Can you have Internet access while still be off grid? It seems, and is in fact, self-contradictory. The Internet is by definition of network of connected server and client computers. That requires being, in some fashion or another, on that “grid” and to be connected to it.

Yet for someone working on getting off grid, it seems possible to mitigate some of the privacy challenges of connectedness to make it more “like” being off grid for the user. That is what this section of GettingOffGrid.org will explore.

How can we be connected to the apps, companies, and information providers we want to have access to, while also protecting ourselves from indiscriminate spying on our life?

To be clear, someone who appreciates privacy from the spying eyes of silicon valley, perhaps, isn’t necessarily doing anything wrong, illegal, or unethical that they are trying to hide. A common thought about Internet privacy is that the only people wanting it are doing things that are culturally or legally questionable. That is simply not true.

You are the product

The key to understanding my off grid desires is the reality that Silicon Valley consider you and I to be the product they are selling. For example, my wife and I were taking our daughter to Spanish lessons a few years ago. On the drive, I was practicing with her using some flash cards, asking her what various words mean, or how to say various things in Spanish.

We dropped her off to her lessons, and on our drive home, I looked at my phone and had an ad for McDonalds pop up–in Spanish. Silicon valley was listening to my Spanish practice with my daughter, and clearly sold me to a McDonalds ad campaign as a Spanish-speaking potential customer.

They got it wrong, since we don’t read or speak Spanish fluently. Getting better, but still not great at it. But the most troublesome thing was knowing that:

1. Our phones are at least listening, and perhaps watching us (I highly recommend watching the movie Snowden about this).
2. Our words, GPS locations, and patterns of life, or being sold to advertisers or worse.
3. If one or more tech companies can do this, how many hackers can hack into that data for nefarious purposes?

What this means for me is that I’ve become very aware of how technology violates privacy. Part of getting off grid but still using the Internet is becoming more savvy about using apps, devices, and companies that protect our data. This means not only telling us they won’t sell it to anyone, but ideally that they’re not collecting it at all.

If our data doesn’t exist on someone’s server, it can’t be hacked by nefarious individuals or companies.

A lot of us prefer the cost and efficiency of gas-based heating for our homes. Heating with electricity just adds too much usage to your electricity needs for most of us working on getting off grid.

Natural Gas

Natural gas is the most popular kind of gas for home heating, and other things like clothes dryers, ovens, and ranges for cooking. The challenge with natural gas is that it’s generally supplied by plummed pipes which are necessarily connected to the “grid” of the local community.

Here in Idaho, Intermountain Gas Company is the natural gas provider, and most larger communities are served. However, there are locations where Intermountain does not have gas pipes laid. For that or for reasons of wanting to be more off grid, you’ll need to consider another alternative, like propane.

Propane

Propane is the common alternative for most homeowners where natural gas is  either unavailable or undesired. Most appliances such as ovens, stoves, and clothes dryers, can be converted to use propane instead of natural gas. Supply is the  biggest inconvenience, because you’ll need to have a very large propane tank outside your house, and hire a propane supply company to deliver it to you periodically.

Propane is not as inconvenient as it sounds. With a large enough tank, and with moderate control over your usage rate, you can likely get by with only a couple of propane deliveries per year.

Heating Oil

Heating oil, while not as common as natural gas or propane for heating a home, is actually quite cost-effective for heating your space. It is essentially a type of diesel oil, and is generally stored in an underground tank on your lot. It is plummed to the mechanical room where your heating oil driven forced air furnace is installed. Like propane, with reasonable usage rates, you can probably get by with only two or three deliveries to your tank each year.

I personally have a 500 gallon tank, and usuage is very slow. One of the benefits of heating oil is that it puts out a lot of BTUs of heat in proportion to its consumption rate. The equipment is more expensive to buy and to have installed by HVAC pros experienced with this type of fuel.

But it is increaasingly popular with homeowners intetersted in getting off grid. Heating oil is definitely cost effective, and simply requires occasional delivery directly to your house.

The amount of power we consume is extensive. I have lived with my water and sewer needs off-grid with a high producing well and well designed septic system. But it is much more challenging to meet our electrical power needs off-grid. In this space I will explore this extensively for ideas and solutions to the challenges we face electrically when we want to start Getting Off Grid.