Going "Off Grid"

Orionaut · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:08

Assuming, hypothetically, that one is in a position whereby one has a well/borehole for water, septic tank for sewerage, oil/solid fuel for heating and sufficient solar/wind/CHP/etc capacity to meet ones electricity needs,

How does one get oneself officially "Cut Off" (IE no utility supply or accounts at all)

Edit to add, Should this be in "Home and garden"?

moon man · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:15

we have a shared septic tank here and no gas ,but you still have to pay for the water that runs off your property ,drainage i suppose but its only 17 quid a month .was 60 in yorkshire before i moved down
ediit ,obviously im paying for water supply as well but its a nice reduction

Jez · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:20

You just close the applicable accounts, I was (sort of am, very complicated) in advanced negotiations over an agricultural building conversion. Only an electricity account (mains power, luckily) would have been applicable to that, once completed.

Loads of houses do not have sewerage, loads do not have gas, many do not have mains water. I am yet to see one without mains electricity, but it isnt a legal requirement to buy power from the grid so you could easily close that down.

Jez · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:22

moon man said:
we have a shared septic tank here and no gas ,but you still have to pay for the water that runs off your property ,drainage i suppose but its only 17 quid a month .was 60 in yorkshire before i moved down

Only if there is a surface water sewer in your area, we certainly dont have any run off drainage here and therefore nobody to pay for that. My surface water runs into my own soakaway.

Ahleckz · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:27

Jez said:
You just close the applicable accounts, I was (sort of am, very complicated) in advanced negotiations over an agricultural building conversion. Only an electricity account (mains power, luckily) would have been applicable to that, once completed.

Loads of houses do not have sewerage, loads do not have gas, many do not have mains water. I am yet to see one without mains electricity, but it isnt a legal requirement to buy power from the grid so you could easily close that down.

Are there really many that don't have mains water? Are people still using hand pumps or something?

moon man · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:28

yes i guess its the water supply im paying for but happy with the cost

Jez · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:33

Ahleckz said:
Are there really many that don't have mains water? Are people still using hand pumps or something?

"Many" is probably not accurate in the context of the number of houses in the UK, but certainly a few hamlets around my immediate area do not have mains water, i have to assume that Oxfordshire is not unusual in that regard.

Of only around 5 houses in the last 10 years which i have viewed, 2 of them did not have mains water. I remember the setups in some detail as we tried to buy both of them.

Boring but if you are at all interested:

One of them shared a little water pumping and filtration station on some common land in the hamlet, fed from a local tributary, the running costs were shared between ~5 houses in the hamlet via a shared business bank account out of which the contract with a maintenance company was set up.
The other hamlet had a pumping and filtration house which was fed directly from the river thames. This was later superseeded in the 1990s (hence i never did find out about the legal setup for this) by a private thames water (normal supply, but quite a few miles long) supply installed to one house, at a cost of around £0.5m. This house (The Manor house) actually owned the supply and at their will allowed connections to it, the owners split the business account with thames water around 8 ways equally but at any point in theory could cut it.

There is an entire industry around automatic modern borehole pumps and the like, it isnt rare in my (limited!) experience.

Orionaut · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:35

Ahleckz said:
Are there really many that don't have mains water? Are people still using hand pumps or something?

Back in the 60's/70's the farm we, as a family, used to stay at for our summer holidays in Cornwall had, as its sole domestic water supply, a hand pump in the kitchen.

The only other source for potable liquid was the Cows. Our breakfast cornflakes came with warm frothy milk that ten minutes earlier was inside said Cows!

Wonderful really.

peterwalkley · 31 Dec 2019 at 16:51

Would you want to cut off completely though. Being able to sell your excess power back to the grid and buy power if weather prevented your method(s) from working would be useful.

Orionaut · 31 Dec 2019 at 17:06

peterwalkley said:
Would you want to cut off completely though. Being able to sell your excess power back to the grid and buy power if weather prevented your method(s) from working would be useful.

If you are a "low user" the standing/daily charges that utility accounts all seem to apply these days are particularly painful

And yes, I am asking because I am shortly to be in a position where all this is a significant possibility.

I dare say there are all sorts of regulatory/technical hoops one would need to jump through in order to sell surplus electricity. I really do not want to be bothered. Sad really since what I have in mind will almost certainly be capable of generating an excess at certain times of the year, possibly quite a significant excess (5-10Kw)

Gray2233 · 31 Dec 2019 at 17:08

I've been following this guy on youtube for awhile now:

He lives totally off grid, I'm not really planning on doing the same anytime soon but I find the idea of doing so pretty interesting.

Orionaut · 31 Dec 2019 at 17:37

Gray2233 said:
I've been following this guy on youtube for awhile now:

He lives totally off grid, I'm not really planning on doing the same anytime soon but I find the idea of doing so pretty interesting.

I have one of these (This is not mine)

These old Listers can run continuously, literally, for months, even years. They generate around 4KWhr/litre of pretty much anything you want to put into them (Diesel, heating oil, Waste motor oil, Chip fat, Rendered down dead bodies of ones enemies, etc

)

I also have a rather more powerful 7.5KVa gen set that I built from scratch based on a Perkins 4108 diesel engine (With a marine exhaust manifold to maximise the heat>Water CHP utility)

(Unfortunately the 4108 has a hydraulically regulated, rather than a mechanically regulated, injector pump so its speed regulation is poor, I modified the springs to improve matters but there is still a lot of droop between no load and full load. I have set it to 60Hz no load to 50Hz full load. The Leroy Summer alternator is fine within this range since it is rated at both speeds.)

So yes, I have plans!

I will be posting more about this in the future.

Jez · 31 Dec 2019 at 17:38

Orionaut said:
If you are a "low user" the standing/daily charges that utility accounts all seem to apply these days are particularly painful

And yes, I am asking because I am shortly to be in a position where all this is a significant possibility.

I dare say there are all sorts of regulatory/technical hoops one would need to jump through in order to sell surplus electricity. I really do not want to be bothered. Sad really since what I have in mind will almost certainly be capable of generating an excess at certain times of the year, possibly quite a significant excess (5-10Kw)

In this case, you do not legally have to buy anything from any of these companies. Just contact them and have them close the accounts, they will need to come out and disconnect you for which i cant think that there could possibly be a charge if you are stating that you want nothing from them.

The only services which i couldnt imaging wanting cut off are power and telephone/fibre (however fixed line internet is delivered in your area). Even if you do manage to generate 4KWH/L, the cheapest readily available bulk fuel is what...kerosene? This is over 50ppl+5%VAT at least here in Oxon. You might as well just buy power from the grid with zero noise/hassle/setup required? Internet, i wouldnt personally want to swap FTTP with 4G regardless of cost.

Orionaut · 31 Dec 2019 at 18:03

Jez said:
In this case, you do not legally have to buy anything from any of these companies. Just contact them and have them close the accounts, they will need to come out and disconnect you for which i cant think that there could possibly be a charge if you are stating that you want nothing from them.

The only services which i couldnt imaging wanting cut off are power and telephone/fibre (however fixed line internet is delivered in your area). Even if you do manage to generate 4KWH/L, the cheapest readily available bulk fuel is what...kerosene? This is over 50ppl+5%VAT at least here in Oxon. You might as well just buy power from the grid with zero noise/hassle/setup required? Internet, i wouldnt personally want to swap FTTP with 4G regardless of cost.

You are missing the point. I need the kerosene for heating anyway. the electricity would come as a free by-product # (For half the year anyway, for the other half Sunlight might well be enough to do the job)

(# Obviously not-free. there is a lot of work and other expense involved in being off-grid. But I have always liked the idea of Autarky, or at least as much Autarky as I can achieve. it is one of the reasons why I am a hard Brexiter!

)

Jez · 31 Dec 2019 at 18:16

I don’t think that I am missing the point...the fuel fed into a generator to create electricity costs at least 50ppl. This is certainly not a free byproduct(!) and is as expensive as buying silent reliable clean power from the grid.....

as I say I am involved in a building which other than power and fibre is off grid along with the whole hamlet which it is in, no one bothers to generate their own power though as you can’t really do it in a worthwhile fashion. If you have a power connection available, use it..imo.

FoxEye · 31 Dec 2019 at 18:46

Does off-grid also mean no internet?

Dreadi · 31 Dec 2019 at 18:54

Don't you need to be subterranial? I spoke to a guy about it before who's fully into this and he was looking for somewhere to build in the side of a hill as you don't council tax if your classes as underground? He's really against paying for things he could get free

Armageus · 31 Dec 2019 at 18:56

FoxEye said:
Does off-grid also mean no internet?

It's not needed in a zombie apocalypse

LeeUK · 31 Dec 2019 at 20:35

Most of these off grid people are rich hippies who can stop it all in an instant if it gets too much for them e.g hook the leccy/gas/water back up.

Yadda · 31 Dec 2019 at 23:01

Youtube once led me to an "offgrid homesteader" channel and I followed it for a short while. He's an American ex-soldier who moved his family off-grid and documented it through vlogs. He's an interesting bloke and the vlogs were good for a while but now all he seems to do is talk about tracking/being followed by the mysterious and hostile "sasquatch".

It seems being off-grid does strange things to a man.