Les Stroud – Off the Grid
Les and his wife will explore the difficulty of building a ‘green’ home entirely off the power grid.
Les and his wife will explore the difficulty of building a ‘green’ home entirely off the power grid.
You got it right Les, and you are lucky to have found such a wonderful woman as Sue. I can’t wait to get off the grid
)) Peace & love to you and your wonderful family 
))
Les is a great. Love his show and his info and that he’s Canadian!
sure good thing to do if you can all work together at it….looks like you all did. good for you.i enjoyed it a lot ,thanks…….my sister lives in the woods in a camp all finished, way off the grid also with solar power here in the backwoods in northern.N.B. tahoo. now that,s all we need . all need more spiritual revelations.
lame…outdated technologies
if they work then is not outdated.
this is stupid half the planet lives like this with 1 dollar and less per day living in nature and having nothing go to afric or asia rich americano les and bring your blonde wife they live in nature there and have no electricity and no grid what a jackass
So uh…. what kind of money did this dude have to blow on all of this? Helicopter flights, mini-lumber yard machines, hired specialists… And this guy is a musician and filmmaker… Where’s the money coming from Les? Are you a banker? Sounds great if you have thousands to spend. Guess I better start a career as an amateur filmmaker and musician.
Yeah, what Fantebukowski said.
A lot of gas-powered gear, outside contractors, a helicopter!?
Also the kids’ commentary was clearly coached. “Stop crying and say something nice for the camera”. Hell is for children.
i admire the guiding philosophy
i am doing something similar
much less brute force and modern technology
no city time scale either
queen charlotte islands bc (haida gwaii)
What’s w/ all the haters commenting on this page, man??? Here’s a man, taking the oppurtunity to better his life, and to teach you Walmart shopping, Mc Donalds eating, Ringtone buying, MTV loving couch potatoes how to actually survive if the sh** hits the fan!! I mean, seriously, are you people thankful for anything, except for your Ipod, your Xbox and your porn??? I don’t have the money to do it either, but if I did have the money, I’d have some idea of how I can begin or I can adapt and create my own way to accomplish some of the things he has taught me. And yes…dowsing is real. Learn something, losers!! I still love you all!!
Such a rude post, and to end it with “Dowsing is real” Pffft!!! Are you happy with who you are?
That is a dream of a foolish man. If you have tehnology why not use it? if you have roads why not live next to them? If you have kids, why torture them in living with no friends? You think a bike trail will do the trick? or a sky hike? Be real man… That is just a dream. There are real problems you are about to face… if not already. If feel sorry for the kids, and you… onece you realize that is too much of a sacrifice what you have done.
People are sociable creatures, without friends… i can’t imagine a saine live.
I liked the documentary, and yes the self sustainable living also sounds great, but it looks like it’s actually more costly to do then he said it was. All the equipment, tractors, contractors helicopters he used definitley isn’t on the cheap side, but maybe in the end the investment is worth it. He should tell how much money was invested in the end though. I’d love to see a 5-10 year later mini documentary on the same family and house, to see how everything is going.
omg its Survivourman..woohoOOO
good philosophy…peace
peace
The nonsense about water magic was annoying; I think sustainable living ideals should be mixed with state-of-art scientific thinking if it is to become a mainstream concept. No need for nonsense, eh?
I both agree and disagree with what was said in this documentary. Valid points have been made about the obvious financial cost of establishing this off the grid home and the fact that the children are essentially being deprived of a social life (although I’m sure not entirely). The fact remains however that a large percentage of the industrialized world lives in cities and suburbs and doing it the way he did with 150 acres in what looked like the middle of nowhere is simply not realistic or really even sustainable. If everyone that lived in cities decided to move to the country and get back to nature then we wouldn’t have any nature to really get back to. Let’s not forget that suburbia originated from the exact same idea of getting back to nature and look where that got us. Uncontrollable sprawl and endless cookie cutter homes devoid of all individuality.
I believe the true answer is to utilize the technologies he was talking about like solar and wind to replace current power sources inside dense cities that reduce the human footprint on the world around it and allow for a place to escape to when you need to get away.
henry David Thoreau faked most of that nosebleedingly boring book, i downloaded the audiobook [free at librivox!] the guy who read it did the best he could but it was a letdown to learn that the dude thoreau was a fraud. if you want to get off the grid you need help like the amish i would suggest people set up a site like a dating site only its a “free state colony” asking for like minded families
it might be more successful but i dunno, making real life seem more difficult than doped life has been a new world order specialty
the message is definately a good one, but i just find that bulldosers, and chainsaws, and trucks, and stirofoam sealings are too far away from nature…
Great informative video. Really cool of Les to do this and I think it’s very in tune with the way people are feeling today. People dream of getting out of the urban jungle, sitting in traffic, waiting in lines and want something more oriented to family living.
The film was interesting, but Les showed the wrong way to do it. First he had no plan going in. He kept talking about having to make money, well no wonder how much did he piss away on equipment, outside workers, helicopters and a second building that was being constructed before the main living area was finished. All he kept spouting off about was not having to pay an electric bill. How much was his electric bill? One doesn’t move off the grid because of ones electric bill. It usually because you want to get away from the government at all levels or just the surrounding morons. Me and my better half are making the move off grid later this year, around spring. We (her and I) will have a self sufficient dwelling. We are going in with a plan, the house is designed already, spent the last year doing so. It will have indoor plumbing with running water. Toilets and showers. A washer and dryer (dryer for the winter time) The front of the home will be a greenhouse for raising our own vegetables. As much as wish to commune with nature we will be eating some of our animal friends. Plenty of guns and ammo. If Les made this movie to be informational he didn’t even get close other than showing 10,000 ways of not going about it. I would of liked to know what his financial outlay was. Cost of property, cost of equipment, cost of helicopter? I will have a Pinzgauer and it will have a winch on it in case I do get stuck. Oh one other thing, if a building inspector or any other uninvited trespasser shows up on my property, I will explain the facts of where they may get buried on my land if they should encroach on our privacy again.
Actually this movie would be a good foundation for a reference book on how not to move of the grid. If I had time I could write chapters. Maybe I will.
we managed to survive on nothing but what the wilderness and mother nature gave us so why cant we now? i love camping and going outdoors and i am a big fanatic on survival skills so im gona do the best i can with what i can get, it will be hard at first but isnt everything?
Loved it! Thanks for all the valuable information. My husband and I are really looking forward to getting to this point. Thanks Les!
One word: Dousing
You honestly portrayed dousing as a viable and realistic way of accomplishing something other than throwing away money and being scientifically naive. I was just starting to entertain watching the show when you broke out that nugget. What other magic will you turn to as you go “off the grid”. It’s no wonder you would see “the grid” as something bad with such a bad sense of reality.
I’m actually quite sorry to be so negative. Les is a pretty amazing guy and the family looks like genuinely good people. I really wish them the best. But there may be people watching the show for practical ideas. Magic has no place when every decision means so much more. Every single thing that was said in that little part was so counter to science and reality that I couldn’t go on. Ypu would have had an equal chance of finding water if the “diviner” had thrown chili peppers over his left shoulder on the waning moon… and then dug randomly.
I could not even afford one of those kyacs much less an adventure, where does your money come from? your financually secure? Nice show but not obtainable by the likes of me a vietnam vet on social security
I think its fine if you want to do this as adults, however to drag your kids into it is definately not fine. As a ‘kid’ of parents like you, raised in the ‘wilderness’ with only animals and parents to commune with (who are both usually ‘busy’ doing their own things). If bush and animals were all one needed to live a fufilled life it would be fine. Unfortunately kids need much more. This lifestyle only provides a very narrow education, social output, economic choices, lifestyle choices for your children. I am now over 40 and still trying to ‘recover’ from such a childhood. I have tried to raise my own family without social skills , without proper education, without confidence to deal with real people in the real world in real time – All thanks to my parents “Wilderness experiment” and “lets play farmers” using kids as labour, which they just assumed I could do as well for the rest of my life without resources. Wake up! This damages your family and takes generations to recover from. Incredibly selfish.