18 Years Living Off-Grid on a Remote Island in a Solo-Built House & Homestead

Oct 19, 2025 #selfsufficiency #offgrid #livingofftheland

Tim Coertze has been living off-grid on a remote island in the Straight of Georgia (in Canada) for 18 years. He is solo building his own retirement home using local materials from his own land, like rock, sand, and wood, as well as concrete for the foundation, rockwool for the insulation and tin for the roof. He generates electricity with solar panels, he collects rainwater from his roof, he heats his home with firewood that he cuts down himself, and burns it in three different wood stoves: a monolithic masonry stove, a cast iron wood stove, or a rocket stove under his bathtub. He also grows a lot of his own fruits and vegetables, sprouts seeds, bakes bread, and is raising a pair of Thai river water buffalo for milk. You can follow Tim on his new YouTube channel here:    / @timcoertze   The island where Tim lives is completely off-grid, and can only be accessed by a pedestrian ferry (there is no car ferry), which makes it difficult to bring materials onto the island unless you can do it by barge, which is very expensive. There is a community on the island so Tim finds that he can barter and trade with folks on the island for most of his needs, but he does go to town off island every couple of months to get groceries like coffee. He does use propane to heat hot water and to cook when his wood stove is damped down, or when the wildfire risk is too high to burn a fire. Tim is a thoughtful and talented creative builder who has done a ton of research into alternative building methods and systems from around the world, while focusing on using local materials, skills, and items for his projects. One of his first jobs in the '80s was working at sea, where he saw floating garbage islands that forever changed the course of his life. This led him to resign from his job and to seek out a remote and clean place where he could have a family, and live closer to the land. He has been growing his own food and processing his own firewood for 40 years, and he now has grandchildren, so he managed to make his dreams a reality. But the experience of seeing those garbage islands never left him, and he has made an effort to manage his own waste on his land. He keeps all of the garbage that he creates and sequesters it in the walls of his outbuildings, where they will be enclosed in concrete or plaster. This reduces the energy needed to transport the garbage off the island and to a dump or recycling plant where only a fraction of the items will be recycled. He has also repurposed the tires from his island truck as the chamber for his composting toilet. He has managed to sequester 7 years of garbage in the walls of his solar panel shed. He is not yet retired, and still works as a roofer, although he is hoping to spend less time doing the heavy work and more time managing crews moving forward. He also plans to slowly complete his house with trim, paint, etc. and spend more time growing food once the house is complete. This off-grid lifestyle can be challenging but Tim appreciates the silence, the satisfaction of being self sufficient, and the connection to the environment that allows him to appreciate the sun, the rain, and the plants around him. A big thank you to Tim for sharing his story with us! Thanks for watching! ------------------------------------------------------------- STAY IN TOUCH! ------------------------------------------------------------- Website: www.exploringalternatives.ca Facebook:   / exploringalternativesblog   Instagram:   / exploringalternatives