Off the Grid Limitations that No One Tells You About

   Off the grid living is something we all dream about, but only a few of us have the courage to actually do it. We love our convenient lifestyles and we cherish our electrical appliances that make life easier. Living off the grid means living off the public utilities and becoming self-sufficient. The tricky part is that nobody will tell you what it all implies in the end.

Living off the grid is not a primitive living as most people imagine and it certainly doesn’t mean you have to lower your living standards. In fact, to go off the grid has many advantages and if you managed to stay strong in the beginning, you will benefit from living off the grid in the long run.

Here are just a few benefits of going off the grid:

• You will not have to worry about how you’re going to put food on the table with the economy going crazy and the prices skyrocketing. You eat what you grow and you know where your food comes from.
• Living off the grid will give you the financial independence that you were always looking for. Becoming self-sufficient and producing your own energy and food will give you financial freedom.
• In time, you will get a sense of security that other people don’t have. When a disaster strikes or the fast approaching energy crisis hits us, you will still get all the services. In an extreme situation you will be on your own and your chances to make it are much higher than those for the rest of the world.
• Living off the grid means developing a set of skills that are not available for everyone. Your off the grid skills will make a huge difference when a natural or man-made disaster hits your area. You will be able to barter with people and get goods in exchange for the services you provide using your off the grid skills.
• Living off the grid will unite a family and create a strong familial bond. Everyone from the family will have to contribute to this new lifestyle and your kids will no longer stay on Facebook 24/7. The absence of media from an off the grid living provides a freedom that is hard to explain, but it’s a delight to experience.
• You get a sense of accomplishment from living off the grid. Something that you don’t get from your day job. When you produce your own energy and grow your own food you achieve self-satisfaction. You do it all for yourself and your family and nobody else. You don’t work all week to make someone else rich. You work for your loved ones and you get a satisfaction that doesn’t have a price tag.

Going off the grid means you have to make your own energy and there are many ways to do so. Here are the most popular ones:

Using Photovoltaic solar panels is the most common method to produce energy for your house. All you need are the panels and the sun. The market is flooded with solar panels and the technology improves every year. These targeted products for people living off the grid are increasing at a high rate and you won’t have problems finding something suited for your needs.

Related article: This solar power generator is something new. Will it conquer the market?

Using a wind turbine to produce energy is another method preferred by those who live off the grid and it’s not as complicated as it sounds. You will need to install a wind turbine about 50 to 120 feet high from the ground and the wind will do the entire job for you. Of course that this off the grid method has to be used in an area with a reliable supply of wind in order to be efficient. However, with the climate changing, it seems that most of the regions will have a good supply of wind.

Related article: A new wind power generator that changes the game. Goodbye blades!

For an off the grid living you can also use a hydro power plant to produce electricity. However, this requires a lot more work as you have to build dams and utilize the kinetic energy from the water current to create electricity. All the work will pay off since water power can produce between 10 and 100 times more power than solar panels. Building a dam on your land for your off the grid setup can involve a substantial cost that you need to take into account.

Related article: Man builds hydro power plant and uses local stream to power his entire home

You can also make your own gas for a comfortable off the grid living. All you have to do is to build a biogas generator that uses household, organic waste to produce your own gas for cooking or lighting. Living off the grid means having easy access to a lot of organic material that can be turned into gas and it would be a shame not to profit from it. It is much easier to build a gas generator than one would think, it’s not rocket science. This method is preferred by those who live off the grid because it’s much easier than cutting wood to produce gas.

Those who can afford it can use more than one of the methods listed above in order to make energy and have the comfort they desire. It’s just a matter of location, budget and the will to do it.

Another critical part of a decent off the grid living is how to arranged for your own food. Making your own food is possible and everyone can do it. We buy food or groceries from the stores because of the hectic work life we have and because we lack the time and will to do it otherwise. Growing your own fruits, vegetables and meat is a skill that goes under constant development for those who live off the grid.

You can have a vegetable garden at your off the grid home to produce what you need. You will have to get the proper seeds and gain good knowledge in order for your garden to become efficient. In addition to a vegetables garden, you can always run a home-based farm consisting of chickens, rabbits, goats, pigs and cows if you like dairy products.

Things may look great if you read all of the above and it would seem that living off the grid is not that difficult and you can make it too. With the right will, you might and I really hope you do make it. If you consider an off the grid living you should also be aware of the limitations an off the grid life brings.

Limitations of an off the grid lifestyle

It would be unfair to discuss about an off the grid living without exerting on the limitations that this choice comes with. Everything in this life has its limitations and so does an off the grid living.

Money, the root of all evil.

Every off the grid adventure requires money and most of these adventures requires a lot of money to start with. If you find it hard to make both the ends meet and you are struggling with soaring bills to be paid, then this system will not work for you. You need to be debt free before you build your off the grid home and you need to have a little extra on the side. You shouldn’t go for it, unless you own land in the suburbs or you have a big savings account. Sure, there are many who struggle with nothing at the beginning and end up building their off the grid dream home, but those success stories should not be a role-model for you. Those people struggled hard enough and they had an advantage, they had the skills you probably don’t have. Even so, most of them wish they had something extra when they started in order to make their life easier. Renewable energy sources have high initial costs and you need to keep that in mind.

Recommended reading: How to get rid of debt

Growing food requires a lot of work

You need to understand that growing your own food requires a lot of work and success is not a promise. Growing your own food requires diligence, consistency and a recuperative ability. It will take time until you get used with all of it and you need patience. Not to mention that growing food means you need to get down and dirty. You can’t do it from the keyboard and you it will be harder for you if you’re not used with physical labor. It will pay off in the end, but you will have to get to that point and that means you have to practice and have patience. There are a few good solutions for producing your own food, some quite innovative and you just need to find the right one for you.

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