riginal Blog Entry
Hello there. My wife and I live off grid in the western mountains of Maine. We moved out of “town” over 3 years ago, and never looked back. Our journey toward personal freedom has been an adventure, and we wouldn’t have it any other way. We started out the same as most everyone else, working toward an end goal of personal independence. We “practiced” a very long time before we finally took the big step. If you’re interested, I’d be happy to share it here, to provide a personal view of what it was really like to purchase, and move into an off grid property in the middle of a Maine winter. Who knows, it may even provide inspiration for someone sitting on the fence
Now, keep in mind, this was written a few years ago. Many things have changed since i wrote this.
After my recent posting of a picture of my solar panels and woodshed, it seems that there is at least some interest in a "write-up" on our system. While I love to talk about our "off grid" home, I feel it's just as important, if not more important to provide some idea/backstory about how we arrived at the point we're at now. Without knowing the whole story, folks might get the idea that this lifestyle could be purchased by anyone. That being said, I do think someone with unlimited resources could make it work, but the cost would be ridiculous.
We started out just like most couples here in western Maine. We've been married for 27 years now, and our two children are now grown, and living their own "adult" lives.
Somewhere along there, my wife and I became more or less disillusioned with "the system" and widely accepted idea of the "American dream". At some point it became clear that although we owned our own home, we would be making mortgage payments until I was in my early 70s. Don't get me wrong, our home was very nice, situated on a beautiful 4 acre lot, with a long section of river frontage on the bank of the Androscoggin river. We had a driveway that was about 300' long, a nice garden, and a big green lawn where we had watched our kids play, and grow. The house payments were pretty affordable too, mostly because the land had been in my family for generations. We started out with an old aluminum house trailer on the same lot, and lived in that for nearly 10 years while we paid off our original bank loan for the trailer, well, and septic system. If i remember correctly, our original loan was around $15,000.
Our kids were steadily growing, and after we got the loan paid off, we decided it was time for a upgrade.
In 1998 we bought a new double-wide, and put it on a full basement on the knoll just behind our old house trailer, which we had removed from what was to be our new front yard. We lived in that house right up until just over a year ago.
In a lot of ways, that house would have been the perfect small homestead for most people. The payments were low, but with the low interest rates, and the loan being a variable interest rate, we knew things could change fast.
I had a friend who had been living off grid for many years, and the idea really appealed to me. Not so much on a "save the planet" level, but more of the independent living side of things. I also had another close friend who built a hunting/fishing camp up in northern Maine about that time. We went up there on our own a few times, and neither of us could believe how much more relaxed we were whenever we were there. The camp was pretty primitive, with a outhouse, gas stove, gas lights, etc. But the camp did get us thinking about going off grid.
I did a lot of research, and asked a lot of questions. We knew what we wanted, but it just did seem like we could ever afford the stuff we'd need to make it work. We did however make the decision to sell our house, and land, and find someplace further out of town and probably smaller, that we could buy outright with the money we got from our other house, and woodlot. We found a good relator, and the signs went up.
About the time the woodlot sold, our house went under contract, and all of a sudden we needed to go house shopping. The idea was to get out of town, but still be within around 30 miles from my workplace. At this point I should probably point out that I am a Millwright/ Maintenance Mechanic. This means that I work on, and maintain large industrial equipment, in my case in a sawmill. So I have a pretty wide set of skills. This isn't, or wasn't anything uncommon in this area. My hometown of Bethel used to be mostly supported by the forest products industry, but now things have turned more toward skiing, and tourism.
The tourism thing has driven up the taxes, and home prices right along with them.
We looked at a LOT of homes, and it was pretty consuming for a while. One of us was always on the laptop, or talking to our realtor, sometimes both at once. We'd spend our weekends driving around, looking at places, taking notes, doing research, all the stuff you'd expect. We had closing dates on our house and land, and we rented some storage units to hold all of our stuff. We were looking at everything selling, all of our bills being paid, but being homeless with a big checking account. That might seem cool, but this was in December, in the middle of ski country. They call Maine "Vacationland" for a reason. So we were looking at weeks in a hotel, during peak season, not to mention that we had to find a place that allowed dogs. There was no way we could leave our beagle/basset behind. We spent Christmas that year with a mostly empty house. We had put nearly everything in storage except a couple of camp chairs, our bed, and the coffee maker.
About that time, my wife stumbled on a real-estate listing for the house that we ended up buying. It seemed to good to be true, and in some ways, it was.
The house itself was a full two story colonial, with 2,000 sq feet of living space, plus a full basement. Three bedrooms, 2.5 baths. All this, and it was off grid too. The house had been built in 2008, and had been designed with off grid living in mind. The place was overbuilt, and insulated to the max. The previous owners had spared no expense on materials.
Now the sad part, the previous owners had turned the place back over to the bank because the couldn't make a go of it. They suffered several setbacks, that left them with more than one mortgage, a ruined battery bank, a ruined generator, and no way forward.
The property was "bank owned" and had been vacant for 4 years. The bank had sent in a crew to remove anything that they thought was in danger of being stolen. The wood-stoves were gone, as were the inverters, spoiled batteries, generator, basically anything that was at risk of theft. You have to keep in mind this place has its own private road, and is pretty much in the middle of nowhere.
We negotiated back and forth with the bank for quite a while. Although it's a new, modern home that looks like it would be more at home on Main Street than a off grid home in the middle of nowhere, there were no banks willing to finance an off grid home. A lot of people looked at it, and tried to buy it, only to have financing fall through. We, on the other hand had the cash to purchase the place outright.
The bank wasn't interested in doing anything to the place. They offered it to us at a much reduced price, if we decided to take the place "as-is". Because there was a lot missing from the electrical system, we couldn't do water, or sewer tests. The bank did agree to pay for a brand new battery bank, and to bring back, but not install all the stuff that they had in storage.
We weighed our options, decided to take the chance, and bought the place. We had already spent over 2 weeks in a motel, so we moved in to the cold, winterized house in the woods of Maine, in early January.
Things were pretty primitive for the first couple weeks. we had one wood-stove in the basement, no propane tank, or contract, and mostly Coleman camping gear for lights and cooking. We melted snow on a kerosene heater to get water for flushing the toilets.
Like I said, pretty primitive. We probably should have been more worried about the possibilities, considering the first owners failure, but we were to busy to be very worried. Looking back, it was quite an adventure.
I had taken a week off from work to give us time to do our real-estate closing, and initial move in and hoping to get things functioning enough for us to be comfortable. We had put most of our camping gear, portable generator and anything else we thought we might need to get started into the storage units last, so everything was right out where we could get at it.
As I mentioned before, the bank had agreed to bring back all the stuff that they had removed. We were given one final chance to view the property prior to signing the papers, and taking ownership. I think we did our walk thru at 11:00AM, and our closing was at like 1When we got to the house, the property management people were there returning all the stuff. The had already unloaded the wood-stove, the backup generator, inverters and the pallet of 24 brand new batteries. The downside to all this being, all they did was put everything in the kitchen. And I mean everything, in a pile, in the kitchen. The refrigerator/freezer had been removed, but there had been no mention of the bank having it in storage. We assumed, and it did end up being the case, that the previous owners had taken the fridge with them when they left. We had already bought a new energy star rated fridge, which was scheduled to be delivered that same day. Only catch being the propane backup generator, which weighs around 800lbs, was now sitting in our kitchen, in the very spot that the fridge need to go.Thankfully, the appliance delivery guys helped us lift the generator, and get a couple of pieces of carpet under it, so we could slide it around on the hardwood floor. The brought in the new fridge, and off to closing we went.
It was a pretty standard closing, other than the fact that we were buying the place outright, with no financing.
Buy mid afternoon we were back at our new, and very cold, home.
My wife and daughter made a few trips to the storage unit to get our bed, some sleeping bags, and any other stuff we thought we might need to get started.
On our way home from closing, we stopped at a Tractor Supply, and bought a pallet of those bio-brick sawdust blocks to burn in the wood-stoves.
Ever seen a Toyota Tundra with a ton of wood in the back???!!!
The ironic part is, we sold our old house with a full winters firewood stacked in the basement. You just can't plan for everything.
Anyhow, I checked the chimney for obstructions, and got the basement wood-stove fired up. If you've never tried it, it interesting to try to warm up a whole house that's been sitting unoccupied for years, and now in single digit temperatures. I also had a couple of those kerosene heaters that I put on the ground floor. The place started coming to life. There were lots of noises as things warmed up, and the frost went out of the wood. We busied ourselves setting things up. We got our bed upstairs, and started moving things. The whole moving in process took a long time. We had gotten rid of a lot of stuff, but you never really know how much stuff you have until you move.
On to the great power fiasco…..
I had been calling all around, trying to get someone to start a propane contract with us, and deliver a tank. It's not like it was a new setup. All the lines were run, and there was a large cement pad for the tank to sit on. They say "cash is king" but I found that to some companies it just doesn't matter. After a week or so, I found a small company that was just starting up, and they were glad to have our business. They delivered the 500Gal tank, and filled it. The owner said it would be about a week before his one tech guy could check everything, and complete the hookup. Not the best situation, but at least we were moving forward.
We use propane for a lot here. It runs our backup generator, our hot water heater, our dryer, our stove/oven, etc. We knew we'd have all this stuff going eventually, but we'd just have to get by.
We have a family friend named Tom, who has been living on solar power for years to at least some extent. He had designed and built his own system (and all of it's many incarnations) over the years. Tom was instrumental in putting our power system back together. We were fortunate to have found all the original tech manuals for the twin 2,400 watt inverter/chargers in the basement. Between the manuals, the length of all the battery connector cables, and the positions of all the micro switches on the inverters, we figured out how the original setup had been wired.
It took the better part of a day to get all the new batteries in place, make all the connections, put the inverters back up and do the rest of the wiring. During this process, it became evident that the inverters had been removed with a prybar, and handled pretty roughly by the property management crew, or as i came to refer to them, "the goon squad". The inverters had some broken micro switches, bent lugs, twisted covers, and looked pretty rough on close examination.
We wired up my small 4,200 watt portable generator temporarily to give us power for lights and stuff independent of the mains. I did this by making a double male ended heavy extension cord. (Disclaimer : This is a very DANGEROUS thing, and not something you would want to use under any normal circumstances). I plugged the generator into an outside outlet, and was able to isolate the stuff i didn't want to power, by turning off the main, and several breakers. By doing this I now had 110 power to most of the lights and outlets. This also gave us lights in the basement to complete the rest of the reinstallation.
Once we got it all hooked up, we did several tests with a multimeter, making sure we hadn't made any mistakes, and we were ready for the big test.
We powered down the small generator, and removed the "death cord", and we began to bring things to life. We started out with the 110 stuff, lights, outlets, ceiling fans, etc. Then came the first big test….. Running water.2:15. (No big hurry)
Comentários