Dear readers of Off-Grid.net,
My name is Krzysztof Lis, I live in Poland, and since 2005 I am interested in off-grid living. My off-grid journey started in 2006 when I bought my volkswagen T3 (vanagon) camper (RV) and equipped it with small flexible solar panel and solar charge controller.
Since January 2009 I am running a blog about off-grid living. Last month I was invited by Nick Rosen to write my articles here instead of running my own blog, and that’s how I ended up writing this. :)
During the following weeks I will be moving all my old articles to be published here, and when those articles are all moved, I will start posting new ones.
I hope that by writing here I will learn a lot and meet new people with similar goals. :)
At the moment I live in a grid-connected apartment, but I started preparing my lot for an off-grid home. In the next two or three years I plan to build there a house, connected to the grid, but with off-grid capabilities, what Nick calls “off-grid-ready.” If I have enough money, it will be completely self-sufficient in terms of electricity, water and sewage, and heat for heating and domestic hot water. The lot has easy access to electrical grid, but no water nor natural gas supply. Because of that I want to drill my own well, probably harvest rainwater, and heat my home with wood, with a lot of help from Sun. I will try fulfill the passive house standard requirements, to be able to use passive solar heating. I don’t have much off-grid experience, but I already know it’s easier to save than to produce energy.
This year I plan to work on my permaculture garden. Almost half of my lot is an old plum orchard, I will cut down some of those trees to make place for my house, and the rest I will try to transform to forest garden. I would also like to build a small shack with straw bale walls this year so I have a base for all my future operations. When the house is ready I want to move there, quit my daytime job, and reduce my costs of living so that I won’t have to work again at all!
This winter I started recording my efforts to build this house (or, to be more specific, my small autonomous farm) on video, and publish on my videoblog. When I prepare english subtitles for those videos, they will be also added here.
I also started publishing on Twitter recently, but didn’t have much opportunities to write anything there. I plan to update my Twitter account with cool stuff I find on the internet, as well as with links to my articles.
6 Responses
interesting….this is what I ve been planning too. On a plot in Poland or anywhere else. I wonder how your plum trees are doing?
So great to know there are likeminded others… Hailz to you and yours. Keep intouch. I have property in Sieroslaw Poland just out of Poznan. Have always been, will always be…. an off-gridder. \m/
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Good luck to you. Your plans sound amazing. I too hope to live off-grid eventually. I look forward to reading about how you get along.
All the very best
Daisy
@Wretha: thanks! The plum trees are still producing a lot of fruit, much more we can eat, I even thought about harvesting and selling it so it wouldn’t waste each year.
The previous owner didn’t water the orchard at all. It seems our climate has enough rain when it’s necessary for the trees to grow.
@Psycho-Mantis: my garden (and my entire lot) is 17 meters (56 ft) wide, and it’s located in small rural community, so it wouldn’t be possible. ;)
Ever think this guy really wants to be living “off the grid” so he can chop up bodies into little pieces and bury them in the garden…? Just my assumption after seeing his picture…. :O
Welcome Krzysztof, sounds like you are well on your way to living a great life off-grid. :) Are any of those plum trees still producing fruit? How did the previous owners water the orchard?
Good luck with everything.
Wretha