25 Years Living Off-Grid on a Self-Built Floating Home

foreign [Music] I've always had an affection for the ocean and to me I can't get any closer to it this is it [Music] we are entirely off grid the only way you can get here is by boat or aircraft and we are entirely responsible for our own infrastructure Charlie built this float home on the west coast 30 years ago and has been working on it ever since I'm a newcomer to hear I've been here for about six years it's been life-changing living out here we are tied up in an inland Waterway with excellent access to the ocean uh there are other neighbors they are primarily fishermen they're The Weekend Warriors we are the only year-round people here and it is basically Wilderness other than that it has been somewhat of a challenge to adapt to what is offered here but it's uh it's spectacular I built the float house and I milled even a large number of the major Dimension pieces in the float and the cabin the home is basically Cedar in my time being down here which is amount to do about 25 years full time it has evolved from a relatively small cabin to what it is today it's about 900 square feet on two levels and we've got everything that's any normal house in town would have we've got a laundry room we have washer and dryer propane run we have a kitchen with a good sized Pantry because we don't shop that often and so we need to keep a good supply of food on hand and then the living room and dining room are all together one big room and they're they're spacious enough for us and they're even spacious when we have people here it feels bigger than it is because of the design um our bedroom's downstairs and then there's two more bedrooms and storage area upstairs it's a nice functional little cabin for its 900 square feet it gives you a lot I have a quite quite an inventory of Driftwood that has been acquired off of uh beaches and I enjoy building out of it I like making furniture and just kind of cool little bits and pieces we have a covered in porch that provides us with a place out of the weather and that's kind of an important thing to be able to have access to the perimeter decks around the main cabin float it's like a 12-foot deck it's lots of room to move around on for deck chairs and for a dining area outdoors and wood storage which is a big deal for being able to have dry wood available when you need it the sitting out there is just like every single evening we take you know we take our drink and go out there and just sit and relax and chat about our day and it's just it's become part of the ritual here is using that front deck we are floating on styrofoam that's uh in the day that uh it was built and that was considered to be the premium way to support the structure if I was to do it over again I would probably use a different system they make a heavy duty kind of plastic now that they wrap styrofoam with and I think that's a excellent way to go there is literally schools of fish lots of times that live under the cabin because they're protected from aerial Eagles and predators and there's nudie Banks and all different kinds of things under there it's just it's amazing it does look like an aquarium The Boathouse was one of the first structures I built after the cabin I found that being here year round that it was necessary to protect my open boats the Lee Hotel she's a sweetheart she's a 1978 chb fiberglass it's our safe boat to go in questionable conditions uh it's our warm boat for poor weather we have what it's uh I refer to as it being our tie up which is a system of boomsticks that are lashed together and then at each end there is what I refer to as Jill pokes and they are smaller logs that go into the bush that in most cases there's uh pins drilled into the Rock and then all the structures are secured to the tie up there's anchors out in front we also have four ropes that go into the bush that tie to trees or stumps and uh she's very secure she moves very little other than the very severest of weather and even then you certainly have the feeling that you're not going anywhere [Music] we are truly off-grid but that's qualified by we take advantage in just about everything that neighboring communities can offer Us in the line of groceries propane boat gas of course and that kind of stuff so we kind of benefit from the the civilization at large if we're here and there's nothing pressing we can easily get away with six weeks even longer if we get groceries brought out to us by friends or there's a boat that goes part way here and we can meet the boat really we can be in here for months so she's the gardener yeah we've got a lot of stuff going on out there there is kale carrots peas beans zucchini cucumber broccoli lots of arugula uh there's garlic oat here uh in the summer probably 50 of our vegetables come out of there one of the things that we can do out here which is amazing to me is that we have a crab trap and we can drop it right off the front of our dock right here and get beautiful size Dungeness or red Rocky crabs the power is supplied by our 2000 watt solar system that during the summer like this particular time of the year is amazing if I'm using heavier pieces of equipment that may require the the running of a generator and in the winter it needs to be subsidized quite a bit more with the generator but nevertheless the panels that we have particularly the newer set are very efficient and do a pretty good job even on a gray day our water supplied from a creek that runs out of a small Lake up above the cabin and behind and there is an intake in the creek and it funnels it to reservoirs and there is about 2 000 gallons of water up there and we have never run out of water we've come very close the reservoirs are high enough that they actually pressurize the cabin It's actually an old Beaver Dam that's been given up but it looks like a pair of lakes and then we have filters in line that dig out the largest particulate and then there's a smaller filter and then finally for drinking water we have a filter system inside the cabin that sits up on the counter our gray water goes into the channel that we live on it is about 40 feet deep and so on any given tide about 25 percent of that water goes away entirely and uh our black water situation is a composting toilet um any Plastics we have go back to recycling in town we have a composter going all the time and we generally have a very small bag of true garbage well we heat with uh with wood it also Heats our hot water most of I find free-floating I go in uh latch onto them with ropes and bring them home and then I have a workstation set up for dewatering the logs and bucking them into firewood it is sometimes rather difficult because it tends to have a lot of sand in it so you get good at filing chains I usually just split it all by hand but I've done things to make it easier to uh to live here there's a hydraulic splitter that takes care of the harsh work that's that's about the system in the process of getting most of the firewood out of the water there's a lot of salt in it and I don't bother to fight that system I just replace the stove I know that I can get maybe 10 years out of a stove their difficulties involved in getting salt free wood that would be very challenging to say the least the winters here we get just about anything we get wind inside the channel but we do not get any wave activity it can get quite Fierce through the winds and stuff the ocean out there is nothing to take lightly we can sometimes wait for a while before we can get into town like we've you know we've had to wait for up to a week before we've got weather that isn't you know nine meters East so we have to plan in the winter for our leaving and plan to unplanned and reschedule and sometimes two and three times just because of the weather we have satellite phone currently which is hooked up with our internet it's been a real blessing uh as much as I hate to admit it it does tend to keep me a little more informed Helen when she was working for a living she was the site director of a hospital and I left the forest industry after 30 years I retired and I set myself up down here now since that time there's very few jobs down here that I haven't done I've built a lot of things for a lot of people I've done nature cruises [Music] some of the challenges about living out here for me I'm a bit of an extrovert and so I I really miss my connections to my kids and my grandbabies and my sisters and Charlie's family too so it's yeah we got we got a lot of people out there that we hardly ever see so that's that's the biggest challenge for me and I think the rest of it I just love until recently we both lived here year round and now we have purchased another house elsewhere um we're aging and uh coming up with issues around pain arthritis different things that aren't going to allow us to stay here for much longer it takes a lot of physical strengths to be able to do all the stuff that you have to do here it's an absolutely huge change for my lifestyle for sure I have a very deep emotional attachment to this home and to this neighborhood it is just it's almost become a part of me I've always wanted a challenge and this whole living down here was a challenge I think that it is such a rewarding experience and there's nothing that compares to it it is just something of itself oh

Channel: Exploring Alternatives

Views: 1,577,906

Keywords: off, grid, float, home, off grid, floating, house, boat, house boat, float home, Exploring, Alternatives, tour, self, built, DIY, cabin, water, solar, power, wood, stove, styrofoam, floats, greenhouse, grow, growing, food, vegetables, fishing, crab, wilderness, remote, water access, boat access, sufficient, self sufficient, lifestyle, living, generator, winter, wind, challenges, composting, toilet, greywater, fire, documentary, story, couple, west coast, short, shore, tie up, fresh, reservoir, drinking, deck, flotation, setup, interview

Id: VumwQpW3rZM

Length: 12min 48sec (768 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 24 2022