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Message Subject How much money does it cost to go Off-Grid and to live on the Land?
Poster Handle Bowyn Aerrow
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That all depends on what you are wanting.

A combination straw bale, rammed earth, two bedroom house would run you as low as $5,000. The idea is to used the rammed earth as your heat sink and the stray bale to be used as the insulator. thus the rammed earth would be on the south side, the stray bale on the rest.

If you do most of that or all of that labor yourself, it will be much cheaper than hiring out the work.

How much power do you need? If you are planning on living like you do in the suburbs you will have to spend a few hundred thousand for solar/wind and solar batteries.

If however, you can live with LED lighting, and highly energy efficient electrical stuff, you can bring that down to a few tens of thousands.

As for well, all you really need is wind, a windmill mechanically linked to a pump and a tall storage area, or one built on a hill above the house. The windmill will pump water when the wind blows, filling the tank, thus when you need water you are getting it from the tank, not the well.

Where you live also matters. Other options may be cisterns, stream water, rain water, etc.

How you build the house also matters. If you plan on having the kitchen at one end and the bathroom at the other, you could triple or more the costs for plumbing. If kitchen and bath share a common wall with everything on short pipe, then you could save lots of money.

A small freezer, under the counter one may be all you need if you are willing to dig a root cellar and use that for most of your cool (not cold) storage.

Warmth. If you use a combination Straw bale, rammed earth and plan out your structure for minimal heat lost through windows (thus usually no northern windows in the northern hemisphere) the cost of heating drops - a lot. If all you have is cold and rain during winter you will not need a huge furnace, a simple wood stove or even just a kerosene stove may be all you need to heat the whole house.

If you decide 'oh screw building, I will dig my house' then you may not need to heat at all. An underground shelter would have its heat and cooling system year round.

Typically the average mean temperature of the area over a year is the temperature of an underground structure. Thus if you live in Southern New Mexico you are looking at ground temperatures around 72 degrees.
 
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