When you think of an off-grid home, you might visualize a rustic log cabin built in the middle of the woods with few neighbors.
Laura Ryan, a finance professional who is passionate about living an environmentally conscious life, shows that you can have an off-grid setup without sacrificing urban living.
Over eight years, Ryan transformed a modest cottage on a small block in Newtown, Sydney, into a modern, urban home named The ImPossible House. She's documented the journey and all the projects she's done to lower her home's environmental footprint.
Starting with a two-bedroom cottage, Ryan wanted to build an off-grid home with energy and water supply systems large enough to support a three-person household, according to her website, The ImPossible House.
Paul Adams of Modus Architects used passive house and regenerative architecture principles to design the space to need minimal energy: just a few ceiling fans to heat and cool the home.
This includes strategically placed windows to achieve cross-ventilation, effectively releasing trapped heat from the home and cooling it. Adams also lined the house's exterior with deciduous trees, such as jacarandas, to provide shade year-round, helping to keep the home cooler.
Ryan's drinking water supply lives in five 2,000-liter water tanks under the house, with two additional tanks each for collecting gray water and storing treated water, according to the Domain Group. To make the most of the water she uses, Ryan has an Aqua Clarus device that treats water used from the washer, shower, and sinks and turns it into clean water for her fruit and vegetable garden.
The house is powered mostly by solar panels and battery storage, but Ryan is hoping to add additional panels to the roof to become fully energy-independent.
To avoid wastefulness in the building and construction process, Ryan worked with her construction team, King Building Group, to remodel and build using recycled materials, including doors, floorboards, sinks, stairs, kitchen cabinets, and more.
The house is furnished with secondhand or sustainably sourced items, including used art from eBay and furniture from secondhand marketplaces.
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Using cleaner fuel ⛽ Every aspect of the house is strategically designed to lower the home's environmental impact while achieving energy and water independence.
Forgoing a central heating and cooling system, for example, and relying on natural ventilation, as historic buildings do, and ceiling fans, can significantly reduce energy usage and lower energy bills. Powering the home with solar provides unlimited, low- to no-cost clean energy that doesn't emit planet-heating gases as burning fossil fuels does.
Achieving resource independence with an off-grid setup can also fortify the house against unpredictable and extreme weather-induced events, such as power outages.
Ryan has shared her building journey on her website, Instagram, and Facebook. She also includes instructions, as well as knowledgeable contacts, for certain projects, in case readers want to try their hand at them.
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"I figured that if I can find a way to make being sustainable easy ... then maybe a lot more of us would do it," Ryan wrote on her website.
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