How much money does it cost to go Off-Grid and to live on the Land?

Depends on if you do it yourself or hire all the work done...I bought 63 acres for 30K cash, hired a bulldozer to clear some woods and build a Dam, and paid to have a well dug...but did everything else myself...including solar and wind power...I bought two tractors and some implements to mow the fields and plant a garden...it's a ton of work!

Well .. i think your setup is way beyond most preppers possibilities.

On a smaller scale, my number is:

10k every year for 10 years without land or house to cover the basics, not in the best but in a workable way.

Dont worrie about water..you will have enough once the great flod comes..lol.
Well, in Sweden you dont need 250k usd..land in a bit high altitude pretty far away from any neighbour, near water for dring and fishing, near forest for hunting, warmth from the woods, comunication...fuck comunication dont need that. What i would need is meds and some solution for planting more than potatoes in this cold place..TOP 50k usd.

500 kish in land gear and building materials and labor done by yourself , hired or bartered.

People who say oh about 100 k or less , well you cannot really say it was only 100 k if you spent 20 hours a week working on it for 250 weeks. My over 40 hour rate of pay is a minimum of 20 dollars an hour net pay.

You guys are all wet, it's much less than that!

Not if you want to live in comfort...if you want to live like a caveman, then that's pretty cheap...

Absolutely NOT TRUE as I show in my article.

How many square feet is that, three?


I built an actual comfortable self-sustaining homestead that is all off grid and large enough for my family and my small army...

You can build a decent sized home for 2 for 10k...out of Cob.

The Pros and Cons of Cob Cottages.

[link to brie-hoffman.hubpages.com]

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.

Thanks, that is a very good example (as well as the ones I have in the article).

I think after the home..power is the next biggest expense. So, if you can get by with very little power that is key to keeping the costs down.

pretty sure it is illegal in my country to go off grid...

OMG really?

Living off the grid completely is a PITFA. You have to want it pretty damn badly to go through all the effort and pay the bills to make it happen.

It's easier and cheaper to live on the grid with a "backup system" for relatively short-term outages.

If you have a well/septic system, then all you really need is a generator powerful enough to power your well. You'll be fine as long as your gas holds out.

You can do that for a fraction of the cost.

Plus, who really wants to live like Little House on the Prairie? I don't.

Move to Northwest guys,, we have lots of water, trillions of gallons in the aquifers. A water purifier is 100 bucks. My family bout 7 acres and a stream for 7500. Cabin hauled on the land for free. I sell of grid solar, I know you can get a small off grid system for lights and media, 12 volt, 1000 wats and batteries, less than 1000 dollars if ya do it right. Wood burning stove and all the wood we need for free. Dont forget your snow shovel

What state are you in? Actually the NW is where I was considering.

Friend, more than you think. There will be lawsuits, lawyers and all that to pay, just to support your beliefs. Township zoning laws will be applied and you won't qualify, county building codes and health districts.

I know this for a fact, I am in the middle of one now. Also friends moved from one state to another as the one they were in would not let them have facilities and they were way up in the mountains in desert area's. Luck to you, little ass holes that get these small government jobs are of low quality and love their power.

going off the grid will automatically make you one of the hated 1%

ridiculous!

in SHTF , mobility will be the king
bugging out, not bugging in
cuz you never know what kind of SHTF is coming
could be near you

so far i have 310k into my project. i have land, house and outbuildings. i have a backup generation, but no long term energy source other than a woodlot for heat. it takes a bankroll to get from out and under bau. don't be fooled into thinking otherwise...

...and you end by saying:


Finally, I haven't gone off grid yet but... I think that you could go off-grid for about $25,000 very nicely.


until you have, don't speculate. as you can see by the posts of those of us who have or are in the process it takes considerably more to disconnect from bau...

If I lived off the grid, I would really live off the grid.

No power, no running water. Why spend your life savings on trying to do it. I rather have my life savings.

I would learn from the pioneers.

Doesn't take much. Certainly not 250k..

But you aren't a pioneer....... You do realize that thousands of pioneers died of cold, lack of food & disease?

good luck with hygiene, irrigating crops, providing animals with hydration not to mention cooking and your daily requirements with no power and no running water.

it is a recipe for disaster.

Don't be ridiculous..how do you think people lived for thousands of years! And, today we have it even better due to technology and knowledge!