Off the Grid
I live off grid. We started with a stone hut in a deep valley without cell signal, and no infrastructure, and now we’ve all the power we can use, all the water we can use, and 140Mb/s internet.The whole “oh, we only need 3L of water per day and 500Wh is enough” lifestyle is unsustainable. I know, I’ve tried it, and I’ve seen many others go through it - you go gently mad spending your days managing your limited resources, and eventually give up.Power: we’ve 4.8kW of solar panels, a hydro generator that makes a continuous 280W through the winter months, and three small 150W nominal wind turbines, which also help in the winter.  Storage is 84kWh of OPzS lead acid cells. 2x 5kW Victron multiplus for triple phase output, and their MPPTs for the various inputs. I also laid 500m of 18mm2 SWA cable from our powerhouse to the cabin we built, so we can have power here too. Stuck a 1:2 transformer at each end to get more carrying capacity.Water: there are a number of muddy, sulphurous seeps in the side of the valley. In the winter there’s water, in the summer, mud. Laid tubing with simple pre filters on the intakes down to a chain of IBCs 70m above the valley floor - 50 micron, 10 micron, 1 micron, carbon, then store in the IBCs. At each house (there’s both the mill and the cabin) I then re filter through a 1 micron sediment filter and a carbon block, as algae tend to grow in the tanks. For drinking, we have a simple reverse osmosis setup along with a UV block under each kitchen sink. As our fallback, basically for august when the river runs dry and the mud turns to dust, we’ve a submersible pump next to the hydro intake, which is a low spot in the bedrock and holds a pool of increasingly stagnant water in the summer. Still, our water treatment system makes it perfectly good for everything.Hot water, I took inspiration from someone on here, and built a pair of big damn heat exchangers - excess heat from stoves in winter, or from power in summer, gets dumped into 4000L of water in a heavily insulated bunker. I aim to keep it at 85C, as above that I risk melting things. There’s then 200m of coiled tubing in each bunker, through which flows the high pressure cold water (7bar), which comes out somewhere around 40-60C, depending on the seasonSewerage, we are using above ground vermi composting tanks built from IBCs (IBCs are dead handy, very cheap used) - works a charm, no smells or anything. Grey water just goes to a soakaway.Internet: I’ve talked about this here before. Solar powered mast atop the valley with an atheros w/ openwrt, LTE with an LPDA antenna as our nearest cell mast is line of sight from there but 20km away, Wi-Fi relay using yagis to each point of consumption, and then APs dotted around so we have coverage over our few sq km.Heat in both houses is from a log stove. We’ve 11ha of forest, which we are clearing the dead but still standing trees (ash, oak) from, both for the sake of the forest and for the sake of us not freezing in the winter. We’re insulated up to the gunwales in the cabin, and the mill has a huge thermal mass.We have a dishwasher, a washing machine, home theatre with surround (and oh boy you can crank it when your nearest neighbour is 20km away), all the modern conveniences. Sure, it all had to be carried in by hand or on the aerial cableway, as the one thing we don’t have is road access, but I’m one who’s strongly in favour of “effort now, easy later”.What else… I use an rpi running openhab to monitor and control everything, from power production and consumption to water levels and quality, to the weather. I can’t control the weather, to be clear.Other things… our chainsaws are battery powered (makita’s 36V stuff packs an amazing punch, and no two-stroke screaming in your ear), as are our brushcutters, polesaws, everything. Only thing that uses fossils is the truck, and that will change.This year I’m planning on more infrastructure - probably a small monorail, as I’ve got bored of injuring myself carrying stuff up 45 degree inclines, and a large pond up the hill, for water storage, and possibly hydro, possibly pumped. I’m also thinking about building myself a proper workshop, as at the moment I just drag equipment around the forest and cover it with tarps for the weather, which is also getting boring! Oh, and I’ve grand plans to turn our ‘88 hilux into a strange beast - remove the elderly million mile diesel, add hub motors and as many batteries as I can cram into the engine bay and under the flatbed. That’s the main thing making me want a workshop.So, anyway - my point is sustainability. I’ve invested significant time and resources here over the last two years so that our life here is a sustainable one - ecologically, sure, but also for us - it’s enough work just being here - I don’t want to have to always be worrying about resource management too, and I want to be able to still live here when I’m a feeble old dodger.