Living off the grid | Chappaqua Real Estate
Sometimes you just have to go for it.
About a year and a half ago, Dabney Tompkins and Alan Colley moved from a condo in Portland to 388 square feet in rural Oregon. Their house, a 40-foot-high fire lookout, doesn’t have a street address or a bathroom. And the nearest neighbor is three miles away.
“We still have that sense of ‘are we really doing this?'” Colley admits.
When the couple decided to go off grid, they didn’t know a thing about solar power. But through trial and error — and lots of Googling — they figured out how to pump running water into their kitchen, power LED lights and have Internet using only 80 watts of electricity.
As for the bathroom, they “visit the bear” (aka an outhouse in the woods) or use one of three alternative options designed for emergencies — or a few laughs.
Through it all, Tompkins and Colley have tried to keep things in perspective.
“Every time I think could I really do that — could I really live in a place where all you had was an outhouse — and I would step back and say well of course you can. People have been doing that for centuries,” Tompkins says.
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http://www.zillow.com/blog/could-you-live-off-the-grid-182828/
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