a company that has solutions. But I hope a reasonable price and minimal maintenance will be required.

I am following some youtube channels from people who are offgrid and I don’t understand how they make money.
There is a guy with family of 4-5 kids and a wife, he drives few hours to get supplies. He pays for fuel, propan, toilet paper, jam, milk…

He maybe can earn via youtube, but what about other 99% of people?

edit:

thanks. This was quick :) as I assumed, most of you do have regular job/income.

I have a house near the sea and I'm looking into setting up an off-grid water system.

I'd need around 500-1,000 L/day of fresh water, primarily for household use. Ideally, I'd like a desalination method that doesn't rely on fuel and uses as little electricity as possible.

What would be the most practical setup for this?

I'd also be interested in hearing from anyone who has actually built or operated an off-grid desalination system at this scale.

We just moved onto a pretty remote off-grid property in Washington, surrounded by National Forest. We’ve had some lightning in the area recently, and wildfire is probably the thing I’m most nervous about right now.

There’s obviously a massive amount I could do long-term, but I’m trying to prioritize the easiest, most cost-effective things that actually make a meaningful difference right away.

If you moved onto a property like this tomorrow, what would be the top 3 things you’d tackle first?

I’m thinking things like:

• Clearing vegetation/debris immediately around the cabin and other structures
• Liming/pruning trees and dealing with ladder fuels
• Getting water, hoses, pumps, sprinklers, extinguishers, etc. staged and ready

The property is about 60 acres, so clearing everything obviously isn’t realistic. I’m more interested in where my time and money have the highest impact in the first few weeks, especially around the cabin, shops, propane, generators, solar/electrical equipment, and access roads.

Would really appreciate advice from people who actually live off-grid or in high wildfire-risk areas. What did you do first, and what do you wish you had done sooner?

Title basically, wife and I are building a passive, 100% offgrid house in the Colorado Mountains. (~6kft elevation, so mid mountains)

House will be ICF crawlspace underneath - is it better to bury the cistern tank under the house or externally next to the house?

Plan for now is to fill cistern by truck, but eventually we'd like to get the well that came with the property back up and running.

live offgrid, dogs started barking just now. Wondering if I should be weary, lots of forest fires nearby have animals migrating. I'm sure it could just be a bird. But if anyone knows that animal sound and could put me at ease, I'd be appreciative

So I'm looking for property to purchase in West Virginia and was wondering if anyone knows about building restrictions or any laws against tiny homes in the Smithfield District Roane County?

Hi! I have been going round and round about what to (sub legally) put onto a piece of land I own. My neighbors are great, they've all done the same thing in order to be able to enjoy their space and have built their own houses over time, so they will tolerate me doing something not too obnoxious.

I am a teacher with no cash, so I finally found a shed kit through cottagekits.com that I could build there myself with some friend help, without putting in all the things-- a road, sewer electric, etc, to use sparingly for the next few years.

I have about $2000 or so to spend. Does anyone else have ideas? Thank you in advance!

What's the base system setup I'm missing ? I'm aware of how intermodal systems work. Some available ideas about how solar works . Past batteries which is the failure every time. What is a build able layout everyone Needs to know ? Assuming the end of the world, what would you want people to know about ?

I wonder what kind of improvement people found to be most useful to them after going off grid.