Country Life

My idea of off-grid homeownership would be closer to camping then modern suburbanite living. My home of the future would be like camping, but with more insulation and better protection from the elements during the winter months and severe weather like heavy rain storms and snow. Having a reliable, relatively clean and non-smelly source of heat (e.g. not a smoky campfire that makes your clothes stink)  like a wood stove or coal stove would be important for the cold winter months, a hot shower to get clean, and a refrigerator/freezer to keep cold meat and beer is important too. Running water, at least stored water that is electrically pumped, probably is a good thing too. If I have to purify it before drinking, it’s a not a big deal.

But other then that, I can hardly imagine having much more modern technology then what I already use for camping. I don’t have a problem with composting toilets, building a fire, burning my trash, conserving electricity by using LEDs and low voltage USB powered devices, cooking on a camp stove and Coleman oven. I don’t mind having to purify water or doing some of the dirty work of life like stirring humanure. Having a microwave and waffle iron is somewhat handy in my apartment, but it’s hardly a show stopper to live without. I don’t own a television and I don’t have Internet at home. I do like the idea of building my own small, energy efficient electronics and low-voltage lighting, to automate my house, and provided carefully controlled light output, as efficiently as possible. Just because you have to conserve energy, doesn’t mean you can’t use energy-efficient LEDs controlled by a microprocessor and build displays to tell you about battery voltage and other details, like with my Max7219 projects I’m currently working on.