Trying To Find Our Way: Off Grid: Power, water, plumbing, heat, cooking & internet

Shower house inspiration

Will be building this month blog post to come!

Then following quickly behind chicken coop & green house/raised garden beds

My DREAM is to not only have the shower, washer, and sink area but have myself a relaxing plant house!

INSPIRED by our amazing neighbors whose shower house is partly underground and heated solely from the earth and is SO WARM! (this is the type of green house I want to make come spring)

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Sorry for the delay in posting life has taken over and so has school; I am on a six week break and hope to fill you all in on the projects and adventures at the Thompson Homestead!

We have been asked a few times to explain our current systems which we are perfecting daily. We will likely carry most of the systems over to the barn house when we break ground in the Spring; the only major change will be solar. We got a quote from a local solar company and to power a fridge which we currently are still going with out (over a month now) and lights, internet modem and small gadgets it will be roughly $2000 which isn't bad considering we lack a monthly electric bill. Currently, the battery powered lights are still doing good and our power source which I plan to explain in a second is doing alright sometimes it cuts out at inconvenient times (one of my school tests) but hey thats the exciting part of living this way right?

IDEA for "fridge" until we get solar since we are using a small cooler and have to shop every 3/4 days

Lets start with power since it leads to all other things; we currently use two marine batteries (29DC) purchased from town and a 410w power converter.

Here is the set up we transfer them inside and outside depending on the use.

Next, lets talk no running water ... we currently use the marine battery to hook up the water pump which goes into our water tank (320gallons) which costs us $6.00 to fill each time we go to the community well and it lasts us just under a month; this includes ALL of our water diapers, dishes, showers, toilet etc.

Here is the set up for water

View at community well

Our 320gallon tank

Live and learn...the water tank needs to go closer to hitch or else it will slide off the back when full and unhooked from jeep!

First day setting up

Another first time setting up pic

When we fill water for cooking and toilet we don't hook up our tank less hot water heater but when we do diapers, dishes and showers we use it. The tank less hot water heater runs off propane and we are currently showering outside. We plan to build a shower house this month which I posted our inspiration for at the start of this blog! In addition to that we hope to find an RV washer that runs off propane or even a marine battery but we will continue to air dry.

Shower time!

Diapers by hand (and sometimes at laundry mat if were going) we normally soak them in water/soap for a hour, spin them manually with a little pole thing empty the tub, rinse them three times, and then a final hose down and hang dry in bus or on line depending on weather

the tankless hot water heater bought at camping world runs off propane which you don't see here and also in this picture the water hose is not hooked up

HE LOVES OUTDOOR BATH TIME!

Dishes are normally done when the hot water is hooked up but sometimes we do them with water filled containers which is much harder and more time consuming!

Up next plumbing and bathroom we now have the RV toilet hooked up to ABS pipe and it is plumbed into a garbage can that has holes drilled in it around the entire side and on the bottom to make a compost bin. It was a trial and error thing; we had one leak and one "clog" which was really frozen water due to the angle and gravity issue which we fixed.

In addition, since we don't have running water we have to "flush" by pouring water from a container we have in the bathroom. Eventually we may try to gravity feed from a ran barrel.

*****This morning I was addressed with question of is this safe with the water table. The answer is yes. Our ground is pure rock and gravel allowing the compost to drain properly. In addition, no one has a well near us the community well is 4 miles away. The water table is pretty deep here over 1000 ft. most of our neighbors have legit old school out houses; hole in the ground with a out building. I wanted an indoor toilet so we took this route. OH and lastly, we have trees planted around it and rocks over the top the area is around it is not used*******

The garbage can after the holes were drilled it was buried into the ground

Casey cutting the hole so the pipe could go from toilet to outside

Bathroom storage

RV toilet bought off amazon we now have a piece of stainless steel under the toilet over that entire wooden piece

Plumbing hooked up and working

Jacks closet and laundry baskets

Indoor battery box

That brings us to heating we are still currently heating with kerosene and if we are in the bus next year we may switch to a mini wood stove which was our original plan but we had some issues with Lowes and just decided on this route! We get asked a lot if we are staying warm and to be honest we get baked out of here most nights!

YES THAT IS ACCURATE!

As for cooking I do have the vintage stove (1937) I bought from Casey's uncle which is both fuel and wood burning but I need to do some work on it and haven't been able to use it yet so for the time being we cook inside with a little camp stove (coleman bought at Wal-mart) and Casey's mom got us a little Coleman oven that sits on top of the stove and is heated by the flame.

Lastly, internet we got satellite internet mainly for my online schooling since it was nearly impossible to make it to town enough with the baby and even harder to complete homework. We went through a company recommended by our realtor called Wild Blue-Excede we have 25gb a month and this month we were right on and didn't go over and we watch a tv show on Hulu each night plus school, blog, reading and learning ideas for the homestead. We are extremely happy with the speed and quality so far even with the snow! (Which came and went already)