Off Grid Living is a LIE

How are you all doing? My name is Dave Whipple and you're looking at radical Bush. I see it over and over again. They watch offline content on TV or YouTube and people have new trucks and giant farms in the mountains. They're moving materials with helicopters man, whatever, I've seen the craziest things, so what are you supposed to believe in this video? I want to show you what it was like for us when we were younger. We started

living

off the

grid

why we did it, what our thoughts were and what it actually looks like in real life.

Pay attention. Brooke and I got married in the fall of 1998. The following spring we went to Sitka, Alaska, where we got a job as caregivers. and Stargate and Campground we both worked in the city but lived in the camp we showered in the harbor we washed clothes in the city laundry and got water from an artesian well in the camp for bathing we had forest service latrines when we left Sitka we finished going to the Aleutian Islands for seven and a half months to be caretakers of this farm. This place is called The Stonewall, named after a giant rock outcrop that is right in that area.

Now this farm had electricity. but it was generated from hydroelectric power, there was a small stream on the side of the mountain with a dam and that dam was connected to a four inch PVC pipe to a small generating house on the beach where there was a water wheel, so the water pressurized by gravity turned this water wheel and charged the batteries. The place also had an inverter, so it actually had power, but it was limited to the amount of water coming down the side of the hill. We had to keep an eye on the inverter.

We had to recharge the batteries, we had to keep an eye on the maintenance of the system for seven and a half months and when the water got very low when it was very cold, we lost power, believe it or not, this house was heated with wood, we would go out and look for logs drift logs that came from who knows what part of the world and we would hook up to these drift logs, bring them back to the farm with a boat and then we would cut them up, split them and stack them so that it was very windy and the Wood dried out pretty quickly now the wood stove in this house wasn't really used to heat the house, it had a water jacket around it and was connected to a 500 gallon water tank, you would burn that stove for five hours. and it would heat up that 500 gallon tank and for about a week it would keep the house pretty decent.

We had a flushing toilet because the entire water system in this house came out of that stream, everything was pressurized due to gravity, which was pretty cool.

grid

setup we learned a lot that winter about off grid systems in the spring of 2000 we ended up back in Fairbanks where we rented a small off grid cabin and then in the spring of 2001 we bought this two acre property north of Fairbanks Alaska, this is the first raw land Brook and I purchased. You could see that someone had already tried to do something with it, they had a corral, maybe a horse or two, who knows now this property had electricity so technically it was not really off the grid but due to the conditions of the frozen ground, a conventional septic system was out of the question and the water in this area is about 200 feet deep and good water is not guaranteed, so we were going to build a dry cabin, which means carry the water, you have a five gallon bucket under the sink, when it fills up after washing the dishes, you take the five gallon bucket outside and empty it.

We also had a small vault. We started with a 55 gallon drum that was for our latrine. I don't really have some sort of pit latrine in these soil conditions because the ground was frozen, as soon as you dig a hole in the ground it thaws and then turns into a mud bog. Definitely not what you want for an outhouse. The cabin was 12 feet by 12 feet, it was built with all the logs that were already on the property and although this cabin was not 100% off the grid, it was partially off the grid, we also heated it with wood which is the only thing that makes sense.

In this type of environment, there is a large amount of fuel available, all you need to do is cut it up, put it in the stove and burn it now. This property was about 10 miles from Fairbanks, so it was now a short drive into town. You can't do this 10 miles outside in most cities because it's completely unconventional, but in Fairbanks you know no one bats an eyelid. Dry cabins like this were pretty much the norm anywhere there was questionable terrain when we finished this cabin. We had about three thousand dollars for the construction. All of the wood in this cabin was rough cut, so we purchased it at a discount from a local mill.

The roof, the roof metal, the wood stove, all those things we had to buy now in Fairbanks, Alaska. It has a waste management system where there are sites called transfer sites. It is a parking lot with trash cans around the parking lot. The windows in this cabin all came from the landfill or transfer site, as did the sink and countertop, as much as we could. We found building materials that were useful, usable and free, where we collected them and incorporated them into this cabin. We lived here for two and a half years until our daughter was born in the spring of 2003.

When I say two and a half years, three of us lived in this cabin until Christmas of that year and the time between our daughter's birth and moving in. From this cabin we spent all that time building our second cabin. The two and a half years we spent in this cabin were fantastic, it was a very free and extremely affordable way of life, but once it was more than just Brooke and I, we needed a bigger place, so in the summer of 2003 We started building our second cabin. The idea was a thousand square foot cabin, 500 feet in the bottom 500 feet. on the top floor and take a look at this base.

They are concrete platforms with small concrete pillars on top. The idea is that if you are building on permafrost, you need to be able to adjust the foundation. If an area lifts, you can remove some shims. the top of the post, if it sinks, can add some now that we bought the logs for our second cabin. I think at the time it was about two dollars and fifty cents a foot, I could count on it being two or three times that. today because this was a while ago, my brother Ryan came over that summer to help my brother Ryan and I and our friend John Cassidy poured concrete all summer as a three man crew and whenever we had free time we worked on this cabin and I kept going The boys were busy when we got to the second floor, you can see we slid the logs two by four and then placed all our logs on the second floor floor.

Now this cabin had the same problems as the first cabin when it was built. on permafrost, so I needed a base that could be adjustable, that's why you see all those concrete docks, but this place had electricity like the first cabin, but of course there was no running water or indoor plumbing, so technically It is semi disconnected from the network in which we lived. cabin from Christmas of 2003 until August of 2006. By then our son was born, we had purchased property in Delta Junction Alaska, about a hundred miles southeast of Fairbanks and we decided to go and build a farm on that property, so in August of In 2006 we embarked on a completely new adventure building a new farm in a new location and sold these two cabins.

Now starting over was no picnic. I tell you we lived in this little trailer until we built a garage and then we outfitted the garage at his house and lived in it until we built a bigger cabin, but this area in Delta had good water and it wasn't that far down, so running water was going to be an option for the first time. In years, this was the time when things went from being filmed to digital and we don't have many photos of this garage, but we lived in this garage until we built our next house, let's talk about that.

I started construction on this log cabin. on our Delta property in the spring of 2008. The whole time we were

living

in the garage we hauled water and had an outhouse that we used that was our complete plumbing and water system, we got water from about two miles down the road at a well public, but this cabin was actually going to be a conventional house, it was going to have running water, electricity and everything. We now lived on this property for six years, from 2006 to 2012. The workshop garage cost us about twenty thousand dollars. The big house here cost about fifty grand to build and construct, but we had the cash on hand and it was totally doable because we started small with a 12 by 12 cabin in Fairbanks, built it when we could afford it, invested money in materials we had. one hundred percent capital from day one and that made the difference, that's why we were able to have a place like this without going into debt.

In 2012 we sold that property and purchased an old farm in northern Michigan. We were able to pay this in cash thanks to Of course, we had 100 equity in the previous property, now Old Farm has running water and indoor plumbing, so this is the end of our first chapter of off-grid living, but that's not It lasted a long time, let me tell you about 2014. In 2014, our friend Neil Lachlan got a TV show with the National Geographic Channel construction law graphics and floated them down the Yukon River. Brooke and I had known Neil for 14 years and she had worked on a previous law chart that Neil had built in 2000.

She invited us to come on the show and we were all going to build rafts and float down the fantastic Yukon adventure. We had a great time. I can't say enough about Neil, his son Laro, the film crew, the whole process was fantastic. I loved every minute of it, but we went back to living off the grid. We had a generator with which we charged the camera batteries. Crews ran it for a couple of hours every other day to charge all the batteries at the end of the day. On the raft we had a small portable toilet with a five-gallon bucket in it.

The five-gallon bucket was heavy-duty, with an emphasis on heavy-duty biodegradable bags, and that's what we used as a toilet. When the bucket was full, we would go to the beach and get on the raft. forest and bury the contents of the bucket with the bag. We would also stop at all the freshwater streams to replenish our water supply. Some of it leaked. Part of it didn't depend all on the Crick and where we were at the moment. Wild Country, so not likely to be contaminated by people, but you could always have a wonderful off the grid experience.

The following summer we purchased four acres north of Fairbanks, Alaska and started another farm. This farm was going to be completely 100 percent off the grid, no. running water with no indoor plumbing the idea was that we still had a lot of business in Alaska we had a lot of friends in Alaska and we wanted a small farm where we could spend four or five months in Alaska in the summer and then the rest of the year in northern Michigan the first year we lived in a tent the second year we lived in a walled city where we built the foundation of the cabin now 2016 was a big year for us Brooks started his YouTube channel in March and we had also applied to be on History's only show Channel that fall, we had been chosen to be finalists for the fourth season and I'm sure our off-network background had a lot to do with us being chosen.

Brooke already had a YouTube channel that she was getting off the ground and these 49 days of on-camera experience helped me get over the mental hurdle to start my own channel. I had thought about making a channel for a couple of years at this point, but I felt intimidated by camera work that shouldn't have been, it's pretty easy next summer in Fairbanks we started laying logs and now you see the video, each log that entered this cabin left this property, they were all hand cut, they were all hand milled. each log was transported from where the tree fell and milled to where it ended up in the wall.

It took a long time. I really wouldn't recommend this unless you have nothing but time during the days and week I was doing concrete work. Fairbanks, which was about a 25 minute drive away and in the evenings and weekends I worked at this cabin because we had two kids in school. I usually arrived at the end of April about a month before Brooke and the kids and got to work. and then when the Brook kids went off to school in the fall, I usually stayed about an extra month and did as much as I could around this place while the city's concrete season wrapped up.

Now Brooke started doing YouTube in 2016 and I startedmaking YouTube in 2017. So, you see, we've switched from photos to videos at this point. This was the first real project I took on after starting the YouTube channel. Now this property is on a steep hillside and the land has pretty good drainage. just a standard old school outhouse is what we chose here, we also have enough sun, that solar power is definitely an option so that was part of the plan from the beginning, we get our water from a public well that is on the way to the city, so we never made any special trips to look for water.

We usually only got water on the way in or out when we went to the store or work. It was quite convenient, since transporting water can be of all dimensions. The wood in this project was rough cut and came from local mills in the area. I will say this, although as much as I like to use the rough cut just because it's two inches by whatever and stronger by nature, it's getting more expensive at least in this part of the world that used to be, you could save Quite a bit of money using rough cut wood in this area but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore, it's stronger so I like it but nowadays there really aren't any savings.

By now you're probably seeing a pattern that Brooke and I have always built with Equity in a property, we've always bought materials and done the work ourselves, we don't hire anything. We figure out if we can avoid it and that helps us create value in the property. ownership of the property from day one. We never ask for a loan for anything. If we don't know how to do a certain aspect of the construction process, we learn how to do it. That's advice that I think is the most important. That's the key if you're interested in living off the grid.

If the idea appeals to you, ask yourself this simple question. Are you willing to learn? Do you love learning? You are open to trying and learning all the skills you need for building, for the plumbing that is involved even in an off-grid home, for hooking up electrical, gas lines, working on your own things, if you are willing to learn and have your own hands. dirty and not having to hire things made, then I think it's a fantastic way to get ahead in life, especially for young people to get a really good start and be owners from day one, when Brooke and I built our first cabin in 2001, we basically had three. options: we could apply for a loan and buy a house and have a 30-year mortgage.

We could rent a house which even a dry cabin at that time cost around 500 dollars a month or we could buy a cheap land and we can build. and from day one we would have ownership of that property, we would have ownership of that house, our first property that we bought from Robert Fox at Fox Realty in Fairbanks, Alaska, we paid sixty five hundred dollars for two acres of permafrost land, we put a a thousand dollars down on the rest we owed Robert Fox on a promissory note we paid that promissory note that summer we put in every penny we could pay for it and we have never borrowed another dollar for housing since overseas this property took It took us years to finish years because we built as we went, we were building in a way that was very time consuming and very physical but very cheap and we were only there part of the year to begin with, once we finished the cabin we really needed to focus on the other systems you need , no matter where you live, whether you're on-grid or off-grid.

We took this bathtub out of the dumpster and built this little shower. The house cost about eight hundred dollars to build this small building. Speaking of showers, that brings me back to the point where there are systems that everyone needs no matter where you live, you need a way to clean yourself, you need some power to run anything you have that is electric, you can be careful. So in many ways, solar panels and batteries, you can have a small generator in this place, we tend to use the generator more than anything else, the reason is that we don't need much for lighting, since this is Alaska and we are Here in the summer, it's daytime most of the time, so lighting is not our first concern, but it can get very hot in interior Alaska during the summer, so a place to shower is very important.

Now I have this piece of linoleum. from the landfill, so it's a good way to reduce costs wherever possible. I found it a couple of years ago and it was in the yard waiting for something to be installed, but I had it when I needed it and I didn't pay for it. anything I know how to install vinyl well I didn't really figure it out as I went along like everything else, which brings me back to that advice, the best advice you could ever get, just be prepared to try anything, be prepared. Most things are easier than you think to try, but the idea that you have to hire a professional to do almost everything you know will keep many people from trying this type of lifestyle.

I would do it too. Let's just say that a lot of the content on YouTube about life off the grid is very confusing. You see things like this where someone collects rainwater from the roof of a shed, but then you also see a place that has forty thousand dollars worth of solar panels. Either they have a new fifty thousand dollar tractor or they are going to move construction material with a helicopter. I once saw on television who the hell has a helicopter. It's so unrealistic that I don't even know how to relate to it. One of the reasons I decided to make this video offline, living what I understand to be what my life has been like before YouTube, almost before the Internet, has very little to do with much of the content I watch. on YouTube, I think.

There's a Hollywood version of life off the grid and then there's a real version of life off the grid and I don't know if the two have much in common. Brooke and I started this journey 20 years ago. and it was the best option for us at the time because it was a way for two young people to have a roof over their heads for next to nothing, as long as they were willing to sweat and work and learn, and that made sense to us, but today Nowadays you know that there is also a hipster version of off-grid life that, in my opinion, is completely a fantasy land.

Let's be honest here too, a lot of people have jumped on the offline bandwagon because it's popular on YouTube. YouTube is a source of income and many people have decided to create content offline because they find it inspiring, they like the idea, but there is also a financial element. There is an opportunity to make money on YouTube with off-grid content and of course I think it's pretty easy for people to distinguish between an authentic experience and a hipster version of off-grid living. For me, YouTube has truly been a blessing because it allows me to do what I've always done and share it with the world that I personally feel.

I feel much more comfortable at home with an outhouse and a wood stove in a small cabin than with a boiler and a nice bathroom in a beautiful, expensive house, especially when you have a mortgage for Brook and I and the income from YouTube has allowed to buy. some property that is much more remote, which is what we would both prefer not to be tied to a certain area to make a living, but that's certainly not the way we started, we started long before YouTube, we had hard jobs, physical jobs in the city, we returned home. and getting water from the well, showering at the truck stop, that was the reality of things in the past, how we started and why we started living off the grid, it made a lot of sense back then, it was a way to get ahead .

So if you're feeling overwhelmed by some of the things you see in offline content, people with a lot of money, people who have huge solar panel systems, people who have lots of acres in beautiful places, raise livestock, have new vehicles . and you think what's real in the world how do these people pay their bills how can they buy food how can they have all these things if what they are is really remote well chances are they're not really remote chances are they're not. It seems like there are people out there who are probably making all their money from very popular YouTube content and that's why I wanted to make this video.

I wanted to make this video for people who don't understand what they see portrayed. YouTube in the offline space, the truth is for me I got out of school and went right into the construction trades. I started making concrete for six dollars an hour and learned a lot about carpentry in that trade and after Brooke and I got married. and we decided that we wanted to have a house, you know, it was just a decision to build one instead of buying one and it was a decision to do it really affordably so we wouldn't end up in debt and in Fairbanks, Alaska. where we were at the time the cabin thing was pretty normal, the dry cabins were the example you looked at and it's good, we could do that, so if you've ever wondered how we got here, what our trip was like, what we were like doing 20 years ago and how we ended up on YouTube.

I hope you enjoyed this video and got an idea of ​​what the truth is when it comes to the offline content you see on YouTube. We have always been building cabins and it is nice to have a cabin in a remote location. It just so happens that it's also something a lot of people want to watch, so in my opinion it's a perfect fit for Brooke and I, on the other hand, there's quite a bit of YouTube. There is content that should be taken with a grain of salt, so keep your eyes open. Don't believe everything you see.

If you find a channel you really like, ask them to tell you how they got there. Thank you all very much for watching it. My name is Dave Whipple and you have been watching Bush radically and you will be radical, see you soon.