Want to live off the grid and experience a minimalist lifestyle? The future of modern life will most certainly be off the grid as traditional natural energy sources become finite. Find out what we have learnt from setting up our off the grid Tiny Home glamping business. We go into detail about: Advantages of living off the grid How to live off the grid and find land for your Tiny Home What renewable energy sources did and didn't work. What appliances are required to minimise your energy usage to live self sufficiently What is Living Off The Grid Living off the grid means living independently, without depending on the national grid for power or other utilities. People who live off the grid care deeply about their impact on the planet and want to reduce their cost of living with a debt free self sufficient lifestyle. Growing communities of people with off-grid properties are thriving! Advantages of Living Off The Grid Minimal Carbon Footprint For Sustainable Lives An off-grid lifestyle is best way to be environmentally friendly. Much like a vegetarian is giving up meat, you are giving up producing carbon emissions through relying on renewable energy for electricity and heating. Improved Mental Health & Physical Health It's been scientifically proven that tree-bathing / being situated in nature reduces stress hormone production, improve feelings of happiness and free up creativity, as well as lower heart rate and blood pressure, boost the immune system and accelerate recovery from illness. The natural environment provides pure tranquility to meditate and be in control of your actions and thought process. Most of our guests do exactly this and use time to their advantage to slow down. Save Money On Your Energy Bills Being connected to the national grid means you’re at the mercy of price hikes as and when utility companies see fit (case and point). Although the initial cost of going off the grid and solar energy can be higher. Installing solar panels, battery storage, wind turbines and buying sustainable appliances has a green premium albeit this is reducing and for Tiny Homes you do not need much off-grid power. The longer term savings are worth it though given we pay nothing for the electricity generated from solar used in our Tiny Homes. Our cost is £17 a month to power the remaining appliances with gas such as a gas boiler & hob. For heating, we spend about £50 a month in the winter to heat the Tiny Homes. But can chop your own wood if want to be fully self sufficient. Going fully off-grid would also mean you have less cash tied up in a house, can have a debt free life and pay reduced property taxes. Exciting Natural Environment Completely Off-Grid Being off-grid opens you up to plenty of adventurous hobbies. For instance, being off-grid in the mountains provides an endless amount of activities from skiing, rock climbing, trail running and mountain bike. The majority of off-grid locations will open up our horizon to historical monuments hidden in the wild thought the endless opportunity of hiking trails and beautiful country roads to cycle. Even paddle boarding (SUPing) and wild swimming down rivers / sea bays are possible off-grid. In one of our off-grid locations in Dorset we are walk able from a Iron Age Hill Fort, The Dorset Gap, a historic trading point where 5 paths and have the largest 55m chalk giant. Not to mention all the Castles around. How Do I Live or Escape off the grid UK The escape option is easy with this shameless plug - stay at one of our tiny houses. First of all here are various forms of living off the grid. Your can disconnect your house from he national grid by installing renewable energy sources and batteries. Or you can do fully off-grid living in the wild. This might involve building a tiny home, installing your own renewable energy, connecting to a rain harvesting system and growing your own food. Living off-grid does require some learning and preparation as will change every aspect of your lifestyle. You will need to work out what you will want from your off-grid lifestyle as your renewable energy system will dictate your usage and appliances you can use. Therefore, you will want to size this correctly This is what we have learnt:- Location / Land / Planning Permission Most people cant find a piece of land. This is tough on a small scale and buying land means you will be restricted to whats on the market. Add Land is a great place to start your search and have a great buying guide here. Renting farmland is a better strategy in terms of having more land available to you and potentially more suitable to your off-grid lifestyle. They also might have an existing planning permission for a rural worker dwelling. Finding other people who want to live off-grid will improve your negotiating power here and make it more worthwhile for a rural farmer to situate you on your land. We will be going into further details on this section in another blog post "Is living off-grid illegal" so make sure you subscribe to stay updated Property - Tiny Houses Off-Grid Tiny Houses are certainly the easiest way to escape off the grid given their affordability, mobility and minimal impact on the land. There compact and minimalist design provide a simplistic way to live without clutter. There is even the possibility to self build your tiny home with your own off-grid home design. In terms of planning, there it is still early days for the Tiny Home and currently sits in a grey area given its temporary nature. Our Tiny Homes for holiday escapes can work under a planning exemption license however for more permanent off-grid living a test bed is currently being launched in Teignmouth, Devon. We will discuss this in another blog post so please subscribe to stay updated. Solar Power, Batteries & Renewable Energy Renewable energy technology has improved and the average cost for Solar & wind energy has been reduced dramatically. Our Tiny Homes energy equipment includes Solar Panels, Wind Turbines, Battery storage, Inverter, and a charge controller. We have 1,500 watts of energy currently which are connected to a charge controller and two 110ah batteries to be stored. The battery power is sent to our 12v appliances directly or it converted into 240v by our 300 watt inverter to power our electrical system. All our electrical appliances use less than 300 watts but any item above this such as a toaster or hair dryer will trip the system. Solar Power is the best way to power your Tiny Home as modern technology now means all panels are photovoltaic which means they just need daylight to get power, not necessarily direct sunlight, which is beneficial in the winter months. Albeit for 12 weeks of the year (6 weeks either side of Christmas), off-grid living in the UK is tricky given the very limited amount of daylight hours.Therefore energy consumption will have to be minimal. Even having a big batter bank will not solve this as you will be producing 10% of the power you did in the summer Wind power is not very energy efficient on a small scale. We have a 500 watt turbine conencted to our Tiny Home and they need a good amount of wind to produce any sort of electricity. The majority of the time they are not running and if they are, they are noisy interupting the tranquility. We have tested both a lead-acid battery and a lithium battery. We would recommend the latter even though is 5x more expensive. Lead-acid batteries sulfate quickly (lose there charge capacity) when there charge is consistently reduce below 50% (this was our off-grid living mistake and batteries lasted 2 months in the winter) and therefore the lifespan is much better for lithium batteries. Not to mentioned you can get a 5 year warranty for lithium. Alternative sources of power are hydroelectric power, heat pumps and a bio - digester Sizing your off-grid system is not straight forward and it is very much dependent on your energy consumption and choice of electrical appliances (discussed below) Heating A wood burning fireplace is a delightful and ambient way to keep off grid homes warm. If you’re near to woodlands, you can source free wood which is ideal for the off-grid lifestyle. Wood is also a carbon free natural source however, you should remember that in order to reduce CO2 emissions, burning wet wood is no longer legal. A water heater will be required for hot water. We recommend using a gas water boiler as powering an electrical one would be impossible on a micro off-grid solar system all year around. Would require a much bigger setup with more power, more batteries and a bigger inverter. Water Source Your biggest hurdle to off-grid living will be trying to find a water supply. A natural water source could be drilling a bore hole to get clean water, connecting a pump to a spring for fresh water or rain water harvesting It is also fairly straightforward to mole plough a water line from one of these sources or cheat a little bit by connecting to an existing pump of the land. Having an off grid shower using a natural water source direct to your home is an inspiring wash! But beware, rainwater can be collected, but that’s not always dependable. Sewage What do you do with human waste and food waste? Where does the grey and brown water go? Having a compost loo will solve all your waste problems. There is no plumbing connection as does not require flushing. Effectively have a wee funnel that goes directly into a small soak away outside (legal if not more than 10l a day) and a glamorous bucket where your human waste goes. This can be emptied by taking out the compost bag and putting in a compost bin to create manure. Therefore, the only water waste is grey water which again is filtered into a soak away and can use natural environmentally product, soaps and washing up liquid, to have zero impact on the land. Therefore, you avoid any plumbing connection to the grid or digging in a septic tank which will require emptying every so often Electronic Appliances & Energy Consumption Most electrical items do not use too much electricity given modern technology. Charging you phone will require 50 watts and so will running a water pump. The difficult electrical appliances are your fridge, water heater, washing machine, cooking hob and oven oven. You can forget about a toaster, kettle and hairdryer. An off-grid living mistake was to have an eco-fridge which ran on 40 watts. However, the starter moter required 1,200 watts to start which tripped our electrical system. Therefore, we ran on an electrical cool box for a time period before we could fit a compressor fridge. The compressor fridge is more efficient but it is noisy and therefore our preference would be an electric coolbox which you can turn off when you sleep as holds the cold for 9 hours You will have to buy a weird eco-friendly washing machine or you it yourself with a pumping spin system such as the wonder wash . Food If you are situated on fertile land growing your own vegetables will be a great addition your off-grid lifestyle. We are no experts here but there is plenty of articles to read here Conclusion Living off-grid in Tiny Homes is a growing trend. We are still at early stages of this as a model for living but the technology is there, and experiments are starting with certain local authorities around the UK with regards to the land and planning. Therefore, even though the land and planning piece is currently difficult but possible, it will become much more straight forward in the future. We believe the future way to live will be in off-grid communities situated in Tiny Homes around Europe for those that want to adventure and live a sustainable minimalist nomad lifestyle. Experience the off-grid life in one of our Tiny Homes or subscribe to our blog to support us make this happen