Show Me Yours And I'll Show You Mine:)

My husband and I are coming up on our 3 year anniversary of building our off grid berm home. We are now in the stages where we can tweak and hopefully perfect what we have done.
I would love to see pictures of other off grid homes/cabins/shops. Please post what you have and the equipment you use. I think this could be very helpful for people interested in going off grid.

Here is a picture looking at the front of our berm house. We still need to paint.


From the hill in the back:


We have a 1620 watt 12 volt system and 1540 amp hours of batteries...we need to add more batteries. Right now we are producing more electric than we can use or store....this is not a bad thing, lol.

We have twelve 135 watt Kyocera 12 volt panels, two Outback 80 amp charge controllers, one Outback 12 volt inverter, fourteen 6 volt golf cart batteries and a back up Honda generator which is only used for pumping our well water into an underground storage tank. My husband did the installation. Our system works flawlessly.
When my husband designed our system he wanted to have 2 redundant systems so that if something happened to one we would still have power from the other. We also went with two larger charge controllers for future upgrading which we are now in the process of doing.

Please tell us about your sytems no matter how big or small.

 

Awsome! Did you design it yourselfs or buy a plan?
I live in the city in a house built in the 50's.
Some thing like you have is near my dream home catigory.

 

We did everything ourselves and there was a lot of trial and error, lol.

This is the whole story from the beginning. It is a long and detailed story with lots of pictures if you want to see what we did.

Going Off Grid in East Tennessee (motorhome, design, install) - (TN) - City-Data Forum

Good luck to you. Dreams do come true

 

WOW!
I'm still trying to get my land surveyed!
I have a 12 x 60 mobile home up north ( stripped ) for storage only, and it appears it was set up about 8 feet over my northern boundary line on someone else's land! ( sheesh!)
I have a LOT to do up on my land ( all 3 parcels!)
Congratulations, you have a fantastic set up!
My hat's off to you!

 

Very nice set up. I have followed your building of this on another forum, but looks like you did an excellent job. Enjoy !

 

ylisa- thanks for posting! I'm still having trouble convincing my husband that an off grid house can be attractive and comfortable. He liked the pictures! One of these days when I have the time, I'm going to read that entire thread about building your house. For now I'll just have to randomly select a page a drool over the pictures.

Bruce- I'm so jealous of those crab! they look delicious!!

 

Lisa, might I suggest one those Steel Buildings to cover your parking area. Love yer home & am reading sum on the link you posted & drooling

 

Interesting Possibilities and challenges

Thank you Ylisa, for sharing your information with us....unfortunately I don't have a homestead retreat to quid pro quo images with you.

The site has quite a few defence possibilities, and some possible potential defence challenges. Earth Berm housing is not only a benefit to off grid living, but makes for a stronger more defensible dwelling.

Hopefully the high ground behind your dwelling is also part of your parcel of land.

Cheers from Chello

 

by the way great thread about the place on city data and i notice that you had to retell a person the reason why earth bermed a couple of times in the post that i read..

i had gotten up to the post count of 100 when i notice that a few times that you had to explain the reason behind earth covered homes to a people on the website there ..

 

I'm up to page 75 on that forum thread so far an I'm Amazed!! I'm also learning a whole heckuva lot too!!!

 

I loved the title to this tread. I guess I was hoping for something else

YLisa, very nice hacienda you have there!

 

Good luck with your land. Personally, I think the surveyor's mess up more land than not..they should know better.

What are your plans for your land?

Thank you so much. I think after this year we will finally be able to enjoy it more rather than work on it.

Very cool..thanks for the link. Hubby wants to know about all the machinery. Is it on your property? What is it all, lol?(that's from me)

Tell your husband there are so many off grid styles. Just make it your own

You are very welcome. Yes, we own the ridge behind us and around us. We are very lucky.

It's OK I'm used to repeating myself....I'm married

We learned a lot too. So many people write in with so much good advice.

That was the point...to get your attention, lol.

 

This is fantastic. I am always interested in seeing the inside of places like this. We have a tiny 16x24 cabin.... 6 more yrs til it is paid off and then we will be converting to solar. This is beautiful.

 

Dang, Lisa. You and Mike did a great job! Love the weekly digests (I have only read through to the second conex box repaint so far, tons of pages). If Mama Falc and I get back on our feet, we are planning an earth berm, fully off grid home here in Texas. Thank you for your postings and the inspiration! I am continuing reading, as the synopsis pages are great with pics! By the way, you and Mama Falc share the same birthday, 10-20! Weird coincidence, but your birthday will be easy for me to remember LOL!!

 

Me too If you click on our link you can see the inside. Sorry, I have no idea what page #.

Congrats for your goals and paying off your home soon

Thanks..I'm glad you like. Mike loves to read the stories. Me...I spend so much time doing pictures and then the story that by the time I post it...I don't read it. My stepdaughter had a book made for me of the first year. It was a wonderful gift.

BTW, can you remind Mike when my birthday is? He forgot last year. It's a good thing I love him so much, lol.