This is Not a Normal House.

The title here refers to both the Noctiluca House, a physical off-grid castle, and the House Bender, the eccentric family who live in the castle. The first thing you need to know is that our house is so remote that the word “boondocks” doesn’t even begin to describe it. It is located in the foothills of the Talkeetna mountains, and is (on paper, at least) “off-road”, though there is a road that we ourselves maintain, which is accessible most of the time unless Breakup conditions are especially horrid. What does “off-grid” mean? According to some uninformed, suburban keyboard warriors, it means a subsistence home, completely cut off from communications. That is a faulty, and ludicrous definition. The REAL definition of “off-grid”, simply means that a home is not connected to any kind of grid utility services. That is us. We are not connected to any kind of power grid, water, sewer, or anything else. We generate all our own power, have a well for water and a septic system. We do have wireless and satellite data services. And our home is like the Buckingham Palace of off-grid homes; we have indoor plumbing (as well as an outhouse, used solely for back-up in case of systems failure), We have lights. We have a washer and dryer, a float switch that automatically pumps crystal clear well water into our holding tank, and even a dishwasher!

Our home is powered by 6KW Northern Lights generator and solar panels (that are in need of re-mounting! Up at 62 degrees North, it’s tricky to find the optimum mount for your solar panels), and a very SEXY new lithium-ion battery bank we just installed last summer (after our old lead-acid batter bank had a catastrophic failure). The “brain” of the house is our ancient inverter. Without it, nothing would work. It’s the HAL900 of our house. And it’s equally as EVIL as HAL (this thing is so ANCIENT, it has grown a personality, and it doesn’t play well with our brand new battery bank; its personality is that of an asshole).

Friends, both off-grid and on-grid living, who come over to visit often remark that they forget our home is off-grid. We like it that way. That is by design. We had many philosophical reasons to move off-grid, but the romantic machismo of hauling buckets of water and cords of firewood was not one of them. We did not want the “Little House on the Prairie” experience, because we know that is a mirage. We wanted to live like modern day, 21st Century people, but independent from the grid, with privacy and space.

So our house can do almost all the things that yours can. We just need to be a bit more mindful about how and when we use power. But guess what? Whenever the grid power in town is out for lengthy periods of time (which is often), we smile as we make espresso in our Jura machine.

But this is not a normal house in other ways as well. We are a large family. There are nine of us alive, and one of us buried by the big menhir out back, overlooking Denali. And that is perfectly legal. There are no codes or zoning out here in the hills. “Ain’t no law against it,” ; we would just have to disclose there are human remains on the property if we ever decide to sell. That is unlikely though. I will never leave here. I will be buried back there next to my daughter.

It’s not a big home, mind you. It’s 1600 square feet, occupied by nine people. We traded indoor space for outdoor space. We own 10 acres of Taiga. We have a sauna, a garage/neon bending workshop, a tractor barn and sheep shack. Yes, we own sheep. And chickens, and turkeys, and rabbits, and dogs, and cats, and hermit crabs, and a fish tank with tetras and a catfish, and a sassy cockatoo, and a 31 year old tortoise I hatched from an egg in 1989.

Inside you will find a neon jellyfish lamp by Eric Ehlenberger hanging above our dining room table, paintings of Santa Muerte and St. Omi the Baptist (a dianoga of Death Star trash compactor fame), house plants everywhere, including two monstrously large pothos whose vines span half the house, three species of palm trees, ferns, bromeliads, orchids, bonsai and succulents.

We homeschool. Not only because we are miles away from any school bus stop, but also because we philosophically believe that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to education is flawed. The teacher might break out into Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana” when teaching geography (she has a thing for bad ’70s music). Some days the students might be found mummifying a chicken (more on that later), and all the children run off to join the circus every Spring.