What self-reliance really takes: lessons from a real off-grid build
Self-reliance sounds like a mood. In practice it is a long list of decisions: where your power comes from, where your water comes from, what you still depend on, and what happens when one of those fails. One family is building an off-grid house and writing every one of those decisions down.
Free tool: J.R.’s off-grid solar and battery sizing calculator turns a few questions about your home into a rough battery, solar and inverter size. No signup. More on why it’s worth your time below.
Why self-reliance is worth thinking about
You don’t need to live off the grid to care about this. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the average American electricity customer went about 11 hours without power in 2024, nearly 9 of them from major events like hurricanes and storms. That was the most in ten years, and more than double the decade’s average for major-event outages.
Most of us depend on a single power line, a single water system, a single grocery supply chain, and a single way to heat the house. Self-reliance isn’t about cutting all of those cords. It’s about knowing which ones you depend on, and having a plan for each.
One real build, written down as it goes up
J.R. Graham is building an off-grid house in the high desert of Central Oregon, and documenting it at The Off-Grid Build Book. The idea started young: his father, a carpenter, used to talk about a cabin in the woods and living simpler. In 2019, after a conversation at a graduation party, J.R.’s family drove out three weekends in a row to look at land in an off-grid community, then bought a 3-acre parcel with two other couples. When the pandemic hit the next year, that land became a refuge, and being prepared started to matter more.
- The house: two stories, about 1,368 sq ft, new construction, built by a general contractor.
- Its use: a weekend and vacation place for the family, not a full-time home.
- Power: solar with a battery bank, no grid.
- Heat, cooking, hot water: propane. Cooling: ductless mini-splits.
- Water: hauled to a cistern. Septic: still being worked out.
- Status: the foundation is in; the house is far from finished.
He is not a builder, and he says so. He’s the owner asking a lot of questions, usually right before something that can’t be undone. That’s what makes the project useful to the rest of us: it is the research an ordinary person would have to do.
How the research shaped the design
Power: the grid wasn’t an option
The nearest power line is several miles from the house site, so he never even asked the utility for a bid. Solar with a battery bank became the primary power by default.
The battery: the one piece already bought
The battery is the one piece of power gear already purchased: a Walrus Atlantic, an all-in-one unit with 30 kWh of storage and a built-in 10 kW inverter, bought at a discount in 2025. Everything else, including the size of the solar array, the tankless water heaters and the heating and cooling equipment, is deliberately still open.
Commit early to what gets poured, buried and permitted
That’s the rule behind the timing. The foundation, the trenches, the conduit and the permits are hard to change later, so they get decided first. Fast-changing gear like panels and appliances gets bought close to move-in, when prices and models have moved on.
Propane for the big heat loads
The furnace, the stove and the tankless water heaters run on propane, and ductless mini-splits handle cooling. The trade is visible in his free calculator: with a propane furnace, the battery only has to run the furnace’s blower. In one example run we tried, for a default house in the Bend area, that came to about 3.5 kWh of electricity on a cold day, plus about 58 gallons of propane a month in the coldest months.
Water: a cistern, because a well cost too much
A well was out of reach for the budget, so water gets hauled in and stored in a cistern. It is cheaper up front and adds a recurring job: somebody has to keep it filled.
Size for the part-time house you actually have
Because the family won’t live there full-time, almost every sizing decision changes. A house that sits empty during the week uses power very differently from one with people in it every day.
The small-start trap
His first setup was the “start small and upgrade later” kind, and he ended up buying a power system twice. That lesson is a chapter of the book: size for the house you’re building, not a starter setup you’ll replace.
An AI co-pilot, with a warning label
He used an AI assistant almost every week, usually right before an expensive, permanent decision. It caught mistakes that would have cost real money. It also got things confidently wrong. He plans to show both, and the book’s standing advice is to confirm every rule with the offices and licensed pros who cover your own land.
The honest part: off-grid isn’t independence from everything
The most useful thing in J.R.’s build log is his list of what the house still depends on: propane deliveries, water hauling, a road trucks can drive in winter, parts shipped from somewhere else, and the county that issues the permits. Going off-grid isn’t automatically cheaper either; you pay up front for what a utility spreads over decades, and you become the maintenance crew. As he puts it, “You trade one big dependency for a handful of smaller ones you manage yourself.”
That’s the real definition of self-reliance. Not needing nothing, but knowing what you need and managing it yourself.
The calculator: research you can use on your own house
Until the book is out, the most useful thing J.R. has published is the free sizing calculator that goes with it. Good free calculators already exist, and he says so; he built this one to fit part-time builds like his. It does the part most people skip: turning “I want solar and a battery” into numbers you can take to an installer, or use to judge a quote.
What it asks
The quick estimate takes about two minutes and seven questions: where the home is (a ZIP code, coordinates or a map pin), its size and number of stories, rooms and people, how you heat, what’s always on (refrigerators, a well or cistern pump, a septic pump, internet and electronics), extras like a washer, dishwasher, shop tools, EV charging or a hot tub, and how often someone is there. A detailed mode, about ten minutes, goes appliance by appliance with watts and hours, and your answers carry over between the two.
What it gives you
- Daily load on an average day in your darkest month.
- Battery size, both the usable storage and the nameplate capacity to shop for.
- Solar array size, set by how fast you want the panels to refill the battery after cloudy days.
- Inverter size, including the surge it has to handle when motors start.
- A low, typical and high range for each, so you see the uncertainty instead of one false-precise number.
- Heating scenarios: split your heat between primary, supplemental and backup sources, and try a “primary heat outage” to see what happens to your battery if the furnace fails. With propane heat, it also estimates the gallons you’ll burn in the coldest months.
Our example run, with a Bend, Oregon ZIP code and the default answers for a generic house:
| Daily load | 10.8 kWh |
|---|---|
| Battery (usable) | 24.1 kWh |
| Solar array | 8.9 kW |
| Inverter | 3.3 kW |
A generic example, not J.R.’s house and not a design. Your answers will change every number.
Why it’s valuable
- It sizes for the worst month, not the average. A system that works in July can leave you dark in December. The calculator uses sun data for your area and finds the month that sets the size.
- It shows the cost of your choices. Switch the furnace from propane to electric heat, add a well pump or a hot tub, or change how many cloudy days you want to ride out, and watch the battery and panels move. That is the fastest way to learn what actually drives a system’s size and cost.
- It catches the loads people forget. The furnace blower, water pumps and always-on electronics are exactly the hidden loads that wreck a battery estimate.
- It fits real lives. Full-time, weekends and vacations, or part of the year; sized for winter, winter with a generator, or summer only.
- It’s useful even if you’re staying on the grid. The same questions tell you what a backup battery and a few panels would need to keep your fridge, pump and furnace running through a long outage.
- It respects your privacy. Your location and answers stay in your browser, and nothing needs a signup.
It is honest about its limits, too: it’s a planning estimate for education, not a system design, and a licensed electrician and solar installer still have to size and install the real thing.
▶ Size your own system with the free calculator
What any household can take from this
- Start with your loads, not the gear. Write down what has to keep running: the fridge, a medical device, the furnace blower, a well pump. That list decides everything else.
- Plan for your worst month, not your average one. The calculator sizes for your darkest month; your emergency plan should assume the worst week.
- Name your dependencies. Power, water, heat, fuel, food, the road out. For each one, what happens if it stops?
- Decide the permanent things first. Where the generator goes, whether you need a transfer switch, where water is stored. Buy the fast-changing gear later.
- Don’t buy twice. A small kit is a fine start, but know what it will grow into.
- Keep records. J.R.’s receipts are what make his numbers worth reading.
For backup power in an ordinary house, see our gear list and the warnings in what fails first when the grid goes down.
The Off-Grid Build Book isn’t published yet; the website, build log and calculator are live and free. Links to it are not affiliate links. This article is for education only, not engineering, electrical or code advice.
The Finton challenge
FIND YOUR SINGLE POINTS OF FAILURE
In Finton: Surviving the Collapse, the power goes out and stays out. The fridge spoils, the pumps stop, and every household in town finds out what it depended on. Some neighbors were ready with panels, batteries, a woodpile and water of their own. Most weren’t. Which one will you be?