TIME TO GET OUT OF THE CITY
‘Starting From Scratch’
PART 1 – The Overview
Photo: Looking down on an 80 acre pasture fronted by a lake
Have you even dreamed of moving to a remote location and getting set-up to live a life totally off the grid? I’m sure that some people have had that notion, given all of the unsettling developments worldwide and domestically, especially within our own cities. It’s a fact that cities have become more and more dangerous over the past decade.
That said, getting out of the city may make more sense now than ever before:
http://www.survivalbased.com/survival-blog/4843/is-it-time-to-get-out-of-the-city
But that may mean you’ll find yourself starting from scratch, possibly with a piece of bare land out in the boonies! But that’s not as bad as it may sound in comparison to the un-pleasantries that you have left behind in the city. And the tradeoff for a lack survivability in the city during a major disaster or just the crime of the city versus the work to develop your little safe haven may be the best investment you ever made.
Possibly the best part of starting from scratch is that you can buy a nice chunk of land at a reasonable price, and own it! We have seen very affordable yet usable 5-10 acre parcels of land for $10,000 – $15,000 (full price). The upside to buying raw land is that you get the best deal on the land… just like a developer. If you compare prices for raw land, versus developed land in the same area, you will notice a substantial increase in value on a per-acre basis that is disproportionately high and does not reflect the simple value of the land plus the value of the improvements… a significant premium is added and that’s how developers make their profit. So why not save some real money and DIY?
My wife and I have spent many amazing years recently living aboard our boat and sailing in remote locations offshore with and without our family and friends, so when we decided to try a wilderness experience in the mountains by developing a remote piece of raw land, it seemed like another fun adventure to us, and why shouldn’t it be? After all, at least we won’t be 1,000 miles from the nearest major hospital or diesel parts house. However, with that said, we appreciate that some people might find it a bit daunting… just the same as it would be to sail a boat out into the ocean. Trust me, the reality is far less frightening than what the imagination can conjure, and that’s what we have found during our adventures at sea:
Photo: Wild Horses visiting our building site – courtesy – Laura Simpson – copyright 2014
So now we have turned our efforts to trying our hand at starting from scratch with a piece of remote raw land up in the mountains with the lions, bears and wild horses. Instead of writing about the subject as an arms-length exercise in what might work, we decided to jump into the project just as anyone else would, and ‘start from scratch’ and try to help others through our real-life experiences.
I have to admit however, that spending my formative years on a working ranch in Southern Oregon did provide me with some life experiences to look back upon and call into service in this new enterprise, so I might be cheating… just a little {;-)
So it begins:
The first thing is to find the right piece of land. It doesn’t matter if it’s 5 acres or 500 acres, the key is the right location… which is as far from highly populated cities as possible and as close to natural resources as possible. After traveling for many months and looking at numerous properties (searching takes time), my wife and I stumbled onto 150 acres situated in the mountains on the Oregon-California border.
There are several characteristics that I would recommend to Preppers and others who are looking for land to build an ‘off-grid’ cabin or home; here are a few:
1. Location:
a.) This may rank as the highest in importance of the characteristics that are desirable. The farther you are from densely populated areas, the better. In our case, we found a great piece of land that was about 50 miles from the nearest populated town of only 7,000 people. And it is several hundred miles from any city with a population of 200,000 or more. Keep in the mind that the last place you want your land to be located is within easy access of the large cities with populations of 200,000 or more. In the event of any major disaster or civil unrest in those high-density cities, it’s only a matter of time before the panic-stricken exodus begins, and you don’t want your land anywhere close to that mess. And of course you definitely don’t want to be ‘in’ that mess!
You don’t want seasonal access to your land
b.) Being in the boonies is great as long as you have year-round accessibility; make sure there is a decent road into the land that is passable year-round with an average truck. If the road is 4X4 only, or snow-packed two months out of the year, that in my book is a non-starter. You need decent accessibility year-round in my opinion.
Photo: Herd of wild horse at the lake – copyright 2014 Laura Simpson
2. Resources:
a.)When you’re looking at raw land, you want to make sure you have access to a reliable source of water. Multiple sources are best; in our case we have both a small lake and a good well that makes 35 gallons/minute.
Photo: Family of 5 deer grazes under a tree above the pasture
b.) Wildlife is important for several reasons; having game animals on your land would be a blessing during a serious national or regional disaster where a loss of distribution infrastructure creates food and fuel shortages/outages. An abundance of animals also adds to the ambiance of the land.
c.) Sunshine is a resource that is sometimes overlooked. When you’re looking at land in the mountains, especially forested land, some parcels are shaded much of the day, and that is bad for solar panels! Make sure the land has a building site, or a logical site for a solar array (numerous solar panels) that is in direct-line with the sun even during the sun’s lowest winter arc through the sky.
d.) Fuel for heating and cooking is very important and multiple sources are always optimal. Land that has plenty of trees allows some harvesting of firewood, although if your land borders State of Federal lands, in some cases you can get firewood cutting permits and preserve the trees on your own land for a rainy day.
Photo: Capt. Bill assisting with tank placement
I also like propane in off-grid situations (this is also why a good access road is important); with a large capacity tank (say 1,000 gallons) you can both heat and cook in an efficient cabin or home for several years before the tank needs to be refilled by the delivery truck. This is a really nice off-grid feature and saves wood cutting, splitting and stacking for days best suited to such activities. Solar arrays in most off-grid locations won’t have the wattage needed to heat or cook and handle other necessities as well. However, solar water heaters are a viable option and cost effective.
Photo: Two 3,000 gallon water tanks feed a gravity water system that makes 60 psi.
e.) Topography is, in some cases, a resource! The right topography gives a piece of land more utility than simple flat land. I like to have a rise or hill on the land that gives you an elevated location for gravity feed water tanks (150 feet elevation or more is better). Gravity feed water is a much bigger deal than most Preppers even realize. The reason is; energy comes at a great cost in off-grid locations, and powering a well must be done with an eye for saving the energy that you must make (or pay for).
In our case, we have 6,000 gallon water tanks that are located about 250 feet above (elevation) and behind our building site on the side of a mountain. This gives us almost 60 psi of constant water pressure for domestic use off those tanks, and 6,000 gallons can last us for many months in a pinch. The energy savings comes by filling the tanks once every few months, instead of cycling an electric well pump with a pressure switch every time the line pressure drops too low. Starting an electric motor, like a well pump, initially uses more energy than when it’s running (trust me on this, there’s some physics beyond the scope of this article). And when you cycle an electric pump on demand as water is used/needed, you use much more energy than if you turn on the pump and fill a large capacity tank once every month or three.
Our well has a 3 hp. single phase 120 volt submersible pump that we power with a 9,000 watt Honda generator. The well pump can fill the tank (5,000 gal. nominally; we refill with 1,000 gal. remaining) in approximately 2.5 hours, and in that time, we use less than 2 gallons of gasoline. This means that a single 55 gallon drum of fuel (stabilized) will allow us to fill the water tank (5,000 gallons Nom.) about 30 times (150,000 gallons of water). All things being equal; survival time with just 150,000 gallons of water is considerable. Of course we have a backup gen-set and extra fuel. The other upside of good gravity feed water pressure is it allows you to treat the water by pushing it through a series of filters without using extra energy. This involves staging tanks with a filter system in between the tanks over a larger drop of elevation to maintain flow and pressure at the point of use. I will discuss this further in a subsequent part of this series.
In the next part of this series (Is It Time To Get Out Of The City: ‘Starting From Scratch’) I am going to get into the individual project details (as it is said; the Devil is in the details)… and how we approached and solved the various technical problems typically associated with living off-grid. For instance: I will be putting together a high efficiency (upgradable) 2KW solar array with a large battery bank and wiring all of that to the chargers and power inverter. We’ll also get into plumbing off-grid (ever popular ditch-digging) so that pipes don’t freeze in winter, etc… and much more… maybe even a few more wild horse photos.
Cheers! Capt. Bill
Capt. William E. Simpson II – USMM
Semper Veritas / Semper Paratus
http://www.WilliameSimpson.com
IMDb: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6505899/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/NauticalPrepper