Let’s Talk ICF For New Off-Grid Home- Part 2

Posted on December 7, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

In my last post “Let’s talk ICF For Our New Off-Grid Home- Part 1”, we discussed what this ICF material was about and how easy it was to build with. Although ICF is an easy, straight forward method of building, there’s a lot to it if one is going to do it properly. We had 6 courses of forms up at the time of my last post so let’s continue on with the building process. Winter is coming and we are longing to move out of the tent. Let’s talk ICF For New Off-Grid Home- Part 2

Roof Trusses Delivery

Roof Trusses Delivery

We Utilized a Detailed Floor Plan

A detailed floor plan is a must in order to properly lay out the house. We knew we wanted a couple of doors and lots of windows. Some windows may have some leeway in location while others will need to be located dead on. The kitchen window is an example where a window location needs to be dead on. Johanna has a kitchen cabinet that will be hung on one side of the window and a refrigerator on the other side. We had to know exactly where that window would be placed before cutting any block or pouring concrete. Continue reading →

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Let’s Talk ICF For Our New Off-Grid Home – Part 1

Posted on October 27, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

There are any number of construction materials and methods a person can use to build their new home. The traditional method is stick frame using conventional framing lumber. That’s the method we chose for our last 2 off-grid homes. As many of you already know, we opted for a different method this time. Let’s talk ICF for our new off-grid home.

Lugging Buckets of Rocks Out

Lugging Buckets of Rocks Out

ICF (Insulated Concrete Forms)

ICF is short for Insulated Concrete Forms. Although the concept is not new, it has taken some time for this construction method to really catch on. I knew absolutely nothing about ICF until someone mentioned it in passing. It sounded interesting but working with concrete is not one of my strong points. I’ve done very little with it other than mix some stuff by hand a few times. Continue reading →

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Nova Scotia Fall Update

Posted on October 11, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

As expected, Nova Scotia weather is like the tropics compared to where we once lived. It’s all relative of course. We would generally have our first dusting of snow around this time of year back in northern Saskatchewan. (In fact, it was snowing on Monday, October 9th when I checked the weather while we, here in Nova Scotia, were at 74F, 23C.) And temperatures would certainly be on the brisk side. The last remnants of the garden would be going down to the root cellar; buckets of potatoes and carrots. Johanna would have transplanted cabbage, Brussel sprouts, leeks and celery into a cold frame in our greenhouse for the best storage and we’d be getting ready for the long winter ahead. Any warm days would be relished and we’d consider them a bonus. By contrast, Nova Scotia certainly has a more moderate climate. Here’s a Nova Scotia fall update on our off-grid home building efforts and other fun stuff.

A Somewhat Bountiful Harvest

A Somewhat Bountiful Harvest

I unfairly characterized our garden as pathetic in an earlier summer post. I have to take that back. Although Johanna would chime in that she is responsible for the success of our first garden out here, she doesn’t realize the role I play as “plant whisperer.” We have gotten far more out of this garden than we ever expected. It is by far better than our first garden in Saskatchewan. As you recall, we converted forest land to garden in both locations. It is obvious we have much better soil fertility here in Nova Scotia. And the climate is more favorable for a garden. Nevertheless, we will still use our bag of tricks to extend the season in both spring and fall. A greenhouse is a year or more out though. Continue reading →

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Campfire Cooking

Posted on September 21, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Living in a wall tent as a temporary residence presents many challenges, one of which is meal preparation.

Apple Crisp in Dutch Oven

Apple Crisp in Dutch Oven

Yet anyone who thinks camp meals are limited to burgers and hot dogs is in for a surprise. The possibilities are endless, limited only by the cook’s imagination, initiative and time. Campfire cooking can be as simple as a one pot meal or as elaborate as a full course dinner. If Ron’s lucky, I might even bake him a pan of Brownies in my Dutch Oven.

Cooking Over a Campfire

I have 2 options when it comes to how I will cook meals. One is an outdoor campfire, which I try to use as much as possible, and the other is an old Coleman camp stove powered by pressurized gas. The camp stove is certainly the easiest, fastest and the most similar to cooking on a household range, but the camp stove has its limitations. Fuel is expensive for one thing. And roasting that Thanksgiving turkey would be quite the chore. But the range of possibilities open to a cook who is willing to step out of their comfort zone and explore campfire cooking is astounding Continue reading →

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Is a foundation really that important?

Posted on September 7, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Is a foundation really that important? The answer to the question is yes! As far as I’m concerned, it’s the most important part of a building to ensure its long term survival. If the foundation crumbles, shifts or isn’t square and level, the poor building set upon the inadequate foundation is headed for a lifetime of misery. Surely you’ve seen pictures of the leaning tower of pizza. 🙂 I mean Pisa. Is a foundation really that important? It is paramount!

We’ve built 2 of our off-grid homes and are currently working on our third. Each home has had a different foundation. Let me briefly describe the first 2 and then we’ll delve into the specifics of our current foundation construction.

Finished Footing

Finished Footing

Continue reading →

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Hacking Our Way to Garden Prosperity

Posted on August 19, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

 

In our 37 year off–grid homesteading adventure, we’ve had the tough chore of taking woodland and converting it to gardens. We’ve never had the luxury of driving into a new homestead that had cleared land with an established garden. We are establishing our third homestead and I’ll share what I’ve learned about creating a garden where one didn’t exist. Let’s hack our way to garden prosperity!

One Colossal Mistake!

Readers of my book know I made one colossal mistake when I first started my homesteading adventure. I was young and a complete novice with off–grid living, homesteading and gardening. I was in my early 20’s when I made the big transition from electronics tech to homesteader. I purchased a 120 acre woodlot in Maine that had an old overgrown potato field in the middle of it. A young forest was growing in this field with spruce, fir, poplar and alder.

Piled Up Brush and Topsoil in Maine

Piled Up Brush and Topsoil in Maine

Continue reading →

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Mid-Summer Homestead Update.

Posted on August 7, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

We wanted to take a little time to show you what we have accomplished since our last update. We’ve made some real progress. I especially, am results driven and things don’t always look like they’re progressing fast enough. But when I take a reality check and consider this was nothing but young forest and thick brush and wasn’t even accessible by road until sometime in May, I’m pleased with what has transpired thus far. I’ll elaborate and write specific posts to provide more information on all this stuff but this gives you a good sense of our progress. We feel considerable pressure to keep pushing since winter is fast approaching. Here’s our mid-summer homestead update.

The Beginning

The Beginning

Continue reading →

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Squeeze a House into a Tent

Posted on August 2, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Most of us live in some form of traditional home complete with the typical layout. We probably have a living room, dining room, bathroom, kitchen and utility area. Unless a person is a tiny home enthusiast, most homes are of modest size and comfy. Because we are living in an expedition wall tent while we build our home, we were faced with a bit of interior design when it came time to make our living space as efficient as possible. This would be home for the foreseeable future and it needed to be thoughtfully laid out. In my last post, I explained how we built a tent platform and frame, then erected our temporary home. Come on in, make yourself at home and we’ll talk about how we squeeze a house into a tent.

We were fully aware of potentially having to use a tent for a year while we built our new home. The tent would serve as our shelter for many months and would need to protect us through summer heat and winter cold. Throw in gale force winds at a minimum on occasion and we were asking our tent to do a lot. With this tent we have a roof over our heads and with the added rain fly, we have zero concern about rain and snow.

Easy Tent Access

Wood Front Door

Wood Front Door

Continue reading →

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Wall Tent, Our Temporary Home

Posted on July 16, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Have you ever heard of a wall tent? You may be familiar with backpacking and family camping tents put out by various companies but there is another breed of tent used by hunters as well as the mineral and oil exploration industry. And that’s the wall tent. The wall tent has been our home multiple times over the last 17 years. If you read my book, Off Grid and Free: My Path to the Wilderness  or listened to the audio version  you know we lived in an exploration tent for about 4 months while we built our Saskatchewan home. While working in the mineral exploration field, I helped build and manage “tent cities.” These tent cities usually consisted of 12 tents including one designated as the kitchen. The wall tent is perfect for those who need a substantial “home” while building a new homestead as we are, preppers who want a back up shelter as well as those who enjoy the outdoors and would like a semi-permanent set up. Let me tell you how we made a wall tent, our temporary home.

Tent with Rainfly over Porch

Tent with Rainfly over Porch

Continue reading →

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Digging Our Water Well On Our New Off-grid Homestead

Posted on June 24, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Gather round and let me tell you a story about magic. And water. Hard to believe they can be associated. I’m going to give you all the details on digging our water well on our new off-grid homestead. And a bit of dowsing magic too!

Dealing With a Big Rock While Digging

Dealing With a Big Rock While Digging

We’ve spent an enormous amount of effort scoping out our Nova Scotia property, clearing and cutting a large area for the new homestead, clearing and building an access road then moving in a 40 foot sea can for storage. But one critical ingredient was missing from the list… water. The burning question has been where will we get our water and will it be of good quality? That’s where the magic comes in.

Me? Dowse For Water??

We are both pretty skeptical people so when the excavator contractor asked if I could dowse for water, I said nah, not me. Back 37 years ago, when I was building the Maine homestead, a local older gentleman offered to witch for water on the Maine property and based on his recommendation, we drilled in the spot he indicated and had all kinds of water. I wrote about this water source in Homestead Water Supply-Part 1  I’ve always felt we could have bored anywhere on that property and hit water. But none the less, we had a high quality water source for our Maine homestead. Continue reading →

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Road Building and Preliminary Orchard and Garden Preparation

Posted on June 4, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

We’ve come a long ways in a relatively short period of time. In my last update post, we had selected our property and were clearing a homestead site by manual chainsaw work. Johanna was piling all the brush into large piles. We also  had the septic system application in place and I had a driveway flagged out. Phew! But there’s lots more to add to the list so let’s get started. Let’s talk about our road building and preliminary orchard and garden preparation.

Our cleared homestead site

Our cleared homestead site

Road Building Tips

We have an approved septic system and permit. The driveway is complete and now we can drive right in to the home site. I could have selected any number of routes through the woods to access our clearing. I spent considerable effort and time wandering through the forest in order to select the best route. Even though it’s quite hard finding a route through thick alder and dense, young growth, my efforts really paid off.
Continue reading →

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Our Off-Grid Refrigeration and Battery Choices

Posted on May 29, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

I have a more comprehensive update post coming in the next few days regarding how things are progressing on the new homestead but for now I wanted to pass on some preliminary info that others might find of use. As you might be aware, living off-grid requires thoughtful consideration on appliances and special power equipment. Some of the items needed are inverters, solar panels, and of course, the batteries which are the heart of the off- grid system. For now, let’s talk about our off-grid refrigeration and battery choices.

I want to be right up front with the information I am passing on. I am not endorsing any product. I researched and placed an order for the following couple of items but I haven’t seen them in person yet. I have them but have not unpacked them yet. I am merely letting you know of a couple new items that I am trying and once I hook them up and get some experience with them, I’ll make a new post to let you know what I’ve discovered. Continue reading →

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Our New Off-Grid Homestead is Underway!

Posted on May 8, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

If you’ve been following along via facebook, you know we arrived safe and sound in Nova Scotia. We haven’t stopped since arriving. We own two properties along the coast and we had the hard decision of which one would be the new homestead. After evaluating all the pros and cons, we’ve made the big decision. Our new off-grid homestead is underway!

Scenic Overlook from Homestead 2

Scenic Overlook from Homestead

Selecting the Homestead Site

Many of the criteria we have espoused in previous posts on our blog  http://www.inthewilderness.net/2017/01/09/selecting-homestead-site/ were used to evaluate the two properties. Some of the things we considered were ease of access, private location, potential for future close neighbors, good soil for a garden and orchard, a woodlot for aesthetics and firewood, strong potential for clean drinking water and a soil structure to insure a proper, standard septic installation. Johanna wrote up a spread sheet so we could  compare the parcels against each other. We rated each parcel in regards to each criteria. This helped us to reach our decision. Continue reading →

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Farewell Hockley Lake!

Posted on March 29, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

I wanted to give an update on our life. As some of you know, we’ve been on one big, long adventure. We’ve homesteaded off-grid for the past 37 years. The last 17 have been spent alone in the wilderness of northern Saskatchewan on remote Hockley Lake.

Wilderness River North of Our Off-grid Homestead

Wilderness River North of Our Off-grid Homestead

We’ve been on the cusp of a major change. We have one more adventure in life before we hit the checkout counter and that is to move to Nova Scotia, somewhere on or close to the ocean, to start over again and build a new off-grid homestead from scratch. The last 6 months have been spent packing and preparing. Continue reading →

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Floor Plan For The Perfect Homestead Dwelling – Part 2

Posted on March 20, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Welcome back! In this part of designing the perfect homestead dwelling, I’ll discuss more factors to consider when developing your floor plan, beginning with the workshop.

At the Maine homestead, the workshop was attached to the barn. This was convenient for tool storage since most repairs took place outside but it was inconvenient for Ron to do his woodworking. He’d have to make a fire and warm up the shop before any work could take place so he seldom engaged in his hobby.

Johanna's "Woman Cave"

Johanna’s “Woman Cave”

Here, the shop is an enclosed room in the house. Enclosed so wood shavings and dust are contained. It’s somewhat inconvenient having to run inside to fetch tools when Ron is working outside, but that’s balanced out by the fact that he’s more inclined to do wood working since his shop is located in the heated house. If you’re able to locate the shop so that it’s near the entrance, tramping through the house to retrieve tools when working outside is kept to a minimum. Continue reading →

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Floor Plan for the Perfect Homestead Dwelling Part 1

Posted on March 14, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Designing the floor plan for the perfect homestead dwelling, whether it be on or off the grid requires careful thought and consideration. Let’s face it. You’ll be engaging in activities most people have never dreamed of doing. Certainly modern houses aren’t designed with activities such as butchering and food preservation in mind so you’ll need to devise areas and work spaces with these activities in mind.

If you’ve purchased property with an existing house but plan on doing some remodeling, you can incorporate many of the features I’ll discuss. Doing so will make your homesteading life easier and more enjoyable.

If you’re building the house on your homestead from scratch, you have a wonderful opportunity to include features into your floor plan that are integral components of an efficient, smooth running homestead dwelling. Continue reading →

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Homestead Road Building

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Busting a road through the woods is an expensive proposition. You may have to pay a logger to drop trees. You will have to hire a bulldozer to clear the roadway. Then you will need to pay for load after load of gravel that will be hauled by a dump truck. If you are trying to convert a boggy area to a road, you will be astounded at how much gravel the area sucks up before you have a passable road. For spots with high spring run off or year round flows, you may even need to purchase culverts. All these expenses need to be factored in when figuring the cost of homestead road building.

Road Building to My Maine Homestead

Road Building to My Maine Homestead

Out of curiosity, I inquired years ago how driveways through the woods are priced in Canada. Per foot was the response. A lot per foot as it turned out. It was an absurd figure. So absurd, I never bothered to put it in my memory vault for future retrieval. Paying a pile of money per foot to bust a trail through the woods wasn’t going to happen in my lifetime. Continue reading →

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The Indoor Outhouse

Posted on February 20, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

In my last post, The Homestead Outhouse, I alluded to the fact that there is an indoor version as well. Composting toilet manufacturers probably wouldn’t be too keen on my characterization, but an outdoors outhouse is essentially a chamber that solids drop into for composting. A commercial composting toilet is essentially the same concept. So let’s chat about the homestead’s indoor outhouse.

Our Off-grid Homestead Bathroom

Our Off-grid Homestead Bathroom

In Maine, many years ago, we purchased a non-electric composting toilet. Liquids (urine) were supposed to magically evaporate and solids were to turn into a nice crumbly compost. It was a nice idea but it didn’t work. In fact, it was a disaster. I installed it properly including the vent tube through the roof and ultimately installed a small fan hoping to aid the evaporation process. What really happened was a mostly solid mass formed in the rotating drum. This occurred even though we added other organic matter after each use. Because the drum door didn’t close properly sometimes, with each turn of the crank handle, some debris fell from the drum into the collection tray, mixed with the liquid urine and formed a disgusting goo. And guess who had to clean out the mess? It was an expensive fixture that turned out to be essentially unusable and a waste of space.

I would discourage everyone from a non-electric composting toilet. Any composting toilet should be an electric version that has a heater and fan to really heat and dissipate moisture. Even though I put one of those small metal wind driven turbine fans on the stack pipe outside, it didn’t make a difference. Just not enough air flow to draw moisture out of the toilet. Continue reading →

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The Homestead Outhouse

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Welcome back. I had a question from a fellow homesteader about outhouses. We used an outhouse for 20 years in Maine and I’ve used them in remote exploration camps too. To a degree, even in our current off-grid home, we use an indoor outhouse. Seriously, an indoor outhouse? Sure, and I’ll talk about our current toilet setup in my next post. But for now, let’s talk about a traditional homestead outhouse.

Be aware, in some localities outhouses may not be legal. Check the laws and ordinances in your locale. Assuming a privy is legal, placement of an outhouse is a critical component of any safe waste disposal system. In this case, human waste. We all seek safe, clean drinking water so unless you want “flavored” water, it is critical to locate the outhouse a suitable distance from any well or drinking water source. Please don’t take chances with water borne diseases. Locate the outhouse well away from your water source. Figure 100 feet as a starting point. You may wish to ask your state public health department about the recommended set back distances from wells and property lines. Continue reading →

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The Homestead Plan – Part 2

Posted on February 8, 2017 by Ron & Johanna Melchiore

Welcome back! Continuing on from yesterday’s discussion, I asked numerous questions and suggested ascertaining all the different attributes of your property and mapping them out. Now let’s start to lay out your homestead plan using that information.

Laying Out the Elements of Your Homestead

If at all possible, I would situate the house so that the living areas face south. Why? Admitting natural light to the living room, dining area and kitchen makes for a brighter home, helps combat SAD(season affect disorder) and may mean needing artificial light for fewer hours in the day, a plus for any off-grid home. Having large picture windows that face south guarantee all of the above. Two other positives, in winter you will gain much heat from solar radiation on sunny days and come spring, you will have full sunny window sills for your garden seedlings. At the Maine homestead, the living room picture window faced west. The house was rather dark even on sunny days and our garden seedlings weren’t the best. Here at the wilderness homestead, we have 2 big picture window that face south. The difference in the brightness of the living spaces is dramatic as is the quality of my seedlings.

Continue reading →

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