I thought they said hay. Mrs. L saw it and ran with the idea.
They did get sued by at least one couple.
Having now watched Homestead Rescue here are my thoughts:
- They play up some of the hazards, danger, and personal drama to, I presume, keep viewers interested because, being a TV show, they need ratings
- Not only are there three people in the family running this thing, they also bring additional crew along. This makes all projects go faster and some things possible that wouldn’t be otherwise.
- They have access to/bring along some very heavy machinery the average “homesteader” is less likely to have access to.
- Not only donations of materials, but presumably their TV budget gives them resources for projects that might not otherwise be available.
Now, none of the above is bad, especially where they disclose things like donations vs. costs of materials. But it’s not 100% reality.
I watch a show like that for the same reason I’d watch a show about prepping - not because I want to be a prepper but to make me think about situations in ways I might not otherwise, and to glean things appropriate to my own life.
And really, they do illustrate how interpersonal issues can derail a project, how enlisting additional help can really make things go better, why/how heavier machinery could be used (for the regular person by rental/hiring someone/whatever) and how donating/repurposing can defray costs. We built civilization by pooling knowledge and resources after all, it’s a useful thing to do. I just don’t think the average “homesteader” is going to have access to as much as they producers of the show do.
The productions are useful, but what is stated should always be taken with a grain of salt and/or otherwise confirmed prior to making a big commitment of time, money, or effort.
I saw a video on some guy making an off-grid cabin and was thinking the same thing. And if there are no inspections, etc. then how do you get insured for when your wood stove burns your cabin down?
You should only insure stuff if you can’t afford the loss. Thus a lot of us only have liability coverage on our cars because while we can’t afford a $100,000 liability claim we can easily afford to replace our $2,000 junkers. If you have a log cabin remember the logs are free if they come from your own property. So mostly just some labor. And we know you didn’t buy a $3,000 wood stove; if you had it wouldn’t have burned down. Instead you built one yourself:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=build+wood+stove
I’m the nutty person who, when flying ultralights started adopting some of the rules and regulation of general aviation not because I was told to do so but because a lot of them made sense and I noticed there was a lot less frightening moments, injuries and deaths among those who did so.
I feel the same way about building codes - even if something isn’t required, doing something to stricter codes can have a significant improvement in safety. The rest of the Off-Grid Cabal feel the same - we’re going to do our best to follow best practices whether local codes require them or not.
I’ve followed this guy’s YouTube channel for several years. There’s bound to be something in there that’s helpful to you:
I’ve done a LOT of work on my house. Some of it not permitted (I used to do framing and have remodeled a number of kitchens and bathrooms). But when it came the time to add an addition to the house, that would change the foot print of the house. Oh, yeah, I pulled a permit and acted as the General Contractor.
Yeah, none of the ‘reality’ shows actually are. What I like about Homestead Rescue is that it presents very real issues people are having (even though they play them up for the audience) and demonstrate solutions. Maybe not the solutions I would use (my not being a contractor), but solutions nonetheless; and I often think of alternatives. As my dad would have said, the solutions give ‘food for thought’.
Here are some random thoughts that may help:
A comment on solar in the north: It sucks. You can easily go three or four months in the winter with very little to no solar. November to February are terrible, and that’s when you really need the power.
In the summer you will make more than you need during the day, and maybe with $10,000 in batteries that will power you through the night. But in winter you should prepare to get your power from propane - don’t trust wind either. Small wind turbines can freeze in winter, the lubricants will get gummy and rob energy, and it’s not rare to go long periods without much wind in your average rural location. I would want a complete backup power system totally unreliant on wind and solar. A house full of elderly people losing all their power in a winter storm is not a recipe for a happy ending.
As an example of the uselessness of solar in the north, Alberta has 738 MW of solar installations. Guess how much power they produced today at their peak? 36 MW. About 5% of rated power. And that lasted for about four hours. And these are commercial installations with panels tilted properly, etc. Rooftop solar is worse.
Wind was worse today, only generating a little over 1% of capacity. Tonight wind is doing better at cirrently about 40% of capacity. But historical records show that even with 12 hours of battery backup and building out twice as much capacity as needed in the summer, you generally will get multiple 1000+ hour gaps where wind and solar combined will provide less than half the power you need, sometimes next to none at all. Germany, which is about at the latitude you are considering, went through ‘dark doldrums’ a few years ago where two weeks went by with both wind and solar producing almost zero energy. If you install either or both, I would consider them to be backups for propane to stretch the time between fills, not a primary source of energy. It might work in Arizona or New Mexico or Southern California, but on the Canadian border, not so much. The gap between winter and summer is severe. And of course if you get that big winter storm, your solar is dead until the snow clears.
I would plan to have a way to dig yourself out from a storm. I lived on a farm in Saskatchewan, and when the lane snowed in it was not fun at all. We were only about 500 yards from a graded road, but that 500 yards might as well be miles if it’s under 3 feet of snow. And in a serious storm it was possible to not get that road graded for a week or more. My grndfather had a tractor with a blade that we used to dig ourselves out after a storm. BTW, we had an outhouse and fittings for a rope on the side. I never had to use it, but grandpa said that people had died in the area going out to an outhouse in a blizzard, getting turned around and walking off in the wrong direction until they died from hypothermia a few hundred feet from their hiuses, So a rope would be tied between the house and outhouse to follow. Do not take winter storms lightly when you are on your own.
We didn’t have heat in the house. Instead, we had a huge cast-iron stove. Cook breakfast o; it, and it stays hot enough to keep a small house warm for a couple of hours before cooking lunch. Then we’d keep a small fire going for the afternoon if people were in the house, or let the house cool down while we were all out working. We’d have a late supper so that the stove would keep us warm in the evening until bedtime, which was spent under a pile of blankets. It’s not ‘city comfortable’, as often you are either too hot or too cold. There were no thermostats.
We had a well on the farm with a hand pump, which worked fine. We were lucky to have the pump right in the house, though.
Prparing baths sucked. Without running water we would put about a half dozen kettles and a big stock pot on the stove to heat the water. Multiple rounds of heating and pouring were required. Then the family would share the bathwater. If you were the last one in, it wasn’t great. You might want to look at showers and tankless heaters run by propane.
In the northern US, the groundwater can be as low as 35 degrees F. A hot bath is around 100 degrees. It takes 8.33 BTU to raise a gallon of water one degree, so raising 30 gallons of water to hot bath temperature takes about 16,250 BTU, or about 4.7 kWh. Even if you had a 10KW solar system, in winter even on a sunny day you won’t make enough power for one bath.
When we eventually built a more moden house with gas heat, we kept a 500 gallon tank of gas on the farm, kept at least half full, and a huge propane tank. I think it was either 500 gallons or 1000 gallons. But I’d put in something like that. My wife and I like to sit outside in the evening with a dual burner propane heater keeping us warmnin the winter, Just fhat little thing will burn through a 20lb bottle of propane in about five or six hours, and I think it puts out about 20,000 btu. A propane furnace can use as much as 1000 btu when running.
If you can’t start a well, you’ll need to get water trucked in, and you’ll need to build or dig a sistern. Surprisingly, trucking water isn’t that expensive. My mother and brother both lived in homes with sisterns, and they’d pay something like $150 for a 1,000 gallon fill. if you are a long way from a trucking company, it may be different.
There was stress involved, but it wasn’t specifically about money, but more about worrying about running out of water before a truck came out, especially if a snowstorm hit while the water was low. Good planning is required.
Depending on your area, you might not need a septic tank, but could instead create a septic field if you have space.
I would definitely buy a little skid loader or a small tractor. Cutting grass, moving snow, hauling wood, moving dead appliances and all that stuff is really hard when you can’t just call someone to do the job. A little tractor with a box trailer is a godsend when working an acreage, and with a blade necessary to keep you safe and mobile in the winter. I would 't plan on snowmobiling for goods.
Where you are building, you either want to dig a basement and pour a foundation, or you need to drive pilings below the frost line to build any kind of permanent structure. That gets pricy, and it’s a job for the pros.
Finally, I will note that all my relatives who lived on farms and acreages wound up retiring to cities and towns, because at a csrtain age it gets really hard to do the work. You seem to be going in the other direction. My wife and I considered it as well, but now we are leaning towards a semi-rural lot with service, if we decide to go.
Are we supposed to be surprised that little power was made via solar panels during one of the shortest days of the year?
On the other hand…
I didn’t see it here although I may have missed it. Wouldn’t an off-grid home cost significantly more due to the greater need for efficiency? Double-paned windows. Better insulation. More energy efficient appliances. LED lights. Etc.?
Most inefficient houses are that way because of poor design decisions at the planing stages. Doing a careful site study, and using passive-solar design techniques can make a house much more energy efficient. Superinsulation is easy if you build with something like straw bales. Even if you don’t, 6” studs with foam insulation isn’t much more expensive than the normal builder-grade construction.
There are some greater initial costs, although frankly even if I built in an established city I’d want double-paned windows, better insulation, LED’s, efficient appliances, etc. Doing all that from the start is generally less expensive than retro-fitting. Then, going forward, you have savings over older conventional buildings due to energy savings.
The most important “power” thing in a big storm would be heat. We would not be intending to heat the place with either solar or wind, so it would have to be some sort of wood/pellet stove or propane. So that would be leaving solar/wind for lights, appliances, charging electronics, etc. which might require limiting use or having an alternate electrical source for the dark of the year. But your cautions will be put into the pile of factors we’re weighing.
Your cautions about winter are noted, and you’re far from the only person to make note of this.
I particularly like this paragraph where you go through the math.
Space is not an issue.
As I keep noting, this may be off-grid but it’s not remote wilderness. We are investigating the possibility of hiring help for such things, and cost. Particularly in winter when the tourism business drops off there may be people eager for a small job. (Although tourism does not completely stop winter activities just don’t have as many enthusiasts)
We’re not intending that as a constant thing, more as a back up. Also, winter recreation. And before anyone points out how freakin’ cold that can get, I’ll drop in that I used do winter trail-riding on horses during Michigan winters, cross country ski for hours at a time, snowshoe, and I’ve also flown in open-cockpit airplanes in Wisconsin winters. I am well aware of how cold it can get outside and what is required to be warm and safe in such conditions.
Yes. Especially since the ground is so rocky in the area that sometimes the “digging” is done with explosives. How we go about that is why we’re talking with local construction companies, of which there are six who serve the area including one dedicated solely to excavation and foundations.
I’ll note that we’re not building a farm (although a garden will probably be a feature give that two of us enjoy doing that) which cuts down on the work considerably, although there is a point where you can’t maintain just a house anymore, at least not without help.
There is the possibility that we’d live there for 20 years then decide to go back to city living. I also consider the example of my parents, who owned a single-family home in the suburbs but at a certain point elected to sell it then move into a living situation where someone else took care of the maintenance. A lot of this depends on support services that are available. A lot depends on how capable we remain - elderly people vary quite a bit as to what they can and can’t do. A lot depends on what we may be willing to do as we get older. As I have noted, we would not be that far out from an actual town.
If we elect to sell and move to a town that might be as little as 10 miles. Or, if assisted living is required, we might have to relocate to Saulte Ste. Marie or maybe Cheboygan.
There is always uncertainty to making future plans. If we do this we might get 30 years in the home we want. Or we might have to sell in a year or two. But that’s a risk you run whenever you move, or whenever you build. Like I said, we haven’t decided for sure on this, we’re investigating it.
As some obstacles we’ve bumped up against with the notion of remaining in a city: crime, pollution (Michigan has more than one city with water problems, Flint just gets the most attention), lack of accessibility for the elderly, costs of retro-fitting an existing home for age-in-place…
I second the tractor idea, but it’s something you can decide if you need as time goes on.
I have a 4x4 Kubota loader with a box scraper that is invaluable to me. It’s like having a dozen friends with wheelbarrows at your beck and call. We’ve found all kinds of uses for it over the years.
Is there a ballpark figure on cost for such a thing?
I got mine about 5 years ago, but traded in my old one. Out of pocket was $17000, but the old one wasn’t worth much.
These are not ‘lawn tractors’ so not cheap. But, you can buy mowers and other attachments for it. I also have a post hole auger for the three point hitch and PTO. But as you say digging is done with dynamite that probably wouldn’t be of much utility to you.
This is the model I got. But I also have a loader and box scraper on it.
Depending on how much of the construction your group is going to do, it can probably wait.
Just got a 52 HP LS enclosed cab (heat, AC) tractor made by LG. $37k. We have 17 acres and a half-mile driveway. It’s probably overkill. Had a skid steer before, same price range but used.
LG makes tractors? I had no idea. Another option is Mahindra, which is an Indian company. I think whatever you buy, make sure there is a local dealer for service assistance.
Any other suggestions for tractors/other equipment people have found useful? Would be interested in the full range from “used dirt cheap minimum needed” on up, to some extent - we’re not going to purchase 100k equipment.
Also not entirely clear on some of the terminology - loader? Is that a shovel attachment on front? Box scraper?!? I’m sure I’ve what’s being mentioned, I’m just not up on the terminology. I’m not the person with background in industrial machinery/forklifts/tractors/etc. in the mix, that’s a different person.
I’m trying to educate myself on this, but most of what I’m seeing assumes a small farm which is NOT what we’re doing here. It’s basically going to be plowing snow, near as I can tell, and grass mowing although we’re not eager to have a multi-acre lawn. I dunno, maybe it would also have some utility for a largish kitchen garden, and/or hauling firewood.