Living "Off the Grid"

[Leo Graywacz]

You can light a gas appliance with a match. No electricity required.

[Mark Bolton]

You can light a gas appliance with a match. No electricity required.

I agree Leo, the only killer is most gas ovens now will either #1 not regulate temperature without power, or #2 wont even let you light them with a match any longer. The cook top yes, which will of course get you through an outage. But most gas ovens now use a heat element to light the burner (which, in an off grid home consumes a lot of power by the way). This element is chewing up about 400 watts of power the entire time the oven is on. So imagine you have a cake in the oven and 400 watts of lighting in your home (that you gain no benefit from) at the same time. The gas valves in the new ovens will not open until that element is at temp and there is no way around it. Standing pilots and milli-amp gas valves are becoming very rare nowadays.

The modern ovens out there that do allow you to light with a match will only run wide open (no temperature control). Great if your going to eat pizza through an outage!!

A lot of people look even to gas lighting like the old days however the moisture they will dump into a home is obscene so they are not a good choice for moisture and health.

Its all a fun conversation and at least to me, makes me appreciate more an more todays modern conveniences.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

My gas furnace won't run without the electricity to it. I am pretty sure, it won't ignite the main burner unless the fan is blowing.

[Andrew Joiner]

Something I did find interesting though was how many seemed to have a problem with someone choosing to live a very modest/frugal/humble life in an effort to require very little money to exist. Of course psyche issues aside (hoarding, hermit, reclusive) I just dont see the problem with someone making a conscious decision to live as small a life as possible to perhaps allow them to really do the things they enjoy or are passionate about (windsurfing from a van comes to mind). That taken to a more permanent setup with a house and property but a life lived with a conscious focus on keeping things minimal could allow for a tremendous amount of time and resources for the things that truly make that person happy. I guess I mean it doesnt always equate to some guy muttering around a building with a dirt floor talking to the walls and not bathing.

I think a well planned setup in the right area could allow someone to live a pretty rich life for an amount of money that wouldnt require an IRS filing but I dont have it in me to do it.

I quoted you a few times Mark. Your posts on this ( and elsewhere on Sawmillcreek) mirror my thinking! I too was surprised that a bunch of woodworkers don't sympathize more with modest/frugal/humble life concepts. Of course we have to remember that everyone here is on an electric powered device. Oh, and I did mutter around my van if the wind quit for more than a day.

Of course there are variables in the mix like my property for instance which is remote yet has a natural gas well on it which I could tie into if I pushed the issue but have no desire.

I like your hunting story, and while my place is not "roughing it" by any means, especially nowadays with wireless hotspots and so on, I often enjoy the contrast of the two and think it would be good for more people to experience that "roughing it" if only for the appreciation factor.

I for instance grew up in a normal suburban life, I dont think I ever even camped much until I was grown. I moved to this property and took my time getting setup and things built (a bit too much time lets say). It was like a break from reality, a bit of a long vacation/sabbatical. In that time we roughed it a lot and for longer than we planned because we were too busy goofing off in the woods, four wheeler riding, exploring, and just enjoying ourselves. So the day the bath/shower/laundry came on line it was like the second coming. A hot shower, and a looooong one at that. And this is no lie, to this day (which is years and years later) I dont care when or where, when I step into a hot shower an overwhelming feeling of appreciation comes over me. It happens every single time.

For me, it really speaks to the small things in life.

You have a natural gas well? I assume that utilizing the gas is not cost efficient?

Your shower story is very true. Go without some thing for awhile and then you really appreciate it. I learned that traveling and windsurfing. My thing was toast as well as showers. I could boil water on my single burner stove, but when I got back to my house toast was a treat.

[Frank Drew]

if you want running water, you need to have power to energize the pumps. No power - no water.

The first house I lived in when I moved to Virginia many years ago had a gravity fed water system; primitive as that house was in every other respect, at least we always had water to the house (even if some of the service lines in the house were prone to freezing.)

[Jim Matthews]

Inadvertently you have highlighted why one would choose to have the ability to be independent of the grid. I will be hooked to the grid as long as it is there, but also have the capability to run everything in my house that is important without it for a period of time.

I too, have a backup generator.
It's for the rare occasion when power is interrupted by natural events.

Living off the grid implies no connection to the power grid, whatsoever.

[Sean Hughto]

Fighting The Crowds On Walden Pond

Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or Life in the Woods, deserves it's status as a great American book, but let it be known that Nature Boy went home on weekends to raid the family cookie jar.

Thoreau begins his American classic with lines that are memorable for their simplicity, clarity, and ... utter deception.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

Most Americans have an image of Thoreau as a rough-hewn, self-educated recluse, who, following the grand tradition of prophets, disappeared into the solitude to commune with nature. We picture his little shack far off in the woods, the man a voluntary Robinson Crusoe, alone with his thoughts and the bluebirds.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Thoreau could see the well-traveled Concord-Lincoln highway across his field; he could hear the Fitchburg Railroad as it steamed along the track on the far side of Walden Pond.

He visited Concord Village almost every day; Thoreau's mother and sisters, who lived less than two miles away, delivered goodies baskets every Sunday, stocked with pies, doughnuts, and meals; Thoreau even raided the family cookie jar during his frequent visits home.

The more one reads in Thoreau's unpolished journal of his stay in the woods, the more his sojourn resembles suburban boys going to their treehouse in the backyard and pretending they're camping in the heart of a jungle.

The children of Concord visited on weekends and the cabin became a popular picnicking spot for local families. One winter, fellow writer Bronson Alcott had dinner there on Sunday nights; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne were frequent visitors.

And, on August 1, 1846, the good ladies of an antislavery group held their annual celebration of the freeing of West Indian slaves on his doorstep. The cabin once packed twenty-five visitors inside.

"It was not a lonely spot," understates Walter Harding in his excellent The Days of Henry Thoreau. "Hardly a day went by that Thoreau did not visit the village or was visited at the pond." The joke making the rounds in Concord was that when Mrs. Emerson rang the dinner bell, Thoreau came rushing out of the woods and was first in line with his outstretched plate.

After a year, Thoreau was giving little lectures in the Concord Lyceum on his experiment in simplified living. Words of his shack spread fast so that tourist stated arriving, asking for a drink of water, hoping to catch a glimpse of the inside.

But Thoreau, a meat-eating Harvard grad, did find time away from the crowds to write about man and nature. Walden is a mesmerizing tale of St. Francis on a budget.

However, if you have a hankering to duplicate Thoreau's experiment in simplicity, perhaps you to should build a shack a couple of miles from the family home, just off the road, by the railroad tracks, a five minute walk from the village. And don't forget to schedule the weekend picnics.

[Richard Zacks.(1997). An underground Education. New York, NY: Doubleday.]

[george wilson]

I had enough of "living off the grid"(not really,but "pioneer living is more descriptive". When I was in Texas we lived in a single car garage with 2x4's naked inside the walls. In Oregon also. We had an out house.

In Alaska,we lived for about 3 or 4 years without electricity,and mostly without plumbing. I had to get up at 5:00 and carry oil up the hill for the day,then walk 4 miles to school. Then,carry oil up the hill for the night. We had no out house at all. Instead,a slop jar which was,of course my job to empty. I would not use it most of the time. Instead,I had 2 short planks laid over 2 logs,with a space between them up in the woods. When it got filled up,I'd move to a new spot.

WE bathed once a week in a tin tub in the kitchen,in front of the open oven door. It was the only warm enough spot in the house.

We finally got water,but no toilet for another few years. I had to go down the hill early in the morning and chop open the ice in a box lined with wood. The water faucet was down in there about 2 feet down. I had to reach down in the ice water and turn the water on,then,at night,I had to go down there and turn the water off to keep the pipes from freezing,though they were buried 4' deep by hand.

No,I had enough of that crap. Oil always had to be carried to the house until we left and went back to the states.

[Ryan Mooney]

No,I had enough of that crap. Oil always had to be carried to the house until we left and went back to the states.

I reckon there are about four sorts when it comes to this sort of thing:

1. Those who never have and have no interest (the modernists)
2. Those who never have and think they want to (the optimists)
3. Those who have and never want to again (the realists)
4. Those who have and liked it enough they want to again/still (the primitivists)

I'm somewhere between 3 and 4, a lot of people who have land in 3 (as clearly George has) and I think the 4's often tend to drift more towards 3's as they get older (ok that was interesting can I just have a hot shower now?). In fact I'd argue that two things are what really keep me in check; running water not something you miss until its not there, and hot showers these make all of the other modern inconveniences worth while. A close third is the internet, there are a lot of things I'm not sure I'd ever figure out how to do if it wasn't for easy access to information.

[Jim Matthews]

From what I've seen, if you try to live off the grid
you go back onto the food chain.

People who live "on the grid" don't have to worry about Cheetahs at the train station.
(With apologies to Louis CK.)

There's simpler, and there's frugal, and there's nasty,brutish and short.
Less electricity is consumed at each step, I suppose.

Americans should go hug a coal miner.
They work in the dark, so we don't have to.

[Daniel Rode]

When I was a teen I recall my brother and I discussing how we might survive in the forest for a year by living off the land. The idea being that we would start out with a very minimal set of supplies and tools. (Survivor type shows came decades later)

At first, we were confident that we could complete our great adventure as long as we started in spring with a good knife and warm coat. As we discussed this more and started planning in greater detail, it soon became clear just how difficult it would be. One has to be not only highly skilled and tenacious but somewhat lucky to survive a month, let alone a year. Living off the grid, even on the margins of societal support, is a tough way to live.

At this point in my life, I have no interest in living off the grid. I like modern conveniences. However, that doesn't mean I don't want to escape the rat-race and a good portion of modern society. But there are people to feed, clothe and house that don't share my enthusiasm for a simpler life. How I must live is not necessarily how I wish to live.

I blame it on the Sumerians. First with the silly writing, then the mud bricks and cities. Pretty soon everyone is a soft bellied suburbanite working for The Man

[Ryan Mooney]

I blame it on the Sumerians. First with the silly writing, then the mud bricks and cities. Pretty soon everyone is a soft bellied suburbanite working for The Man

I blame beer actually. You start not being able to collect enough grain to be able to keep in supply, so you start trying to help that by growing some and that means you have to settle in one place to keep it rolling.. Then you need to start keeping track of all that grain and the resulting product so you invent tally sticks which lead to writing.. and then its all downhill from there.

[David Cramer]

Thanks for the history lesson Sean, and I sincerely mean that. I had a history course that I took at a local college about 15 years ago...the teacher never mentioned any close to what you've shared. You surely opened my eyes


David

Fighting The Crowds On Walden Pond

Henry David Thoreau's Walden; or Life in the Woods, deserves it's status as a great American book, but let it be known that Nature Boy went home on weekends to raid the family cookie jar.

Thoreau begins his American classic with lines that are memorable for their simplicity, clarity, and ... utter deception.

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.

Most Americans have an image of Thoreau as a rough-hewn, self-educated recluse, who, following the grand tradition of prophets, disappeared into the solitude to commune with nature. We picture his little shack far off in the woods, the man a voluntary Robinson Crusoe, alone with his thoughts and the bluebirds.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Thoreau could see the well-traveled Concord-Lincoln highway across his field; he could hear the Fitchburg Railroad as it steamed along the track on the far side of Walden Pond.

He visited Concord Village almost every day; Thoreau's mother and sisters, who lived less than two miles away, delivered goodies baskets every Sunday, stocked with pies, doughnuts, and meals; Thoreau even raided the family cookie jar during his frequent visits home.

The more one reads in Thoreau's unpolished journal of his stay in the woods, the more his sojourn resembles suburban boys going to their treehouse in the backyard and pretending they're camping in the heart of a jungle.

The children of Concord visited on weekends and the cabin became a popular picnicking spot for local families. One winter, fellow writer Bronson Alcott had dinner there on Sunday nights; Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne were frequent visitors.

And, on August 1, 1846, the good ladies of an antislavery group held their annual celebration of the freeing of West Indian slaves on his doorstep. The cabin once packed twenty-five visitors inside.

"It was not a lonely spot," understates Walter Harding in his excellent The Days of Henry Thoreau. "Hardly a day went by that Thoreau did not visit the village or was visited at the pond." The joke making the rounds in Concord was that when Mrs. Emerson rang the dinner bell, Thoreau came rushing out of the woods and was first in line with his outstretched plate.

After a year, Thoreau was giving little lectures in the Concord Lyceum on his experiment in simplified living. Words of his shack spread fast so that tourist stated arriving, asking for a drink of water, hoping to catch a glimpse of the inside.

But Thoreau, a meat-eating Harvard grad, did find time away from the crowds to write about man and nature. Walden is a mesmerizing tale of St. Francis on a budget.

However, if you have a hankering to duplicate Thoreau's experiment in simplicity, perhaps you to should build a shack a couple of miles from the family home, just off the road, by the railroad tracks, a five minute walk from the village. And don't forget to schedule the weekend picnics.

[Richard Zacks.(1997). An underground Education. New York, NY: Doubleday.]

[Dave Sheldrake]

A nice supply of weapons and tinned food is essential so you can eek out an existence in the event of war or disaster that turns the planet into an uninhabitable wasteland. If it came to say "Nuclear Armageddon" all I can hope for is the first bomb lands on my house.
I just love the idea of watching my kids grow up in a world where radiation would cause all manner of genetic mutations and problems or seeing them die very young slowly from thyroid cancer or such like.

I personally believe preppers could spend their time more usefully contributing to a safer and more friendly society rather than adopting the doctrine of "He with the biggest guns wins"

cheers

Dave