My Wife and I share bathrooms, but not office space. No way. We do need our space. We already work with each others respective offices/departments. That is handled quite fine with email.
It’s cool that while we KNOW what each other does, neither of us could do the others job. When at home I or she may say “OK, work question” and so we switch gears.
Of course we share things at the end of the day. It’s hard no too in our situation. But it’s generally watercooler type stuff. We limit our work talk pretty well.
My Wife worked from home for a couple of weeks during the beginning of COVID. Nice set up. I had my space, she had her own.
Now that I see how great it is to NOT work face to face with coworkers, Uh, uh. No way.
My Wife and I spend plenty of time together, but we need work separation, which is difficult as it is.
Don’t know if the OP follows subreddit linked below, but their experiences building off grid homes might be useful. I occasionally wander in there just out of curiosity.
Would have replied sooner but I’m recovering from major surgery and an AC failure during a heat wave and just got home today. Thank you for the reading material for my multi-week leave from work while I recover.
What the hell - thought I’d check in on this thread.
We’re still investigating this idea, but everything’s on hold for the current year due to major health concerns for two of us. The good news is that these are probably the “fix it and it stays fixed” sort of problems, and follow up for one of us would be quite doable at that location going forward. We know this because we know of two other people on the island with the same issue who have no problem having their follow up attended to while living there. Basically, life happened and we’re taking care of it this summer rather than camping or moving forward on a multi-year project that is not on a deadline at this time.
Next task is doing a building survey of the land to make sure property boundaries are marked and to determine where we can build on the 40 acres, including where a septic field can be sited. Or, if there’s no area with sufficient topsoil, how to fix that. (We have the names of contractors who can address that problem) The original plan was to do that and do our usual camping trip but as I said, something came up. So that is deferred until next year.
Even if, in the end, we decide to sell and retire elsewhere a new survey and boundary markings would need to be done so we’d probably have to do this sooner or later anyhow. No, we aren’t 100% committed at this point, but it is our preferred option if we can make it work.
Two of us are planning to retire a couple years earlier than originally planned. We weren’t intending to actually get the build done until at least one of us could be on site so that potentially brings that a bit more forward.
We were informed by builders up there that there could be a wait as long as 18 months to start construction, but given we’re still a minimum of 2-3 years out that’s not the end of the world. It’s still good to know, however.
The grid has been extended a bit more over the past two years. If it keeps growing at this rate then hooking up to the grid will become our better option (with appropriate backups, of course).
So… thanks again to everyone who contributed. Not sure how much I’ll be updating this in the future, but if/when we make the commitment to build and put the money down I expect I’ll update it.
My Wife and I are moving to a new house out of the mountains. We are becoming suburbanites (but 1/3 acre). We are getting a PV system that should take care of all of our electrical needs. Including electric vehicles (which we don’t have yet) and a hot tub at the new house (the hot tub is a meh… perhaps fun in the winter, but I doubt it).
But hey, other wise it’s perfect. Seriously perfect for us.
We are far, far from being off grid. But we did do the Solar. Colorado blue skies are perfect for it.
The survey for boundaries and building conditions will be done by the end of this month.
We also consulted a lawyer with the applicable expertise and experience in regards to structuring legal ownership the way we want it. All that’s left now is to go to his office in person, sign the paperwork, and hand him a check for his efforts.
Our eldest will be retired at the end of next month and thus free to go to the site to supervise construction.
We have not, though, finalized exactly what structure we want. Which is OK, the earliest we’d break ground would probably be next year.
The locals have built out more of the electrical grid - hooking into it is now much more practical than it was four years ago when I started this thread. I’m still looking into possible back up systems but as back up, not primary source of power.
We’re looking at propane for heating with wood back up. After more research and speaking with others living on the island I am now convinced that is the way to go.
Water supply in the area seems split between wells and catchment/cistern. As mentioned, the town has a well that’s free for use by anyone if you need a backup for your home system.
So… it looks like we’re going with running off to live in the woods.
I heated with wood for years. It is a lot of work. We ended up going to propane.
Now in the new house, we have PV solar. Looks like we are making 3% more power than we need. But we still depend on the grid, we don’t have batteries. We send extra energy off during the day, and get it back at night.
It’s a fairly symbiotic with the electric company. But of course, they ‘buy’ it from us at a lower cost then we ‘buy’ it back from them. But that seems fair, we are using their grid that they must maintain.
I heat with wood with a fuel oil steam backup. The wood is indeed work, but I find it mostly pleasant work; opinions of course will vary. Most of the work can be hired out if you don’t want to, or become unable to, drop trees, cut, split, and/or stack; leaving you only with moving wood the last bit to the stove, loading the stove, and getting the ashes back out.
Get a stove that doesn’t need electricity to function and that you can do at least minimal cooking on. A couple of cast iron trivets to hold pots off the stove surface will help with temperature control on what’s mostly a heating stove (a proper wood cookstove will certainly heat the house some, but it’s not optimal for that as generally the firebox is smaller.)
As you’re designing the house from scratch, design wood storage into it; space for at least several days of wood where you don’t have to go out in a storm to get it.
I never have. I live in an old farmhouse on an old farm, and occasional insects and other critters get in, but they’re not particularly associated with the stack of wood in the back hall or the crateful in the stove room.
Wood that’s obviously insect infested doesn’t get brought into the house. Good sound firewood isn’t going to be hosting lots of insects. If there’s an occasional bug under a piece of bark, it’s unlikely to create an infestation in the house.
ETA: There are areas where you need to be careful to watch for specific pests. In my area, the ones at issue are a danger to living trees, not to animals or to dead wood; so there are restrictions on moving firewood from infected to uninfected areas, but no problem with bringing firewood into the house.
Yeah we did this. We finally just ordered pre-split wood. I gave that guy my log splitter.
He would dump the wood in the ‘driveway’. Six cords a year. My wife and I would use the tractor to move it to the other side of the house to make it accessible. That took a couple of weekends.Then we would bring in about 10 days of wood at a time and stack it near the stove. We kept upgrading that stove. We went through three untill we finally went to propane.
Our house was passive solar, so that helped a lot. But the stove needed to be restarted every day after work. I would do that, and go out and plow. The house was mostly warm when I was done plowing.
I liked the rustickness of wood and the ambiance. But, it sort of sucked after a while and we found options.
What was nice, is you never had to worry about shredding anything. Went right in the stove.
Cool. Our wood stove (was primary heat) had two 45 degree bends in the flue. Gawd, it was a pain to clean. Had to take the entire flue off, take it apart and carry it outside. Then I still needed to stand on top of the chimmey and clean the top part out.
Yeah, this was my experience too while growing up in a largely woodstove-heated house that always had logs stacked by the stove. During the cold months when firewood is indoors, it has a rapid turnover. Nothing is sitting around long enough to provide breeding space to any colony of critters you don’t want in your house.
Moreover, grabbing logs off the outdoor woodpile and tossing them into the tote or barrow or whatever you use to carry the firewood indoors is usually interpreted by the arthropod community as a signal to abandon ship. Generally, when something starts pawing around the log an insect, spider, etc., is resting on, it’s something that is interested in eating the insect, so the prudent insect makes itself scarce.
Finally, and somewhat sadly, an arthropod that does remain hiding under the bark of a log brought in for the stove, unless its name is Shadrach, Meshach or Abednego, is very unlikely to have any further influence on arthropod populations either indoors or out.
If you do get grid power, I would seriously consider a (air source) heat pump. The way mine is set up is it used down to 20F*, and then my furnace (Natural Gas) kicks in. I’m sure it could be set up that way with propane.
* This can be changed, heat pumps can work even colder, the set point is based on the cost of electricity and fuel.
Thanks. I was initially less than enthused about heat pumps but my current understanding is that they have been much improved over time. Certainly something to look into again.
We’ve been on propane for 25 years. Not the cheapest, perhaps, but very reliable. We also have a traditional fireplace that we very rarely use. I once looked into converting it to a wood-burning fireplace (in an effort to reduce our heating bill), but concluded it was more of a hassle than what it’s worth.