Why do I want to build an off-grid house?

Basics

• To produce a warm, peaceful house for me to live and work in which is not expensive to run either financially or environmentally.
• To act as a testbed for ideas on making efficient use of low-grade energy from the environment - particularly the control systems needed to do this effectively.

Practical

I want to live and work in a home which is warm and peaceful but doesn't cost a lot of money to run. I can't afford this is the south-east of England.

Also, I want somewhere comfortable to live if and when the economy starts having real problems. I don't mind being poor but I don't want to be cold and poor.

Environmental

There's an element of "be the change..." involved. A combination of global warming and peak oil are going to result in the need for some action here in the West. Four possible (but not exclusive) outcomes spring to mind:

• We sort out our energy needs and sources in a way which allows us to continue to live comfortably, though probably with a lot less travel than at present, or
• We burn a lot of coal and really mess things up for those (mostly in the third world) who are very vulnerable to climate change, or
• We continue burning a lot of oil and gas which causes slightly less or slightly delayed climate change but probably involves taking the resources at gun-point, or
• We wind up having a really miserable time.

Politics being what they are, I don't think the first or last are really likely to happen without a great deal of leadership, something which is rather out of fashion. We seem to be particularly bad at dealing with problems which are not immediately apparent.

I don't want either of the middle two done in my name.

But, Why Self Build?

Mostly I just want to live in a house which meets the criteria described above. Unfortunately, I don't think there are many in this country (a few hundred at the absolute most; I think I know where a large proportion of them are) and, particularly, not many that I can afford. Therefore, building one seems like a good plan.

I want to do as much as of the construction of the house myself as I can because:

• I'd rather get on with things myself slowly than mess around dealing with other people - it's a fault, but that's the way I am.
• To ensure that things are built the way I want them and particularly to standards of airtightness and so on for which the British building industry is not currently famous.
• To ensure that I understand how everything is built so I can tinker later.
• To save cost: I want a break from programming so value my time lower than I would if my career was going full steam ahead.
• To learn to do something other than antagonize bytes.
• In the longer term, to have the basis to build up a consulting business on the use of relatively high-tech but low-power open-source software and hardware control systems to make efficient use of energy in houses.