The TRUTH about OFF GRID LIVING that NO ONE WILL TELL YOU.

what does it mean to live off grid that is what we're going to be talking about [Music] today [Music] from the comments that we get on our videos i know that there is a lot of confusion out there about what it means to live off grid some people think that if you're gonna live off grid you have to live like a caveman right cooking your food over an open fire and wearing nothing but animal skins but is that really what it means to live off grid others seem to think that you have to live in a log cabin that you made with your own hands out in the woods you have no contact with the rest of society is that what it means to live off grin well let's see what the dictionary says dictionary.com says off-grid not connected to or using one or more public utilities as for electricity or water i think to myself well what is a public utility wikipedia says that public utilities are natural gas companies electric companies telephone companies water companies steam companies and former hydraulic power companies jules and i are going to take you around here in just a second and show you how we are actually living off grid in a modern world with modern conveniences all right let's go check it out the first public utility on the list was natural gas the off-grid alternative to natural gas is propane so in our cabin we're using a hot point range it works off of propane and it has a battery igniter it works just like the natural gas version of the stove except it's for off-grid use it doesn't even need electricity the battery igniter is down here and it uses a 9 volt battery and we haven't had to change it yet and it's been about a year that we've been using this stove i'll show you right now how it lights hey ducks are rude well you're so excited you know what he wants right what do you want talk son all right you want a snack huh whoa hey you want a snack all right you want a snack huh tuck snack taste it is that good huh he does love his snacks but this is how it lights you just turn it like that that's that that's for the burners and then for the oven you push it in until the pilot lights about 10 seconds and then turn it on so you can see through this little hole the flame to tell if it's sliding or not another thing that people often use natural gas for is heating their home and also hot water we choose to use wood to heat our home and so we have this wood stove right here and it does a pretty good job of heating our whole living area space oh and what about the hot water our hot water heater is right here it's plumbed into the house it uses propane heats the water instantly works super great off-grid alternative to natural gas number two on our list is electricity companies so let's go outside the off-grid alternative to the power company or the electric company would be some sort of alternative power source such as solar power wind power hydro power gas generator diesel generator propane generator something along those lines so here on our homestead we are using solar with a backup generator so from those solar panels it comes right here into the solar shed where we have our off-grid power station our batteries inverter charge controllers all of that good stuff there and then like julie said we also have a backup generator that we can use when the batteries get too low and the weather looks like this see that right there oh boy that's not good for solar we could go for maybe four days with weather like this before we will have to actually start up the generator and charge the batteries next on the list of public utilities is telephone companies so some of the off-grid alternatives to telephone companies would be cell phones you could also use maybe a can and a string maybe smoke signals i don't know there's lots of options but we choose to use cell phones kind of piggybacking off of the telephone company in modern times you also have internet which if your internet is provided by the landline telephone company then i guess you could say that that would be a public utility as well although technically internet doesn't really fall into the list of public utilities but i know a lot of people are curious about off-grid internet let me show you our antennas these are internet antennas right here pointing down that way we get our internet through the cell service it's lte high-speed internet it seems to work fairly good for us but if you don't have cell service on your off-grid property you might think about using satellite next on our list of public utilities is the water companies once again there are a few different alternatives that you could go with for your off-grid water you could collect rain water you could haul water from a different location to your property like we had been doing for oh about a year and a half tux do you wanna go for a ride you wanna go for a ride come on let's go come on or you could go ahead and drill your own well this right here is the well that we had drilled it's about 520 feet down there is a link to that video in the description of this video if you want to check that one out right now we are powering it with this champion generator right here we do have plans to hopefully get a solar system set up over here so we can actually pump water with the power of the sun as marty likes to say when we pump the water out of the well using the generator it comes out this frost-free hydrant right here and runs down the garden hose over to our large 2 500 gallon storage tank where we keep the water and then pump that into the house at a later date in no way guys are we saying that the way we do off-grid is the only way to do it or that we do it the best way or anything like that there are a ton of different options that you could go with a ton of different lifestyles that you could choose to live off grid if you want to live like a caveman in a cave perfectly fine go ahead and do that but don't judge other people who choose not to live in a cave like a caveman or if you want to live like a pioneer and dress in pioneer clothes and use pioneer tools perfectly acceptable or if you'd like to live in the modern world and have modern conveniences electricity running water hot water internet all of that there are tons of different off-grid options that allow you to disconnect from the public utilities and still live a very modern life here on our homestead it is all a progression and it's a fun experiment to try to learn new things figure out how new things work and try different alternatives to the public utility system if you'd like to see what else is going on here in our homestead there is a video right over there you can go ahead and check out otherwise i hope you guys have a really great day keep smiling and i'll see you over in that video in just a second [Music] you

Channel: Martin Johnson - Off Grid Living

Views: 550,596

Keywords: off grid living, living off grid, off the grid living, living off the grid, living off grid with a spouse, disconnect from the grid, off grid solar, off grid lifestyle, off-grid, off grid with doug and stacy, the truth about living off grid, the real truth about living off grid with solar energy

Id: DneOl1H5rlc

Length: 8min 15sec (495 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021