Trying to live off-grid in my early 20s

My first attempt at off-grid living was rough; but the experience was so valuable.

Up until age 19 I’d never thought much about off-grid living.

I grew up in the suburbs of metro Atlanta. Having been born in the early 1990s, I grew up in the age of American Sun Belt City boom times. Living near a sunbelt city like Atlanta ensured I only ever saw growth: New grocery stores, new subdivisions, new roads, and constant construction. I had no idea that many other big cities and small towns were decaying in the rustbelt or rural areas of America.

Like many young people in western countries, particularly America, I took the abundance of food in the grocery stores, the clean tap water, the immediate electricity, the gas stove, our car, the roads, and our home for granted most of the time. It all seemed like a given. Normal.

It was not until the 2007-2008 financial crisis that I witnessed friends and family face challenging times: Lost jobs, worried about losing their homes, financial stress. This is the first time I recall thinking “I don’t want myself or others to feel that stress over losing my job or my home”.

Many of the newer homes (from the 90s to now) built in metro Atlanta are cheaply built & massive. You could call them McMansions. I absolutely knew I didn’t want to go into 30 years of debt for an oversized, energy hungry, McMansion. But as a teenager, I didn’t know what a real solution was to live simply. Everyone I knew worked 9-5 jobs and lived in the suburbs. So my thoughts on the matter ended there.

I knew I wanted to study something in the fields of science or engineering. I liked the idea of driving a nice car and living in a house on the north side of town, maybe working in software. So I majored in Computer Science at Georgia Tech.

When I was 19, just a few semesters into college, I started interning for a software company writing code for big retailers like Home Depot, Tractor Supply, WholeFoods and Ross. I loved the new challenge. I built many valuable skills, enjoyed my team, and I enjoyed the work.

I had about $40,000 worth of student debt after the first few years of school. I didn’t think much of this debt at first. However, after a few semesters the initial charms of writing code in a cubicle began to wear off for me. I experienced the negative side of a corporate environment: office politics, corporate bureaucracy, the monotony of working under fluorescent lights all day. I began to want to be outdoors more, like when I was a kid. However, I realized if I was in $40,000 of debt upon graduating, I’d have no choice but to keep working in a cubicle to earn the money to repay my loans.

Somehow I found a book on “Minimalism”. This clicked for me. Own less stuff, live frugally, pay off debt, become more free. This was my first clue. Shortly after, a friend at work told me about “Tiny Homes.” I was fascinated. Tiny homes allowed people to build a small home, keep it affordable, and stay debt free. Learning about tiny homes opened up the world of alternative living systems, local regenerative farming, decentralized energy, and off-grid living. I was totally hooked. During my college classes I’d be sketching plans for tiny homes, gardens, and various off-grid concepts.

I cut out what little social life I had at school, my classes were demanding already. Through trial and error I started a small online e-commerce business, manufacturing rubber stamps (of all things). It was a niche business I ran on Etsy. I made about $35-$45k per year while finishing my Computer Science degree. I paid off my student loans as fast as possible, and was thrilled to be able to graduate debt-free. The idea of living off-grid in a tiny house, and being debt free, was pure fuel for me.

I still knew very little about off-grid living.

After paying off my loans, I began to save money from my work. I saved up about $40,000 over the last years of college. I didn’t want to put it into the markets after watching the 2007-2008 crisis. I knew I wanted land to build a tiny home on.

After researching land online, I found 7 acres on a river. The land had been clear-cut and logged recently, and the river was known for being somewhat polluted. This was no paradise, but the land was $35,000 - I could afford that. It was quiet, there were lots of trees, and I felt like it would be a good place to start my off-grid journey.

After buying the land, I built a rough-cut little wooden shed with a tin roof to store tools in. I cleared a driveway on the weekends. Eventually I purchased a trailer to start building the tiny home. Around this time I had met my bride to be. We were dating, and became engaged after about 6 months. We started working on the tiny house together.

I had a few small solar panels out there, but very little practical knowledge beyond basic carpentry. We charged our power tools from the solar panels, and built a solid little tiny home shell. The property had no water connection, and no power hookup.

We were married in June, and had yet to finish the tiny house. We planned on living in the tiny house as we finished it, which was a big mistake during a sweltering Georgia summer. The temperature was brutal in a tiny house with no AC unit. We could power a small battery powered fan at night, but that was about it. We had a cooler with ice for food, and had yet to fully assemble a plumbing system. We were very unprepared, overly ambitious, and in over our heads. In retrospect, I should have finished the project 100% before we both moved into the tiny home.

We lasted 5 nights sleeping in the tiny home without AC or functioning water systems. We had two dogs at the time, and they slept in the wooden shed I’d built. All of us were hot and miserable. The final straw came when my wife was bitten by some ant or spider in the middle of the night. She had a bad allergic reaction, and we ended up in the ER. She was fine after some allergy medicine, but we took the incident as a sign we’d bitten off more than we could chew. I didn’t have a ton of money left in the bank to purchase a big solar panel system, and I didn’t have the practical skills yet to rapidly fix the plumbing and electrical systems. We were in a pickle.

Wanting to be a responsible husband, I knew risking our health was not an option for the off-grid dream. We had been running the online Etsy business together, but it wasn’t enough to purchase a typical suburban home.

We found a basement apartment to rent, and I started looking for a job in the software industry. I found a good job with a software company in Atlanta, which I was very thankful for. We had the money to put down on a 3% mortgage for a normal house in the suburbs, which we were also very thankful for. I realized I had my original dream: living on the north side of town, nice home, and a job in the software industry. I was thankful to have that. It wasn’t the debt-free freedom I’d recently made my goal, but I was thankful for the opportunity.

Within 6 months our first off-grid experiment had crashed and burned. I didn’t have a fully formed plan, or the skills to execute the build 100% properly. We didn’t have enough funds to pay for turnkey solutions, and we didn’t have the full understanding of the proper systems that could have allowed us to make the first off-grid living experiment a success.

Ironically, if I had the knowledge I have now and the access to current off-grid systems that I have today, we could have made our off-grid home work well within a few weeks. Back then affordable plug-and-play solar generators were not available. I didn’t know about HomeBioGas systems for sanitation and cooking fuel. I didn’t know we could actually power a small window AC from a few solar panels. We didn’t have the experience to setup a rainwater collection system quickly. Innovative tools like the GoSun solar ovens were not available yet.

Looking back, we could have gone fully off grid, even with our small remaining funds, if I had the knowledge of these systems and the ability to install them. However, I didn’t have the know-how and some of these systems didn’t even exist yet! So much has changed in the last 10 years.

In that moment of failure I was devastated. I felt like all my passion for the project had been misdirected. I felt like my dream to be debt-free was a pipe-dream (with my new mortgage on a home in the suburbs). That said, I became very thankful I could take out a mortgage on a home. I was also thankful for my software office job.

My goal to live debt-free, stay more independent, and work for myself had taken a beating in the short term. Looking back 10 years later, I’m incredibly thankful for the failure. It help me to better understand what I needed to study and improve.

The fire I had to be debt-free never left. Nor did the passion to become more sustainable and independent. We learned to enjoy the different path, stayed frugal, and adapted to our new journey. We didn’t sell the land, and we kept the tiny house. The dream had taken a back set, but it was still alive.

My challenges in going off-grid at a young age has fueled our work at Acorn Land Labs. We want to help provide the learning materials to allow others to successfully do what I was unable to at a young age. If I had a guide, and the right systems, I could have made that dream a reality. We came close, but ultimately fell short on that first attempt.

My aim is to use what I’ve learned to help others succeed on the first try. The desire to be debt-free, sustainable, and more independent is a worthy goal to aspire to.

The need for affordable, sustainable, and independent homes has skyrocketed in the last 3 years. We need affordable, sustainable off-grid living systems more than ever.

In the past few years the world has woken up to the reality the many young people cannot afford modern homes, and many young folks won’t ever be able to afford a home of their own as Wall Street gobbles us single family homes and builds entire neighborhoods for rent only. Many people (especially young people) are essentially becoming indentured servants to corporate America and Wall Street in a new form of modern feudalism. Their educational debt, rented apartment to live in, food, utilities, vehicles, entertainment, and everything else is becoming a lifetime subscription.

Student debt is crippling. Wages have stagnated. Our industrial food system is broken: often harming both humans and our environment for profits. Energy prices are rising. Cars and car-infrastructure are huge financial drain making us and our towns poorer. We need local solutions that help local people.

Our mission with Acorn Land Labs is to effectively share and communicate the ideas, tools, methods and processes to build off-grid systems to provide people with:

• Creative and affordable shelter

• Nutritious and fresh local food

• Clean and abundant water

• Clean energy from solar, biomass & biogas

• Simple green sanitation

• Common sense, affordable transportation systems

Our primary tools to help educate others are our Land Lab Off-Grid Simulator app, and our online Land Lab Circular Systems Overview Course.

We will continue sharing ideas to our social media channels on Youtube, Tiktok, Instagram, and Facebook. I will keep writing articles on this Substack newsletter.

We’ll be launching the Land Lab Off-Grid Simulator Beta app this October along with our first digital course.

People need living-system options that are sustainable, affordable, decentralized, and accessible. Our world has clearly entered into a new season of hard times, and we need to build the skills and community to adapt accordingly.

Our biggest challenges are not the technology or methods for off-grid living. The technology works, and the methods work. The biggest challenges are zoning, regulations, financing and changing the status quo around those key issues.

Historically, seasons of decline and disorder are cyclical. We’re absolutely in one of those challenging cycles of decline. It could last a few decades or more.

It doesn’t have to be all bad. It’s a chance to build new skills, rebuild our communities, change old habits, and learn to become more resilient together.

My hope is that my past challenges and experiences can help guide you and others to navigating the process of building useful off-grid systems for living freely more effectively. It’s not an easy path, but it is worth the challenge.

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Our mission at Acorn Land Labs is to share the ideas, methods, tools & concepts needed for people to leverage off-grid systems to live more freely and affordably. Go build something!

🎥 Off-Grid Systems Video Course - 10 hour off-grid systems course

📗 Acorn Off-Grid Home eBook - 50 key off-grid systems we use for living simply

🎧 Acorn Off-Grid Audiobook - 50 key off-grid systems we use for living simply

📚 Acorn Off-Grid Systems Paperback / Hardback Editions - buy on Amazon.