SOMETIMES you just want to get away from it all. And that doesn’t mean simply turning the phone off. For some second-home owners it means escaping everyday stress by going off-grid  living life more or less unplugged.

“The term ‘off-grid’ means away from the utilities  not being connected to an electricity company and such,” said Alan Bridgewater, author of “The Self-Sufficiency Specialist: The Essential Guide to Designing and Planning for Off-Grid Self-Reliance” (New Holland). “But it has also to do with a state of mind. While the term was originally used to describe a house in the developed world that by necessity or choice sourced its own energy, the term is also now more and more being used more to describe an independent way of life.”

Nick Rosen, editor of Off-grid.net, bought his retirement home this way. “I wish I could claim great ideological purity or trend-spotting brilliance, but I stumbled across the off-grid life because it was all I could afford,” he said in an e-mail message. “I bought a mountaintop shepherd’s hut in Majorca, home to Michael Douglas and Claudia Schiffer. I did not see why I should wait until I was 50 to afford my retirement home.” Mr. Rosen bought his getaway  a hut and five acres  for $10,000.

So how to do it yourself? “Location is everything,” Mr. Bridgewater said. Mr. Rosen agreed; he suggested a south- or southwest-facing structure away from a main road.