The potential impact of moving to Portugal and building an Earthship on my costs of living
I was very excited to read @eco-alex's news that he's now got $37 000 towards building a model Earthship in Portugal.
The model he's working towards just sounds truly evolutionary in its approach to assisting people to overcome the cost of living crisis.
The general gist is that @eco-alex is working on an Earth Ship design package that can be built for an extremely cheap price (somewhere around $40K ATW, and I think that's all-in for land, regs and materials).
An Earth Ship is designed to provide climate control and energy needs passively, so that means zero utility bills, and combined with a water source, growing your own food and a no or low mortgage, given the cheap building cost, then we're talking about a very low 'basic expenditure' outlay, practically all you need to do is find yer beer money on top!
Once they've built the first Earth ship successfully then they're planning on offering an 'assistance package' which involves helping people to find land, deal with the bureaucracy of building and the actual building.
The place where this is happening is around Penamacor, north central Portugal, quite close to the Spanish border.
NB In case you think $40 000 sounds like a fantasy price, which it might do if you're living in Northern Europe, check here were actual houses are listed (so presumably you can get 5-10% off easily enough) for under $40K in the region.
By extreme coincidence I've had my eye on this region for several years as a potential place to buy land, long before I came across the eco-villages project, and the fact that this is now becoming reality in that region has just solidified my desire to move out there.
What I'll probably do is phase in a move as follows:
- Rent my house out, rent a flat somewhere in central Portugal.
- Buy some cheap-ish 'farm' land, start going through building regs (this I will need help with).
- Sell house, buy a Yurt, move onto the land, start building.
- Alternative phase 3 if I can't get 'regs' - on 'virgin land', sell house, buy a land with an actual property on it and then get permission to build an Earthship, or failing that, reno it as earthshippy like as possible.
- Alternative if I don't like Portugal (unlikely, but you never know) - just come back to the UK, sign on the doll and watch reruns of Bargain Hunt and Homes Under the Hammer.
Excitement of the whole eco-building community saving people and planet in Portugal aside for one moment, the economics of the whole transition also looks very enticing>
A cost-of-living comparison of 'staying in the UK' with three transition phases:
I find this quite motivational, as my cost of living comes down with every phase - NB I can't quite cover my mortgage with the rent on my house (you know, agency, tax man, they all take their cut, but that's on an 15 year mortgage (8 left) which is my choice).
The headline totals for monthly costs of living in different phases are:
- Stay in the UK - £1500 a month
- Rent house in UK, rent in Portugal - £1300 a month
- Rent house in UK, move onto land - £950 a month
- Sell house, live on land in an Earth ship - £600 a month
What's clearly obvious from the above is that it's my housing costs that are making the biggest difference, about 75% of the difference moving from staying in the UK to Earth ship Living in Portugal.
A clearer breakdown?
What hopefully becomes clearer from the above is that a lot of my 'disposable expenditure' I'm holding equal in different scenarios. What mainly changes with 'Earthship Living' is the cost of, well, basic living: housing and utilities.
NB I anticipate they'll be some minimal cost with maintaining solar panels and water filtration systems. So I've factored this in!
Final thoughts
I'm looking forward to getting building, in the meantime I need to practice hard on my chillaxing as life is going to pretty sweet in Portugal!
If you want to find out more, then check out this post by (and follow) @eco-alex - you can also support the project by buying Eco-village coin - they're priced at 4 Hive each and there's a buy-back planned once the project starts making money, details in the linked post!
Maybe see you in Portugal, BYO Hammock.
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wow man, that's a nice plan! but are you about cut a beer consumption??))
I was thinking the same. When I moved from the UK to Cyprus, where beer is cheaper, my beer spend actually went up. Of course, I went from miserable UK weather to 8 months/year in t-shirt.
@fknmayhem 🙂yea! prices in UK are different) but the regular beer is way better ❤️
I’m Belgian so don’t get me started about British beer. :P
Ahaha) we can discuss it for hours, believe me) I was running a Beer and a Brew school for 5 years) So it's a matter of a long discussion. What beer do you usually drink in Cyprus?
There was Jupiler serving bar near to my place. Which was also the pils I grew up with. Otherwise, just like in England, I would look for places with Staropramen as I particularly like its flavor. Aside from the Belgian pils I grew up with (Jupiler, Maes Pils, Cristal Alken) and also Kölsch, Staro is definitely my favorite among the commonly found draught pils/lagers.
Regular beer is the topic, right? Base level beer. Otherwise, totally agree that the UK has a great thing with ales and definitely in this craft era. British hospitality had a great decade and craft ales do belong to that.
Altho I like me some live beer like Gueuze Lambik.
I'm a huge fan of British Ales! Love CAMRA and other local beer fests in-particular.
Hopefully lockdown won't put too many smaller breweries out of business, but I guess a few are going to fail.
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Yea man! Camra rocks! I’ve been at the GBBF few years ago in London
I've been a couple of times, that is one massive event, although I prefer the smaller ones they do - There's one in Surrey (near London) every November that I think I've been to for 13 years in a row, it's a real event on the annual calendar - meet for lunch, country walk, end up at the festival. Love it!
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@revise.leo unfortunately all the events are canceled due to coshit. but in a normal life it is few weekly across the Island
In terms of non macro breweries both countries are awesome!
Love British cask ales so far as Belgium Trappists, but normally I drink regular lager or czech pilsner. Damn I love czech pils
I guess if it's cheaper, I'll be increasing it!
I certainly won't be decreasing my virtual !BEER consumption!
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I've just realised I need to call the beer from this account!
!BEER
@revisesociology !BEER back
View or trade
BEER.Hey @revisesociology, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @rollie1212 for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.Sorry, you don't have enough staked BEER in your account. You need 24 BEER in your virtual fridge to give some of your BEER to others. To view or trade BEER go to hive-engine.com
View or trade
BEER.Hey @rollie1212, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @revisesociology for you. Enjoy it!Learn how to earn FREE BEER each day by staking your
BEER.HI. We met during Nextcolony… I am studying Spanish already for 3 years with the plan to move to Spain(Portugal) or a Latin America country as soon as my wife stops working too. Interesting post. I know how hard it is to work on the land and my age would not permit that anymore.
Good plan!
I guess you just have to opt for something a bit more maintained then, still easily done in either part of the world!
Shame about Nextcolony, @exodegame looks a bit more promising!
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Btw what happened with Nextcolony?
They shut the servers down a while back now.
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any idea whats the reason? @revise.leo
I'm not entirely sure TBH, I guess it never really took off as a game, it was pretty lame, and people just lost interest.
I might have to look back at it, I lost quite a lot of money on that game!
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I really hope you can achieve your dream and get the life you want. I read about earthships many years ago, but not seen so much on them recently. We wanted the house we built to be more energy efficient, but had to make some compromises based on cost and the abilities of the available builders.
A have a cousin who is really into sustainable building. I really ought to try to get her onto Hive.
If I can bring myself to sell my house, it'll be easy, I'd like to hang on to it though, which will be much more of a challenge.
Thanks for the DM on twitter by the way, I'll keep her in mind, you should get her on Hive, low-impact is pretty big here.
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She says she's too busy to spend more time in front of a screen, but I said she could spread the word and I can set people up.
I hear her on that one, and on that note, I'm off to do non screen activities for a good few hours!
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I can’t imagine that coming to portugal from the uk would be a difficult choice, especially with all the madness going on right now but either way. I’m in a similar path right now except I am looking more toward natural building than earthship but pretty similar. Permaculture and cob/stone is more my style.
Regulations are definitely something to look into. Rural land/farm land usually cant be built on (permanant structures) but anything with a ruin On it can be renovated/expanded on pretty freely as I understand.
I’m on the central coast right now and there is a lot to love about it.
Yes that's interesting about the regs, that's my understanding - there's some farmland for sale with a newly built posh dormer-shed with a wood burner for about $40K - my feeling is that they've built it and then been told to tear it the fuck down, for that kind of price!
You can pick up land with ruins for pretty cheap though, right? I mean $50-$60K should give me some decent options, probably less, just for the purchase I mean.
A tenth of that price for land with a ruin
Unless youre looking for a couple acres...
I would like a couple of acres yes!
I need to head out and rent for a while and see what's about!
nice to read this post!! love the plan. WOW you have really gone into the details.. very impressive!!!
lets SEE on the costs.. its such early days but i am gonna try make this happen for very lesss..... watch this space! <3
I could well be moving over in October, not 100% yet, going to keep an eye on the Covid-craziness, but rentals around Penamacor seem pretty cheap for an interim phase, Castelo Branco strikes me as a good temporary base.
There are some very cheap looking properties around.
Although I don't know anything about local building regs.
I was looking at this in particular and wondering whether they build the cabin without permission and then told 'NO' by the local authorities, hence the sale of what appears to be a pretty sweet set-up.
Be interesting to get out there and start looking around!
Nice one bruvva, I love the eco plan. @eco-alex wrote an inspiring post about his Portugal earth ship. And Portugal offering land and citizenship apparently, sounds like a safe haven at this point in history.
Wow eco-village coin sounds sweet man, let me check it out.
Hey cheers, it's certainly a good project to support in any way you can!