Off Grid Homesteading.....everything you need to know

[Music] one year ago my wife brooke and i bought about 80 acres of remote wilderness property up around lake superior and over the last 12 months we've shot a series of videos on this piece of property she built a small cabin i built a small cabin we each did a hand-driven well put in an outhouse and we also set up a camp a tech camp that we stayed in most of the summer while we were up there well documenting the process of all these different projects we have got a lot of comments and a lot of questions in this video we're going to take a look back at all those projects and answer the reoccurring questions we're also going to take a deep dive into the specifics of wells and outhouses and off-grid cabins we're going to touch on legalities and we're going to dive into the philosophy behind off-grid life in general stay tuned let's start with the outhouse my brother ryan and i went up to the property as soon as the snow was gone to do a little bit of trout fishing spend a little bit of time camping and to put in an outhouse which on a remote piece property like this is the most important building brook and i made the purchase of this property in the dead of winter when there's three feet of snow it was pretty surreal to get to walk this land and see it for the first time when it didn't have snow on it now when it comes to building an outhouse i've been asked probably more questions than any other single topic except maybe putting in a hand pump well let's take a look at a few of the things that people ask all the time just to clarify things number one where do you want to put your outhouse well you want it as far away from your main camp as you can comfortably bear to travel you know the outhouse is never going to be sealed off from the environment flies are going to get in and out of the outhouse you don't want to buy your food in camp you want the outhouse as far away as possible but of course you know sooner or later you're going to run to the outhouse and you don't want to run a quarter mile so there's just a happy medium now soil is a big consideration you want to dig an outhouse somewhere that's high up above the water table and good draining soil you don't want to dig an outhouse pit in clay if you can avoid it because clay is going to hold surface water and fill up with water before it's ever going to reach its life expectancy as an outhouse you also want to avoid low areas on your property so you're not hitting ground water when you're digging the hole [Music] i've had a lot of questions about this toilet seat foam cover this is just a one-inch foam that you get from home depot it's kind of an alaska thing with a foam seat cover like this even in the dead of winter when it's 20 below you sit down and that seats warm one question that i'm very surprised i get all the time is what do you do when the outhouse fills up well when the outhouse fills up you move it that's why i'm building it on these six by sixes so it can be skidded to a new site move it 10 feet to the right 10 feet to the left 10 feet backwards doesn't really matter you just take a new hole move the outhouse fill in the old outhouse hole with the dirt from the new hole lots of people have a phobia of animals in the outhouse people are always asking me how to keep animals from living underneath the outhouse well i've built half a dozen outhouses on as many properties and i've only ever had one problem in an outhouse with an animal taking up residence and it they don't go down in the hole and live there that's never happened matter of fact i've never seen like a mouse at the bottom of the outhouse i couldn't get out what i did find one time is i had a woodchuck go underneath the porch and then dig a hole horizontally from right beside the hole hole in the outhouse and by digging a horizontal tunnel from that the woodchuck totally filled in the actual outhouse hole and ruined it you know filled it right up to the top with dirt from the hole so i can happen but there's nothing that's just going to be hanging out underneath the porch spiders people are always asking about spiders in the outhouse outhouses are a great place for spiders to live they love it you know it stinks flies are going to show up spiders love flies just look for the big spiders and get them out of the way another question i get all the time is wouldn't the outhouse be better with a vent you can always put a vent pipe in if you want this is open underneath the walkway and it's open out the back it does get ventilation a pipe would be just fine i just haven't done it on this one another thing regarding animals in the outhouse spiders are about the only thing you're going to find in the outhouse but you do have to watch out for mice and squirrels if you don't put your toilet paper inside some kind of a container they're going to get in the outhouse they're going to take your toilet paper and shred it one other note on soil the ideal soil is soil that you can dig you can dump water in it the water will leach into the soil and it'll hold its shape sugar sand is going to need some kind of a vault clay is going to need some kind of a vault because it'll fill up with water same thing with permafrost in the far north areas so if you don't have soil that will hold its shape and drain you'll either maybe build a wooden crib and then that gets just covered and left you build another one when you do a new outhouse or you have some kind of a tank and you can have that pumped by a septic pumping company you know one thing that i get asked constantly which surprises me people are worried to death about snakes under the outhouse maybe that's a southern thing maybe snakes down south like to get in cool shady places like underneath this walkway in front of the outhouse that's not the case up here in the north you're never going to see a snake underneath your outhouse it's not going to get you that's just a crazy phobia people have of something coming up from underneath the seat and grabbing their backside while they're doing their business it seems to be universal because i've seen the comment a thousand times of course you're going to want to latch on the inside and the outside the outside just keep the building shut when you're not using it and the inside to shut it when you want for privacy or when it's raining or windy it's a good idea just to plan on one on the inside and the outside i love these clear plastic roof panels just for the natural light every outhouse i've built in the last 10 years i've used these clear plastic panels and it's just it's a wonderful thing because all day long you have a very bright outhouse of course you could use metal roofing you're just losing the natural light and it's the same process so i would just go with these polycarbonate panels when it comes to off-grid homesteading the only thing that gets more questions in an outhouse is a well now this pump is very old it's an american-made unit but if you buy a new one from menards or offline it's going to be the same principle there's only a few parts in them the leather components that make the pump work are replaceable you can buy them at menards or ace hardware or through lehman's catalog next time you see one of these pumps for 10 bucks at a yard sale pick it up and then just tear it apart and see what's inside of it it's very simple the reason i chose this pump is it's an interesting antique it was dirt cheap and it works just as good as a new one and i wanted to demonstrate that how simple these things are now this is the check valve leather this lets the water come up into the pump but doesn't let it go back down the pipe the little weight that's on that check valve holds that valve down and the weight of the water sucking against it it kind of seals itself off now this leather is a cup leather this is what's the actual the suction that goes up the bore of the pump and pulls the water [Music] one of the questions i get all the time is how do you find water people talk about dowsing and witching for water and finding it with rods and all kinds of stuff all i know is that in this part of the country the water is pretty close to the surface the ground is all sand the water is quite good pretty much everywhere and you're likely to hit water anywhere you drive a point in this particular part of the country if you're somewhere where it's really tricky to find the vein of water you'll have to ask somebody else now the clean sand in the ground is a very good natural filter by itself there's no agriculture in this area there's no industry in this area i'm not worried about runoff from farming or pollutants from factories or anything like that it's just water it's down there i'm not going to worry about it people ask all the time are you going to get your water tested [Music] every single person that's watching this video has a bloodline that goes back as far as humanity does and your ancestors have survived thousands of years drinking whatever water was available now if you have questionable water or you just have to know go ahead and get it tested but this is a fairly pristine part of the country and i'm just not going to worry about it the conditions for good water here are about as good as you're going to find anywhere now 150 years ago a well like this would be the pinnacle of technology people would be getting these on farms all over the country and being super thankful for them without having to dig a well by hand and line it with stones to keep it from caving in or going to the creek with a bucket a driven well like the one i'm about to drive would have been a very much a luxury one question i get asked all the time is how does the water get into the pipe if you see this blue section of pipe down here on the end that's the drive point it's perforated all the way along it from one end to the next and it has thousands of little tiny holes and it has a stainless steel screen inside of that think of taking a straw and putting a piece of fabric over the end of it a drive point is really an ingenious invention it allows you to drive a pipe down into the ground it has a screen that lets the water into the pipe but enough of a filtration system it keeps any sand and particles out now that i'm getting ready to drive this well let me touch on some things people comment about they say why don't you use a jackhammer why don't you use a fence post driver people have told me many times a fence post driver is a better way to go everyone i know that's tried a fence post driver will tell me it's too light i can pick one up and tell you right now from driving several wells it's too light it takes some oomph to stuff that pipe in the ground and that light little 20 pound fence post driver you may get the job done with it but you're gonna work yourself to death because it's too light to do this kind of work take a sixteen penny nail and try to drive it into a two by four with a tack hammer it's about the same principle there are two sizes of drive point and pipe available inch and a quarter and two inches the pump i have has inch and a quarter threads in the bottom that's what i'm using inch and a quarter pipe and an inch and a quarter drive point now the pipe and couplings that i'm using for this are drive couplings and drive pipe it's heavy pipe and it's steel couplings and they're meant to be driven if you use just galvanized pipe and galvanized couplings you'll break the threads and you'll break the pipe [Music] it's a waste of time and money to try to use cheaper pipe and cheaper couplings and you're just going to frustrate yourself there's the water right there i do know folks that have used a jackhammer to drive a driven well and have had really good results with it i don't have a jackhammer or an air compressor big enough to run one you're probably going to find that on another video on youtube and i think it's a pretty good idea if you have the stuff people ask all the time what about rocks if you have a lot of rocks this is probably not going to work for you it's a sand point it drives through sand like a big giant nail but it's not going to drive through a big rock now if you have sandy soil in water that's pretty close but your soil is full of big rocks it's just a gamble there's no way to guarantee you're not going to hit a rock and if you do you're going to have to pull that pipe up and move it and start over a very common question is how do you keep a well like this from freezing in the winter months well you can use the well but you have to let the prime down which means you let the water back down the pipe when you're done using it right now you can see me priming this pump you'll have to do this every time you want to use the pump if you leave the water in it of course it'll freeze and it'll break everything how you let the water back down the pipe is when you're done using the pump you lift the handle up and leave it up the mechanisms that are inside the pump itself will touch that little steel weight that's on the leather gasket at the bottom and it'll hold it open just a bit and the water will seep past that leather gasket down the pipe back into the ground and it'll save your pipe and your pump from freezing and cracking so much better now the well is going to clear up as much as it's going to and then you either drink water or you don't some water will have a high sulfur content smell like rotten eggs or maybe it has a lot of iron and you don't like that some people think every drinking source is suspect some people will drink out of a creek that runs through a cow pasture if you need to get the water tested to be happy with it by all means do that do whatever you're comfortable with but understand this point a lot of houses will have a well that's a driven point well with an electric pump on it and people look at that as a modern well it's just an electric version of this very same setup that we just installed in fact i could put a shallow well pump motor on this pipe and have the same well as a house i grew up in one comment i see all the time people will sit and watch a 45 minute video of someone building a cabin and then comment well that was really great i could never do that it's too complicated over the last 20 years brooke and i have built several cabins and houses but when it comes to brook's end of the job it's helping me most of the time the brain work the math that's my job that's what i generally do cutting rafters and laying out walls and window openings anything that requires actual like construction knowledge it kind of falls to me but that's not because she can't do it it's just because she hasn't had the opportunity before to do it by herself without my input most people who look at a project like this and think automatically oh i could never do that they've never tried a small project like this to find out how difficult it is and figure it out like anything else in life it's just a process of experience and you get experience super fast when you start building something all by yourself you have to figure it out now personally i love to read i love to watch videos of somebody doing something that i would like to do but i will guarantee you this one day of doing is better than a year's worth of reading better than a year's worth of watching videos you're not learning as much as you believe you might be learning by watching videos and reading books putting your hands on the materials making the cuts making the measurements seeing how it works in real time with your own mind engaged in a project that's where you really are going to make progress quick a lot of people are afraid of making mistakes ruining valuable material and that's a natural thing everybody fears mistakes the truth is the mistakes are a real gold mine you're going to learn insider knowledge about what you're doing from your mistakes that you're never going to get from a book or a video another comment i see quite often is people don't think they can physically do the physical work of building a cabin now brooke here is five foot four she's 125 pounds there were things like this three-quarter inch plywood that probably pushed her about as far as she wanted to be pushed not to mention she cleared about a quarter of a mile a trail and then cut another quarter mile of four-wheeler trail just to get all of her materials back here but 100 percent by herself brooke went to the lumber yard loaded all these materials hauled all the materials by hand and figured everything out start to finish to build this cabin not only that but come to find out an a-frame is nothing but angle cuts so there was a lot of brain work that went into this over and above just simply making a box or a square wall brook did an absolutely fantastic job on this cabin and for folks out there that look at something like this and think wow that's just so out of my league that's so out of my range it's totally doable it's doable for anybody who's willing to try and anyone who's willing to learn that's really the key if you have the heart to try and the patience everything's possible brooke built this cabin from start to finish 100 by herself which meant any time she ran into a snag she had to figure it out you can do the same thing this cabin turned out beautiful and she's going to be able to enjoy this thing for years to come if you'd like to see brooke build this cabin from start to finish pop over to her youtube channel girl in the woods the link's down in the description i get asked all the time where's your wife and of course in brooke's videos she gets asked all the time where's your husband the fact that we built two cabins on this property people have asked over and over why are you building two cabins why aren't you just building one where's the other person now brook and i are together all the time but when we're filming we're filming separately a lot because we're filming different things for a lot of the time that brooke was building her a-frame our son mick and i were in alaska and when i got back to the states i procrastinated until late into the fall before i started my project when building this cabin i decided to sink posts in the ground kind of like pole barn construction i sunk the front set of posts four feet in the ground and the back set of posts are short posts and they're set on concrete pads folks have commented about these posts maybe rotting but they're pressure treated rated for ground contact why did i bury the front posts and then put the back ones on concrete pads well every time i build i just want to try to do something different and i didn't have enough posts to bury all of them four feet down so i cut short posts for the back it's like this insulation people ask why i used craft faced insulation well that's because it's what i had i think the whole process of construction is so over thought 90 of the time takes a lot of the fun out of being a contractor now i used to be a cement contractor where i did foundations and slabs and stuff like that and people love to let you do that and leave you alone but when it comes to carpentry everybody thinks their way is the right way when the truth of the matter is there's a lot of ways to do this and you're really just building a box you shouldn't think too much about it one of the questions i get asked all the time is about the legalities of things is it legal to build a small cabin well most places have agricultural exemptions so if you want to build a horse barn you don't need a permit unfortunately you may have a zoning ordinance in your area and even a building that wouldn't require a building permit might require a zoning permit the zoning inspector is going to want to come out ask you about the usage the intended use of the building and check setbacks from the neighbor's property in the road things like that when it comes to building permits a lot of places have a square footage minimum i think in this state it's about 200 square feet anything that size and smaller is not going to require a building permit one of the only practical uses for zoning laws is setbacks you don't want your neighbor building right up against your property line so on a build like this i'm in the middle of 80 acres even if there's a zoning ordinance here i'm not going to get a permit the original intent of zoning laws was to keep industry out of residential areas you don't want a sewage treatment plant moved right into your subdivision so we have these usage laws which are zoning laws the problem with zoning laws is they've kind of morphed into people wanting to pass zoning laws so their neighbors can't do x y and z often zoning laws are enacted as kind of a reaction someone wants to sell used trailer houses on a couple acres or somebody wants to put a mud bog the community a lot of times will get together they don't want that industry in the neighborhood they adopt zoning laws and they'll take a zoning law from a big city and just apply it to that area when it comes to the building code there's nothing wrong with the building code it addresses safety issues like deck railing spacing and handrails and tread length and stair step height egress windows like how big and how tall off the ground a window can be in a bedroom so you can get out during a fire there's nothing wrong with the building code most places in the country pretty much use the same code anyway in earthquake zones you're going to see different requirements than you are in areas that don't have earthquakes but the building code is is pretty similar one state to the next this building project is under the minimum square footage so i did not get a building permit and it's also in the middle of 80 acres so there will be no setback issues so i didn't get a zoning permit i don't even think that this county has a building inspector i think they share a building inspector with a couple other counties because of population loss and cutbacks and funding and that sort of thing so even if i wanted to get a building permit which this place doesn't require the odds of an inspector ever making a trip out here are slim to none to illustrate that point i have a neighbor who has a beautiful probably thousand square foot log cabin they didn't bother to get a permit because they knew an inspector wasn't going to make the two-track ride out there to actually do their job that the permit pays for i also have another neighbor who got a building permit for their cabin but the inspector that was there at the time never made one single trip out to check on the quality or the accuracy or the code compliance of the building project they took that person's thousand dollars for a building permit and the builder got nothing for it they got no inspection services they got no back and forth of what's the correct way to do certain things they got nothing it was just a hoop the homeowner jumped through and an expense the homeowner incurred and they got nothing for it now i'm never going to encourage anybody to go out and break the law but the truth about building laws and zoning laws is that they're largely ignored someone will build a garage and the next time the tax assessor comes by they'll be like oh i see you got a garage they add it to the tax roll it's a taxable building the township's not going to care or the building inspector drives by someone's house and sees that they've put an addition on their house but they know those folks so it's cool it's never going to be brought up one of the biggest problems in this country in general is unenforced laws if a law is not important enough that it can be ignored it shouldn't be a law in the first place it should never be a weapon that's available to be used against you and if it's something that needs to be enforced it needs to be enforced but these wishy-washy laws are a real issue in my opinion my personal opinion is that zoning ordinances should only apply to industry and business and building permits should only apply to people who are borrowing money to build if you're building on your own land with your own money you should be able to do whatever you want it's in the best interest of the person who owns the property and who is building the building to build as close to code as possible so in the event that they want to sell later on down the road their project that they're building is going to be financiable whether it's a house or a shop and a bank is going to be able to loan someone else money to buy it seeing so many places are built with construction loans a lot of times you have a state building department and a law that you have to buy a building permit and all that's ultimately being done is the banks are having their quality control done for them at the expense of the taxpayer so to make a long story short the farther away from the bigger cities you are the more lenient most everything is if you live in the middle of chicago or los angeles you're not even going to be allowed to patch the sidewalk in front of your house and that's unfortunate but if you live somewhere that's way out in the thules like alaska or idaho you probably do pretty much what you want so long as you're using your own money case in point in alaska where i've built a lot of what i've built in my life there is no state building department if you want an inspection on your home building project you hire a private inspector they come out do all the inspections the plumbing the electrical the framing etc etc and then you know that when you go to sell that house it's going to be financial but there is no state building department and there are no building permits that you need to get to build it's all on you which in my opinion is the way it should be truth is 20 some years ago when brook and i got married and got started in life we were living in interior alaska we bought a cheap piece of property for about six thousand dollars we built a 12 by 12 cabin on it we lived in it for two and a half years in that part of the world it's very much up to you you could do whatever you want with your own land you build whatever you want it's your responsibility it's your life and i love that about that part of alaska but more than that it also gave us a real start in life we had a couple years where we were paying next to nothing in property taxes we're paying next to nothing to heat we hauled our water we had an outhouse it was an extremely simple life but it was a very very easy way to get ahead in this world that's something people are really going to have to start to think about [Music] your kids get out of school tomorrow they're going to be in a housing market where a modest starter house is going to cost them a hundred thousand dollars how is that sustainable you know people don't want their neighbors living in a tiny house next door because oh that's just not i don't want that in my neighborhood well those people might be getting a head start to be millionaires in their lives because they're not incurring all this debt because they don't have all these living expenses it's a fantastic way to get started in life and i think it's something we're really going to have to start looking at in the future in this country we've priced so many people out of the housing market and then there's such restrictions on what you can build that people are going to get out of school and be in a rather hopeless situation when i started this channel i really wanted to share that angle of life that philosophy the freedom you get through rustic living if i had to describe the channel to somebody in a sentence i would i would tell them that this channel is all about freedom through rustic living brook and i started out in a one-room cabin nowadays you'd call it a tiny house back then it's just a dry cabin in interior alaska looking back i see that cabin build as a huge blessing in my life not only did it give me a lot of skills and confidence but it also gave me perspective perspective that is so valuable today in this country that you can work with your hands and and learn how to build the thing that you live in that little cabin was brook and i's introduction to the concept of sweat equity and it's made such a huge difference in our lives [Music] that pioneer mentality so many people around the world are so thirsty for that opportunity to do something uh get a start in life by building a little tiny cabin to live in tiny houses and little cabins are more popular today than they have ever been but on the flip side of that there's this other mentality that says i want to keep my neighbors from living in a way that i don't like i don't want my neighbors living in a tiny house i don't want them living in a little shed people can feel threatened by an alternative living situation and it's a terrible shame you have two mindsets there's the people who want more control over their own lives they want more control over their own situation and there's the other side the people that want control over everyone else's life over everyone else's situation because people doing things that they wouldn't do makes them uncomfortable i absolutely love cabin living i could have an outhouse and a pitcher pump well for the rest of my life and be totally happy with it [Music] if i want to play electric guitar i just fire up the generator if the power goes out just stoke the wood stove [Music] if you want a four bedroom three bath mcmansion with beige siding in a beautiful subdivision with paved streets more power to you that doesn't bother me a bit but in my life what i really crave is i want to be left alone to do what i please with the time that i have and the resources that i have so many people in this country want the same thing they just want to be left alone they're not happy with the only choice that they have is what color of siding they're allowed to have by their homeowners association that's no real choice in life one of the things i really wanted to convey five years ago when i started this youtube channel was hope hope to people that look around them and they just don't see a way to get ahead in life they see 300 000 houses and people driving 50 000 trucks student loans and mortgages and and people just thinking if this is the american dream it's not what i want this does nothing for me i wanted to give those people hope who wants to find themselves 45 years old and 200 000 in debt where you don't own your home you don't own your vehicle you haven't paid for your education for a lot of folks that's just the way it is in america today tiny houses and cabins and off-grid living and van life all of those things are at an apex of their popularity people want a different answer than a mortgage than a car payment than a student loan that's not the answer anymore back in the middle of michigan where i grew up some of the best factories were paying 14 an hour when i got out of school those jobs are almost impossible to get the average factory job would be about 9 bucks an hour today 30 years later it's not a whole heck of a lot different but the housing market has quadrupled vehicle prices have tripled food prices have tripled the idea of buying a house today that was worth 50 000 10 years ago and now it's worth 200 000 how does that make sense for anybody 21 years ago brooke and i built our first cabin on two acres of property outside of fairbanks alaska the land cost us six thousand we maybe had three thousand into the cabin by the time we were done and we lived in that cabin for two and a half years and that allowed us not only to get ahead but to experience real freedom and to get a perspective that hopefully is valuable to you guys through these videos i wanted to show folks that even though there's legal hoops you have to navigate and there's nosy neighbors that might want you to live a different way that it is possible to have a rustic lifestyle to have a small off-grid cabin that you don't have to be amish to have the same benefits that amish folks have with a minimalistic lifestyle that really helps them get ahead in life now i started this video off kind of doing a q a about the most commonly asked questions regarding homesteading about wells and outhouses and building cabins and stuff like that but for me it's really hard to talk about that sort of stuff without really getting to the heart of the question the question is why why do you want to do your own well why do you want to why do you want an outhouse why do you want a little tiny cabin and really it's just it's this theme in in the world today not just america but in the world people want more simplicity people want more freedom and it's plain to see that more technology is not giving us more freedom more expensive complicated vehicles are not giving us more freedom more regulations and more laws are not giving us more freedom the world is not becoming more free but i think it could [Music] i think for a lot of things the way forward in the future for this country and maybe the world is more the way backwards simpler housing simpler vehicles simpler lives in general [Music] one of the questions that i got asked the most about this cabin is how much did it cost i couldn't answer that in the first video or the second video because i had a giant pile of receipts from all my building materials and i hadn't added them up yet when i finally got around to adding all the receipts up it was right around fifty five hundred dollars about five thousand five hundred dollars to build this cabin and that was pretty much everything now a lot of that expense is the tongue and groove there's tongue and groove on the walls there's tongue and groove on the ceiling and the tongue and groove is fairly expensive for a wall covering i have about 1200 into the tongue and groove that went into this cabin i bought it at menards and they have an 11 rebate which of course i forgot to send in so i paid full price for it i didn't get my rebate back so there are much cheaper wall coverings at 1200 bucks this is about 20 of the price of the whole entire cabin just the tongue and groove but when it comes to the trim i just cut up the scrap the remainder of the tongue and groove from the windows and door openings and i used that for trim so there was no added expense for the trim one question that i get asked quite a lot is why i don't use a nail gun well i don't own a nail gun and the generator that i do own is too small to run the air compressor that i do own that's big enough to run a nail gun if i owned it on the other hand this little brad nailer is fantastic and it runs off a tiny little air compressor that i borrowed from my sister that's easy to run with the generator that i have that brad nailer makes so much work so easy and it's very inexpensive i think it was 25 when i bought it i think there's an assumption that because i use a hammer that i'm trying to make some kind of a point i'm not making any point at all out here in the wilderness i'd rather swing a hammer than borrow the tools to run a nail gun to do the framing it just seems it seems nicer makes for a nicer work site i don't mind swinging a hammer at all the same goes with this table saw it looks cool it's a good visual but i'm not using it to for a visual i'm just using it because it's the table saw that i own i'm not trying to make a point with any of the tools i have other than the fact that you can do this with whatever tools you do own you don't need anything fancy you don't need anything new all you need is tools to function i use the tools that i already have they work fine and there's really no point i'm trying to make with them one of the questions i got asked all the time on this is why is the cabin just plywood isn't that going to be a moisture issue are you going to cite it my intention was to cut cedar shingles on my bandsaw rig and cover the entire place kind of like a cape cod look with cedar shingles but when you wait till the middle of october to start a building project you run out of time and so did i so ultimately the cabin is going to get sided with something i'm thinking of slabbing up some spruce trees and using spruce slabs up and down vertically for siding or cutting cedar shingles and shingling the hole outside of the cabin and cedar which i think would look fantastic but it the cabin is going to be sighted in the future another question i get all the time is what power station is it that's powering these lights i think it's a chiffon c-h-i-f-o-n i believe uh it's very small very very easy to tow very easy to charge and it sure does a great job because for what i'm doing that's about all you need i'm only running those lights it'll run those lights for four five six days another question i get all the time is about the safety of being this far out this cabin is seven miles to a plowed road in the wintertime which means it's snowmobile trails for seven miles just to get to where you could park a car so if something did happen it would be a major ordeal just to get to a functioning vehicle seven miles away now on one hand it's a very legitimate question but on the other hand there's risk in everything living out here you are alone so you are taking more responsibility for yourself if you get hurt you probably don't have access to the same resources someone on a paved road does but on the other hand you could die in a car wreck tomorrow life is full of choices and fuller risks and there's no way to mitigate it all you just got to do what makes you happy well i hope you all have enjoyed this video and the philosophy behind off-grid living in the deep dive into outhouses hand-driven wells cabin builds i hope that's cleared up some of the things you've wondered about about the off-grid lifestyle my name is dave whipland thank you so much for watching bush radical be radical eh see you soon

Channel: Bushradical

Views: 1,829,585

Keywords: Off grid, tiny house, cabin, off grid cabin, off grid living

Id: 2JrbcZDwJtQ

Length: 38min 43sec (2323 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 16 2022