Homes – What is the best offgrid home to build for your family? | Off Grid Living

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Build an Off Grid Shed, Cabin or Home?

Living Off Grid News – Building a shed, cabin or home on an off grid property is the #1 main concern when planning to move of a rural off grid property. The shelter of choice usually depends on budget as well as temporary versus permanent housing. In many cases, new pioneers moving from a city to a homestead environment will start off in a tent or an RV while they build a permanent shed, cabin or home to live in.

Please click on the links below that will take you to our Off Grid Home Facebook Group where we have hundreds of photo albums. If you scroll through the photos, there are comments to read, articles to review, videos to watch and photos that should give you some good ideas on what is possible and what topics you might like to research a little bit more and eventually include on your own off grid homestead.

How to Live Off Grid in a Shed Home

If you’re in a hurry and have $10,000 to $20,000 to spend, you can buy a really nice shed in just about every small town in American and the build it into a very nice home. You’ll have to plumb and wire it, but it’s a very quick and easy solution.

How to Live Off Grid in a Cabin Home

There are a million online sites that allow you download free and paid log cabin floor plans. My favorite designs include a small core in the middle that is easy to heat with a large southern facing window so that I can use passive solar heating during the winter. Followed by a big wrap around porch that provides a great breeze and is the perfect place watch a thunderstorm’s pouring rain. The most impressive people that I have seen living off grid are those folks surrounded by a thick forest and that use a portable saw mill to cut their lumber using nothing but the forest around them. To me, that is very, very impressive.

How to Live Off Grid in a Tiny Home

If you’re a minimalist, then you might be attracted to the growing trend of building a tiny home. Too small for me, but for people on a budget and not many physical belongings a tiny home offers a dry, warm, cool and soft place to sleep, a small kitchen with limited space for appliances and storage.

How to Live Off Grid in a Container Home

If you know how to weld or have a close friend that does, then building a container home might be the perfect option for you. Containers are strong, can be stacked in a wide a variety of floor plans and then framed in with wood or steel studs to meet your desired living requirements.

How to Live Off the Grid in an Earthship Home

My personal favorite is building an Earthship into the side of a hill so that it is well insulated from heat, cold and the weather outside but comes with large slanted windows that all the sun’s ray to shine almost all the way back into the home during the wintertime. The large windows allow the whole front room of the home to be turned into an aquaponics garden and fish farm that can grow a large vegetable and medicinal garden all 12-months of the year.

How to Live Off the Grid in a Steel Building

If you’re loaded and have plenty of money to burn building a steel Barndominium might be the best option for you. You can build a 5,000 sq ft slab, with 18’ walls, and two floors for less than $75,000 and then frame the whole structure in with huge open rooms, awesome amentities and set it up so that you can host large parties, wedding, anniversary parties with the look and feel of a hunting lodge.

Yes, this option would be a taxidermist’s dream comes true and you could fill with a zoo of stuffed trophies. The pictures of barndominiums interior designs and decorations are worth a look, even if you can’t afford it right now. You should always have a dream planned to live out when you win the lottery. Right?

How to Live Off the Grid in a Terraced Hill Home

More complicated and probably a lot more expensive than most options, building a home on a terraced hillside would work well with Earthships and/or Container Homes. Things to keep in mind include steel supports drilled deep into the hillside so that everything stays in place. Each terrace should slope slightly backwards for rainwater harvesting and lined with 4’ x 4’ x 16’ Gabion baskets. See the pics featuring different landscaping features such as gardens, flowers, vineyards and fruit trees.

How to Live Off the Grid in an Underground Home

Paranoid that the world or the government might be out to get you, then an underground bunker might be your cup of tea. Perhaps a nuclear missile silo might be the perfect bunker to prepare for a nuclear war and or an El Chapo escape tunnel that leads to a safe place under the backyard? Check out this photo album of pictures for possible floor plans.

How to Build an Underground Off Grid Home

How to Live Off the Grid in a Yurt Home

Perhaps your ancient relatives were nomads or gypsies and you’re looking to build a home that is mobile should the need arise to pick up your roots and move to new location every once in a while. If so, a Yurt might be right for you. Yurts are very sturdy, hold up well in cold environments and provide an amazing amount of space and can include more than one living level. One of my favorite features is the skylight in the middle that provides daylight and views of the stars at night.

How to Live Off Grid in a Yurt

How to Live Off the Grid in a Tent Home

Some people like to start their off-grid experience camping in tent. The good news is that tents have some a long ways in the past 20 years and if you don’t believe me, please do a quick Google search on “Glamping,” which is short for Glamorous Camping. You start by building a giant wooden deck. Cover it with a giant heavy-duty tarp. Inside sleeping bags have been replaced with a Queen Anne Cherry Wood Four Poster bed and a memory-foam mattress, matching chester drawers / armoir and an old fashion clawfoot bathtub. Once you build a home, you can always use it for guests or rent it out for thousands of dollars per night to luxury travelers who want to experience the off grid living lifestyle.

How to Start Living Off the Grid in a Luxury Tent

How to Live Off the Grid in a Teepee Home

Once I camped in a teepee that was big enough to hold 30 people sitting in a circle with a fireplace in the middle. There were a small village of teepee there and they were all fixed up like the Glamping tents mentioned above.

We camped there on purpose because it was 20 degrees outside. It turned out the Teepees are very well insulated and very comfortable with even a small fire in the middle. Plus, I like Indians and the way the respected mother earth and all the creatures that live in it. In a sense, they existed hand-in-hand with a nature, which sense to blend well with the off grid mentality.

If it was me and I lived in a Teepee, I would definitely wear moccasin boots, a leather jacket with fringe and have a peace pipe that I smoked with all my friends. Check the pictures of living in teepees that we’ve posted. They are very cool.

How to Live Off the Grid in a Wilderness Shelter

If shit really did hit the fan, more than likely I would feel more comfortable in a wilderness shelter that is partially dug into the ground and a roof covered with soil and plants to disguise the structure and keep it hidden unless you walked right on top of it. I will also include several escape routes like many of the underground bunkers. That way if someone did show up, my family could quickly exit without being seen.