Living off grid (kind of)?? As few bills as possible?

[Cottagelife1]

Ok so I have had a little revelation? We are moving into a small cottage for about a year while we save and build a new house? So I have decided to try to live with as little bills as possible?? Has ANYONE ever done this?? Aibu to think this is possible?Posting here for traffic but there may be a better group??
So we will have no rent/mortgage, no tv or tv license, no water bill, we will need electricity obvs, but we will have a stove and our own wood, and a gas bottle for the hob.

We were thinking chickens , a pig to feed our waste food too (and the compost heap obvs). Am I missing anything?? Any ideas from those who try to be self sufficient??

Near Valencia in Spain.

Property is really cheap and food, weather, lifestyle all great.

But not without drawbacks sometimes!

Harder to do now if one of you isn't Spanish though! (DH Spanish) You'd need private medical insurance etc. But it's certainly doable. We've been here 15 years and now DD (Spanish) is nearly 11, I feel we could do it (and she actually has some friends in this town that go to her current school in a much larger town nearby)

Mostly, I am sick of paying rent to live elsewhere when we have a 'rural house' that would be about as cheap as possible to live in as it gets, I think!

I'm pretty lonely anyway, I've got used to it, so I am not worried about that.

We have a fairly sizeable allotment. The hungry season is definitely something to watch for. This is the gap between the end of the winter vegetables and the start of harvesting. This time of year you would be living off the gluts you had preserved from last year's harvest.

We are self sufficient in specific things: soft fruit, jams, cut flowers, courgettes, beans. Once we start harvesting we buy very little in the way of fruit and veg and some things we never buy.

Home brew is something to look at if you like a drink every now and then. I started brewing again last year. You can brew from kit or from your own produce. We made cider from our own and donated apples. The apple juice was wonderful and DH was very happy with the cider.

Freagle / Freecycle will be good to request Jam jars , bottles for storing produce. Quite a few people seem to advertise rescued battery chickens which will lay. A generator /windmill is also a good alternative if electricity is a problem .

@elfies thank you although I am unsure as to whether we would get permission for a windmill. There’s already Electricity on site so we would actually in theory be on the grid 😬🤣

"car payments"
ROFLMAO. An essential?!

@FinalNameChange we own our cars outright and yes I stated upthread that we would pay car tax and insurance as a yearly bill.

If you're going to keep any livestock, you need to thoroughly research how to look after them, as well as what rules/legislation Ireland and the EU have in place.

It's not good welfare to keep a single pig. They are social animals, and very intelligent, and a single pig would be lonely. They need to be with others of their species.

A good forum to join, is www.downsizer.net. There are lots of people on there living various degrees of a self sufficient lifestyle. You would do well to tap into their expertise.

@Motoko thank you! I’ll check that out!

Yes we’ll i have well and truly told Dh there will be no pig! 😂😂

What we are trying to achieve with our allotment and home brewing activity is to keep luxury at a low cost. Some examples:

• home cured bacon is cheaper than good quality shop bought bacon. In Britain pork is cheap, curing is straightforward.
• jams & jellies. We make our own either from own grown or foraged fruit. I dont think we have bought a single jar of jam in the last year.
• through the summer we get through a lot of tomatoes. Last year the polytunnel gave us a good crop of high quality tomatoes. This year we are going to be looking at drying the surplus to give us the flavour of fresh tomatoes in stews and casseroles through the winter.
• home brew is giving us beer and cider at around 50p/pint from kit. Cost of cider from our own apples is even lower as the only extra costs to add are things like sanitiser and heat
• cut flowers can be expensive but we are growing a lot from seed so now arent tempted to buy flowers

Having the allotment has made us much more aware of the seasons. We arent self sufficient but we are trying to be a lot more seasonal and less wasteful.

Good luck with your endeavours!

I applaud you and I would love to do this . I had planned to have a year of zero spending to try build on our savings but it's one thing after another . Live rurally too and our water well needed repairs to the pressure switch this year in addition to a host of other unfortunate problems and it's all nearly brought us to our knees.

It sounds like you have a plan though but you have money if you need it to help out . Are you planning not having cars or health insurance?

Hi OP, this has always been my dream, too. I have read most american homestead-type blogs and the Little House books etc. I am now the proud owner of a fruit and vegetable garden and I also have some chickens, ducks and rabbits and I am thinking of adding bees this year. I look after them on top of my full-time job. I think it's a great lifestyle but you should not expect to save any money by growing your own veg, meat etc. It is a big learning curve and one year is simply not enough. In addition, even the most experienced gardener is helpless in the face of adverse weather. Last year, there were almost no tomatoes in my village due to the constant rains here. I also incubated some chicken eggs and they all turned out to be roosters, so no eggs from them (plenty of meat, though ;). I think the best way to save money is to lower your outgoings, eg. bills, buy secondhand etc. Growing your own food is great and nothing tastes better, but I am happy to have my full-time job so that I won't have to worry about finding the money to buy chicken feed.

We live off-grid and keep animals, and while our bills are very small it's a lot of work - neither of us work full time because this is also our work. I think it's something you need to do because you really want to, not just because you're hoping to save a bit of money. You also need to consider what skills you need to learn, otherwise you'll just end up paying other people to of things for you.
You don't need permission to install a small wind generator btw, well not in the UK you don't, no idea about Ireland.

We used to live off grid - no mains electricity, no mains water, no mains gas, no phone - it's very hard work. We moved to just living very rurally about 18 months ago and having mains electricity is absolutely amazing. The washing machine! The hoover!

Build a cold store. A well ventilated larder on the north side of your house in which to store all your food. It makes a huge difference.

Cut your own fuel (wood or peat).

Make sure you budget properly. Generators break, stoves need serviced, gas or oil need bought in bulk.

Growing your own is fun and convenient when you are many miles from the nearest shop but I wouldn't have said it was particularly cheap. I grew lots of salads, soft fruit, new potatoes etc. These are all more expensive to buy than grow. Growing onions and carrots for example is less worth it because they are very cheap to buy and you probably use them in greater quantities than you can grow.

@cantstopeating01 yes we both have cars as we both work (however I will be part time from sept. We have 2 dc and they need to get to school too. Yes health insurance here in Ireland is a must for us.

Alec I am doing this is Spain from next April, the weather here is sunny most of then time, but in October and February it can flood/torrential rain.

I am planning to grow: courgettes, aubergines, strawberries, tomatoes and beans to start with. I'll put the fruit in pots with herbs. I think in the summer they will grow so well (judging on the old mans allotment next door!)

Potatoes and onions don't do well here and agree about carrots.

Have you got any other suggestions of what might work well?

Just thought I'd add a few comments about chickens.
You can feed them household scraps but ONLY if they come from a vegan household. That said I don't think many people stick to that rule. I have 20 chickens and their surplus eggs just about cover their feed and bedding. Unfortunately they aren't paying me back for their very expensive coop, and there isn't enough left over to pay for worming treatment. Neither I nor my partner ever bothered worming before, until I had one almost die from a very nasty worm. Cue £60 worming treatment every 3 months. Not that begrudge paying any of it, just thought it was worth mentioning.

As a PP poster mentioned, some things aren't worth growing yourself. carrots, onions, potatoes you can get cheaply in large sacks. My DP and I are looking to go down a more self-sufficient route, but we just dont have the time to look after all our crops. The amount of runner beans that went to waste last year makes me so sad! But there wasn't enough hours in the day to get everything done.
Make sure you only bother planting what you actually like, or things that you can sell easily. We sold some of our veg to the local greengrocer last summer as well as selling some 'on the gate'.
And storage is a biggy too. I've no idea how people used to store fresh fruit all winter, mine wont last a month!

I think living off-grid is an idea that appeals to lots of people. I think that up to a point there's nothing wrong with being frugal and self-sufficient, but fundamentally the idea of being off-grid is flawed. The idea of depending on no-one is psychologically comforting because it gives the feeling of being in control of your life, but the reality is that you will have a safer, richer and better life by interacting with (not being independent of) a complex developed economy.

I'm speaking generally about the impulse to go off-grid. It didn't sound like OP intended to take this further than was sensible, so this isn't intended to discourage her.

I agree Petty My plan is to do frugal/grow as much as possible as in we will have electricity and DH has a car (for school run as remote)

It's come about as we own the house and it has it's own water supply, septic tank and no mains gas already and I am heartily sick of renting and all the neighbours/noise/no outdoor space etc It also doesn't have things like the postal service/street lamps etc so will feel isolated. No more Amazon prime for me!

There is no way I could be completely self sufficient or keep animals etc. Off grid lite for me!

But good luck OP, we'll give it a go!

@WendyCope

I'm not familiar with what will grow well in Spain but I would imagine your new neighbours will give you a good idea. Check if there is an allotment scheme or a veg growers club. That's a good way of sharing out gluts or seeds or plants. Make friends with a local farmer or stables and see if you can get some muck. Make sure you start a compost heap straight away. Get water butts.

Off the top of my head aubergines, peppers, squash, corn cobs, melons, grapes, apricots, almonds. Depends where you are though. The far south is very arid I think. The north west looks like a really lush place. I've never been though.

Other off grid tips include led bulbs, meal planning religiously, mouse traps, investing in cubies for storing diesel etc, water butts, solar panels, building up good relationships with handy people like builders, plumbers etc. Any building work going on nearby and they might let you have a rake in the skip. We built all kinds of stuff from leftover odds and ends. A whole patio, a porch, wee windows, heaps of things. If you are building or renovating then YouTube is really handy.

To live off grid I think you have to be really committed. It takes a lot of effort.

Thank you so much alec I hadn't even thought of a compost heap, thank you! I'll get that started asap.

Great tips and DD is looking up things on youtube!

Those veggies sound exactly what the man has next door, so I'll do that. I forgot about melons. There is a huge fig tree at the end of the road with thousands of figs so I might try my hand at jam. I know it's going to take a lot of commitment and also getting used to being really isolated. There is a builder's yard quite nearby, again, good tip!

Deffo more meal planning will be needed.
I'll be back in a year and let you know how it goes.

I just mean living as independently as possible

Who is paying for your rent/mortgage/council tax and who is funding monthly unlimited broadband for you?!

@Cottagelife1 it sounds idyllic to me and something I think I would love to do on my own - did something similar when my parents purchased a house to do up and there were 6 of us and two dogs in a two up two down (with pigeon loft!) in the coldest winter on record!. We did have mains water and electricity but no central heating.

The only thing I don't get (and apologies if this is ignorant/has been asked but I've missed it!) what do you use for a loo and a shower if no mains water? I guess you could do baths with water heated up on the stove?

what do you use for a loo and a shower if no mains water?
Not the op, but I'm in Scotland and don't have mains water, it works much like a normal house would re toilet, hot shower, general water, just not connected to the mains but my own private supply and waste water goes to a septci. It gets pumped up, through filters and into the house, the only major difference is I'm in charge of making sure it doesn't kill me rather then the water board so have to test it occasionally and make sure uv filter etc is actually working.

Do you not have to pay for any water then if you’re not on mains?

No as your not getting it from the mains you don't pay.