This goes with my Nov 5 post on X. Follow the build at @JRGrahamBuilds. Read the post on X.
I've been posting the build of our off-grid house on X, and I want to share the whole thing, start to finish. And the start wasn't a house at all. It was a campground.
A graduation party and three weekends in a row
When I was young, my dad, a carpenter by trade, used to talk about having a cabin in the woods and living simpler. That idea stuck with me. Years later, at one of our kids' graduation parties, another couple started telling us about an off-grid community in Central Oregon. My wife and I asked a lot of questions. Then we got talking with neighbors we're close with, and we all decided to go take a look.
The next three weekends in a row, we drove almost three hours each way to look at property. On the third trip we made an offer on a 3-acre parcel. That was 2019. We bought it with two other couples, so each of us owned a third of what became our own personal campground. It came with a 24-by-30-foot metal-clad shop with a woodstove in the back and a 1,200-gallon cistern that all three couples shared.
A fun twist: my wife's lifelong friend bought property in the same area at the same time, and neither of them knew the other was doing it.
Camping gear, then a trailer, then a park model
Things moved fast. We started with camping gear and car camping. Then we bought a 36-foot travel trailer. Then I built a shed to hold the water system and our solar generator. Then came an outdoor shower, a hand-me-down from someone nearby who had finished their own house and didn't need it anymore.
Eventually we sold the travel trailer and bought a 43-foot park model, and we put in our own 2,500-gallon cistern. Our family used far more water than our neighbors did, so having our own supply meant the shared tank was always there for them.
That first property is where I learned most of what I know about off-grid power, mostly by doing it wrong first.
What we actually did out there
Honestly, a lot of it was just family camping. We added toys as the budget allowed, including a side-by-side and a pontoon boat. One of our favorite things was backing the side-by-side up to the gazebo, dropping blankets in the back, and tailgating in front of the propane fire pit. Then came cornhole, ladder ball, solar lights everywhere, and a trailer stocked with board games. The kids losing at cornhole and demanding a rematch is a big part of why we're building at all.
Then the real house
In 2023 we bought our own 5 acres in Central Oregon for the real house. It's a buildable parcel, and it's where the two-story house this blog follows is going up. It's a vacation house, a weekend getaway, not a full-time home.
When we started dreaming about it, we weren't trying to build something new. We were trying to make more room for the old things: the blankets, the fire pit, the cornhole rematches.
If you're starting where we started
- Camp first. A few seasons in a trailer teaches you what you actually use: water, power, propane, and how much of each.
- Know the chores. Someone checks the battery and the cistern level, schedules the propane and water deliveries, clears snow off the panels, and keeps the generator running. If that sounds like a hobby, great. If it sounds like a second job, that's worth knowing now.
- Own your water. Sharing a tank works until one family uses more than the others. Ours did.
- Size power for how you really use the place. A weekend place and a full-time house need very different systems.
That last one is why I built a free calculator. More on that in later posts.