if money is tight get a pickup truck and put a topper on it and camp with that as your bad weather shelter. you won’t get through the construction experience without it.
Seconding the yurt or even a good quality heavy duty canvas tent with a steel pipe frame. Well anchored, they can survive some truly insane weather conditions. Such a tent can easily be had for around $150 for 20’x20’.
Depends where you live. No one dares break in any where near our property (in Montana) as they know everyone is armed). If you build in Liberal land, you may have a problem as people see that they “have to call for authorities” rather than protect themselves. NO ONE DARES BREAK IN WHERE I AM, AS EVERYONE IS ARMED>
Doesn’t have to be pie in the sky. All you need is the land. That is the hard part. My dad just gave me 10 acres in Montana, and I am going for off the grid cabin ( with solar panels on the roof.
Im not wanting it on the grid, as I want to live off the grid. I have to pay for a well but for the mean time, I can use my dads well, and make an outhouse. I want enough power for LED lights, a high efficiency freezer ( For the meat I kill, the fish I catch< the berries I pick in the summer). I can build my 20X20 cabin with loft for around $3000 as I already have the land. The Solar panels will be more. The costliest part will be the foundatiuon, then the pannels. If you happen to be cool and are near Montana, maybe we can work something out, just saying.
I think living like it was 1813 would make me a healthier person. Own garden, Own Meat, Own construction. This society is going to HELL fast, and I want OUT. I know how to survive, and am willing to help those who would like to know how to do so as well. If interested ( Male or Female, Email me At shgibby61981@gmail.com
Shgibby,
I’d like to hear more about your point of view and how you plan to prepare. Do you think you could start a thread about your efforts inthe In My Humble Opinion section of this forum?
The whole problem with cabins is weekdays and winters they tend to be deserted. In cabin territory, so do the neighbours.
If someone drives up to your door and knocks on it, you’d have a hard time justifying shooting them. Plus, they live in the area, know what you drive, and if you have a garage to hide the vehicle in, you probably have some tempting fixin’s inside the cabin to take. You’d have a hard time arguing, even in Montana, that a guy not carrying a gun, knocking on your door or peeking in the window of the garage, was threatening enough that you had to shoot him.
Of course, while you’re down at the police station justifying your actions, who’s watching the cabin?
I have a friend who helped build his own log cabin. As a student, he had spent a summer working for a logging company. So, after buying the property, he spent a summer cutting down trees where he wanted his “cabin”. He stripped and debarked them, cut them into 25’ lengths and built a trough 26’ long which he filled with a preservative solution and left for a couple years. Then he hired a couple of local people who were used to building log cabins and acted as their helper for another year or so. The house they built had a basement and a second story (with sides sloped at 5:12 as I will explain later). At first, they used a wood stove (one of the efficient ones) with a chimney that went through and warmed the whole place, but after a couple years they gave up and installed electric heat throughout. This was maybe 25 or 30 years ago and it cost over $50,000. On the other hand, it is suitable for year round living and he certainly doesn’t spend the summer caulking. The one headache is water. At first he had a well, but it wasn’t very productive. Eventually, he abandoned the well and started taking water from the lake 50’ from the house for flushing, washing clothes, showering, etc., while getting large carboys of water from a nearby town (to whom he pays real estate taxes and has the right to get water). There is of course, a septic tank, but there are indoor toilets.
One amusing anecdote. When the builders were putting on the roof, the center beam was 5’ above the top of the walls and the total span was 24’ (12’ each way). The builders were about to cut the logs to 16’ or 17’ and cut after. No, he told them 14’ will do (including a foot overhang). They didn’t believe him, but it was his nickel so they tried it. They were absolutely amazed when he turned out to be right on. Pythagoras lives! (My friend is a mathematician.)
I live out in Montana and I’ve met many people who claim to be “off the grid”, but I’ve never met anyone who actually was in any meaningful way. Sure there’s lots of survivalist types who might grow some of their own food, heat with wood they cut themselves, have the fancy-pants solar systems and such, but every single one is completely and utterly dependent on thirsty power equipment. If the proverbial shit hits the fan, unless the gas stations are still open those guys are just as fucked as the rest of us. I actually got in a bit of an argument with one of those guys in a bar once when I asked him how off the grid he really could be when every year he easily puts over 1000 gallons of diesel in his pickup truck alone to maintain his backwoods lifestyle, to say nothing of his generator, tractor, log splitter, chainsaw, etc.
Living truly off the grid might be possible in other parts of the country, but it definitely isn’t in a place with a climate like Montana. At least not even remotely comfortably or even safely. This is definitely a fun place to play make-believe backwoodsman, but realistically communities are how people survived back in the pioneer times and they’re the only way people are going to survive come the whatever vaguely defined catastrophe you think is coming.