we're going to jump right into it I'm Nick I'm Jen and we're going to give you guys a cost analysis of what it was to move off grid so we have been offgrade for about 2 years now and we're going to just kind of break everything down we get questions all the time about how much money did it take for us to move offgrid and kind of like what to expect if you guys choose to do that definitely with today's climate in the world we feel that people moving offgrade is more common and people really want to do it what's the first thing babe I'm going to go with the first thing is buying the land okay so buying the land we were in southern Utah we were looking for something that was kind of like what out in the middle of nowhere away from everything and we found 20 acres up on top of a mountain and we paid 57,000 $57,000 for our 20 acres in southern Utah okay and then the next thing we're going to talk about is we went and did permitting for a septic septic okay before we moved up here we had to obviously have somewhere for our number two number twos to go right so this is like one of the only things that we didn't do ourselves we it out and the permitting was $750 through our County and then we paid a ranch hand up here $7500 to install the septic tank that's a,g septic tank with a leech field so that will accommodate a decent sized house with a family of four maybe six and then we built the shop when we were deciding to move up here we definitely wanted a place to store tools materials and that type of thing keep them out of the elements so we felt like a shop was like a great idea to start just a place to have everything so we ended up doing this ourselves we dug the forms we made the forms we did the concrete and then we bought the metal preap building and then installed everything ourselves the metal building was $10,000 the concrete was $4,500 and shout out to our 14-year-old who helped with that that was amazing so the three of us did it ourselves it was the first time we ever did concrete our permit was $500 and the excavation for it was $800 so in total we're looking at about $5,800 for the Workshop it's amazing it's definitely a necessity when you do go off- grid you have to have something to store everything I mean you could use a trailer or something too but like we just wanted to Workshop to put vehicles in and that type of thing as well I want to say before we keep going that all these numbers are rough they're not exactly like to the the cents or the dollar amount it's just like a very close to the round to the nearest 100 or 500 or something so there's always unexpected expenses that you don't even think about and these probably could be even lower than they probably are all right to give you a little context we did the septic tank and the Workshop before we ever took the leap and moved out here full time so we were moving from Vegas and we needed a place to store all our belongings that we were going to keep out of our 3,000 ft home so we decided to buy a shipping container and store all of our stuff to bring up here how much was that shipping container the shipping container was 3500 we got out of a friend we got a good deal and we stored everything up there and then trailered that shipping container up here just to like house all of our stuff once we moved up here and we were in our trailer we were running up a generator and having to turn it off and on all the time or we felt the first first thing that we should do is solar power our solar power is looking at about $20,000 okay that's all the equipment that's the panels we have 10 480 W panels our inverter our charge controller our batteries that's just pretty much all the equipment to do it so the array to build the array was actually $2500 we had to dig holes concrete them in build like a big array it has to be a certain angle and all that stuff and we mounted all of our panels on that array so we had to rent up an excavator to Trench the conduit for the electrical lines from the solar array all the way over to the solar shed that we had to build as well we'll talk about that here in a little bit probably close to 900 bucks yeah $900 I think we rent it for a week equipment rentals are expensive so be prepared for that it's not it's not that cheap to do that with the installing the solar you had to the kit that was $20,000 did not include the wiring wiring conduit fittings all sorts of stuff that was a th like $2,000 roughly just to make it work correctly for our solar system we were looking at about 25,400 roughly for the whole entire solar system next up next up is water water the big before we had the water system we would get those 350 gallon IBC totes IBC totes right and we got three of them and we would just fill them up hook that up to our trailer and pump it in that's how we did it for the first 6 months or something quite a few months and then right we couldn't drill well it cost six figures to drill well easy cuz we're at 7200 elevation and there's a well probably 10 or 15 minutes down the road from us so we decided let's just haul water up store it in tanks so how much were those tanks for our water tanks it was $111,000 we bought four 2500 gallon water tanks and we were going to link them all together so we'd have a combined uh 10,000 gallons and then we also had a smaller 1100 gallon tank that we stuck over by our garden so that we could eventually start the garden and have water for the garden to take a step back for a second we do need to talk about the solar shed we had to build the solar shed in order to house all of our solar equipment and house our water pump right it's like a solar pump shed laundry room as well it's my laundry room still for now we needed a place to store all the batteries and the components inverter and all that stuff and then also the pump pressure tanks the filters for both of those utilities and how much did that cost for the concrete we're looking at $2,500 to lay a slab of concrete which we did ourselves our wood materials were 3500 to build it so in total we're looking at about $66,000 we did the the wood and the the insulation and everything like that we needed to be insulated so the water wouldn't freeze and also so the batteries wouldn't get cold the batteries wouldn't get too hot or too cold it's like our maintenance room for all of our utilities but back to the water the equipment rental we had to do again cuz we had to trench the lines in we had to dig our tanks into the ground so they wouldn't freeze they're not meant for burial but they're about halfway underground just so they wouldn't freeze the equipment rental was $900 we rented a thunder excavator from the same place and and use it to Big Dig the holes and trench the line all the way over to the solar shed pump shed and then you have like your filters your pump like miscellaneous things that you're going to need to make the water work right so we have like a sediment filter I think we have two of them and then we have a black a carbon filter and then we have a UV light filter too I think that was around $11,000 for that system we just kind of like pieced it together based on what we thought we needed the pump that we got to just keep the pressure tank full at all times so we have pressure on demand was $600 and then just miscellaneous Plumbing under the ground and fittings and having to R redo things two to three times cuz I'm not a professional plumber was about $1,700 for all that DIY right so that total for all the water $3,675 yeah that was all right you ready to get into the big numbers now the big numbers yeah here we go so but first I want to take a little backtrack because we were going to originally do our Farmhouse and then we chose the apartment let's talk about that a little bit because everybody always right so there's a foundation just off in the distance right next to us I see it all the time you guys probably see it in our Drone footage we originally were going to do a farmhouse and we did the foundation for it and we were on track to get the lumber and start building it so we could get in before winter and then lumber prices increased dramatically dramatically it was I me you guys probably remember so we had to kind of cancel that for now just because it was too expensive we stayed in the trailer for another our winter and then while we were staying in the trailer just crunching numbers and just time frame and how long it would take to build the Farmhouse we decided to build what we're in right now which is this garage apartment yeah it's it's got a cool cabin feel modern rustic apartment we just felt like financially it was going to be less expensive to build this and then also time wise it wouldn't take us as long cuz we really wanted to get out of that trailer just like learning all the basics of building cuz I've never built a house or we've never built a house from the ground up so just taking the time to do this one first so we can spend more time on that one and make it bright cuz that's going to be like our nicer house up here we always wanted to build a cassita type house like this just for family to come up we did it in reverse order it's okay it's fine though it took us 6 months to build this so I think we're we're doing good but anyways let's get into the numbers how much it cost to build this apartment and please keep in mind everything that we have listed off we've done everything ourself except for the septic these numbers would be a lot more if you have to hire someone to do this stuff take that in mind with the apartment build first thing we got to do is the excavation right so where we're sitting right now it used to be just a bunch of trees we flattened it out took all the trees out and that costed $1,500 right then we did the Footers in concrete which you're looking at 4500 for that that was part of the excavation after our friend Larry cleared everything out he dug the Footers and then we built the farms and did the concrete and that was $4,500 and then we had to get permitting for the apartment which was $2,200 right and then next came the we got a big huge Lumber pack delivered and that was awesome so that was $27,000 for all of the lumber to be delivered right and that was keep in mind we do have a garage underneath if you just did this apartment on the ground it would probably be way way less we wanted a garage down below I want a car lift when you move UPG you have to do everything yourself it's nice to have that type of equipment then we wanted a shady area too where if we were outside we can be outside or in that garage area kind of like party area for that we went into the electrical and we did sewer and plumbing I have a line item here for all these these things and I just put those all together as one item I guess spent about 4 $1,000 on the plumbing the electrical and the sewer to run the pipe underground that get everything set up for all the utilities and I guess you could throw in propane for that too that wasn't too expensive that was maybe a couple hundred bucks about $4,200 for all of that stuff to get put in and also again remember we did that ourselves the help of your dad the next thing we did was all of our windows and doors and so all of our windows and doors together were 5500 right so we're high elevation so we had to get high elevation windows we wanted to do black windows cuz that's the cool thing to do right now but it was like multip it time two and that's what black windows cost even though they're the exact same we just went with white windows we like them and I don't even notice the difference anymore next is going to be all of our drywall and our drywall was $6,000 we did have help with that that was the next thing we had help with that's like the only two things we've had help with was drywall and a septic cuz I don't like doing drywall nobody likes doing drywall does anybody like doing drywall everyone says to hire it out anyway so we were able to whip out drywall within a week right we we did it in one week and the $6,000 wor for paying our friends to help and also all the materials mud tape and all that stuff to get it done next we're going to go on to insallation installation is before favorite thing I wish we could have hired that out yeah installation we it was $4,800 so we did spray foam in the ceiling first to get an R value and a vapor barrier and then we went back and put bats in and then did that and it was came out to $4,800 my favorite part of this whole build which is the deck and the deck is $3,300 the deck was $300 we bought a bunk of 2x6 X6 Kiln Dy Kiln dried wood I always I never can say that but we got that and built the entire deck which we love What's the total on the house so far total and and we're not counting all the amenities within the house we're just talking the bones the shell of what's going on with the house and so our total is going to be 58,800 for our home that we built ourselves and we still need to do sighting the garage is not finished there's no Concrete in the G there's no doors down there and like she she was saying that's not there's no counters there's no countertops there's no appliances there's no fixtures we're just talking the shell cuz everyone could do it completely different we you could add under $25,000 to all that if you included everything that we've done inside easy that is our cost breakdown but Nick you are a contractor you do understand how much it would cost if you were to hire a contractor to come out here and do this so if you were to hire a contractor how much do you think it would be to build this house usually depending on where you're at but like it's like $150 to $250 a square foot to build a house at $150 a sare foot you're at about $180,000 so You' pay a general contractor $180,000 he would build you this shell that we just talked about we paid 58 for it right so we did all that so we saved about $100,000 but at on the high end at 250 I have not done that calculation yet let me see $300,000 so that's a big chunk of change doing everything DOI is is nice but also there's a lot of mistakes and learning and oops but the good thing is you do know everything about your house so if you want to go back through and you're like I know I put that wire or I put this right here that is a good thing about it when it comes to fixing your problems that you make I know there's a lot of people thinking about doing what we're doing every time we talk to someone they're oh my gosh that's so amazing I can't believe you guys are living my dream and it's to hear that it's very hard to do and you need obviously quite a bit of money to start out doing it but I mean it's definely definitely motivation like you have to get up and have the drive to go and build and do and take care of and maintenance and I would be able to do it without you right no way I hope you feel the same way about me for sure I'm so hungry I'm just kidding um so the subtotal everything to build not including our property was $27,995 and that's an estimate that's just everything that we built so far I'm sure I'm forgetting something cuz there's there's so many things that we've done there's a lot of little things like You're we're not taking into account the tools that we had to buy like random tools that needed to be bought the list could go on and on of little things that were not even calculating mistakes that you make and then you have to go buy more stuff to fix it like with plumbing for sure anyway uh so the total with the price of the property would be 18 $184,950 at least at least yeah I really hope that you guys find this video formative it's not like our typical video we usually document like us building and just having fun being up here on the property just living our life but there have been a lot of questions about like where did you guys come from what did you do how did you do it like how much money is it cost cost cost everyone's always asking cost yeah and that's important I had the same thing when I when we were doing this I would I I messaged a bunch of people that I used to watch on YouTube and and some of even become my friends right and they would reply and say we started with x amount of dollars and all that stuff I mean it was really helpful for us we're hoping that this will be helpful to you cuz we have not seen a video like this I haven't personally so hopefully if you guys are trying to make this leap and do this type of life it's rewarding it's amazing but you need a little cash but you could I mean we didn't work we once once we moved offgrade we did not work at all so we there's that potential of you still working or whoever still working and commuting to wherever your property is so that you can do this as well I think that's everything so that's a good Baseline for you guys to start with if you have any comments or questions about about about moving off grd or what you think you would need or if there's something that we miss that you want to hear about let us know in the comment section we'll definitely reach back to you and let you know our side of the story yeah cuz we probably missed something I hope you guys like this video please like comment and subscribe and we'll see you guys in a few days see you in a few [Music] days
