Thread: Off grid in Canada

I thought this was interesting. Seems kinda nice to have that much independence.

My brother builds "green" homes and is building his retirement house on 40 acres soon. He is doing geothermal for the HVAC with numerous other energy saving aspects. The really cool part is he is doing a large solar array coupled with a total house generator run off of natural gas. For water he is doing a well. He will not need public utilities at all other than having his natural gas tank refilled.

Originally Posted by VictorCharlie

My brother builds "green" homes and is building his retirement house on 40 acres soon. He is doing geothermal for the HVAC with numerous other energy saving aspects. The really cool part is he is doing a large solar array coupled with a total house generator run off of natural gas. For water he is doing a well. He will not need public utilities at all other than having his natural gas tank refilled.

That is really cool. My mother-in-law lives with this guys that built his house out of mostly recycled materials it's almost totally off grid, solar and wind for electricity, composting toilet, well for water.
His fridge and oven are propane so he needs to buy that. He has a greenhouse facing the sun and he has windows that open into the main house from the green house to help with heat. Woodburning stove and all that. It's up in north so he doesn't really need any kind of A/C. The ironic this is he grows all these organic veggies and stuff and sells them in a local market so he can have money for ice cream and frozen pizza. It took him 20 years from start to finish as he just bought and sourced things as he could. It's pretty much done now and his cost per month to live is less than $200. He pays for internet, propane and supplemental water. He really scored on the land, because his friend owns it and let him do all of it for free there so he could have a neighbor.

I would love to design and build my own house to live with my extended family like the Waltons. I thought you would need to be a millionaire to do it.