off the grid

Modern Conveniences and a Give Away

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My house. I loved it.

I lived off the grid for twenty-two years. We only lived two miles from power lines, also two miles off a main road, but the power company wanted $500,000 to take a power line to our house. We chose not to do that, so we created our power with a generator, first propane with a wind backup, and then diesel. I learned a lot of basic mechanics over the years because the one rule of generators is that they will fail, and usually at a very inconvenient time. Ask me why I flinch when the lights flicker. My fridge was propane and a whopping 7.7 cubic feet. It too failed every now and again, so I am now quite adept at fixing propane fridges.

Now that I have “regular” power, I have it easy. At my old house, I had to schedule laundry, ironing, showers, TV watching, hair drying, cooking with the electric oven, and using the microwave around the times that the generator was running–from whenever we got up to 10:00 in the morning, then from 4:00 in the afternoon to bedtime.  I could not use a crockpot. I did not charge my phone at night. Oh–I also had one of the first cell phones because the telephone company took eleven years to run a line to us. It was so big that it was mounted on the wall, and if you took it somewhere you had a special carrying bag like a brief case to hold it. All calls, incoming and outgoing, were 60 cents a minute. If a telemarketer called you, it cost you.

I did love the “simple” life and it was a great way to raise kids.  That said, it’s so nice to take a shower without tuning on the power. To cook when I want, sew when I want, make a phone call that doesn’t cost 60 cents a minute (that did change to a more reasonable price as cell phones became more common).

Would I go back? Let’s say this–I could go back. It’s a tougher life, and expensive, but doable, and there are some definite advantages. It’s really peaceful and at that time, before phones and battery powered laptops, you looked to other things to fill your time. And even though it was a challenging life in some ways, it was nothing compared to how rural people lived in the first part of the last century. Now those were tough people.

My question to you today, for a $10 Amazon gift certificate, is an offshoot from my topic.  Let’s say you have a cooking stove that needs no electricity, an ice box, and (wonder of wonders) indoor plumbing. No communication or entertainment devices. What modern convenience would you like to add to the mix?  For me, it would be electric lights.

Off the Grid in the Summer

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This is my house in the desert.

I’m sure that everyone has noticed that it’s really hot outside. Like July hot but turned up a notch.

As some of you know, I lived off the grid in rural Nevada for 22 years. We had a generator that we ran about eight hours a day (four hours in the morning, four in the evening), scheduling household chores that involved electricity around “gen time”. When you live on a generator, every flicker of a light sends chills up your spine. And the sound of the engine missing is enough to ruin a day. We had wind power in addition to the generator, but the batteries were expensive to replace, and they (there were twelve of them) would only power the lights and television. I can’t tell you how many times my kids “turned off” the house by trying to use a toaster or hair dryer when we were on battery power.

I had a love-hate relationship with this beast, which powered by life and caused occasional panic.

When it was super hot outside, as sometimes happens in Nevada, we didn’t run the gen much, so we didn’t have fans or AC during peak heat hours. Instead we closed all the blinds, shut all doors and windows at around 9 a.m. and didn’t open things back up again until the evening hours. It might seem kind of primitive, but it worked (kind of). People have lived without electricity for a lot longer than they have lived with it, so while what I was doing seemed strange to my friends who had regular power, but it really wasn’t that unusual.

7.7 cubic feet! It’s so short that I could dust the top of it without standing on my tiptoes.

Our fridge ran on propane (a chemical reaction between hydrogen and heated water and ammonia absorbs heat, creating a cooling effect) and was 7.7 cubic feet. Thankfully we had two. If you want to have some sticker shock, price a propane fridge. You don’t get much bang for your buck, but they do last forever. But…if the pilot light goes out, then the fridge warms up. Usually the pilot light would go out because of a build up of ash in the flue, and the solution involved taking everything apart and cleaning it and putting it back together. I got very good at it. During hot weather, the fridge would labor due to the heat, the ash would build up and the pilot light would go out. I checked the fridge several times a day to make certain it was still operating.

I now have the kind of electricity that comes from power lines, but the hot weather has reminded me of how I lived not that long ago. I still don’t have AC, but I have two fridges and they are big and they do not have pilot lights! And I can run a fan whenever I want without stressing the generator. I enjoyed my time off the grid, but during the heat, I’m glad for regular power.

What challenges do the hot summer months bring for you?