About Jake Mercer & The Off-Grid Workshop

Who I Am

My name is Jake Mercer. I spent eleven years as a mechanical engineer at a mid-size manufacturing firm in Ohio — designing systems, running load calculations, and spending a lot of time thinking about how machines work. In 2020, I left that career behind, bought 14 acres in rural Tennessee, and started building an off-grid homestead from the ground up.

That decision was not spontaneous. My wife and I had been researching off-grid living for three years before we moved. We read every book we could find, watched hundreds of hours of YouTube, and visited a handful of working homesteads. But when it came time to actually plan and build the systems we needed — solar power, rainwater collection, water filtration, food storage — we ran into a consistent problem: the information online was either vague lifestyle content, or it was outdated, or it was written by someone who had clearly never done the thing they were describing.

The Off-Grid Workshop is what I built to fix that.

What I’ve Actually Built

Our homestead runs entirely off-grid. That means no grid electricity, no municipal water, and no reliance on external infrastructure for day-to-day living. Here’s a brief rundown of what I’ve personally designed, built, and lived with:

• Solar power system: 1.8 kW of monocrystalline panels (Renogy and ECO-WORTHY), 400Ah of LiFePO4 battery storage, a Victron MPPT controller, and a 2,000W inverter. Sized using the load audit methodology I describe in the power audit guide. I’ve gone through two full design iterations as our power needs grew.
• Water system: Rainwater catchment from two barn roofs (approximately 2,400 sq ft of catchment area), 2,500-gallon above-ground poly storage, and a gravity-fed distribution system with multi-stage filtration. Full detail in the rainwater harvesting guide.
• Food preservation: I operate a Harvest Right freeze dryer, an Excalibur 10-tray dehydrator, and a traditional root cellar dug into a hillside. We preserve the majority of our garden output annually for winter. The root cellar design is documented here.
• Heating: A wood stove is our primary heat source. I’ve tested and lived with several stoves over four winters, which is what led to the wood stove guide.
• Food production: Chickens (currently 18 layers), a large kitchen garden, and a small greenhouse extended with passive solar design.

Why My Engineering Background Matters Here

I’m not saying you need a mechanical engineering degree to go off-grid — you absolutely do not. But it does mean I approach this differently than most content creators in this space.

When I size a solar system, I’m doing the same load analysis I’d do for an industrial power budget. When I evaluate a water filter, I’m reading the NSF/ANSI test certifications, not the marketing copy. When I review a battery, I’m discharging it under a controlled load and tracking the discharge curve, not just charging it once and calling it tested.

Most gear review sites are written by people who received a product, used it for a week, and published their impressions. I’ve been running some of this equipment for two to four years. A water filter that works great for three months may have issues at 18 months. A solar kit that performs well in summer may be inadequate in winter at your latitude. Long-term use reveals things that short-term testing doesn’t.

How I Test Products

My testing approach is intentionally practical rather than laboratory-controlled, because off-grid conditions are not laboratory conditions:

• Real-world output, not spec-sheet numbers. I measure actual output under real conditions — dust, weather variation, non-optimal angles — not ideal test conditions. A solar panel rated at 200W will rarely produce 200W in real life. I document what it actually produces.
• Extended use where possible. I prefer to have lived with a product for months before publishing a review. Where that’s not possible, I document the testing duration clearly and update reviews over time.
• I pay for most of what I test. We do not accept free products in exchange for reviews. A small number of items have been purchased at a discount through professional channels, which I disclose when relevant. The incentive structure of this site is that I earn a commission when you buy something I recommended and it works for you — not when I talk you into buying something mediocre.
• I include failures. Things break, disappoint, or turn out not to be worth the cost. Those reviews are as valuable as the positive ones. I do not selectively publish only favorable outcomes.
• Specific numbers, not generalities. Claims like “this panel performs great” are not useful. Claims like “this panel produced an average of 182W across three days of testing in full sun at a 35° tilt in July” are useful. That’s the standard I hold myself to.

What This Site Is and Isn’t

The Off-Grid Workshop is a personal site. I write it, I research it, and I test the things on it. There is no team of freelance writers producing content I haven’t verified. Every guide on this site describes something I have either personally done or closely studied from someone who has.

This is not a homesteading lifestyle blog. You won’t find recipes or seasonal roundups or content designed to make off-grid living look effortless and beautiful. You will find engineering-grade explanations of how off-grid systems actually work, honest product evaluations with real measurements, and guides written for people who want to understand the “why” behind the recommendation, not just the recommendation itself.

I cover four main topic areas:

• Solar & Power — system sizing, panel and battery reviews, charge controllers, inverters, and power management
• Water — catchment, filtration, gravity systems, and water storage
• Food — growing, preserving, and storing food without grid infrastructure
• Shelter & Infrastructure — small structures, heating, and the practical reality of off-grid building

Affiliate Policy

Some links on this site are Amazon affiliate links. When you click a link and make a purchase, I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. This is how the site pays for the time spent testing, writing, and maintaining it.

I only link to products I have personally evaluated and would buy again with my own money — which, in most cases, is exactly what I did. I do not receive payment for positive coverage, and I do not adjust my assessments based on commission rates. The full affiliate disclaimer is here.

Corrections & Feedback

Off-grid technology changes. Products are updated. Prices shift. If you find an error, an outdated specification, or something I’ve gotten wrong, I want to know. Use the contact page. Corrections are taken seriously and published when warranted.

If you have a question that a guide doesn’t answer, that’s also useful information — it tells me where the guide is incomplete. I can’t guarantee individual responses given the volume of messages, but I do read every one.