Best off-grid cabin I've ever toured- SEE WHY

[Music] if you've ever thought about building an off-grid cabin you need to meet this guy this is scott his off-grid cabin is one of the coolest ones i've ever seen because he did it year by year small bit by small bit out of pocket and it's just the most cozy efficient simple off-grid cabin i've ever seen you're gonna learn a lot in this video so please watch the whole thing he's got a lot of tips and tricks you're not going to want to miss you wake up in the morning and come out here and the sun's coming up in the morning he's going to take you through the thought process of his systems and show you some cool stuff hello buddy roscoe he was a shelter dog he hit the dog lotto [Music] oh look how warm and cozy it is in here so this is the original main room it started out as a humble one-room cabin but over the years became what you're gonna see today i can almost promise you that after watching this you'll be convinced that you can do it oh too i discovered that slipping on warm shoes before you go outside oh that feels so good come in through here this is one of the additions this is like you know the living room oh it's just so cozy turn back around another addition from the foundation to the additions to the solar and the plumbing to the lights and the cost you'll learn it all [Music] is the kitchen we're just so cute bedroom so cozy and then the new room we'll go check that out too and then there's the loft so grab a cup of coffee and get ready to be inspired property i was fortunate enough my grandparents had bought back when land really was cheap in about 1960. and it's always been in the family since then as a hunting property and at first it was really cool to build a 12 by 16 cabin and it was just intended to be just a weekend getaway come up for a night come up for hunting camp and as i used it more discovered that it was kind of tight being in a 12 by 16 with a four foot roofed over porch some of the things i learned over time when i started with this 12 by 16 and was just happy to have that you need shelter you need to be warm you need water after that life gets better with hot water and a cold fridge so the addition slowly came on it worked out really well that way because to build the whole thing what you see now would have been too overwhelming work wise financial wise lucky enough for the foundation of this the ground here is all sand so we dug down into the ground into the sand and laid a foundation you can buy solid cement blocks they're four by six solid ones and we actually put two of those down in the ground put two more over the top and made all cement pads and used all womanized frameworks so the woman eyes just sunk down into the ground just a little bit or about on top actually put down some heavy plastic for a vapor voice moisture barrier so that ground moisture wouldn't come up into it so it's done without having to pour any concrete and being able to just do all cement block pads and then put the stone around the bottom to keep the little critters from wanting to dig underneath it the room we're in right now was the original cabin this 12 by 16 one room was the original cabin and the loft was a sleeping loft to sleep in the loft with the wood stove going was so hot which is why that's not a bedroom anymore that's now storage right now it's about 80 in this room right here i have so many people tell me that's too warm that's too hot i wouldn't like it then they come here they walk in and they go oh that feels so good and they come over here like this and they're like this and i go so you know what that is you've been living in denial it is so nice to be extra warm in the winter i literally leave a window open to the porch there's a window in the loft and there's always fresh air coming in here the lighting i started with was actually when you buy those harbor freight setups they came with a couple of bulbs and a switch so i started with a couple of those and i thought well that's really cool just to have some lights then through a garage sale discovery i found these lights which are actually they're a 12 volt led light i'm sure you can i found them the first set at a garage sale knew in the package now i found i can buy them at one of the box stores such as menards they sell different ones if you look the one set they actually say 12 volt you can buy these 12 volt lights and where they have a wall plug-in that converted to 110 to 12 volt i just cut that off wire right into my 12 volt and i've now added these in the kitchen they're in every room they draw very little juice they're really nice and bright they come with a peel stick on so i can actually run them shape them put them wherever i want like having lots of light be able to see at night it's no fun it's no fun and i've tried it the other way where you're literally wearing a headlamp and you're trying to you know hover over a book with a light that once you find these led lights and you see how bright stuff can be without having to take much much juice to get it going it's really nice the refrigerator is actually out of a large motor home i run it strictly off propane the selling point for me again was the freezer space for the ice cream not that it's all ice cream in there but there's quite a bit of room in those yes yeah it's just basically a full-size fridge it's nice having good cold stuff yeah absolutely when you're looking for refrigerators like the older cervel that i have on the porch needs no electric it runs strictly propane this one needs to be hooked up to 12 volt or 110 because it has an electronic ignition for the pilot it needs a power source for it to operate if you're watching to buy you can sometimes find older versions of these that don't need to be tied to 12 volt this one just understand if you're going to run just off propane it still needs a power source for the spark igniter so what do you do for that is it hooked to a battery it is hooked to my 12 volt from the cabin this box has the propane that i use there's a two tank setup that switches automatically when one empties it goes to the other those are tied in just to my refrigerator the other one is to my cook stove i found my refrigerator typically uses one of these 20 pounders about every two weeks about every 14 15 days this stove in the oven well that will run me about three to four months on a 20 pound tank i like the convenience of the 20 pounders just for their light weight they're handy i'm not under contract get them filled anywhere you can exchange them it costs more but in an emergency you can exchange them at a gas station you do have a 30 and a 50 pounder that i usually used at the other side that's hooked up to my on-demand hot water my little kitchen area there's a couple of lower base cabinets here this is a slab of cherry i bought from a local sawmill stools were found at a garage sale i stabbed down a well we actually did in the original build i had the well stabbed and we built around the well so that it would end up in the kitchen so you don't have to worry about freezing no unless i mean it don't work for a long time yeah this is another one of these pumps that's actually cast iron here but it's a brass sleeve inside here put in a double sink [Music] so when you were building this place is this just a gray water a pit that you dug in just a grey water one just took and ran a drain out actually took a five gallon plastic pail and sputtered it full of holes again the ground's all sand dug down into the ground aways and put the bucket down in there and it's all lined with stone made like a little dry well so this water just drains into that i have another well stabbed down in the bathroom and i'll show you why in a minute but i've tied in another one of the 12 volt on demand pumps so now i have the on-demand hot water and on-demand with a 12-volt so i've got hot and cold running water but i also have a backup if my pump does quit if something does happen i can still hand pump the water from here too these cabinet doors if you look they were actually homemade out of hardwood flooring somebody had made these and they ended up being just the right size that i needed so these became my cabinet doors right from the dumpster the original 12 by 16 cabin was the high peaked roof with the window in the loft up there i mean that would have been the living room edition that was added on i call this just my my living room fanatic watching tiny home shows and tiny houses and watching all them and i always thought they were so cool and again i started that life basically because i started with the 12 by 16 and as i kept finding out i need a little bit more room to be comfortable i wanted my designated that's just the kitchen there's a dining area there's a bathroom there's a bedroom i like having individual spaces for that this is my room to be comfortable in this is the living room come in here again kind of a cool chair found at a garage sale never seen nothing like it um it works out so cool because it's high sided you can nestle into the high side if you want i heard you like to take naps occasionally i think i i wish that everybody in their life could be to the point where they could take a 20 minute nap every day absolutely look at this he's got a spot there another added feature here like when my dad comes down to visit we've got another bed tips down right here bound to the wall hangs on this chain got an extra little step here comes under here and then this makes it so there's an extra bed for somebody to spend the night right here and yet folds up out of the way the addition that came out on this side is actually the dining room and the bathroom in this back this window in the back is right into the bathroom this opening was one of the first additions i did onto here this would have been a window in this opening about this high up made the addition took the window out cut it down to made this walk through that's where i was i would explain to do it all again probably would have made a little bit higher i mean it's okay it's a little tight but this was a window going into the bedroom was a window going into the the living room was a window the openings were already here just out of luck if you were to plan things out better in the original build things that i would look at different there so when you built on here um it steps down so how did you do the foundation here same way same foundation as the whole place it steps down here a little bit more to get the roof lines to work out from the roof line of the main cabin and then the addition to try and get all the pitch into the roof we could we stepped it down a little bit so the living room and dining rooms both step down and just in keeping in that theme you go into the bedroom and it also steps down now but the the actual reason why was just to get more pitch on the roof so did you dig down into the sand down a little bit more into the sand so let's talk about your your bathroom how you got that figured out my bathroom is actually a pocket door here a nice little pocket door to put in which is off the side so we're on the off the addition here of the like lip dining room this was the first edition built on because it was kind of tight in there with the table and chairs and trying to couch and everything so then this went on to add the dining room a little more space that neat and to give it the bathroom the purpose of the whiskey barrel is solely just pretty much decoration of the stand i actually stab down another well so this one again i can hand pump water this is its own well for here the thought behind this when i originally did this was this hand pump water goes out of this vessel sink which again i bought at a garage sale for like fifteen dollars mounted it on the barrel drilled a couple holes ran a line over the water now with wash water for your hands and it goes into the holding tank on the toilet it won't overfill the holding tank it won't come out on the floor it actually it's like if you had a leaky valve in your toilet and the water keeps running all the time it just cycles through so now you can pump and i've discovered it's about 35 pumps fills that holding tank you can flush the toilet again i started out that way then over time i added a 12-volt on-demand pump there's another one mounted back here to eat into the same well so now you can actually flush the toilet and it will refill off the 12 volt pump or you can hand pump it so again i've got two ways to do that [Applause] [Music] i have an on-demand hot water system here that works great that on-demand heater actually uses two d batteries for the igniter on it i've replaced them once in five years and they weren't even dead when i replaced them wow again i know to code it's not vented outside i typically either have the bathroom door open or the window open when i take a shower my answer to those that say oh that's you can't have that it has to be vented outside and i'll take it take a five six minute shower people will turn around and take their gas stove and they'll cook thanksgiving dinner and they'll run all four burners in the oven for four or five hours and say that's okay but i can't run this again technically it should be vented outside i'm sure people will point that out the way this works i use some plastic panels for the walls you can actually buy that's a four foot bathtub it's a smaller size cast iron tub this has an on off valve right here which is for the on-demand pump as soon as you turn that on automatically the hot water comes on take your hot shower that also is run over to my kitchen sink so my sink gets the hot water from here and the water from this well and that's running off your batteries and solar and everything yes yeah that that's running off just the batteries for the 12-volt pump i was very fortunate a huge leg up that's a lot of people i know won't have because my grandparents had had a mobile home on the property there was a septic and drain field here so i was able to run the toilet and shower to the old original septic system that i'm using so again i don't mind using the outhouse i do have a bathroom i do have a septic system and this is my outhouse really not that big a deal that some people seem to make out of it because some people have an aversion to an outhouse i might have went a little overboard on mine because i wanted people when i said oh you can go use the outhouse and they're like oh an outhouse ooh oh i hate it so i try to make it really nice but also i like it nice my bride-to-be who did a lot of landscaping around it the flowers will bloom and she's done a lot to kind of dress it up right there it took an amish deer blind and turned it into my outhouse this is a tricked-out outhouse let's take a look look at how great this is and let me tell you there's there's no smell in here and you come over if scott has you over for chili or something he's got he's got candles going in here it's pretty tricked out it's very comfortable outhouse another little idea here if you'll notice the metal where the toilet paper is everybody always keeps all their toilet paper in the coffee can so that the mice can't get it by putting that panel of metal up mice can't climb the metal they don't get into my toilet paper and it's just because when you live this way little ideas maybe somebody can use and there's there's the motion lights that come on and there's some insulation you ever shot a deer from your outhouse no i have not living off grid the other thing that i really like is i use a lot of solar rechargeable motion lights so if i go out at night to get firewood outside the light comes on if i go to the bar and open the door the light comes on which is especially nice in the outhouse as you're walking up here at night there's one on the outside the light comes on as you come and open the door there's another one inside when you walk in the light comes on it just makes it so much handier when you're living this way full time not to have to carry a flashlight be in the dark so the bedroom edition was the roof line that comes out from that for the 8 by 12 bedroom then the next addition was to take this window out and to add on to bedroom another thing i might mention while we're here is there's a carbon monoxide detector some people aren't aware maybe most are smoke detectors get mounted up high smoke goes high so there's a smoke detector up in the loft carbon monoxide detector should be bounded down lower to the floor so there is one of those there as you come into the bedroom another handy thing that my dad did you want to come in and turn around take a look here yeah and here's the step down this is like a barn door that my dad actually made for me he took a piece of osb board in the pine and brad nailed it all together used some just barn door hinges actually made a wood track the track is all my homemade from wood so it's kind of an inexpensive way to make a door and there's my bedroom door that's awesome might notice in the pictures that the bed slopes on a downhill angle i'm a stage 3 esophageal cancer survivor for 10 years now it does create some life-altering issues and one of them is i do way better sleeping on an angle however if somebody else was here and really couldn't stand it that that is hinged up at the other end with a couple of blocks and it can be leveled up but i pretty much like it on the angle there was no great foresight into building this this big every room opening were all original window openings from the cabin so as i added on i literally just took the windows out cut them down to the floor and made those the doorways through had i known that the project would get this big made the windows a little bit higher for making the doorways through another regret i had is being so off grid and starting out with with just bare bones happy to have a light i i have no wiring thought out so i've got a lot of exposed wiring that i regret i wish i could have hidden in the walls and done away with more but as i added on i didn't have to worry about hidden wires when i cut into walls and now the last and the final addition is now going to be this 6 by 12 finishing up on right now took out the window here moved it to the back wall when i get married i thought it'd be nice if she could have some of her own space my bride can put her little craft table under the window here and have a view out the window and do a little sewing and some clothes storage and stuff so i meant still in the process of finishing this i current search i'm looking for a good deal on some wood flooring for the finished floor and just putting up the pine right now finishing the inside off i thought everything was just about dialed in perfect and i said well but the four that that four foot porch wasn't enough so then the porch got booted out four more feet so it's eight by twelve it's just a winter cold season type porch it's roofed over it's got no insulation just windows that is an awesome fridge too got a nice little space out here it's almost like a an entryway a cold storage entryway kind of it is it's nice out here in the summer to open up all the windows it makes a nice place to get in stomp your boots off and and cool stuff off and make in the winter when you're cooking and want to set some food out i heat solely with wood it's my only heat source and blessed again that i can cut wood on the property close by so i like to have about three years worth of wood always sitting around stocked up now i do use solar i've done nothing high tech everything i did again was simple kind of low budget started out with just this simple harbor freight setup or these panels i think are about 80 watts to maybe 100 whereas one of these is now 100 and 200 watts on some of these so i had started with just one set of these and then over time as i went from weekending it to living year round and i've been living off-grid full-time here for five years now i've picked up one of these at a garage sale and there's another set over here this is the other second set of solar panels i have and with all the panels together hooked up that i have for at 400 watts of charging power this set is actually on a little turntable which is just a pipe stuck in the ground with a pipe frame above it you know i can chase the sun i'll catch the morning sun and as the day goes on if i'm not going to be around i just leave it set for afternoon sun these charge really great and sunny weather but not so much cloudy weather where the harbor freight ones actually charge fairly good in the cloudy weather so the mix is working out real well the wires from the panels are just buried underground over to the cabin the tower that i have that serves me two purposes one i i don't pay for tv i get just what i can draw off the air free and i do get about 15 channels so the tower was put up for my tv antenna and also the drawback was with the metal roof on all the building i couldn't get a cell phone signal real well but a home cell phone booster which is actually another antenna mounted on the tower that draws the signal in from the outside goes to an inside antenna and boost it so now i get nice cell anywhere and that booster again it's a 110 volt booster plugged into an inverter that runs off my solar my solar panels are all hooked up into this charge controller currently right now we're at 12.6 volts i can monitor that right there then i have a small inverter here which i turn on and that turns on the booster for my cell phone so when i turn that on right now the only 12 volt i'm using i'm converting a 110 for my for my cell phone for my booster to get good signal in here with a metal roof if i want to watch tvs then i then turn on that one tvs draw a little bit of juice even when you're not using them so that way it allows me to switch off i've got a tv here and i've got a tv in the living room if i'm not watching tv but just using the phone i'll have that switch that way so that just kills the power to those to this sure there's going gonna be people pick apart some of the stuff i've done it's not to code it's not right all my life i've been told i'm living in a free country and i'm just doing what works good for me that goes into what this box is i've got one side labeled inverter if i need to run some power in here for a little bit plug in whatever i can turn on the 2000 watt inverter and i can plug right into this for 2000 up to 2 000 watts it'll it'll run a hair dryer you can use that power how did you figure all this out uh none of it's real high tech i like i said i started with just a harbor freight solar setup which gave me lights and then as i added more lights i just kept clipping more onto the batteries and running different lines to each more lights like i said there's i know there's people way more knowledgeable would would tell me to go to a 24 volt system to get different batteries i've been living this way for five years it's simple anything that goes bad here i pretty much sourced locally as far as i can run to a local store and replace it but i didn't want to get anything where i have to oh a supply chain issue we can get you your new inverter in a month we can get you everything is as simple i left the other lights when i redid the lights i left the other lights everything i have is like backed up if the one light quits working i'll use the other light if my refrigerator quit's working i'll use my other refrigerator if my stove quits i'll use my other i've kind of redundancied everything here there's nothing that's in a quick bind or panic if my 12-volt pump goes out i'll still hand pump my water for me living here extremely comfortable everything the way i like it low maintenance the builds were all done one year at a time so that it wasn't so burdensome with the labor and the finances there's a lot of bargains out there if you can look ahead for what you're looking for or if you can be patient for what you're looking for it did save me a lot of money over stuff could you estimate what you've got into this place right now just the cabin total estimate i would rough ballpark around 20 000 the materials at this point are actually getting the worst i've ever seen out of all of it so what kind of building experience did you have going into this and what advice would you give to someone who wants to build their own little place and live off grid like this i've been very fortunate into having a lot of help from my dad my dad has been super for the planning and guidance and help me i don't think most people wouldn't have trouble finding either a friend that's done a little building or there's so much information available online now if you start out small don't take up something that's so big and daunting at first you're overwhelmed start out with something small if you plan it the way i did this you can do the one small one once you get the first one done the rest of them will make sense and the addition isn't so bad because now you've got the groundwork and you have more of an understanding you've done all of this stuff it's all been paid for for me it was to do it one small part of the time and pay for it it's just it's a great feeling not to be in debt to anybody there's nothing high-tech there's nothing state of the art it's just all simple and yet it's comfortable [Music] well guys hope you like that video we'll see in the next one this girl in the woods she going oh don't forget to get outside and get happy no more meter they came and took it away

Channel: Girl in the Woods

Views: 1,456,792

Keywords: off grid cabin, cabin, cabin in the woods, off grid cabin tour, off grid homestead, cabin tour, off grid bathroom, off grid solar, off grid electric

Id: WTuCXFF3sJE

Length: 29min 53sec (1793 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 20 2022