Off-the-grid living requires a lot of hard work to successfully pull it off. Fortunately, your new lifestyle can be aided thanks to some really useful amenities. Here are four amenities that are definite must-haves in your new homestead to make off-grid living a lot easier. (h/t to DoomsdayMoose.com)
Compost toilet
A regular old outhouse can become a cesspool of disease if it isn’t regularly cleaned out. Having a composting toilet can protect your nearby sources of freshwater – be it groundwater or surface water – from being contaminated with microbe laden sewage because you won’t have to keep digging new landfills where you can dispose of your excrement.
Furthermore, with the aid of your new composting toilet, you will be able to get an almost limitless amount of organic compost material that you can then use in your homestead garden to fertilize the soil.
Water purification systems
Not only does your new off-grid homestead require a system with which you can collect – and even dispose of – water, you also need to make sure that the water you’re using is clean. This is why you need a water purification system.
There are a variety of systems that you can choose from to clean your water. Some, like bio-filters, can filter water but not disinfect it, while others like boiling or ultraviolet purification systems have the opposite effect.
Consider investing in systems that can both filter and disinfect your water, such as ceramic filters and distillation systems. These two systems work a lot slower than some other methods like ultraviolet purification, but they can clean water more effectively.
Greenhouse
Unless you live in a part of the world where the climate remains stable, you will need a greenhouse where you can grow all of your crops. A greenhouse will allow you to plant crops all year long, while at the same time allowing you to keep your garden safe from adverse weather patterns like hurricanes and snowstorms.
In addition, if your soil isn’t suitable for growing certain types of crops, a greenhouse can help you by allowing you to use different options for growing produce, such as a hydroponics system.
Furthermore, if your greenhouse operation is large and successful enough, you might be able to grow more crops than you need to eat and store for emergency purposes. This opens up the possibility of you selling or trading away all of the extra food that you grew. (Related: Prepping to barter when SHTF: What skills to learn and items to stockpile.)
The extra cash or extra items that you get from selling your surplus can also be put toward maintaining your homestead or providing you with a few more comforts.
Solar power infrastructure
If you truly want your homestead to go off-the-grid and become self-reliant, you will either need to learn how to survive without electricity or find a way to provide yourself with your own homestead-generated renewable energy. This can be done with the help of solar panels.
Running your homestead on solar power can be very challenging, especially if you want to become fully self-reliant. You need to learn how much power you need to generate not just to be able to run your homestead during the day, but also to provide you with enough electricity to last all through the night.
While learning how to set up and maintain a solar power system for your homestead requires a lot of hard work, once it’s all set up and you’re completely off-grid, you will be lowering the overall cost of powering your homestead.
If you implement all of these four amenities, you will be able to drastically improve your quality of life. Fortunately for you, these aren’t the only amenities you can have on your homestead. Do some more research about off-grid living by reading the articles at OffGrid.news.
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