#0 The Goals

The first general step towards building any kind of off-grid place anywhere, is to set out the goals you want to achieve, and formulate why you want to achieve them, and the difficulties and challenges you anticipate in how to achieve them. It is important to identify potential issues early on so you can plan to tackle them in time (and budget for them appropriately). You will have to make concessions at some point, and that's ok - just make sure you anticipate these in advance.  

Before the start of the project, I set out the following main objectives - with sustainability in mind - in no particular order:

• Energy independence
• Water independence
• Comfort
• Use of local resources

These goals can and will be different for everyone. For example, someone could add self reliance regarding food to the list. While this would be nice, personally that would be almost impossible because of the climate I'm in and the amount of work and effort it would take would diminish overall comfort. However, this does not mean that own food production is completely off the table (pun intended) for example through foraging, it's just not a priority for me. The point is, off-grid is different for everyone and it's up to you to fill in what's important.

Be careful with adding goals that are often associated with off-grid living, but are not necessarily true. Cost is one of those: off-grid does not mean cheaper, especially when you expect similar living comforts as a regular home. Also make sure to quantify aspects such as 'freedom' and other rather vague terms - what do these really mean for you and what do you need to achieve these?

This list does not include the requirements of the actual location, etc. as those will be in a post on its own, however, these goals will be a driving factor in this as well. Let's dive into these four first, and address the why and the how, with the potential problems.

Comfort

I will start by discussing the comfort aspects since this drives some of the others. While many people associate off-grid with a cabin, summer cottage, or some other smaller building with minimal levels of comfort, this is not what I wanted to do. Not that there is anything wrong at all with a typical cabin! It's just not what I wanted for my place and my family. Instead, I wanted the comfort of having a normal bathroom, with shower and toilet. I wanted running water. I wanted normal light fixtures. Being able to make coffee in the morning without having to start a fire first. A regular kitchen with appliances such as a fridge and dishwasher. A washing machine. I also wanted enough space, just like in a regular home. In Finland, the average detached house has a floor space of around 110m² (1200ft²), and the aim was to have a slightly larger area than that to accommodate technical space and several decent sized bedrooms. A sauna is of course a given.

Another aspect of comfort was being surrounded by nature and wildlife, away from noise. Forest of course, and maybe even the sea or lake shore at the premises, without too many neighbors around. 

One can understand that as more requirements get added, the list of potential locations drops and it will become harder to find the 'perfect spot'. This is why it can take a long time to find it, but it's worth the wait: the search is part of the adventure. 

As you can probably imagine, this goal has some pretty big challenges that are not present in a typical off-grid cabin. For one, energy will be a major focus point throughout the project. A lot of work needs to be done in the early planning stages to define the exact energy requirements, through power audits, in order to properly size the solar array, battery pack and inverter. The source of water needs to be verified at the location and rules and regulations regarding waste water need to be clear. The land on which to build this needs to be somewhat decently accessible and the terrain needs to accommodate the foundation requirements. Finally, and probably most importantly: you need to develop a very good idea of what it's all going to cost. I spent tons of time with spreadsheets making the numbers work...

Energy independence

This is probably one of the main goals people associate with the term 'off-grid', in particular when it comes to electricity. The reasons for being independent of the grid in this case can be: cost of hooking up to the grid, not wanting to deal with power outages, the ever increasing monthly bills, etc. In my case, it was more the feeling of independence and to prove (the challenge) that it can be done in a rather harsh climate. 

One of my partially completed arrays

Solar is an obvious way to get an independent electric supply, but it's not the only source of energy we should focus on. Since this is a cold climate and thus a heating oriented climate, we have to have a way of heating the building (and the water) in winter. Electricity alone is fine in summer, but there isn't nearly enough sunlight during the winter months to make electric-only an option, no matter how many solar panels one can install. There is an inverse relationship between when the energy of the sun is available, and when you need it. This is in contrast to many places that have a cooling oriented climate: the sun is there when you most need the energy to run the A/C.

Instead, alternatives need to be found to limit the amount of electricity needed in the first place. The obvious choice here up north is firewood for heating, which is abundant, renewable, and can be sourced from own resources. The one concession I made to all of this is cooking: yes, in summer we can use induction, but in winter cooking is done on propane gas. A wood fired range could have been an option, but in this case, comfort won. There is also the question of what, if any, sustainable source would be available to generate power in the middle of winter when solar is out of the question - we'll go over all the details of energy use, generation, and storage in a later post.

Water independence

The second important resource is water: both in regard to drinking water, as well as waste water treatment. In many other countries getting water is a major issue, and systems such as rainwater catchment, lake/river/stream water (a spring if one is lucky!), or very deep and expensive wells are the usual options. Again because of the cold climate, systems such as rainwater catchment are not really practical since there might not be liquid water from the sky for half a year, and melting snow is just not practical. Likewise, any spring or stream that would be available would be frozen during this period. 

The well being drilled

Luckily, drilling a well is a much more accessible, and cost effective method, because one doesn't need to drill very deep to get access to cool, clean water that needs minimal filtering (but do get a quality analysis from a lab!). It has a pretty much constant temperature year round. It does mean we now have a well pump to power in addition, and this has to be added to the power audit calculation.

The rules and regulations regarding waste water are very strict here. This means you can't just have gray water (shower, washing) flow back into the environment without treatment, and black water (toilet) even more so. This means that a typical septic system with leach field won't do. You have to guarantee a reduction of BOD (biochemical oxygen demand) by adding oxygen in the treatment process, phosphor reduction, nitrogen reduction, etc. This adds additional cost, infrastructure and energy requirements and these definitely have to be taken into account from the start, and will also have an impact when selecting a plot of land to build on. I do personally believe this is the right thing to do in any case, since we still want to lower the impact on the environment where possible.

The reasons for wanting to be independent in water supply are pretty much the same as those for energy independence. The challenge to do this successfully together with the feeling of independence it brings is something that is difficult to describe. In this case however, cost effectiveness is also part of the equation, since, while most of the more remote plots might have some access to power lines, water and sewer infrastructure rarely is readily available and would be cost prohibitive to provide. 

Use of local resources

When I decided to embark on this adventure, I wanted to make choices that are in line with the availability of material and other resources of the local land. For example, while fired brick is a perfectly usable and often used building material in some countries, it would make little sense to do this in a country where most of this material would have to be imported from other countries because it's not readily available. Other materials, while available, should be used more carefully, for example concrete. The amount of energy needed to make cement is high, and building an off-grid place completely out of concrete in a country with sustainable alternatives makes little sense. 

In my case, I wanted a house built out of logs. Wood is a renewable resource and can be (and is) used sustainably here in Finland and does not need to be transported very far. Moreover, every log used in my house sequesters carbon that won't be released into the atmosphere for a very long time. While building a log house in Finland and other northern regions like e.g. Canada makes sense, it would of course not be when you're e.g. in Spain. The goal should be to use local materials as much as possible, and in a sustainable manner, and this is different for every country. For those materials that are not locally available but are used inevitably, the aim would be to find at least the nearest supplier. Of course, finding all you need locally is not possible for everything.

Local resources does not just mean local materials. It also means local human resources and companies. While I did want to build as much as possible myself, this is not possible for some aspects of the house where help is needed, and those that need to be done (by law) by professionals. This includes things like electric, plumbing, etc. but also equipment rental companies, lumber yards, crane operators, metal shops, builders, well drillers, and concrete providers. Getting them locally also does not mean it's always the cheapest option, so take that along in your budgeting. 

The end of the beginning

While it only took a single blog entry to summarize these aspects, in reality they developed over time. Quite a lot of time. Some of the things I wanted to do were not technically feasible even five years ago, let alone ten or more when the ideas first started to form. You often come across stumbling blocks in the planning that need either resources and knowledge that you don't have (yet), or time to develop further. Just don't try to rush things, think it through, make sure you're on the right path, and be critical about your own thinking. Read up or watch videos from those that have done similar things, even if not quite what you're planning. Don't rush to go out and buy the plot of land before you know what you will do with it and how you will use the resources it provides or can provide. Figuring out your goals and how to achieve them is the first and most important step, and incidentally, the one that could end up taking the most amount of effort and time. 

Over the next couple of entries, I'll go into the details of all of the above and the methods and tools by which I achieved these goals. First up will be finding the right plot of land to build on...