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RE: Our First Month Living Off-Grid
I am definitely fascinated by your journey. My husband and I had thought about going off grid but I need reliable electricity and internet because I work from home, and some creature comforts. We've spent the majority of our lives living in Orange Co., NY and lived about a year in the Adirondacks. That was a brutal winter. I really hope you're situated before the cold weather hits!
We're close to being 50 now and sometimes we think we should have done that in our 30s but we're still scoping out land and have thoughts of building an earth bag home. Anyway, I wish you well on your homesteading journey. I'll ask my husband if he's got any ideas about your water issue.
It's hard, but we'be got some creature comforts now. Enough to make it a happy place to live in. My friend lent us his generator, which I forgot to mension in the post. We can use it as long as we fix the pull cord, so we did and we use it almost every day in the evening to charge the few things that need charged.
And things should get easier as we understand and build better off-grid systems for our specific needs.
Carefull with earthbags homes, they aren't very well insulated. They will make homes with a good thermal mass but like Cobb they are not well insulated. It cN work in cold weather, though not as a weekend home... it will take too long to stay heated!
Thanks
Funny you mention that! My husband and I just had a discussion about the type of house we would ideally love to build. He did a price comparison and honestly, the more we look into it, the more block homes seem to be the way to go especially since they are more accepted (from a building code perspective). The R value would be greater too if we stuffed the cinder blocks with insulation. We could always coat the exterior (and interior) with adobe to get "the look" we're going for.
We moved from the Adirondacks to the state of Florida 3 years ago. I told hubby I don't want to be cold again. I mean, it actually does hit the mid 30s in the winter but generally doesn't last more than 2 weeks, but moving from 20 degree weather to 80 degree weather suckkkkkkked. lol
It's pretty difficult to pick what we want to build... there are so many different styles, but we want something natural for sure. Maybe we'll end up with a log cabin.
We have come pretty far with the block buildings. You could also go with the foam blocks that are than filled with concrete, very insulated! I never priced it out though.
When I was a kid we lived in Miami for a couple years, the heat is hard down there but we got used to it!
When do you think you may build?