7 Challenges to Expect Living Off-Grid
While I’m the biggest advocate of living off-grid and the benefits far outweigh any challenges, it’s important to be prepared for some of the challenges you might run into when choosing to join this lifestyle. Here are 7 potential challenges you might face when living off-grid.
1. Power-Source
It is technically possible to live off-grid without a power source (hellooo, little house on the prairie!), but you’ll likely find it a lot easier to have power. The best and most sustainable source of power for off-grid dwellers is solar. It can be a little pricey to set up your solar energy, but the investment in solar power pays for itself quickly. Once you’ve got it set up, you might find that you’re using more power than you have. You’ll have to develop an understanding of watt-usage, and may need to do the math on how much you need to keep your refrigerator running 24 hours/day, lights on for 2-12 hours/day, and charge your electronics.
2. Water Supply
Your water supply is your life source! For us in the desert, we have a water tank with some basic plumbing to an outdoor shower and sink to wash up. We haven’t installed a filtration system for drinking water yet, so we buy that in bulk in town, or boil water from our water tank if in a pinch. If you’re looking to buy land, consider areas that have natural water sources running through or nearby. Typically, a water tank is the way to go for bathing and cleaning. Pro-tip: look into techniques for saving and reusing grey-water! To locate a natural drinking water source near you, try using Find a Spring!
3. Food Storage
Not a terrible challenge, but something to be mindful of. Living off-grid you might find yourself further away from a grocery store than in the city or suburb. So it’s important to plan and design for pantry space for dry food storage, as well as find a sustainable way to keep perishables cold or frozen. Our easiest hack: The Alpicooler. It can plug into a regular outlet or a vehicle 9-volt, and requires extremely minimal energy to run.
4. Wifi
Depending on how far off-grid you go, wifi and even cell-service might be scarce. If you require wifi to work remotely, it’s important to keep that priority in mind when choosing your space. An easy solution for portable wifi *almost* anywhere is a hotspot from Verizon. You can prepay for a certain amount of monthly data, and it’s relatively affordable. You can also look into adding a personal hotspot onto your cell phone line, if you have strong service at your site.
5. Time-Management
This challenge may be harder for some than others. Eric and I are very different in our focus and work-ethic, so transitioning off-grid was significantly harder for me. If you are trying to maintain a full-time job and maintain any weekly hobbies or interests, it can be difficult to manage with all the additional work of building and maintaining your off-grid dwelling. Something that has worked for us is scheduling out mornings and sunsets to work on the property and land, saving the rest of the day and night for work and personal time. But you have to be committed. Life off-grid is not for the lazy nor the faint of heart.
6. Budget
Budgeting can be a challenge whenever you’re doing something for the first time, and it’s no different when making the switch to live off-grid. Unless you do incredibly in-depth research, you will almost certainly run into some unexpected costs during the build phase. A safe-way to avoid financial catastrophe is to budget in some padding for unknowns. For us, ~$1k was enough to cover mistakes and unexpected costs, including a couple sanity night stays at a hotel during our build phase, to shower and refresh. Once you’ve finished your build and are living the off-grid dream, be sure to keep enough emergency savings incase any crucial element of your life off-grid falters, like a solar panel, a generator, or your cold-food storage.
7. Social Isolation + Mental Health
This one is important! And you definitely won’t be alone if you find this to be a challenge somewhere along the journey. The physical and social isolation may be refreshing and welcome most of the time, but you may have moments where you feel lonely, anxious, or exposed to the elements. This is totally normal, and those feelings will pass as long as you are staying connected to a community somehow, whether its family members, a canine companion, a virtual community, or joining a class or volunteering in a nearby town.
See our articles on Running + Fitness Off-Grid, Embodiment Breathwork, and 7 Benefits of Living Off-Grid.
