About Us

How we got started Living Off the Grid

It would be easy to imagine that one day our entire family just woke up and said, "Let's give Living Off the Grid a try"”

We would just turn all of the electricity switches off and never pay another electric bill. That sounds good, but like all changes in this life most are not drastic, they are more of an evolutionary process. That would be a pretty accurate description concerning our family's move to living off the grid- it just kind of evolved.

Back when we first started in 1993 there were no guides like this website, no books on the subject- just a dream. That is why we created the Off Grid Living Website, to help you learn how to live off the grid.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. My own dreams of a home and a family really started coming together in 1984 when I met Jane. She was, and is a farmer, a gardener and a wonderful dancer who captivated my imagination and shared my dream of a place in the country and some kids running around free to play.

We were married in 1985 and our first son Andrew was born in 1986. That stubborn, independent and intelligent boy was definitely my son. He was 8 years old when we moved and built our home off the grid. He worked hard to build the dream of having his own bedroom... he worked as hard as I did most days.

During High School he developed a passion for computers and website building and his skills now rival any professional website design firm. We hired Andrew early in 2004 to build the Off Grid Living Website and now he is a solid partner in our mission to teach living off the grid, having grown up with only renewable energy and a generator for most of his life.

Early that year in 2004 we launched a print magazine, Off Grid Living to accompany the website and our daughter Karen did all of the graphic design and layout. She worked hand in hand with our printer and made the magazine a graphic success.

Karen was born in 1988 and was the most beautiful baby I have ever seen, before or since. She struggles now with her artistic nature, marching to her own drummer, but we know she will find her way.

The Off Grid Living Magazine was a success from the start, our passion coming through with each page, as related by our loyal readers. We loved publishing the magazine, but after 6 issues we ran into a roadblock, postal rates skyrocketed and our printer changed ownership and doubled our printing costs. Just like that we were forced to give up on the print version of Off Grid Living magazine. We are sorry to all of our subscribers who wanted us to continue, but economic conditions forced us to re-examine how we were delivering the message of our mission.

Instead we began to concentrate on the website and writing helpful guide books that outline how to live off the grid.

Our first book, published in 2006 was very well received. ‘Renewable Energy Solutions' is still one of our most popular. The purpose of the book was to take the average tied to the grid family and show them how to integrate Renewable Energy into their life. It includes sections on installing solar panels, and wind generators, off grid batteries and even wind towers.

You will probably have noticed that most of Off Grid Living's focus is on the family moving off the grid. We feel it is a family oriented move and each member of the family should be involved to make it a success.

With that in mind, we were finally able to include our youngest son Andre' in the Off Grid Living website when we built our second and third wind generator to power our off grid home.

Living off the grid in the modern world demands at least 3 kilowatts of power production capacity for the average family home. Our son Andre' was very excited when we decided to build more wind generators to up our own power production. He is always building stuff (and leaving my tools outside) and seems to need a project to keep him focused.

Andre' has a slight learning disability and working with his hands helps him a great deal. The wind generator project was perfect for him, even though he was only 12 when we started it. He had no trouble following along and doing most of the work.

We went about preparing our plans based on the 10 years of research we had been doing into wind generators and realized that our second book ‘How to Build a Wind Generator' was already mostly written. We took tons of photos to include in the book while Andre' and I completed the wind generator and ‘How to build a Wind Generator' has become our most popular book.

Our promise is that you can build a 1000 watt wind generator with no special tools and no experience in about 2 weekends for under $100. So far there have been hundreds of families who have duplicated our success.

Recently we have added several new books to the website that we have written. We are very excited by the response to our 5 book deal- a compilation of all of our books at a great savings of over 50%- that's half off the regular price! It has been very well received.

All of the books are written from our own experience, with photos and diagrams to help our readers along with their own journey to living off the grid.

• Do you want to build your own home?
• Power your vehicle with bio diesel, or heat your home with biodiesel?
• Do you want to know how to build and install solar panels?

We have even included our very popular wind generator plans.

They are all there in the 5 book collection, along with our original Off Grid How-to guide, ‘Renewable Energy Solutions' to keep you moving in the right direction.

From our family to yours, our mission is to provide you with low cost solutions to the problems of everyday living, by showing you how to live off the grid.

Anything is possible living off the grid.