My off grid journey.

[Toepopper]

When I was 30 years old I realized I had to bug out to save my sanity. I worked in just about every major city in the country, both coasts and the Midwest and the Gulf Coast too. Big cities are a trap. I was talking to a real estate agent while sitting on a bar stool in San Jose California in 1978 after work and she showed me some pictures of 60 acre parcels in Northern California. I drove up there and looked at some of them and wound up buying a piece on a land contract. These parcels were off grid, no city water, power, or phone. At this time there were no inverters designed to run a house, they had not been invented yet. I towed in a 28' camper trailer to live in on the weekends and commuted to the Bay area for work. I did this for 10 years until I paid off the property. So the routine was, when I got to the trailer on Friday night, I ran an extension cord from the trailer to my battery in the pickup truck to power the 12-volt lighting system in the trailer as well as a CB radio for communication with the neighbors. After a year I purchased 2 small BP solar panels and a couple deep cycle trolling motor batteries and eliminated the extension cord. After the property payments ended I had more money to spend on improvements to the land, such as culverts and crushed rock for the road. In 1987 the Trace Solar Power Company came out with their first 12 volt inverter which was designed to supply power to a house. I ran out and bought one and 4 L-16 6-volt batteries and installed it in my trailer with the help of the directions provided with the inverter. This was a great improvement and made life easier. While this was happening, I was building a house up on the ridge behind the trailer. I pulled a homeowners building permit which allowed 5 years for construction. The inverter was a modified sine wave inverter which converted 12 volt DC current to 110 AC. After the house was completed, I boosted my storage capacity up to 8 L-16 batteries and 8 solar panels which gave me a total of 820 amp hours. I could power a washing machine and dryer, TV and computer as well as a stereo system. I lived in that house for 19 years and never paid a power bill. Water was supplied with 3 springs and a series of holding tanks but in the dryest part of the year I pumped water from a creek using a 12 volt solar powered pump. These systems worked great. Todays inverters are 12, 24 and now 48 volt systems and are much more sophisticated than the old Trace 2012. I have since moved out of California and into Oregon and have a 12 volt solar backup system for use when the grid power goes down.