Recommended
Off-grid living sites worth reading
The official off-grid living sources we check ourselves, kept short on purpose. A person picks every entry and writes it up.
Official sources
Agencies, regulators and the organizations that publish the rules and the data. We use these ourselves. None of them asked to be listed and none of them link back to us.
EPA Private Drinking Water Wells
epa.gov
If your water comes from a well, nobody tests it but you. What to test for, how often, and what the results mean, from the agency that sets the standards public systems have to meet.
FEMA Flood Map Service Center
msc.fema.gov
The official flood zone for any address in the country. Worth pulling before you buy land or decide where a building goes, because the zone drives both your insurance and whether a lender will touch the parcel.
USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map
planthardiness.ars.usda.gov
The zone map every seed catalog and nursery label refers to, rebuilt in 2023. Type in a zip code and it returns the zone, which is the single most useful number for deciding what will survive a winter where you are.
USDA Web Soil Survey
websoilsurvey.nrcs.usda.gov
Draw a boundary on a map and get the soil types under it, rated for septic suitability, building foundations and what will grow. Free, detailed, and the answer to most of the questions a raw parcel raises.
Run a site we should know about?
We read everything that comes in. Independent sites about off-grid living only, and a person writes the description, so there is no need to send us one.
Add your siteWe link to these sites because we think they are useful. None of them paid for a place here, and nobody can buy one. If a site stops being worth reading, it comes off this page.
