Ten Things We Wish We'd Known Before We Went Off Grid

the number one question that we get over and over again is what do you wish you had known before you made the shift to your off-grid living and some people are asking that because they are maybe thinking about living off-grid themselves and they want to be well prepared some people are asking that just cuz they want to know because it's an interesting thing to find out what is different what feels different and what are the things that we didn't know so we're going to show you the ten things that we wish we had known before we went off the grid here we go solar power is easier than you think it took me a long time to get comfortable with the idea of all of these different solar components and it was all so confusing but there's a lot of good literature out there that kind of simplifies it and you're not going to get it horribly wrong there might be in efficiencies in your system but it's going to work not no matter what you do but you can do a lot of different combinations of things and still get solar power still have a set battery bank that will charge your devices and do the bare minimum of what you need because after you've lived without power at all for a while your needs are really pretty low so any amount of solar power is worth doing plants can't grow where there's no soil so we've got a great piece of land but we got a great piece of land where the soil with not rich and prepared for farming we wasted some time or first year trying to grow plants in the soil without realizing that our first job was to create soil so we have a number of ways of doing that just bringing in any kind of organic matter um from various kinds of manure to UM grass clippings or leaves we now use a chicken tractor and to use our chicken manure and to really create soil even right in the middle of our garden plot where we just had clay dry soil before we do a lot of sheet mulching and um we're building our earth so that when we plant the plant from them they'll actually grow water runs downhill maybe you knew that already so we have a spring that's up the hill from where we set up our yurt and it took us a long time to figure out a really easy way to get pressurized water well that water source is above where we want to use water so why not just hook it up the moral of that story is gravity-fed water systems are a lot easier than you think and it's just worth hooking it up and experimenting and seeing what it's able to do in our case it's able to actually run a small water heater and run our sink and pretty much everything else that we need to do all that matters because carrying water is the worst the literal worst carrying water is so bad in fact that we aren't going to demonstrate it for you we carry our water in 5-gallon buckets all winter long this will be our third winter of doing that and if all goes according to our very very detailed and careful plan this is our last winter of it and that's good because it's just it's back-breaking labor we carry our water down this down for the spring all winter long in containers like this one can you see that it's a five-gallon container and we do have a sled we do have ways to bring it down the hill that make it easier but it's still it's pretty demoralizing to carry water so I I would say we we knew that it was going to be hard but we didn't actually realize how hard it is going to be anyway that you can get around that by creating plumbing systems and even doing the hard work of digging your plumbing underground so that won't freeze it's completely worth it batteries run out LED lights are a really efficient way to go the bulb that we put in our new light fixture is a 60 watt equivalent but it only draws nine and a half watts which just barely sips off of our little battery bank so that beats the crap out of the battery powered camp lantern that we used for so long also we now have rechargeable headlamps these are expensive but they will never go bad so instead of buying a whole bunch of triple-a batteries all the time and throwing them out we just plug these in and recharge them bears like trash okay so we already knew that before we moved out here technically but I think we didn't realize what a priority that was when we had a bear come and visit us we had created conditions that were ideal for a bear to move in and he was with us for a couple of days it was not a safe situation for me or for my kids so if you're thinking well I know that bears like trash but I think it's more important for me to do XY and Z than it is to secure my trash in an area where a bear might pass through I suggest that you reconsider those priorities we have secured our trash and since then it's very possible that the bear ambles through now and then but there's no reason for him to stay or her to stay there's no reason for them to hang out and move in and we sure are safer and happier because of it firewood is a ton of work so every year we have to fill this woodshed it takes about five cords of wood or so to get us through the winter and that's a lot of work getting it all over here and split and cut into the right shape and size and making sure it's all dry and actually useful as firewood so far we've been able to get by on limbs from trees that we cut down for lumber and off cuts of lumber and not really cutting down a whole ton of trees just for firewood but it's still a lot of work to get it over here the the long-term plan is to do a rocket mass heater for the house and we would have liked to do one for the year as well it is a huge savings on the amount of firewood that you go through so anything that you can do to increase the efficiency of burning wood for heat and for cooking do it because creating that fuel is just it's a lot more work than you want to be doing yurts are better at cold weather than they are at hot weather we were psychologically prepared for the winter to be difficult in our half home half tent yurts but we underestimated the kind of brilliant design of a yurt if it's insulated it holds heat very very well and we also underestimated the extent to which hot air would be trapped in the summertime so that became a solution that needed to be found in the summer months we installed a fan and this also has to do with our particular design of the yurt that we I don't have a large opening at the top and we were concentrating on keeping heat in but we solved that problem with the solar-powered fan in the top of the yurt and now our summers are as comfortable as our winters temporary is longer than you think so our plan before we had ever done any part of living off the grid was to be in the yurt for a year well it's going to be at least three years before we have our house habitable so I I guess the takeaway from that is you just don't know until you're doing it so if you are setting up a temporary situation you might as well make it comfortable enough to be in for a while because you just don't know how long it's going to take to get everything done and also you just have to the the ambitious planner part of you has to be kind to the part of you that actually has to live through it you can do things you didn't know you could do so I guess the moral is that you can teach an old dog new tricks I'm the old dog we were doing okay we're doing fine we've learned a lot and we're still learning but an attitude of learning and an attitude of being okay with accepting that the lessons that we need to learn are sometimes kind of elementary is allowing us to make the changes that we have always dreamed of making and it's all right there in front of you and you just got to pay attention and react and not be afraid and look nobody's died so far I hope you're getting our little joke here which is that a lot of the things that we needed to know we actually really did know maybe we didn't know we knew them or we didn't have the courage to act on them but a lot of the things that you need to know to create alternative lifestyle you've already got so if you're making a chef like this we wish you luck have a great time you

Channel: Fouch Family Off Grid

Views: 2,120,103

Rating: 4.8354578 out of 5

Keywords: Off grid, Do It Yourself, Esther Emery, Nick Fouch, Off-the-grid, yurt, survival, homestead survival, homesteading, homestead off grid

Id: -9JF7Zifc-M

Length: 10min 27sec (627 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 07 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/ayanami9870]

A list of the ten things mentioned in the video:

• Solar power is easier than you think.
• Plants can't grow without soil.
• Water runs downhill.
• Carrying water is the worst. The literal worst.
• Batteries run out.
• Bears like trash.
• Firewood is a ton of work.
• Yurts are better at cold weather than they are at hot weather.
• Temporary is longer than you think.
• You can do things you didn't know you could do.

Wikipedia article on the Yurt

I like the focus on water, firewood, good plant soil, and hiding trash from wild animals -- we often take those things for granted in the city.

[u/YourFixJustRuinsIt]

I wish there were more post mortem prepper vids and less "here's what you can buy because it's cool and you MIGHT use it vids."

[u/J973]

Yeah... carrying water does suck. Had a horse farm for a couple years and both years the water froze for about 3 months and my husband and I were carrying out 150-200 gallons of water PER DAY for 18-20 head of horses. That cured my love of running a horse farm very quickly.

[u/bannana]

yep, hauling water is hard.

nice vid, thanks for posting.

[u/[deleted]]

Kids?

[u/gordonjames62]

this is really good.

[u/fab13n]

This is perfect. That's everything I've learned when applicable (living on a river boat, i'm obsessing on neither soil nor access to water), only narrated in a much more entertaining way than I would be able to.

And yes, as many have noticed, being as ridiculously charming as the woman in this video is doesn't hurt.

One thing they didn't mention, though: turning fresh water into drinking water is even easier than PV electricity!

[u/Morganross]

This is one of, if not the best videos on this subject I've seen.

[u/KoolAide187]

I'd say with the natural spring they could benefit from it depending on it's output and how far away it is with a hydroelectric generator. Also they have thermal generators for their wood stove to create extra electricity.