{"id":18407,"date":"2015-10-20T14:39:57","date_gmt":"2015-10-20T13:39:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/?p=18407"},"modified":"2021-07-26T17:00:52","modified_gmt":"2021-07-26T16:00:52","slug":"off-grid-motorhome-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ourtour.co.uk\/home\/off-grid-motorhome-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Thoughts on Off Grid Motorhome Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"how<\/a>I\u2019ve just finished reading Nick Rosen\u2019s How to Live Off-grid<\/a>\"\" and it\u2019s prompted me to jot down a few thoughts about our personal experience of living in a motorhome, without permanent grid connections. I\u2019ve assumed some knowledge of typical motorhome facilities in the text below, but popped in a section at the end giving a brief overview of how the systems work in here.<\/p>\n

First off, I\u2019ve got to admit I gave up on Nick\u2019s book twice, but kept on at it as I was plain curious. The book starts out with some reasoning why folks would choose to do without permanent connections to the water, electricity and gas grids. The problem I had with this was that the reasons were almost universally negative: the environment being destroyed by over-use of energy, growing consumerism, energy prices going up, the risk of global meltdown from the Chinese economy crashing combined with a breakout of bird flu or some similar combination of events and so on. This theme of negativity continues through the book, and negativity just ain\u2019t my thing.<\/p>\n

On the whole Nick\u2019s book turned out to be interesting, especially his look at the whole range of situations people live in, from a lady who uses only a diesel generator for power (imagine firing it up every time you want to switch a light on) to a multi-millionaire who remains grid-connected but has a \u00a3250,000 hydrogen separation facility in his house.<\/p>\n

Not much of it resonated with me though.<\/p>\n

Our experience of off-grid living was a two year stint living in a motorhome and travelling Europe. We\u2019re off again on similar adventures, although we now have an on-grid house back in the UK to go back to in between shorter trips, or at least part of one (see The Cooler<\/a>). So we have some idea of the challenges faced by folks doing something similar, and also of the life-enhancing effect living in such a way can have.<\/p>\n

Nick does touch on \u2018van dwellers\u2019 as he calls us, and he does much of his research from a panel van which he wanders about in to meet people with his wife and baby. During his search for a van he comes across \u2018an upmarket vehicle called a Hymer, which was more like a bedsit on wheels\u2019. He\u2019s advised not to \u2018bother with plumbing\u2019 or having a toilet. One particular paragraph caught my eye: \u2018camper and caravan sales had previously been led by older or retired people trying to see the country on a budget. They shelled out large amounts \u2013 typically \u00a315000 to \u00a320000 – for a purpose-built vehicle with hideously ugly seat coverings and a shrunken-down version of the facilities they had at home\u2019. Ah, that sounds like us, only I like our seat coverings, so we don\u2019t count? I wondered… Nick does actually meet up with folks who live in vans, but unless they\u2019re living in a minimal-cost self-conversion with no loo, and refuse to give their second names, he\u2019s not interested.<\/p>\n

To be fair to the guy, he\u2019s focussed almost entirely on Britain, but in doing so he\u2019s missed an entire legion (tens of thousands I would guess) of sometime off-grid people travelling Europe in self-contained motorhomes, many of whom never use campsites (so what if they do, thinking about it) but find the provided aires, stellplatz and sostas are more than enough to ethically enable them to dispose of waste and access fresh water. Seriously, there are a lot of us out here, and judging by the vans we see around us each day, \u00a320k is bottom end for a lot of them (but again so what if the van costs \u00a350k \u2013 it\u2019s still off-grid?). But does that make us any less \u2018off grid\u2019 than someone living in a mansion in the UK with \u00a3250k worth of wind turbines alongside full grid connectivity? I think not.<\/p>\n

Our motivation for living this way is mainly to have good old fashioned chilled-out fun, but also to live a simpler life. Effectively everything we have in here is \u2018pay as you go\u2019: water, electricity, Internet, loo capacity and so on. Everything is limited, and we\u2019re forced to consider whether we really need that third light on, or a shower today, or can we fit that bag of peas in the small freezer, or do we need to use Google Maps to find somewhere, or should we put the heating on when it\u2019s 18 degrees? We\u2019re as off-grid as they come in here \u2013 and yet we live in \u2018miniature bedsit\u2019 luxury. What\u2019s wrong with that Nick? It\u2019s a lot of fun in here, seriously it is!<\/p>\n

Us motorhome dwellers get to see the world at our own pace, live (albeit temporarily) in some out-of-this-world places and almost as a by-product we learn the value of all the on-grid facilities we have at home. That in turn leads to greater appreciation of what we have, and inflated happiness both when we\u2019re on and off-grid. If you write another off-grid book Nick, or update the existing one, give us a shout mate, we\u2019d love to give you our side of the story!<\/p>\n

Cheers, Jay<\/p>\n

This is how our motorhome (a 2001 Hymer B544) provides everything we need to live in uber-comfort:<\/p>\n

Water<\/p>\n