Honestly, we didn’t even think about potentially having problems getting firewood when we moved here. To save time, money, and get better wood, we buy 20 cords of wood at a time (we use nine to 10 cords per winter) from a sawmill down south when we prepare for winter. And we can only chop and gather firewood in designated woodlots, usually where the bushfires have left standing dead trees. We’re also supposed to get a license to chop wood. In our area, the trees are spindly and not great for firewood. We’re at a latitude of about 62 degrees north. Even when it’s -48 degrees Celsius outside (that’s -54.4 Fahrenheit).īut depending on your home’s size and location, heating with wood in the north can be expensive. You may be surprised to discover that yes, in most cases you can heat your home to a comfortable temperature using a wood stove only. A Wood Stove Can Heat Your Entire House…Maybe Living off grid in alaska how to#When you’re building or buying a northern off-grid home that depends on solar panels, experiment with how to best place and position those panels to make the most of the winter sun. The more solar power we create, the less dependent we are on our generators. Then in the spring, we reposition them to maximize the summer sun. Living off grid in alaska full#And they’re downright awesome from June through August when we enjoy close to 20 hours of full sunlight, with the remaining four hours being kind of “twilight-y”.Įvery fall we position the panels to capture every last minute of the watery winter sun that moves across the top of the treeline for a few hours each day. They work quite well to power our batteries from April through May. Our eight 80-watt solar panels sit on the roof of our two-story chalet-style home. And this means higher fuel costs and more potential breakdowns. Living off grid in alaska generator#The weak winter sun only rises for about 4 ½ hours here during the darkest days of December and January, so we run our generator more frequently. Solar panels and northern winters? Not so much. Yes, solar panels and northern summers are a great combination. If you’re dreaming of moving to an off-grid cabin in Alaska, Yukon, or the Northwest Territories, keep these six things in mind. Yet as much as we tried to prepare to live off the grid in a cold climate, there were a few things that we didn’t anticipate - good and bad. When my family moved to our off-grid home near Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories, we expected our challenges to arise from the extremely cold temperatures and barren landscape. Yet living off the grid in extreme environments has its own set of challenges. Self-reliance, a simpler lifestyle, getting away from the city - people have many reasons to move off the grid. She lives with her family off the grid in Canada’s Northwest Territories.Īll over the world, in different countries, conditions and climates people choose to disconnect from the electricity grid and create energy-independent homes. Sarita is a business and finance writer, blogger, homeschooling mom, and fledgling homesteader. This guest post comes from Sarita Harbour at Off Grid Life. That’s nothing compared to the short 7-week growing season they have in northern Canada. I thought we had rough winters here in Vermont, and I get cranky about our 100-day growing season. Living in a remote off-grid cabin about 200 miles from the arctic circle is not for the faint of heart.
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