Homes, not just homesteads
Off-grid living gaining appeal beyond hardy pioneer types looking to rough it remotely
Living off-grid conjures images of survivalists in remote places and a rustic, “Little House on the Prairie” lifestyle with chores from morning to night. Yet only a tiny fraction of people living off-grid do it like that, and fewer still live more than an hour from any town.
“Living off-grid doesn’t mean you don’t buy your groceries at a store or take your waste to the local dump. It just means you are not connected to utility grids,” says Gary Collins, who has lived off-grid, or mostly off-grid, for a decade. He has published books on the subject, and leads online classes.
Although precise numbers of off-grid households are hard to come by, Collins estimates that only 1 percent of those living off-grid are in truly remote areas.
Overall, the off-grid movement remains small. But it got a boost after the COVID19 pandemic hit: City dwellers began to explore different ways of living, facilitated by improvements in alternative energy sources like solar power, and batteries for storing that power.
More frequent power outages and utility grids’ struggles to handle severe weather events brought on by climate change have added to interest in disconnecting from the grid. So have utility bill hikes.
Today, off-grid living encompasses everything from “dry camping” in RVs (with no electrical or water hookups) to swank Santa Barbara estates, from modest dwellings tucked just outside of towns to — yes — remote rustic cabins.
The Anacapa Architecture firm, in Santa Barbara, California, and Portland, Oregon, has built several upscale off-grid homes in recent years, and has several more off-grid projects in the works.
“There’s definitely an increase in traction for this kind of lifestyle, especially in the last two years. There’s a desire to get more in tune with nature,” says Jon Bang, marketing and PR coordinator for Anacapa Architecture.
The lifestyle that Anacapa homes aim for is one of modernist elegance, not roughing it. Bang says new technologies can ensure comfortable self-sufficiency.
One reason for the high cost of homes like this is that it’s expensive to haul equipment to a remote site. In addition, they might be outfitted with things like solar power, an onsite battery bank, a septic system that treats sewage onsite, a water well, and a dry well to treat and reuse water, not to mention a plumbing system designed to use as little water as possible.
Such homes also are designed to take advantage of the site’s landscape with an eye to sustainability. For example, one of the firm’s homes is built into a hillside and has a green roof (with plantings). Strategic landscaping can also help with minimizing watering needs.
“For those with means, it opens up building sites that cannot be connected to local grids, and allows for a quieter kind of life, grounded in nature without neighbors nearby,” Bang says.
Collins, now living in Arizona, makes regular grocery runs, but also grows some of his own food and hunts wild game. He has his own septic system and well. While his previous home was entirely off-grid, with solar panels and a wind turbine for power, his current home is hooked up to an electrical grid, mainly, he says, because the bills are too low to warrant the cost of solar panels.
If you want to be totally self-sufficient, he says, it takes a lot of time and physical effort.