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My biggest reward and desire to live off the grid is to have a closer connection
with the things I need to survive this life.
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We live in a society it's so easy to have something and toss it when you run out.
And I'm still doing that, you know, it's hard just to avoid it.
But life in balance with nature, that's really what I'm after by living off the grid.
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Some like passage. I'm up here on Donner Summit, up in the snow, 7,100 feet.
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Since I was a kid, I always wanted to live off the grid. Around when I was 33,
I decided to tackle that idea. I found 40 acres up here on Donner
Summit. I bought it with snow, I didn't know what the property looked like.
I purchased it, lived here in a teepee, just to get a feeling for what it was like.
Donner Summit's pretty harsh weather pattern so I got to know where the wind
blew and how the snow built up here. I started in the next year in October.
80% of the property is granite so I have a lot of rocks. I decided to build out of
that, which I'd never built out of rock before. The same process I built this
under the golden ratio. I just made a floor plan based on my own measurements
of my own golden ratio. The floor plan was kind of it, everything else kind of
just came as I started building it, which was a really fun process and that's how
I usually tackle a lot of things is get enough to start and then let everything
else kinda just naturally happen as you go. It tests your instincts a little bit,
your trust, bravery, just going out and failing or succeeding.
You're gonna experience both. Being up here in the snow, with the rock,
mixing cement was probably my hardest battle. I don't have a well so that's all
creek water. Doing it in the winter is hard cause it's freezing. Took me about five years to
build this 225 square foot cabin. Now I'm getting to enjoy it.
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So here we are. This is the front door. The exterior rock actually does not touch the inside rock.
There is a thin layer of bubble wrap in between each wall. They are
anchored together with rebar, with hooks on them, every so often. This year the
house has been completely buried. All the rocks are from here. This I milled the
year I started building it, but I didn't put this in until three years later cause
I had to wait for it to dry.
*Door Creaks Open*
So this is the inside.
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Got the kitchen built into the wall here.
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Little cabinet, some sandblasting I did in memory of my dog. The house is actually wired DC
12-volt, reason is just to save energy because your solar panels are normally
DC and if you go to AC you'd lose at least 10 percent. I have inverters if I
need it, they're like, this is my plugs here.
Those things are 12-volt. The camera that's filming is 12 volt, cell
phones, computers, 12 volt anyway so. I have a fuse box, but it's a DC car fuse
box. There's a 200 down water tank underneath. That's for the winter because
it doesn't freeze down there and that's on a 12-volt pump. This is granite and
then it goes into soapstone.
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I use this for a hotplate, which is nice. Cook on the fire, heat my water as well.
Over here is an oven which you can bake pizza, bread. I can get it up about 375-400
degrees. Smokestack from the fireplace just goes right underneath that and
behind it so it's all actually boxed in by soapstone, and I just bought a slab of
this off somebody and cut it up myself. You can actually cut this with a skill saw.
It's amazing, really easy stuff to work with.
When this part's not here with firewood this is actually a shower. I shower here,
but also some time I'll just take a bath outside. I have a wood fire bathtub
that, with the winters, it's been crazy maintaining it, but it's buried right now.
This is the south-facing, which I used a lot of the sun to heat the place on
sunny days. The sun will rise and hit all these rocks, heat up the rocks, which is
really helpful to contain the heat when the sun goes down. My couch is built into
the rock, which kind of makes this 225 square feet feel pretty big, especially
with the glass too. This door right here opens so this whole thing can open and
my house becomes twice as big with the deck. Windows are framed by angled iron
and a small $300 welder on a generator up here; that's how I did all the welding
up here, off a 3,000 watt generator. Really helpful to have a loft in a small
space in the snow. Reason is that's where it's warmest and that's where the last
heats gonna be. In the morning it's a little chilly down here, but one thing
I've learned living off the grid is you are so much more in tune with the
weather. When the sun comes up, it's time to get up. When it goes down, time to go
to bed. And the reason you get somewhat forced to do this is that all that means
is is less work, less investment. If I go to bed when the sun goes down I don't
need to run my lights, means my battery bank, my whole solar panel setup is down
to 500 bucks. You know instead of 10 grand you know.
That's kind of what this place is about being in tune with nature. It's a harsh
environment up here, which I think, you know, life is not exactly designed to be
easy and I hope everyone understands that in some form. That hardship can
actually be a really fun and rewarding thing to feel. This table is a tree I
milled from a buddy's house. It's a oak tree that grew apart.
There's an interesting rotted part in the middle so I sunk the marble
here and then this part right here was rotted out that I routed out to fit this
petrified wood. This one's a petrified mammoth bone. The beauty of this is from
the fire I can be cooking something and I could place anything hot on these.
They're your built in hot plates. The couch is black walnut that I
milled. When you build on the golden ratio you get a little in tune with
nature and so the golden ratio, you know, it's like, I did my own measurements so
my hands are actually the far corners of the windows. That's self, which is kind of
like you're always reaching to the sun. That's what the human is drawn to so. The doors
where my feet are where, you know, your feet, you walk into the house. This
floor plan is a Pentagon. This Pentagon, on my birthday, I made this star that shines
a shadow that meets all the points on the Pentagon. And so this stretched out
star actually becomes a perfect star when the sun's in its place on my birthday.
So that was something I learned again just going into this building process of
learning how the earth works, which for my main learning experience with this is
motion. That is actually what makes up our life. Movement.
We are energy making matter and I wanted to celebrate my day I was born with that
idea, so that's, that's what this is. I've picked being up on this rock because of
the view. I could have easily built down by the creek,
in the woods, but it was important for me to be the feeling of being out.
Because being in the trees you get hugged a little too much by the trees,
from my perspective, forget about the rest of the world. It's actually a lot
extra work to be up on this little rock compared to down the hill here.
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I've been snowboarding professionally for 30 years now. I did the whole
competition scene, got burnt out on that. You know love the mountain so much that I
wanted to live my snowboarding and that. After competition I learned how to
shoot self portraits so I did that for 15 years. I just made a book of my whole 15
years of work called The Frozen Chase. Kind of combine all my passions together,
which is the mountains; living off the grid, my snowboarding, so I'm up here
living with a chairlift out my front door. So now I get to walk out in my
snowshoes and do whatever I want to do and don't even need to get in a car to go do my thing.
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Here we are with my latest project. This is a Mitsubishi 2012 Fuso. It's my dream
car. Four-wheel drive. It's 19 feet long so I can fit in a parking spot anywhere.
We've got the fold-out clam deck here. The other side's a slide-out. The inside's
not finished, but that will be the kitchen so that will slide out. We got
the bed, got a wood fireplace, furnace as well. I'm gonna put a 40 gallon water
tank in. The back I need to put in, I'm putting in a Tommy gate, which is another
deck like this on hydraulics so it will be able to hold my snowmobile on the back.
The fireplace swings out so there'll be a whole other deck that way. That's
actually the front door there and I can still haul a piece of plywood in here. That
is a goal in all my rigs is to be able to haul plywood or at least four
big sheets of anything that you're gonna build with. Oh yeah, I also got this thing.
Need to check the back porch, see what's going on out here.