Off grid building ideas

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DrJenner

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PNW, USA
We are in the planning stages for building on our property and want to be completely off grid. Looking at solar and wind power, well/septic (scheduled for spring).
Also planning on building a shop, root cellar, good garden space/orchard, chicken coop, dog area, greenhouse and summer kitchen for canning/cooking.
Any thoughts on must haves for those of you who already live off grid? I am thinking we need a battery room close by (or part of) the house. Would also like to have a cold room/pantry and gun safe built in the house. Thinking the cold room should be a basement.
We are planning on building a small guest house first to live in (anywhere from 800-1000 sq feet) and then a larger home (about 2500 sq feet) in a couple of years. I am planning that my mom will likely need to come live with me once my dad passes.
This is the house plan I want to build first. We will live in this one while we save more money to build the bigger house. Thinking the storage area would be good for battery area, or maybe should build a separate shed next to it? Thanks in advance!
https://markstewart.com/house-plans/lodge-house-plans/freedom-45/
 
The first thing with off grid, is retraining your family to stop wasting electricity,
and for sure build in multiple redundancies .
using what the land has to offer, in terms of terrain, soil type etc. Look at a black water only septic system, and a separate grey water system keep these a good distance from the well. On the subject of the well, if you have a small cistern and a jet pump for house pressure you can make the effective pumping height of your down hole pump far less. plan to incorporate thermal mass into your house design, If the soil and drainage allow for a passive basement drain, that can exit to day light an be kept functional by clean outs, sump pumps should not be part of the original design. If there is a potential for hydro electric generation, I would far sooner have that than solar and battery, battery is the problem here, when Tesla cars start to become available cheaper, they might be a good battery pack solution, as long as someone designs a stand alone operating system for them.
Plan to take advantage of north facing areas for passive cooling, as in a basement cool room and cool air for the few hot summer days.
 
The batteries used in cars pose a severe fire danger. Lead-acid batteries are far safer but pose a fire danger and an explosive danger. Proper room design can all but eliminate the explosive danger and the fire danger is minimal for lead-acid batteries. A separate room is the way I would go.

When I lived on my sailboat I had solar, wind, a towed generator, and my engine alternator. I suggest that you have solar, wind , and a generator. When the storms move in the wind generator will pick up where the solar leaves off. The generator will charge your batteries when all else fails.
 
There is literally tons I can add to this discussion as I have lived off grid for 13 solid years now. Tirediron hit the nail on the head with first DO NOT WASTE POWER.

Starting with system life of the components. All batteries and electronics like a stabile temperature around 70 to 77 F . Ideally a basement is one of the best places for these items. Yes it tends to be a little cooler than ideal but 50-55 F year round without climate control beats whatever the outside temperature is. Stay away from 12 volt and 24 volt systems if possible 48 plus volt systems give the best bang for the buck. I also agree hydro is probably the best overall. I have and use solar and it works but batteries are the weak link. I've been considering a hybrid system using a pond as a storage unit for power. Pump water in when the sun shines use that stored water for hydro electric when it doesn't. Not really feasible for most of us in truth though.

Wood heat and I would look in to Russian stone type stoves with lots of mass. These types of heaters ideally have the house designed around them. Cooling can be done lots of ways depending on location.

INSULATION Is a big one here use plenty of it and don't cut corners here. Straw bales are some of the most cost effective insulation there is. The big problem here is wall thickness, most people are not willing to sacrifice the square footage this requires. If you are building from scratch it's a bit more money out the door to live MUCH cheaper for the life of the structure. In the long run the savings are huge.

Don't be shy about mixing new and ancient technology they can and do work well taking the best of both worlds.
 
Thanks for all this great feedback. I would also like to set up a rain catchment system, and while I love that house design, I don't think it's the best use of energy and set up.
 
I don't think there is a way to use hydro power. We have a small pond - that is seasonal. Right now it's more of a puddle after the drought we had.
We have 4 generators, gas/diesel and propane.
 
That house design is too fancy and too costly. You'll stick out like a sore thumb to bad guys or nosy neighbors. We've had an off-grid house in the desert for 10+ years. Go look up 'pole house building'. Build it up off the ground, storage and/or ? underneath. 6 inch walls w/R19, 12 inch ceilings and floors w/R38. Position it to take advantage of seasons, sun and wind.
 
That house design is too fancy and too costly. You'll stick out like a sore thumb to bad guys or nosy neighbors. We've had an off-grid house in the desert for 10+ years. Go look up 'pole house building'. Build it up off the ground, storage and/or ? underneath. 6 inch walls w/R19, 12 inch ceilings and floors w/R38. Position it to take advantage of seasons, sun and wind.
Have thought about that too. Thank you!
 
The batteries used in cars pose a severe fire danger. Lead-acid batteries are far safer but pose a fire danger and an explosive danger. Proper room design can all but eliminate the explosive danger and the fire danger is minimal for lead-acid batteries. A separate room is the way I would go.

When I lived on my sailboat I had solar, wind, a towed generator, and my engine alternator. I suggest that you have solar, wind , and a generator. When the storms move in the wind generator will pick up where the solar leaves off. The generator will charge your batteries when all else fails.
The tesla car battery pack is designed with a balancing and cooling system built in, I am not suggesting taking the cells out of their "natural habitat" and sticking them in a house battery room, just repurposing the complete car as a battery bank, with a re written operating system so that elon et al can not control your stuff remotely.
but discussion is what forums are for.
 
The good house book by clarke snell is a really well done book that covers a lot of the stuff you may be looking at also, and I really agree strawbale is highly under used, and often over complicated.
 
The tesla car battery pack is designed with a balancing and cooling system built in, I am not suggesting taking the cells out of their "natural habitat" and sticking them in a house battery room, just repurposing the complete car as a battery bank, with a re written operating system so that elon et al can not control your stuff remotely.
but discussion is what forums are for.
Wow - that definitely seems out of my scope of knowledge. :D
 
The good house book by clarke snell is a really well done book that covers a lot of the stuff you may be looking at also, and I really agree strawbale is highly under used, and often over complicated.
Thank you, I will look into this. I was hoping to find a site where I could find good building plans to include rain catchment system
 
When I was young we had no power. We had a house and a outhouse. Water was heated on the wood stove. Water was provided by a spring or the brook. If it was summer we bathed in the brook if winter water from the spring was heated on the stove and dumped into an old claw foot tub.
I consider that life style off grid.
The nouveau concept of off grid is very energy dependent and in my mind not off grid but alternative modern day living.
 
My opinion only - feel free to disregard 😊
If you are using the "storage" for batteries, I would put the bathroom where the study is and make the space they have as a bathroom into a pantry & supply room. A pantry is important to me though. To me a bathroom easily accessible from the living room is a perk if you have anyone over & less traffic through the kitchen while cooking. Obviously, a pantry/storage off the kitchen would be handy.
Okay, now I'll have to read what everyone else wrote so might have to chime back in with all the stuff I didn't think of - heehee.
 
You might want to check out a place called CountryPlans.com - Simple, Small, Affordable House Plans These are mostly small house plans. We built something similar when we moved here 13 years ago. Our next house is going up the hill from this one and will be quite a bit larger. I am planning on starting off by getting a pole frame up and roof on then building under it. Backwards I know but . . . I really hate working in bad weather etc.
 
As has. been mentioned, get solar panels that have more cells, that means higher voltage output, when used with MPPT solar controllers those higher voltages can mean getting the batteries charged on less than ideal solar charge days. Our solar array voltage averages 80+ volts and even on cloudy-rainy days it can be in the 70 volt range, this keeps our 1025 amp hour 24 volt battery system fully charged. Our battery bank system is composed of twenty 6 volt golf cart batteries connected series-parallel, we bought them at Costco in 2013, thing is now days you'd be fortunate to find any GC-2 batteries at Costco, a friend of ours had a hard time finding four deep cycle lead-acid batteries for a small 400 watt solar backup system I'm setting up for her, she ended up getting four 255 amp hour batteries from Batteries Plus for over $200 per battery, so it may be easier to get Tesla type battery packs. I run 24 volts because I have a 4000 watt pure sine wave inverter that runs on 24 volts, the higher the operating DC volts, the more efficiently inverters will run. Our system will run two large refrigerators, one small chest freeze, one 16 cu.ft. chest freezer. We have mumchanged over to all LED lights, LED's use less than a 1/4 of the power it takes to run incandescent bulbs. When I designed our system I told my wife to think small, minimum needs only, no water heater, no dryer and no high amperage cooking devices, we have a 200 watt slow cooker that can be used, trouble is, low wattage cookers are getting harder to find. Always strive to think minimally when it comes to solar power, full powering of a large home will be 10's of thousands of dollars. Wind and water generation depend on constant wind and year around water flow. Gasoline, propane, diesel or natural gas generators depend on unbroken supplies of fuel. Due to winter electrical outages we designed a small emergency solar backup system, if we loose grid power it takes over in 16 microseconds, a slight blink of the lights and it's up and running, when the grid power comes back, it automatically switches back to it.
 
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You might want to check out a place called CountryPlans.com - Simple, Small, Affordable House Plans These are mostly small house plans. We built something similar when we moved here 13 years ago. Our next house is going up the hill from this one and will be quite a bit larger. I am planning on starting off by getting a pole frame up and roof on then building under it. Backwards I know but . . . I really hate working in bad weather etc.
Perfect. Exactly what I am looking for. Thank you!
 
@viking I'm most worried about my husband. I always turn lights off behind him. Growing up in CA, we were conditioned to always turn lights off, the electricity was SO expensive.
I think this will be a tougher adjustment for him :D
 
We are in the planning stages for building on our property and want to be completely off grid. Looking at solar and wind power, well/septic (scheduled for spring).
Also planning on building a shop, root cellar, good garden space/orchard, chicken coop, dog area, greenhouse and summer kitchen for canning/cooking.
Any thoughts on must haves for those of you who already live off grid? I am thinking we need a battery room close by (or part of) the house. Would also like to have a cold room/pantry and gun safe built in the house. Thinking the cold room should be a basement.
We are planning on building a small guest house first to live in (anywhere from 800-1000 sq feet) and then a larger home (about 2500 sq feet) in a couple of years. I am planning that my mom will likely need to come live with me once my dad passes.
This is the house plan I want to build first. We will live in this one while we save more money to build the bigger house. Thinking the storage area would be good for battery area, or maybe should build a separate shed next to it? Thanks in advance!
https://markstewart.com/house-plans/lodge-house-plans/freedom-45/
The Princess would ask if there was a full basement to store preps.

:rolleyes:

Have thought about what if things don't go as planned and mom has to move in before the big house and other structures are in place?

Ben
 
Thank you, I will look into this. I was hoping to find a site where I could find good building plans to include rain catchment system
If I recall correctly there is a section in Snell book on catchment, I will look a bit furtherand see if I can find it
 
The Princess would ask if there was a full basement to store preps.

:rolleyes:

Have thought about what if things don't go as planned and mom has to move in before the big house and other structures are in place?

Ben
Yeah I would love to have a full basement to store preps. I think that would be a given, my husband may beg to differ. My preps are exploding out of the room where they are now. Haha
I think we would just buy another RV and move her into it, especially if we were still in ours (Before the small house was built). If the small house is built, we could move her into our RV.
 
@DrJenner Wait, wait, don't build yet. I have the best idea EVER!!!
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Off grid - no problem! 😂 💕😂
 
I can NOT even imagine a prepper building their main house without a basement! Starter home to later be guest house sure. BUT if the option is in anyway there to do a basement DO IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
I'd have to have an oversized kitchen set up for a canning kitchen. I am in the kitchen over half of my waking hours it seems. My pots and pans are big. My kitchen now is not very big, and I have to store my big stuff in a basement. A good basement is necessary for food stores. Also a wash house. One big family room where everyone meets up.
 
I'd have to have an oversized kitchen set up for a canning kitchen. I am in the kitchen over half of my waking hours it seems. My pots and pans are big. My kitchen now is not very big, and I have to store my big stuff in a basement. A good basement is necessary for food stores. Also a wash house. One big family room where everyone meets up.
We have a setup like that now. I have a huge kitchen, 2 islands, gas stove with 6 burners, double oven. I love cooking, and spend most of my time there. It opens up into a large family room with expansive windows looking out to the mountains. Great set up for gatherings. I also have a spare bedroom as a pantry if that gives you any idea lol.
I have a basement now, but it was more like an apartment for my kids. My house before had a huge basement with a root cellar, I would like the same again. Summer kitchen with an attached greenhouse, set up for canning and food prep.
I'll have @LadyLocust over, and you should come too!
 
The tesla car battery pack is designed with a balancing and cooling system built in, I am not suggesting taking the cells out of their "natural habitat" and sticking them in a house battery room, just repurposing the complete car as a battery bank, with a re written operating system so that elon et al can not control your stuff remotely.
but discussion is what forums are for.
Here is a list of 29 Tesla vehicle fires. Most are after crashes but several happened while parked, charging, or while being driven. This is only one brand and I'm sure a search of similar vehicles will produce similar results.
https://www.tesla-fire.com
 

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