It seems we may need to re-evaluate and reconsider propane use.
That’s a point. Do the perc test before you build anything, also.
Unfortunately, land that will fail a perc test (by failing to do so, not necessarily by percolating too fast) usually isn’t very good for agriculture, either. Poor drainage is a problem for both ag uses and building uses.
Since the OP seems to be looking specifically for a good off-the-grid area, being in an area where it’s easy to get on the grid might be a disadvantage for them, even though it’s an advantage for most people.
Or was the particular land chosen for different reasons? Is it just a matter that one of you already owns it? If so, how attached to it are they?
As with water supplies, there may be problems with a specific lot even if most in the same area don’t have any trouble. Check first. – get your neighbors to recommend good well drillers and septic installers. They’ve probably got a pretty good idea what they’d be dealing with on your particular lot. And talk to your county Soils and Water people – government agency, services may be free, basic info is fairly likely to be free. If there are questions of where to site buildings on the lot that have to do with soil conditions and/or water flow, they’re also good people to talk to.
Having said that – these days there are all sorts of alternative septic systems that can be used where a standard one won’t work. They tend to be expensive, though; and some of them don’t work if the power’s out.
I didn’t spot in your descriptions so far the style of off-grid house you’re looking to build/install. On one end of the spectrum you’ve got the old-fashioned cut-down-the-trees-and-build-a-cabin, grab a shovel and start digging your own well. This is likely what the other locals have done for decades, probably building on the previous generations’ beginnings.
That type of construction usually takes along time, and tends to start with a small and basic set-up which gets upgraded over the years, usually using local labor or your kid’s help. It’s what my grandparents did; they literally lived in a cloth tent for most of the first year while sawing logs and building a basic 8x12 wooden shack. It took 2-3 years to get most of their farmstead built, this was with them living on-site and never leaving the place (they sawed green lumber for local ranchers to make money). Even if you’re hiring people to do all the work and could get it all done quickly, that type of construction is for long-term living and passing on to the next generation.
I’ve stayed at a few remote hunting/fishing camps in Northern Alberta that started this way; the old sawmills are still on site (rusted and overgrown with brush of course). The most practical heating method is to use what’s local; wood in those cases. Cutting and stacking it might not be as hard as you think, it’s just a task you get used to doing. That said, you may find cut & delivered wood easier than you imagine. I cut my own wood, and thought about selling it as well. BUT, every other guy with a pick-up truck also sells wood. I could probably buy it off my neighbor for $100/truckload for cheaper than my own time to cut it.
Whatever your heating source, you’re going to have to buy it in bulk and get it brought in. So it’s going to be a bunch of bags of wood pellets, a few cords of firewood, a big cylinder of propane, tank of heating oil, or something. Any of these fuel sources can be brought in and stored in large enough quantities to last a year; you’ve just got to plan for it. We’ve brought 45 gal barrels of gasoline out to fly-in lodges around here, and I see helicopters slinging big propane cannisters all over the boreal forest where there simply are no roads or trails. Supplies can be moved anywhere if you have the money and contacts.
The other end of the spectrum I’m not sure you’ve looked at is the modern modular remote camp set-ups. I live near the Alberta tar sands and have stayed at the camps they set up; the same systems are used for mines and other resource extraction operations. This type of system actually seems more suited to what you’re thinking of: A temporary turn-key set up you can plunk down in the middle of anywhere that comes with all the services you need. These camps are set up just by leveling a site big enough for however many units you need, and you can place them together to make one big structure, or rearrange them like building blocks to have wings off one central unit, or whatever.
All the plumbing and power supplies are above ground, water and sewage is stored in insulated tanks and heating ducts are also installed (probably easier yet if you have your own well). They can be powered by generators, but this is top-line stuff where you basically have everything you have at home now. You don’t need all the bells and whistles.
Here is a link with a picture of a smaller camp that could probably house about 100 workers. Note how some of the units are arranged to make one big open cafeteria (I’m assuming based on the vents), while other units are either stand alone or in smaller clusters. This site shows some photos of the insides of multi-attached units. Again bigger than what you’re looking at and meant for dozens of people, but you could scale down and just link up 3-5 of these units to form one big room with attached individual rooms.
It looks like you can even find used modules for sale if you want to go cheaper yet. Note the attached propane, AC, and power cords. This is a self-contained unit (check all the photos); you can get units that are just empty space, all bathroom stalls, just bedrooms, commercial kitchen, etc. That unit can be winched up on a truck and dropped off anywhere a truck can back up to.
Also in that last photo see that you don’t need a huge area around the units to be completely barren; you can clear just enough area and keep grass and bushes around. Big work camps just clear the way they do for ease of maintenance and also because they need big parking lots.
My suggestion would be to consider setting up a temporary (couple decades?) camp-style housing that can simply be delivered and set up on a cleared area over a couple weeks. It would come with all the services pre-installed and figured out for you. There are companies that do the planning and system details based on what you have, so instead of starting from scratch with everything you just spend a few days going through some questions and check boxes. I would spend my money on having something like that set up, and focus my time on making the property and system (once set up) look however rustic you want. Build split-rail fences, do some landscaping, or whatever. Then, when you all get old enough to call it quits and move on, call up a company and have everything removed leaving a clean empty lot with a building pad ready to sell; no need to worry about the long-term value of the structures.
One more thing regardless of the type of house you choose: get a quad or two (you mentioned a snowmobile already). These little machines are incredibly useful on larger remote properties; especially for older people. Buy a snow blade and you can keep any size driveway open. My retired neighbor can barely walk anymore but maintains a 3 acre property buzzing around on his quad all day. You won’t get snowed/weathered in, you can pull a small trailer and haul tools/groceries/other supplies, and you won’t get tired going back and forth.
Since this is looking for advice, i moved it to IMHO
One of us happens to own it. It’s been in the family for about 70 years. Pretty attached in that they have gone camping/hunting on it every year through their adult life.
We weren’t looking for “off the grid”, it just happens to be off the grid. And not hugely off it - only by about 10 miles. But 10 miles is a frickin’ long stretch if you’re putting in your own utility lines.
Looks to me like a pretty good reason, then.
Hell, yes.
Back in the 1970’s, I was part of a group that built a house on a stretch of a road with no utility lines. The nearest line, however, was less than a mile away.
We considered getting the place hooked up. Then we got an estimate from the utility company of, IIRC, $5000. In early-1970’s dollars. We changed our minds.
(We were also mostly in our twenties, and not expecting to live there permanently; we got some kerosene lanterns, flashlights, and a wood stove, and otherwise did without.)
– oh yes. That house was built by a group that on any given day might range from 3 to 30 people; almost none of whom had ever built a house before, and many of whom had never built anything before, other than maybe Tinkertoy and Lego constructions. The one person who had built houses before told us how to frame the windows wrong – that is, he taught us what we later found out was the quick-and-dirty method, not the we-want-this-place-to-last method.
Last I looked (though that was a few years ago), the place was still standing.
I hesitated to join this thread, because the story I can relate is so different.
A good friend bought a property in the Laurentians about 199 km north of Montreal and had a log cabin built on it where we lives whenever he doesn’t have to be in the city. It was on a lake heavily wooded. But the electric and telephone lines were already in place, Being handy with a chain saw, he down a load of trees where he wanted the house. He dug a 20’ ditch and filled it with preservative in which he let the logs soak for a couple years. By this time he had gotten to know his neighbors. My most important advice is to get to know the neighbors since they will be full of advice. Relying on their advice, he hired a couple of locals and acted their helper during the actual construction using his logs.
Mostly they heat with wood, supplemented by electricity. The biggest problem was water. He had a well drilled, but it never produced enough. Eventually, he drew non-drinking water from the lake and goes to a nearby town (to whom he pays taxes) to fill a 5 gallon carboy of water for drinking and cooking. But he and his wife just love living there. They only recently got Wi-fi. Before that they needed a telephone connection.
But you must rely on your neighbors for advice.
Several people have mentioned passive solar, which is good–but it’s usually not nearly enough by itself. Have you considered heat pumps? They work by taking advantage of differences in temperature, and transferring heat from one area to another. For the type of location you’re thinking of, the geothermal option would likely be best.
For insulation, aerogel is expensive, but very effective.
Well… yes and no.
First, absolutely no one in the area digs a well with a shovel. The area is on top of dolomite, a very hard type of rock that requires power drilling to reach water and a powered pump to extract it. Prior to that being available people would drive to the big local lake (which I should note is one of the Great Lakes) and get water there. Or collect rainwater.
Also, none of us have kids of any age to help with this. Since we have no descendants or heirs leaving it to someone isn’t really on the radar.
We sure as hell are not going to live in a cloth tent for a year. Sure, all of us have done wilderness camping before, which is precisely why none of us want to live in a tent for a year anywhere, much less a place that gets winters like this one does.
We are not building a log cabin on our own. We might utilize some of the wood on the property in the building, but if we can’t get this done by paying someone to do that work it’s not happening. Yes, we’re aware of the impact that will have on the total cost. The thing is, by pooling our resources we don’t have to do this on a shoestring. Again, let us worry about figuring out how to pay for this.
One of us has knee and back injuries that, while not disabling for regular every day activities would nonetheless completely rule out that sort of physical labor. I got out of construction/manual labor because my aging and arthritic joints could no longer handle the strain anymore and I wanted to avoid major injury. While it may be possible for me to do some wood cutting (particularly with a logsplitter and modern tools) and for non-injured part of this group to do so as well we are very concerned about how much manual labor would be involved in such construction. Again, at late-50’s I am the youngest of the group. We are not a bunch of young mountain men between 20 and 40. On the more positive side, we have some financial resources where, again, we don’t have to do this on a shoestring and paying for labor is a genuine option.
It’s looking like heating with a very efficient wood/pellet stove and a lot of insulation may be sufficient to make this work. That would have the advantage of our fuel being literally outside our door and not requiting buying it bulk and shipping charges. Although we may incur labor charges if we have someone else do some of the work. Yes, it will take planning, but so do a lot of things.
Er… no. I mean, thanks for the suggestion but that is NOT what we’re looking for.
The long skinny configuration is less efficient to heat than a more compact floor plan. Speaking of floors, those had better be really well insulated. Also, NOT user-friendly for aging people/age-in-place purposes with the elevated entrances. Not to mention I haven’t a clue if it would be physically possible to transport something that large to the location short of flying it in by helicopter, which would totally blow up our budget. I realize you’ve seen air transport for a lot of stuff but air freight is very, very expensive. The big oil companies can afford to burn money getting those things in and out, and in running them. We can’t.
We don’t have decades.
I looked at the links. The “figured out” part is only the fixtures on the trailer/unit. We’d still have to get a water source. We’d still need to get a power source. We’d still need to put in a septic system. Those propane tanks are nowhere near large enough and the location has some series issues with bringing in propane. We could order sufficient for a year, but then we’d still have to store them on-site.
We really don’t care about a “rustic” look. What you’re proposing is a viable system in many circumstance but I don’t think it would work for our situation.
I’ll make a note about getting a quad. However, keeping our driveway open is pointless if no one is clearing the road into town mid-winter. Hence getting a snowmobile, which yes, can have a trailer attached.
Darn it - EVERY thread I start in Facts gets moved! ::: pout :::
(No, it’s OK - that was the other place I thought about putting it)
Yes, a very good point.
By coincidence, the landowner of our group was called by one of the location neighbors today. First, to wish a happy new year. Second, apparently some of them are talking about pooling resources to get a powerline laid along the road out of town (they’re still in research phase, too). Landowner was contacted because 1) the line would have to run through one side of the property and 2) to see if we were interested in joining the power party. So maybe not so off grid after all. Also discussion of possibly pooling resources for a larger wind turbine than any one property owner could afford and sharing ownership/power. So yes, having some relationship with the neighbors could pay off.
We’re still looking into off-grid at present. At we’d still need our own water/septic and a backup system in case the city power fails.
That’s one thing - there are several lakes nearby. Including the world’s third largest freshwater lake which is a bit farther but not something we’d have to worry about running dry. Or if it did, we’d all have much worse problems to worry about that what we’re talking about here.
That would be grand but it absolutely will not work. First, heat pumps utilizing outside air will not be sufficient during the winter, it gets too cold. Unfortunately, geothermal is simply not available at all for the area. The locals told us that, and consulting US government resources maps confirm this. The local geography is on top of a thick layer of rock. It is very much cost-prohibitive to do the sort of drilling required for a geothermal heat pump in that area.
If you plan on using ground water you should consider having it tested for contaminants, likewise if you are going to grow vegetables have the soil tested, even if there has never been any industry in the area there can be natural sources of contamination
Since it’s a ‘reality show’, it’s certainly scripted. There are times when I would choose different options (because, 'If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing), but they do appear to help. I like that at the end of the episodes they check back a few weeks later to see how things have progressed.
Is the nearby town large enough to have its own high school? In terms of wood-cutting, since you have trees on hand, one possibility is hiring a group of strapping young fellas to have a tree-felling-and-pizza party. (You are building a pizza oven, right?*)
You might consider making that wood stove a masonry heater or a rocket stove mass heater. Both rely on surrounding the burn chamber with stone or dried mud (think adobe) to retain heat and radiate over time. Both versions used small amounts of wood to heat for up to a day.
In general, I recommend looking at some natural building sites for other possibilities. Even if you go mostly conventional, some elements can be adapted. You may even find hands-on workshops for projects like the pizza oven that will give you enough information and experience to supervise a crew of interested locals, or connections to someone who can hold a workshop on your property. In fact, given your description of the local community, I’d be very surprised if you couldn’t find a neighbor whose done a project of his own.
Oh, definitely - the drama has to be played up at every opportunity. The chief use of such a show from my viewpoint is to make me think about problems and solving them. I did catch one episode today. A bit over-dramatized in spots and a bit more dragged out than I would have considered ideal but it did give me some food for thought.
No. If I recall local town school is K-8. High school have to go to the next town over. But there certainly are people that age living in the area.
Yep, right now we’re leaning towards a rocket stove system but nothing is set in stone, yet.
I know someone in my current area who uses two wood stoves for heating his large house in winter and he has a large thermal mass behind each. His set up isn’t perfect and there are times he turns on his natural gas heater to supplement them. The concept of storing heat in a thermal mass seems to work well. It would work even better if his house had better insulation.
I was going to suggest a Tulikivi stove, but they’ve gotten so expensive you may as well run the electric service.
These are agreeably efficient, but I suspect impractical with off-the-grid power.
If you’re planning on aging in this house, you’re likely at some point to need part-or full-time caregivers, or visiting nurses. It’s going to be a little harder to get such people to come to an out-of-the way location so you may want to reconsider being that far out of town.
(And another thing to consider is to allow for a room or suite for a live-in caregiver. That space doesn’t need to be on the first floor, though, since presumably the caregiver wouldn’t have trouble with stairs.)
Say, you need a kitchen? 
If so, make damn sure they know what they’re doing. Tree felling is a hazardous enterprise; setting a pack of teenagers at the I’m-invulnerable stage at it isn’t likely to make it less risky.
I don’t think three older people would want to deal with firewood, ash and so forth. Plus a wood fire means for poor air quality. I think the primary heat source ought to be propane.
They really do work well. And the newer ones with catalysts mitigate the impact on air quality.
But I’m worried about need for electrical power too. Anyone know how much they use? It’s not much.
Separately, I know some folks will wire their off-grid houses for DC. But I don’t know more than that it’s a thing.