It may not look like everyone’s idea of a dream home but for Tim Dakin this converted shed in East Gippsland represents financial freedom and self-sufficiency.
Located 7km out of the small town of Briagolong, the shed is now a comfortable home. Dakin bought the property on a whim with his ex-wife more than two decades ago, and has spent the past eight turning it into a fully off-the-grid residence.
“We literally stumbled across this property that was advertised in Burger Bill’s fish and chip shop in Briagolong, we met the owners then and there and decided to buy the property on that day,” Dakin says.
Working in the arts, Dakin has never had a stable income. He says living off-grid has given him a new sense of agency and control over his budget.
Off-grid homes have a growing appeal in regional Australia, thanks to rising energy costs and the high cost of connecting a new build to mains power. Reducing costs and addressing environmental concerns, by living a more sustainable lifestyle, often go hand in hand.
But the upfront costs can be considerable.
Dakin was quoted up to $65,000 to build off-grid systems for his home. Instead he installed a modest battery system, new solar panels and a small water pump for about $20,000. He now runs his petrol generator only twice during winter, down from once a week when he first moved in.
“When I first moved back down, I’d be sitting there at night with my old system with a miner’s lamp, trying to read because the power had gone out and my generator wasn’t working,” he says. “Now, when friends with young people come up I don’t have to be worried about them charging all their devices at the same time.”
His battery system allows him to run a washing machine, an electric fridge, a microwave and a big screen TV. The LPG gas bill for his stove and hot water is about $200 a year. He has satellite internet to watch Netflix. It’s almost every luxury he needs.
“At times I’d love a jaffle maker – an electric one,” he adds. “But then, I’ve got the fire.”
He does not have council rubbish collection and has whittled down his waste to just one bag of rubbish every six months. Living off-grid has forced him to become more conscious of decisions that, when he lived in the city, he never questioned. He avoids unnecessary plastic and packaging and shops for fruit and vegetables at roadside stalls.
‘Like an esky’
The rush of tree-changers to regional areas during the initial years of the pandemic has increased the popularity of off-grid living, says Tim Smith, an architect and director of BRD studio.
“We saw it through Covid when we had this big push out into the regions, and then people found these sites that they fell in love with,” he says. “And then they realised that there’s no services there. Or it’s very expensive to connect the services there.”
It is not a new trend – there have been off-the-grid houses in regional areas for decades, most existing more as a necessity of cost and distance than out of a desire for sustainability. But Smith says the increasing affordability of renewable energy technology, such as solar panels, has made it a more viable and comfortable option.
On the New South Wales south coast, David Griffiths has built a timber off-grid house on a 25-acre bush block between Bega and Merimbula.
Griffiths and his wife live in Queensland and initially bought the land as a holiday getaway which would just house a self-contained caravan. They have since upgraded their vision: they bought a two-bedroom, 50 square metre house for $35,000 from a local kit home company and are now putting the finishing touches on the kitchen, bathroom, and composting toilet.
“It’s pretty livable, and there’s always more projects you can do to improve life in an off-grid environment,” he says.
The timber frame of the house is 70mm thick, providing excellent insulation.
“It acts like an esky,” he says. “If you keep it all closed up [in summer], it’s cool inside all day … [in winter] we’ve got a little woodburning stove, and if you fire that up in the morning when it’s cold it heats the place up within an hour and then it stays warm all day.”
Griffiths originally planned to set up a 12 volt system of batteries and solar panels. The property also has a 240-volt inverter system – bigger than they need, Griffiths says, with the power to run “a couple of fridges”.
“It’s nice to have … and it just makes life really easy,” he says. “Really, you only need the power for lighting. So you could run off 12 volts quite happily.”
The longevity of these systems is yet to be tested. Reece Stubbs, the general manager of the sustainable architecture firm The Sociable Weaver, says while they can do modelling of solar systems to calculate the lifespan of the product, “there’s not too many off-grid homes that have been sitting there for 50 years, tried and tested”.
People like Dakin are on the frontier.
For the first time in his life, 25 years after buying the property, he says he feels secure knowing he has a home he can afford on an ongoing basis. It makes it worth the inconvenience. Named after him and his son, a sign out the front – Tim and Sam’s place – hints that it is a safety net his son may inherit.
Plus, he says having a private source of emergency power comes in handy in the Gippsland hills.
“In the little town of Briagolong, power does go out reasonably regularly,” he says. And you’ll see it come up on the Facebook noticeboard. I just sit there chuckling, going, ‘Not at my place it doesn’t.’”
