Product Description

The word 'off-grid' refers to places or people without mains water, power or phone line. Off-grid locations can range from private islands to tree-houses; the people living there might be back-packers, international business travellers or hippies; they may move around in buses or yachts, houseboats or 4-wheel drives. All are outside or inbetween the criss-crossing lines of power, water and phone that delineate the civilised world. Some are trying to save the planet, some live that way because it is all they can afford, some just want the freedom. This book is about that physical sense of off-grid.But it is also about taking the off-grid attitude into your local park or your own back garden. It is part travellogue as Nick Rosen, his wife and baby take off in a camper van to visit off-gridders representing every aspect of living off-grid - on land and water, metaphorical and actual, rural and city. And it is also a guide to avoiding the pitfalls and finding the best solutions for going off-grid yourself.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #53711 in Books
• Published on: 2008-03-25
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

THE TIMES, Anna Shepard
With his book, [Nick Rosen] has caught the Zeitgeist.

Sunday Telegraph
This is a timely and highly readable examination of what it really means to live and travel `off-grid'.

From the Publisher
Haven't you ever wanted to break out of the rat race and find a place to be free? Whether for the weekend or for a lifetime, Nick Rosen explores off-grid living, combining irreverent travellogue with 'how-to' essentials.

Customer Reviews

Essential reading
In How to Live Off-Grid, Nick Rosen investigates the possibilities and difficulties of living an off-grid lifestyle (no mains water and no mains power) in the UK.

This is not a typical "How To" guide to off-gridding although the book is packed with useful information. Instead the main focus of the book is on real people living an off-grid life - their motivations, their struggles, their problems, and their solutions.

In the 120 page Chapter 4: Meet the People, Nick Rosen tells the story of his own journey around the UK in his newly purchased camper van meeting off-gridders from all walks of life who are living off-grid with varying levels of success and for a range of different reasons.

These short stories give a fascinating look into the often difficult world of the off-gridder: seemingly a constant struggle against council planners, neighbours, and the elements. Living an off-grid existence is rarely easy, but is shown to be hugely fulfilling.

The rest of the book comprises chapters on generating power, obtaining water, and building shelter. In addition a chapter entitled We Were All Off Grid Once tells the story of how we ended up on-grid in the first place and looks into the main motivations for people to move off-grid today: environmentalism, post-consumerism, rising energy prices, water shortages, rising house prices, fear, and the availability of new technology.

How to Live Off-Grid is information packed and very easy and entertaining to read. The real world practicalities of living off-grid in the UK today are well covered in this unique and well researched book.

disappointing - hack journalism
Very disappointing and doesn't live up to the title. If you like to read about how a rather well off reporter went off in van and totally failed to engage with any of the people, issues or anything of interest, then this could be the anodyne book of the year for you. You won't be any the wiser about living off-grid tho.

An Important Insightful Book
At last, a book about the environment which is not pious or humorless. A
book about living cheaply which is witty, and inventive, and surprising.
The author has really lived the experience, and as a result he can evidently walk the talk .

The first chapter finds him buying a shepherd's hut for 10,000 sterling
because its all he can afford, and chapter 2 is an extended and impeccably researched treatise on the foundation of the power and water industries as well as a survey of recent writings on imminent social collapse.

The fun chapter is chapter 3 where he buys a camper van, realises it's the wrong one, or his wife does, and then sells it and buys another one.

Its only in Chapter 4 that he goes round Britain visiting all the off-grid types - a chapter that lasts about 100 pages and is a really inspiring guide to how, what and where to go off grid.

The next chapters are rather textbookish, but that might be useful to some - the most complicated is the section on planning permission, but if you are going to stick your neck out and buy a chunk of land, you are going to have to think out your planning permission strategy in advance.

An important, insightful book.