Off-grid?

We were all off-grid once. Until comparatively recently, actually. The power and water grids in the UK were mostly in private ownership until about 60 years ago, when they were nationalised, and then re-privatised again in the 1980s. The original stated aim of the reprivatising was that we could all own a little piece of these vital utilities, but of course the reality is that swathes of shares were brought up by international equity groups and now we’re at the mercy of these groups and are forced to buy in our fuel and water often from off-shore sources at exponentially rising rates which have more to do with politics than costs.

This frightens me, and it makes me feel vulnerably dependent on a bunch of faceless, nameless individuals who certainly don’t have my family’s best interests at heart. Their job, in fact, is to supply us with the smallest possible quantity of what we need, at the highest possible price. And to do their best to eliminate, or to be in cahoots with the competition, or to limit the supply or to generate sufficient fear, to keep that price rising.

By this time next year, if the gas and electricity bills for our house keep on rising at the rate they have been – let alone the rate predicted for the next 12 months – we’ll be struggling to pay them here. And the UK government has said it intends to force single parents out to work and their children into childcare, or school if they’re home-educated. And my older children don’t want to join the ranks of the wage slaves. We also have a mortgage on our current house – approximately 25% of its present value, but enough to cause difficulties if the mortgage rate soars as predicted in 2008. We feel too vulnerable and too exposed to the upcoming national and global turbulence to be owing so much money when we do have a choice in the matter.

Our off-grid rationale, therefore, is purely pragmatic. Being reliant on the grid doesn’t make sense for this family any more. The numbers just about add up this year, but after this year they will probably cease to add up, and we expect this deficit between incomings and outgoings to continue to grow, year after year. We have to take timely action to correct this position. We have to move off the mortgage and off the grid. We have to build such a house that will provide for our requirements without these things and we have to try to do this in the field we now own and with the money we have in the bricks and mortar of our current dwelling.

So what does a family really need? A roof. Water. Drainage. Fuel for cooking and heating. Food. Somewhere dry, clean and warm to sleep, work, wash, play, eat, study, defecate, and store things. Our plan for this year is to use our brains and the time we have to work out how to provide for those needs as efficiently as we possibly can, in such a way that allows us the maximum possible free time and makes us as safe and secure as we can be. There are four of us now who are adults or very nearly so. We reckon that’s enough brain power and manpower to pull together to do what we want to do, as a unit.

How did people manage before the grid? This is the starting point for us to work out how we might manage without it.

They used their resources more carefully and intelligently. Water for a bath could be heated over the fire which was cooking the family meal and warming the kitchen simultaneously. That’s one fire, doing three jobs at once. The bath water, which is no longer fit to drink but still has warmth and soap in it, could then be used to wash some clothes. And finally, when it has no warmth left in it and isn’t really clean enough to clean anything, it can be used to flush the loo.

Fuel from the fire can be cut from local trees, using a coppicing system so that the woodland is made more – not less – healthy and vibrant. The more you coppice certain trees, if you do it properly, the more they will grow. Firewood then needs to be stored intelligently and used when it’s been laid under cover to season for 12 months, because green wood doesn’t burn cleanly.

We’d rather spend our time coppicing, cutting and storing firewood than working in careers if our hearts are not in them. But we’ll have the choice, of course. We can always buy in fuel if we decide to go out to work and earn money instead.