As a student in my early 20’s, a friend and I decided to move to the city of Brighton on England’s south coast. We soon discovered there was no way we could afford the cost of housing there – but moved anyway. We ended up living with new age travellers – this was my first taste of off grid living, I converted an old British Army troop carrier (Bedford MK 4×4) and lived in that.
After a stint of some years traveling about including working in a circus and several winter seasons of conservation work, I ended up in the county of Somerset where I still live today. At some point I had the chance of buying a small piece of land and I went for it. Having no capital at all of my own I had to borrow to all of the money to do so. All the purchase price came in the form of a personal loan from a bank and all the legal fees were put on credit cards. It was a hard 5 years to pay back the loan and it took me a further 2 years to clear my credit cards.
Having no spare money for anything let alone mains utilities I continued to live off-grid simply by default. During this time I built a barn and converted it to a home and eventually I was able to secure a Certificate Of Lawfulness from the council for my home and really that was the moment it was finally all worth while.
Over the years of having no spare cash I had learned how to do without any mains water, power, gas or phone line and so even having emerged from the other side of clearing my debts I was still off-grid and remain so even now. I’ve gone from relying on oil lamps with the occasional battery powered reading light, to my first LED lights, to running all the conveniences of modern life including a washing machine, air conditioning, induction hobs and a fan oven!
Many of the lessons I learned I collected into a series of ‘Off-Grid Basics’ videos, the 5th of which is a detailed discussion of land and planning mostly based on my own experience and with reference to an excellent book on the topic.
These videos are starting to show their age now and certainly I’ve moved on from a lot of what I show in them but I do think they still provide a decent grounding in the subject for those who might be contemplating doing something similar or curious to know what living off-grid in the UK in the modern age is actually like!
More up to date videos on my off-grid living projects are among the perks my patrons get over on my Patreon page.