The information on this page is gleaned from years of experience living off-grid as well as from assisting numerous people set up off-grid lifestyles.
With over 40 years plumbing experience I can certainly recommend giving considerable thought to the points mentioned.

My services are available from design stage through to supply, installation, commissioning as well as maintenance.

Hot Water

With an off-grid house, minimizing energy expenditure to produce hot water should be given considerable thought. The simplest, most efficient way to heat water is with the sun. There are various forms of solar hot water systems. The simplest being passive solar.

The next most valuable consideration is how to back-up this system so you can have hot water when there is low solar gain. E.g. a wet winter. The two most beneficial options are coupling the solar hot water system to a fuel stove, or using a gas booster of some type.

When considering a gas booster, available water pressure can be a significant factor. Some continuous flow gas water heaters require significant pressure to operate. This may require a pressure pump (more power use) of a header tank located at a suitable height to deliver adequate water pressure.

Some gas water heaters can have water from the solar HWS fed directly into them meaning they will only draw enough gas to boost to the preset temperature, others are unable to have warm to hot water as an input and a valve will be required to switch between solar or gas hot water.

Water Supply

Most commonly these days due to the availability of decent off-grid power supplies, a rainwater tank with a pressure pump is found in most off-grid set-ups. An addition, or alternative to this if your land permits is to have a storage tank at a higher elevation as a back-up storage, or, as the main delivery tank.

A petrol driver transfer pump can be used to push surplus water to the top tank so that the house tank always capacity to catch that next downpour. This will reduce load on your power supply and generally have a much faster transfer rate than an electric pump.

1 metre of vertical elevation is equal to 10kpa of pressure. A simple way to estimate supply pressure to the house is to use the compass feature on an iPhone as elevation is also displayed.

Thought needs to be given to the flow and return line between the pump, tank and the house so as to minimise resistance and ensure a good flow rate is delivered to the household fixtures.

If considering coupling a wood fire to your solar HWS consideration may need to be given to the design of your house as there needs to be consistent rise in the pipes between the fire and the hot water storage tank.

Effluent disposal

The design of an onsite effluent disposal needs to be done by a competent person and is generally submitted to your local council for approval. If you are seeking such design services please get in touch with us.
Including a compost toilet in the design can substantially reduce the evapo-transpiration area (ETA) required and thus achieve a cost saving.

With compost toilets, the larger the chamber, the less maintenance that is required. For most families we recommend the Clivus Multrum CM8. This system has been around for many, many years and if installed and maintained correctly will provide trouble free use with valuable humanure as a by-product.