Free Land – Living Off Grid With No Money
offgridpermaculture.com
offgridpermaculture.com
I wish there were sellers with fixed affordable off-grid packages.
You get House A on Plot A for $50,000
You own the house and the plot. It is fully off-grid (except WiFi) and we made smart decisions and installed reliable systems.
You pay your money and you maintain the house.
Unfortunately it’s never like that. It’s all DIY:
Come camp with us for 4 weeks without a hot shower while we teach you how to mix AirCrete and sell you a pump. Get 4 friends and spend 4 months slathering cob incorrectly together. Never cut down a tree before? Buy a chainsaw and start stacking 1-ton logs- you’ll be perfectly safe: nobody has blogged yet about having crushed themselves.
I realize this is contrary to the spirit.
I just want a convention-over-configuration small off-grid house that I can see in models, read specs for, and purchase outright, including the land it’s sitting on.
There's no such thing as free lunch, and not just when it comes to monetary payment, but also to due diligence.
and
If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.
That is to say, I love the design. But I suspect my wife wouldn't.
* how much does it cost?
* what’s included? What are the specs on the windows? What kind of toilet? What’s the flooring made from? What are the screws that hold on the bathroom mirror?
* how long is the warranty?
* where is it located?
Obviously these questions don’t apply to a spec house listed on an architect’s site.
But more generally you find when attempting to purchase an off-grid house or even a small/tiny house, that they leave as many question marks up to the buyer to DIY as possible.
I’m advocating for the reverse: sell me the cheap Xiaomi phone of houses: something mass-market, with sane trade-offs, and all the boxes checked in advance, including the parcel where it lives.
Go ahead and put a price tag on the whole package, builders. Customization = bad (for me).
If somebody else wants the modular custom-built PC of houses, that’s fine.
Me, I’m good with mass-market.
Until there are thousands of these things and the kinks have been worked out you can’t have that. Every innovative architect home has one (or more) secret horror story/screwed up detail you haven’t heard about. When doing something new you need to bear the mental burden of making the house work, build yes but also maintenance which is also specialized and non-standard.
There will be a lot of customers learning this the hard way as the industry catches up with demand.
So you want mass-market off the grid?
You realize thats kind of an oxymoron?
The mass market is by definition only on the grid. Because the grid is predictable and there you can mass produce.
But off the grid allmost always has to be customized. Just alone the getting things there and installing them part.
And like others mentioned, what do you do off grid if your mass produced solar/thermal heating system breaks in the winter?
Order a new one? To be delivered by helicopter?
Off-grid power, water, and sewerage do require on-site work, and usually more land than the house alone uses.
What type of internet do you think would be best? Cell? Traditional satellite? Low orbit satellite? Long range wireless? Cable? DSL? Fiber? Actual wifi from a very nearby neighbor?
Can't have Zoom calls on that garbage.
In EU, getting a lot more is usually not a problem
US plans have a tendency to be much worse than EU due to lower competition
The ISP does do some traffic shaping, so they'll throttle video streaming at peak hours, but a €1 a month VPN busts around that no problem.
I only know people who tried hughesnet, none of them kept it. There are lots of mountains and trees here, so a WISP won't work. Distances are too great for DSL. Cell service (in this area) is lucky to be good enough to send a text.
With starlink this will be a lot easier. I think it comes down to fiber or starlink - and maybe a WISP if possible.
This came in the form of a prefab log cabin - that is to say, the lumber is all cut to shape and size, and you're "just" banging it together. "You" in this case being my wife and I.
Total for the structure was just under €20k - includes windows, doors, insulated walls, floor, ceiling.
Total for water is less than €1000 - IBCs for storage, a km of water line, carbon and sediment filters, UV-C reaction chamber, reverse osmosis.
Total for waste is about €200. IBC. Worms. Cheap plumbing supplies.
Total for power is about €15,000 - most of that cost is in a huge bank of OPzS batteries, and then theres victron gear, a dozen solar panels, a dinky wind turbine, and an experimental (failed) waterwheel. This covers both the mill and the cabin, which are about 600m apart.
So, all in all, it's an off-grid house for under €40k. That of course doesn't include labour, which has been about 1000 hours of our time, from digging and pouring column foundations through to transporting everything to site by aerial cableway - so in many cases it'd be much less, as you wouldn't be building on a 45 degree slope with zero access for machinery.
The thing I keep seeing people getting wrong is energy. Literally yesterday I talked someone out of buying used lithium ion cells from EVs, as while they were indeed very cheap, they likely only had a few years of life in them, so the price/kwH stored amortised over the lifetime of the batteries was terrible. Can't go wrong with lead acid OPzS - 20 year lifetime, easy to maintain - two years in and they've lost basically nothing in terms of their potential. For some reason you don't often see them in domestic installs - but they're super common for battery backups at hospitals, battery storage for renewables providers, etc.
In terms of prefab log cabin, any pointers you could share? (Even if portugal specific)
Thanks
Ours is 70mm milled logs, fit together like tongue and groove. Generally really pleased with how it's come together, although I need to finish the roof, which got postponed by weeks of rain.
Only thing I'd say is that they can be tricky to get permission for in Portugal, but it really depends where you are. Where we are, in the north, where the fires aren't so bad, pretty much anything goes - I have a signed note from the local council saying "it's your land, you build what you like".
Only other thing is don't underestimate the labour. I naievly thought we'd have it up within a few weeks of the kit arriving, but it's been more like four months, and we're still not quite done. Oh, and don't build in winter :)
https://www.h2oreca.it/cerca.php?categoria=giardino%2Fcasett...
Are you putting the log house further up hill? :-?
Love the idea of the house btw - inspiring once the kids get older
This winter the worst we had was 3cm in 24h, and the river stayed a good meter below the level of the floor of the mill, so we now have a better understanding of what kind of weather conditions constitute a danger - the rain we had at the end of 2019 was the worst in 70 years or more.
The mill itself is ancient, and built out of enormous boulders, each weighing tens of tonnes, so the structure was entirely unscathed despite being battered to hell by both the force of the water and the debris that came down - everything from trees to trash to trailers. The roof got pretty badly torn up, so we've had a tarp over it for the last year, as we intend to take it off and put a storey on top this year anyway. Overall, while it was a crisis (we waded out in thigh deep water in torrential rain, and had to walk to the nearest village as our car was already gone, cats screaming in their bag... all a bit traumatic tbh), we've turned it into an opportunity - it spurred us into building the cabin, it's shown us what the river can do and what we should therefore plan for with our projects (for instance, I moved our entire battery bank a few meters further uphill), and the damage to the roof has encouraged us to think about building upwards. It's also shown us what we can bounce back from - lost a lot of posessions, and hosing down the house and everything in it was pretty miserable. Oh, and it happened a few days before Christmas!
The cabin is about 30 meters uphill, and about half a kilometer away, on an old agricultural terrace - nightmare doing the groundwork, and getting materials in, but it's so worth it - spring is just beginning here, and I'm sat in the unfinished structure right now, watching birds flit between the treetops at window level, listening to the stream chuckling in its bed - very different to the perennial roar of the weir at the mill.
It's a challenging lifestyle, but I wouldn't trade it for the world.
I hope it's a lovely spring.
I did discover that you can totally immerse a lot of modern electronics in muddy water, and so long as you wash (urgh, heatsinks) and dry them thoroughly, they live on. Hard drives in the NAS lasted just long enough to get the data off them - NAS itself was fine. Getting silt out of microswitches is also a PITA. Thought the tv was trash, but after a few months, the water that had gotten inbetween the layers of the display dried out, and now you’d never know.
Our main losses were things like mattresses and bedding, the car, books, and a whole bunch of time - took days to hose the mud off the walls, inside and out, and we had about 10cm of silt to shovel out - it took until summer to dry out! The damage outside was also extensive - lots of clearing of debris and chainsawing of huge treetrunks balanced improbably all over the place - at least the flood delivered construction material for the tent platform, which became our home last year while we worked on clearing up the mill and groundwork for the cabin, and taming some of the utterly overgrown forest. This year, as the flood was much smaller, it delivered commensurately smaller wood - but all in all, enough firewood to keep us going until the nights are warm, and some awesome driftwood that’s becoming light fittings in the new cabin.
So far, spring is gorgeous - the valley really benefits from the floods, leaves the banks super fertile - it’s a strip of luminous green in a grey and brown surrounding.
It's very interesting that even after all the improvements in battery tech since then, this still appears to be the case. I wonder how much longer it will hold true?
Lead is at the other end of the periodic table. It's heavy and dense. But the batteries last and last and last, and are well-proven. The lead itself is recyclable,a nd is the most-recycled material by mass in the US IIRC (the USGS reports on this). About 40% of lead production is from recycled lead.
I can't wait for some of the more stable, non-toxic chemistries run through redox flow batteries to become more marketable. For a shelter, I don't care how big the system is, and if all I have to replace is a pump (and I'm trying to figure out if I can use magneto-hydrodynamic pumps to even extend the life of that component) and what evaporates away, the lifespan of the battery is far longer than what we are used to. I'm also interested in nickel-iron chemistries getting hammered out.
Many of these “construction kits” can be seen and bought in a city somewhere on the highway between Chiang Mai and Bangkok (probably Phrae as this[0] company is located there as well).
—--
For comparison consider that I rent a 45m^2 1 bedroom furnished apartment on the 28th floor of a high rise in the heart of Bangkok for roughly $600/month. I could have a 90m^2 two bedroom in the same building for about $1,000/month.
There is a lot of ready made tech for off grid living these days.
E.g. you can buy an island capable solar+storage system from many vendors, not just Tesla. You can buy very efficient and clean log-powered heating systems. "Stückholzheizung" in german.
All the components are commercial off the shelf. So you only would need a prefab house contractor to combine these offerings into a good package.
Add in starlink, and you can indeed be completely off the grid, even including WIFI.
The biggest obstacle for off-grid living is legal. E.g. in Germany you can not opt out of grid connection charges, even if you do not use the grid.
Hey you truly want to live off-grid and off the land? There's plenty of farms like that in the US, other big countries, and I guess it's doable even in Spain or France for example.
Off-grid is not a choice in a lot of places, it's how things are. Closest "city" is 30min/1h by car. And by city I mean a gas station, a pharmacy and a grocery store and one main street.
Edit:
> I recommend the book How to Build and Furnish a Log Cabin ... that teaches old fashioned methods requiring inexpensive tools. No expensive chainsaws necessary.
Oh boy, if you think a chainsaw is expensive and/or not necessary I'm sure you're going to have a great time building your log cabin. /s
If you're trying to live off grid but has never managed a small backyard (some corn, a small orchard, raising chickens, etc) you don't know what you're signing off for.
I'm visualizing OP trying to fell a tree using one of those survivalist wire saws. "Should be done some time next week!"
None of that matters though, and you're right. Punk rock was DIY too. That doesn't mean music companies didn't eventually produce it like any other pop music.
I think their point is that they don't want to DIY at all. They want a consumer product for living off-grid.
I live off grid, I have nothing but reliable systems here. Stuff breaks every single day. Nature happens - we get lightning strikes, floods, fires, freezing temperatures, droughts - stuff breaks.
When we moved here, some stuff had been done by the previous owners. No plans or anything, just "hunt the burst water line under the concrete" and all that fun.
The major advantage of DIY is that you end up being able to repair your own stuff, to know how it works, to know where it is.
If you have an off-grid home that you can't maintain, you aren't going to last long there.
I have this mentality with my normal on grid tract house. My saying is "at least I know what corners I cut"
One of HN’s most important comments on this subject ever IMHO
This sounds similar to the NIH syndrome in some software companies. I’m still trying to figure out when it makes sense and when it doesn’t. In software, I tend to err on the side of NIH. In life, I am almost never DIY. I suspect I’m out of balance in both regards.
Eg if "search" quality is a competitive differentiation, make sure you implement search yourself. Your goal is to beat the rest of the market in search quality so buying a commodity search product that anyone else can buy doesn't make sense. You are directly rewarded for paying the extra NIH cost to go the extra mile for your customers.
For everything else, there's little benefit to paying the extra cost of NIH. An excessively fancy/powerful support ticketing system, for example, isn't going to help you get more customers. Few people might care how much nicer the checkout/payment page is than on other products, so you can outsource that.
Most areas in real life don't benefit from extra quality either. For eg, the extra quality you might get from hunting/farming your own own food makes little difference to most people, so most choose to outsource that.
The zone is not ideal for wind or solar, so we are connected to electrical. We had a contractor help with bath tiling, he did plumbing and electric hook-ups, an electrician did what was required by code for the electric system.
Every single one of the licensed pros had cut corners.
The plumbing had multiple mistakes as well, wrong tank positioning, wrong main drain placement, no main cut-off to the tank, did not get a filter hook-up or a drain valve, etc, and the hot water boiler did not get a proper set-up for easy maintenance (the magnesium sacrificial anode cannot be removed, too close to the ceiling, you have to dismount the whole unit).
If I had the money and not to have to work during the build process, I would have built a small house first, learning everything about how to do it right and observing the "pros" as they go along. But hey, we have a house that total spend was 1/3 of the market, enough land to build a second one, and I am a different man from the experience.
It was my first experience with engineering outside of software. Trust no one, do your own research, plan, experiment and verify apply even more in "physical world" engineering.
It's nice to become more and more self-reliant with construction skills. I just serviced the indoor plumbing, changed 3 taps, installed a water-filter hook-up and filter, including pipes, and plan to assemble a big water filtration system, myself, in the summer. $ 5K to 7K for filter tank, controller and installation by contractor, vs $600 for system and medium from manufacturer, and install it yourself.
Whether you plan to go off-grid, build, be your own general contractor, or even just buy a property, doing things yourself, provided you can follow engineering principles and values, is always the best bet. You want reliability. The pros want to make a profit.
Life pro tip - if planning to participate in construction in any way, audit the locality and how strict vs smart their code and inspections are.
I was contemplating what to do about that with my water heater, but I think maybe the procedure is that you cut it up as it comes out, if it is one long piece, and there are replacements that are segmented so you can get them back in with limited clearance.
Some handy individuals have modified their existing assemblies, but I don't have the time nor the tools, and it's not cost-effective to mess around in my case, as a replacement for my electrical unit will be under $300, dealer demo unit, with own installation. Just have to snag one on sale.
Get a Rheem Marathon hot water heater and permanently do away with sacrificial anodes.
So much about construction drives me nuts. After sweating bullets over microscopic details of software design to find the balance between durability, longevity, readability, reliability, maintainability, security, etc., it comes as a huge shock to see the lack of attention to detail in most "professional" construction.
On the other hand, most people aren't as bothered as I am about spending so much of a lifetime paying for a good that deteriorates to pretty much nil at the the end of that lifetime.
Construction and materials "solutions" that are by design planned to fail by the end-of-life / warranty, etc.
Few plumbers or electricians are willing to make a 2-or-more-hours round trip on the road at any price. If you have an off-grid home you're not willing to maintain, you're going to spend a lot of time sitting alone in the cold and dark until nature finally recycles you.
“Hi HN! (waves). It’s Johnny from Loggr.me (formerly timbr.ho). We’re building the world’s first platform to connect loggers (who can chop down trees) and loggees (who have no business doing so). The idea came at me suddenly while I was building my off-grid tiny house in the Sierra Nevadas...”
Plan on buying 60-150 acres, building a house off grid, adding starlink, then renting it until / when I’d like to move in.
We’d probably build 2-3 homes and rent out 1-2 and people can bring their families. They can learn to hunt, fish, take care of cattle, etc for a summer.
Earth-ship is built using recycling, ie a concrete thermal mass and recycled tires, bottles, etc.
Does it mean without any normal roads? Well you can find that in VA easily if you know where to look.
No power lines? Harder, unless you can accept that power line exist but you simply won't use them.
No water pipes? In a rural environment, having central water would be rare.
Edit: Heating used to be oil, replaced by wood pallets. Heat pumps are a nice alternative as well.
Today we can generate electricity on site, which leaves phone an internet.
It sounds like your best bet is to buy a cookie-cutter in the suburbs and a generator.
Subdivisions are easy, they are all essentially the same. They have a road, electricity, water, sewer are waiting and everyone (builders) knows how to hook up to them. As soon as you go of grid you have to figure that out, much of it from scratch because each site is different.
Electricity- How much solar do you need? That depends on the climate and the level of comfort the owner wants. Are they good running a generator when the sun doesn't shine or are they willing to shell out for a lot of battery? Are the panels on the roof or on the ground?
Water - do you want to haul your own water or punch a well? That is a big, site specific cost that can be estimated, but is also a big unknown.
Sewer- composting toilet or septic system? Septic obviously costs not and each site needs some amount of design and approval, even here where you don't even need a permit for the structure.
Roads - it is likely to not exist in most properties, the cost to get that done varies greatly.
Ok, so the price can swing - a lot and it isn't so cookie cutter, but why does of grid so often get coupled to DIY? Because when you live of grid (at least around here) you are the one who will plow and maintain your road. You are the one to maintain your solar system.
Your generator carb needs tuned? Do you drive an hour each way to drop it off and pick it up next week or watch a YouTube video and do it in an hour and have your generator ready and available instead of in the shop?
I can only speak about what I see around me, but it is mostly DIY, self-reliant, prepared people who live here (on or off grid). By building your own systems you are ready to maintain and repair them rather than wait for someone to come save you.
Can't cut a tree with a chainsaw? It might be a while before someone clears the fallen tree from your road. Even old Grandma's around here have a saw and won't let a tree in the road stop them. (I keep a bow saw in each vehicle and have used it. It is slower, but not as slow as waiting!)
It is a mentality that is so different than my old subdivision neighbors.
Basically you have to end up doing a ton of stuff yourself just because of the time to drive to town and back is very high, or the cost to get a repairman out is prohibitive.
One other issue is that there is usually a ton of regulations around building, and a county or state may not allow a developer to do at scale what it will allow an individual to do for themselves.
DIY is very much a necessary part of living off grid. It actually can be quite fun!
Are you seriously complaining that homesteading is DIY? That's the point. You belong in SV, just buy a copy of stardew valley.
>I wish there were sellers with fixed affordable off-grid packages. (...) I realize this is contrary to the spirit.
You don't get it. It's going to break and if you've got the maintenance skills of a disillusioned tech worker, it's never going to be anything more than a money pit for you. Stay in whatever tech hub you're in.
you could have just searched "van life reality" on youtube. i mean, it's not that hard:
- The reality of van life on social media @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvOHjIGi30Y
- The Reality of #VanLife - Full Documentary Movie - 2018 @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6McizBPKaE
I watched the first one, from somebody that has been actually living in a van.
A lot of the problems highlighted in those video are about (dumb?) people that expect to get free money in exchange of likes and things like that. Yeah you can live in a van or whatever, but do you really expect a misterious hand to give out money every month for you to go surfing and exploring the wilderness?
The youtubers that blog about working full time are a minority, of course, becasue they are mostly busy working (full time) and making a living.
If i was living in a van while having a full-time job and earning a proper salary, I'd probably be spending my time enjoying life more than informing strangers on the internet about my whereabouts. Yeah I might be posting updates from time to time, but the "algorithm" wouldn't pick me up that much.
Riding out of town after having a stack of pancakes at the firehouse or a piece of pie from the local Rotary Club, you have plenty of time to think about what it takes and how remarkable it is for some of those towns to accommodate everyone.
The RAGBRAI is a great way to experience the State of Iowa.
Population 94.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Oyens,+IA/@42.8198478,-96....
Marne looks huge compared to Oyens... Marne has a restaurant and two stores! Oyens has a grain elevator and a closed church.
My nephew's wife grew up in Spirit Lake.
[1] https://www.labor.alaska.gov/esd_alaska_jobs/ak_over.htm
The wealthy think there’s a safety net, even in the middle of nowhere.
They grow up with the Luxury of taking chances because that emphatic family, usually dad, bails them out. They can afford to take chances, and buck the system?
I have read Krakauer’s book a few time, and watched the movie a lot. And thought about Chris way too much.
I think Chris’s biggest mistake was not having a partner.
I know a few homeless individuals. The ones that didn’t lose their mind in a few months, or die; had a reliable partner.
Most of the time the partner was same sex. It was just someone to help, and bounce ideas off.
I’m interested in McCandless because I identified with him. I didn’t have the affluent background, but was unhappy after college. The last thing I wanted was to look at a screen, and hang around people whom were kinda dead inside.
I think Chris would be alive today if he partnered up.
I’m a complete loner, but the times I had true friends, I was so much more successful.
He did not know these things. He died. QED.
So understandable a bit. (if thats the right version)
"Affluent upbringing" or in more plain terms "spoiled kid who always wants to do 'crazy' stuff because he knows dad will be there with the check-book/lawyer to bail him out". (Of course it's more complicated than that, but to the outside, that's what it looks like)
Well, you can't have your dad bail out a bear. You can't live off the land if you can't tell the difference between an orange and a grapefruit in a supermarket. (Edit: the 'theories of malnutrition' on his wiki page are a very good summary of theories, and a lot of things we take for granted in our day to day)
I don't see any point in glorifying people who died for doing something (obviously) stupid who had multiple chances to give up and absolutely zero sense of foresight.
I can see the appeal of living in nature, off-grid, but I see a few problems that are really hard to solve for such type of living:
1) healthcare access - you might be hours away from medical assistance. It's all nice and good until you need it.
2) social activity - it's nice to be by yourself, or with a few people, for a few months; but would you live like that for decades? Wouldn't you miss social interactions?
3) work - not everybody can be a software developer. What kind of work you could do if you are so far away from any community?
4) sense of community, sense of belonging - this is the hardest I think. Humans are social animals, there's no way around it. Some of us are perfectly fine living in a semi-isolated state; but at least for me, that would become a problem eventually. One thing that Covid has taught me is how important my social interactions are.
Edit: also on HN today you find "What Makes a Community? (2020)". Interesting read. [0]
However, it can wear on you a lot. I would absolutely love to own an off-the-grid second home. That's very appealing to me.
But to live like a hermit out in the middle of nowhere full-time seems crazy to me in the long-term.
1. Most things can be taken care of to a point where a lengthy journey to help is possible. In an extreme case you can get a helicopter in on the radio. Of course the US makes this challenging, because you have to pay for healthcare. That's a hurdle for sure.
2. People that live isolated lives choose it because it's isolated. I ended up in London but am still happiest on my own. Until I met my girlfriend my most meaningful relationship was with my dog. No guile there.
3. That's the point though, isn't it? Sustaining yourself and yours becomes your work.
4. Again not so hard. The people drawn to this life like the solitude. Sure they will find their way to a store or post office every now and then where they'll see enough people to remind them why they're out there and isolated.
Did you meet her in London, or did you meet her when you were a hermit? I'd guess the former. Another good reason why a large community provides certain things that living in quasi-isolation doesn't.
In any case, thanks for your thoughts; I value them, despite my comment above.
Still, it seems like it could be worth it to have some land that will be less affected by climate change in the future, especially if you have children you can leave it to.
As there are substantial non-monetary obligations attached (for example, the need to build a house), I wouldn't call this "giving away land". And as most of these programs have been in place for a long time - in some cases dating back to common law - I wouldn't frame it as news. Rather, it's another set of life hacking tips.
But I would budget at minimum an additional $50k for septic system, water well drilling and setup, and PV+wind+battery setup. Before you even start with the cost of laying a foundation for a house.
Many still have hand dug wells and septic tanks. Composting outside toilets are not unknown and were normal within living memory.
Modern families often bring bottled water for drinking and brushing teeth. No matter that bottled water is expensive, it is massively cheaper than investing in a bored well etc.
So I have no idea about “code” and other aspects of the US system or WA in particular, but i would put the cost on working water and waste at about $100 if you are the kind of person cut out for living off grid remote self sufficient and don’t mind grabbing a spade while the rest of us hang out online :)
While I don't doubt the police are racist, crime isn't actually that bad compared to other US cities. I live right outside of downtown and feel safe riding or walking almost anywhere in the city.
Winter is something to embrace like other cold weather cities - easier when you have snow then rain and mud like some warmer places. And in my opinion it makes the spring and summer all the more glorious.
Buffalo has had faced some hard times but the bleeding has stopped and past decade has seen the biggest improvements in years. It's legacy has left housing stock, infrastructure, architecture and culture that far outpaces other similar sized cities, at a similarly low cost.
In this case, the price is working like a maniac 24/7 and living in a tiny shack without electricity.
I'd be really careful about building the type of house described in the article in Kansas. Obviously places in Tornado Alley have that to worry about. Not every place is like that - we've had one tornado since 1966 - but there's nowhere in Kansas you can escape the heavy thunderstorms.
You're correct about the thunderstorms though. Something I miss all the time.
Truly remarkable how it takes only a decade to see entire counties and states to change completely.
This made me laugh. This is an extremely common situation, from dead zone rural all the way up to ordinary suburban and midsize city. And it's not hard to find in hopping metropolis San Francisco either.
Unrelated, but there used to be an ironic-downmarket diner in South of Market. It didn't last long, but (for a while) people packed the place to eat trays of frozen macaroni and cheese.
You could get a slightly better version of the same dish (but still distinctly microwaved) in a dozen places elsewhere around town, but people went to this place for the hipper decor and music, and to know that they were eating (and enjoying) the same food ironically, expensively, a few blocks from work, and just down the street from a wine bar where they have such creative ideas of how to infuse a vodka tonic!
So yes, it's technically free land, but after 25 years. I'm sure some states have slightly different rules about adverse possession though.
The main point of adverse possession isn’t squatters. It’s to give you or your descendants good title after a certain amount of time. There’s a bunch of reasons you can end up with imperfect title even if you think you validly bought or were gifted your property. Adverse possession clears up your title once enough time passes as long as you actually use the land and no one comes along and tries to assert their right.
A guy built a castle, and hid it for four years behind straw bales - on the basis that if nobody complained for four years he'd be able to keep it. It didn't work out that way, and he had to demolish it:
- but yeah they should have them let him keep it ;) -
If adverse possession is 10 years in your state, you don't need to worry about the seller's grandchildren suing you claiming that you defrauded their ancestors when you bought your land from them. This also acts as a backstop for title insurance: title insurers are essentially off the hook for policies older than the adverse possession time.
The main goal of adverse possession has always been to protect people who bought the land from ancient+stale claims that they bought it through fraud or bought it from somebody who wrongfully claimed they owned it. Otherwise you'd have to keep documentation and proof for all eternity. At some point it has to be okay to no longer have evidence and documentation beyond what's in the public record. Torrens title systems don't change this: the point is to prevent egregiously stale claims of fraud. Fraud is the explicit exceptions to Torrens indefeasibility.
The much-publicized "squatters got free land" phenomenon is just a side effect.
Definitely low population but growing up there I never felt I was missing out. Spent lots of time outside adventuring around. I still sometimes miss how dark and quiet notes out there were.
Gives you a little taste of surviving outdoors.I appreciate my current life in a rural setting more than I ever did living in large cities.
We spent a couple of years living in the middle of nowhere in a corrugated iron shack - it had electricity, borehole water, etc - but REALLY slow internet. It was wonderful.
At the start of WW2 (82 years ago) Germany had a population of ~70M. Now it's 83M.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_U...
.. illustrates that Europe isn't this densely populated everywhere.
Pretty much everything is regulated in Germany which sucks at times, but also this is the reason why things work quite well even though we are densely populated.
Cabins and such need a permit, or have to grandfathered. There is even a way to treat them as a "non-permanent" building.
Living near civilization is far easier, even with a soul-crushing job.
I live in northern Arkansas, in a town of <15k people. It’s the county seat and the largest town nearby, but I grew up in an even smaller town nearby (current population 271).
I’m happy to discuss this sort of thing in further detail if anyone is interested.
Some thoughts:
I think it’s going to be foremost on the minds of a lot of HNers, but race/ethnicity isn’t as big a consideration as it might appear from the outside. If you look like the people here it’s going to be a bit easier to assimilate, but I would strongly argue that this is more of a visible marker of someone being an “outsider” than something based on race. In fact, if you’re white, your accent, mannerisms, and perspective on the world will be a bigger deal. For example - pretty much no one here is going to care if you’re a man who prefers the company of men, but if you walk into town with bright green hair, covered in rainbows, and have a giant Biden sticker on the back of your car you’re not going to be well received.
What’s more, it seems to me - again, from the outside - that people who appear obviously “foreign” have a slightly easier time fitting in. Yes, there’s the initial “you’re not from around here, are ya?”, but your differences also make you memorable. Treat others with kindness and kindness will be returned, and your external differences will mean that people remember you. Note that my perspective on this is shaped by my knowing and having spoken with people who have moved in to the area: mostly of Hispanic ethnicity, which is increasingly common, but also a family from Iraq that moved here as part of a compensatory relocation program after the father had served several years as an interpreter for the US Army in Iraq.
The biggest consideration in my mind is that you have to make an effort to understand and assimilate to the local culture.
People here wave if we recognize each other, including people you only sorta/kinda know. I live in a small subdivision and know the vehicles that belong here; if I see them coming in and out of the neighborhood I wave. If I see them driving around town, I wave. None of this means I know their names.
If you see someone who needs help and you’re able to offer it, do so. If the guy across the street from me is working on his house and I see him sawing a board with a hand saw in his driveway, I go out and offer to let him use my power tools. I don’t stand around and wait for him to return them, either, I trust that he’ll put them in the (unlocked) storage area on the side of my home or in the front seat of my (also unlocked) Jeep when he’s done. If I’m trimming trees in my yard with a hatchet, someone is almost certainly going to stop and offer to let me use their chainsaw. If you’re borrowing a tool and it breaks, you fix or replace it. If you can’t afford to do so, you politely refuse the offer.
If you have adjoining neighbors, you stop and chat with them when you see them outside. Sometimes that’s “Hey! How are ya? Good, good - I have to run, I’ll talk to you later.” Sometimes that’s a half hour of listening to their complaining about politics. Whatever. You don’t have to agree, you just have to listen. Social accommodations like this are the lubrication required for our society to operate.
Do all you can not to have disagreements with your neighbors - that’s never a good time, but it’s particularly bad when you’re far from others. It’s better to implicitly agree to mostly ignore each other than to be at odds. If you go that route, you still treat them like you’re good friends in the situations where you do have to interact.
In short, your goal should be “I’m one of ‘us’ now”. Thinking in terms of “us” and “these people” is counterproductive.
Social stuff aside, living outside a city is different from a practical perspective as well. I’ve heard it said that “One hundred years in the US in a long time; one hundred miles in Europe is a long distance.”
The nearest town to me that I would consider a small city is Springfield, MO. It’s 75 mi / 125 km away. That seems like a long way, but it’s about an hour and fifteen minutes’ drive - basically like driving to the other side of a large city. My town has a half dozen grocery stores, but they’re very class specific: poor people and the elderly tend to go to the old Harp’s downtown and Cash Saver; middle class people go to one of the new Harps’ outside of town; upper class people and the elderly go to Hudson’s. Everyone goes to Walmart. We have everything in town that you need day-to-day, and we drive to neighboring cities when we want to “go shopping”. For clothes I usually end up in Branson, MO and for electronics and big-ticket items I’ll either buy online or go to Springfield, MO.
If you live in an outlying community (like New Richmond), you quickly learn to make your trips “into town” count for a bit more. You’ll find you’re not going to the grocery store nearly as often, buying more when you’re there, and will sometimes swing by and pick up a couple of stopgap things that sit on your mental list when you happen to be nearby for other reasons. In a smaller town like that there is usually a gas station or something that also serves as a “general store” and has essentials. They’re more expensive there, but cheaper and faster than driving into town. If you’re even further out, you learn to buy more than you need of everything and do without some things that you used to think were essential. The idea of going through a drive through for a cup of Starbucks every morning is pretty laughable to me, even living in a town where there are a couple of coffee shops. When I lived in a truly rural area, it was something that I considered a rare luxury for when I was traveling.
... this has grown to be a much larger comment than I was expecting. I’ll stop here and go do something productive. If I can offer any insights or answer questions, let me know. I’ll check back :)
I can completely understand how someone who wants to live an urban life would be unhappy with Springfield. From that perspective it’s kinda the worst of both world - too urban to have the benefits of a small town, but too small to have most of the benefits of living in a city.
That said, you should tell her that some random guy on the Internet said she’ll miss “real” cashew chicken if she moves away. If you don’t have the context, she’ll know exactly what I mean. :)
It was productive. Thank you.I've tried this a couple of times: move to the woods with some like-minded people and start a little Permaculture village. All the physical stuff really works: composting, rocket stoves, etc.
In my experience the problems are always people. ("Hell is other people." ~Voltaire or somebody.) Drug and alcohol abuse or just plain crazy can bust up a venture.
I did meet a group of people who were living very very well in a communal village. They did things like holding hands in a big circle and singing grace before meals. They are probably among the happiest and most fulfilled folks I've ever met.
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One thing I would add to the list: Aircrete dome houses. Cheap, easy, fast, beautiful, durable (fire- and earthquake-proof.) Start at https://www.domegaia.com/ for a group that teaches how and developed a backyard-scale foamer. There are lots of DIY videos and information out there too.
People will be able to remote work due to internet technology, local work hubs will appear where you can have social interactions.
Well, sure, if the only people buying houses are the ones who can afford them without getting loans, you could technically describe it that way. But perhaps you could explain a bit further how hard currency / ban on fractional reserve would make housing affordable?
I speculate that house prices has increased mainly due to credit expansion. If you limit credit expansion by using hard currency house prices would be more stable over time like hard assets.
This is probably true, but not everywhere. There are still many places where the cost to build a replacement home (cost of labor and materials) is higher than the price of an existing house+land. Some societies try to solve this problem by forcing people to move.
Find it and read it
I’m moderately “off-grid” because I have a septic tank even though I have a city sewer connection at my curbside. The sewer was run after my home was built, and it doesn’t make sense for me to dig up my front yard (to run the new line), my back yard (to remove the septic tank and drain field), and my crawlspace (to reverse the direction of the plumbing) just so I can pay money every month to the city for a service that I’m currently providing for myself without a recurring fee. I’m in a neighborhood though so I’m connected to city water, electric, gas, and trash.
My previous home in this area has electrical service only. We had a septic tank for sewer and took care of everything else ourselves.
There were three homes in a “bunch” in the middle of nowhere, with a small plot of land that was technically owned by one of my neighbors but served as a community resource. That plot had a small pump house for the shared well, with electrical service from the neighbor’s place. On that same lot I kept a semi-enclosed utility trailer where we would all put our trash. Twice a month or so I would hook on to the trailer and haul it to the dump (a half hour drive) on my way to work and put the trailer back when I got home.
Every month or so we’d all sit down for coffee and bring our receipts. We’d figure up how much water, trash, and internet had cost us that month, split it proportionately, account for any expenses, and make everyone whole. Because I took care of the trash and was both young handy enough to be the one who did repairs on the well when necessary, it wasn’t uncommon for me to walk away with a few dollars in my pocket. It was like our own informal HOA out in the sticks :)