Living Off-Grid in a Tiny House Community Built by Self-Reliant Couple

in a world where housing is becoming increasingly inaccessible we need new options we found six acres just three and a half miles from downtown boone and we're able to create this beautiful place not only for us to live but for students to live with we're off the grid here so the sun the rain and the trees supply a lot of the things that we need and what i'm hoping for is that this is kind of like a living laboratory where we can test out new concepts and you'll just see how it feels i enjoy living here because i'm able to express creativity in the buildings to live in a way that feels authentic to me the element of community is really important to me knowing that i'm providing an experience for young people who wouldn't normally have that opportunity to live in this way for them to try it out on a short term basis and then take that forward in their life that's part of our goal i think with the project is to be mentoring students not only in the classroom but here on the land i really think for both of us it's a sense of adventure something new something different i just feel that i'm outside more often than in a normal home it's just a beautiful place to live one of the other big housing experiments that we did was to live off the grid on a thousand acres at turtle island preserve for nine months it was a profoundly wonderful and difficult experience it was hard to think that once our time at turtle island was done that we would go back to living in just an apartment complex we found a piece of property outside of boone north carolina in january of 2018 and from the beginning hired students to help us with all the work here on the site we needed to clear a lot of fallen trees and dead trees that were on the site we processed a lot of firewood we hired a sawyer to come in and create lumber for us that we could use for decking and framing on the various structures that we knew we were going to build we are on a vacant site here and in this county you are allowed to live in an rv or in a tent or have temporary buildings in other words everything must be temporary once the land was prepared we built this tiny house in my father's driveway i hired a appalachian state student to come with us for the summer and he and i worked to build the tiny house the design of the tiny house is really based on ergonomics so as we focus on good ergonomics how you move through the space the height of the loft and the ability to sit up there and use it without hitting your head on the ceiling the size of the doorway into the bathroom the way that the shared prep area and dining area works all those are ergonomic decisions in terms of multi-use flexibility this space that we're sitting in here is a large area that can be converted to an area to paint an area to eat in when guests come to visit we often just pull out a cot right here in the living room which works really well we found that this large space is very useful for a variety of things when cameron started teaching at appalachian state we were bringing students in to help cultivate the land and built some of the things that we needed and i think through the enthusiasm of students we thought wow some of them are actually interested in living like this and is it possible that we could create a place where we could welcome students as well to experience what we're experiencing so since then we have built two additional dwellings one is called the outlook it is an eight by ten building at the top of the hill that is where sydney currently lives our second student welling we call the chocolate house which is a bit lower down on the property and jake and josh live there the chocolate house is built on wheels in a similar way to our main tiny house [Applause] moving to the tiny home gave me the space to not worry financially as much about getting by each month i studied electronic media broadcasting with a focus in production at appalachian state university because things here are a lot more self-sustaining they don't require as much funding it's really more time and presence it aligned exactly with what i need the house is eight feet by ten feet i have a lofted bed with a beautiful view outside i have a small sink where i wash my dishes every day there are drawers where i can store my food my utensils my bathroom supplies there is a camping stove outside where i can cook all of my food and heat all of my water for my tea there is a compost toilet for me to use inside i have shelves where i can store my clothes there is a hand-built deck where i can practice yoga read and sit outside regardless of weather there is a rainwater collection system behind the house that i can use to resupply my sink water it got a little more challenging in the beginning than i thought because of how quiet it is here compared to the busyness of city life but it was really refreshing for that reason as far as moving forward it makes me question a lot of what i want to do with my life in general at this point i want to live with the environment i want to build things for myself and explore new avenues when something interests me i want to get creative with making something for myself and having fun with it and i get to do that here and i don't think i ever want to stop doing that we're off the grid here so the sun the rain and the trees supply a lot of the things that we need in terms of solar we are getting electricity from the sun our solar collection system has 2.4 kilowatts of panels it has a 10 kilowatt hour battery and can invert up to about 5000 watts our system was sized on the fact that in boone we can count on about one out of every three days to be sunny now with the students here it's become more challenging because we have two additional refrigerators to run lights and so on so that has changed our daily life a bit because the one thing that we can change is how often we use our shower and so the rule of thumb now is if it's sunny we get to we get to turn on the hot water heater and have a shower and it's not sunny no shower it's also a time for us and the students to question the norms of society too do we need one or two showers sometimes for some people a day you know are there other options that go against the norms that are still healthy and good for us we harvest rainwater here and we're using two 300 gallon ibc totes to store that water so we've kind of rigged up a gutter system off of the uh canopy on the main house and then we're also collecting water off the roof of the wood pile shed and so those run into those two totes i mentioned from there we use the electricity that we have available from the solar power to pump it into the house in warm weather we just pump it directly in and use it you know in our sink in our shower in cold weather we pump that water periodically into the large tanks above the stove and so that water is held inside the house so it will not freeze and then has that residual value of being thermal mass moderating the temperature inside the house from there it is pumped and pressurized in the system inside the house there are definitely some challenging moments here this winter specifically with a lot of ice and snow and what's hard then about not having a thermostat is that you do not have a source of heat that's there when you're not there tending it the main challenge is really just ice and threat of freezing and this is why the students housing has a very rudimentary plumbing system to mitigate or eliminate that risk of freezing and ruining a system material performance is how the building works and how it deals with wind and heat variation and one of the major ways that we see material performance working here is in our wood so area we have 600 pounds of concrete that sits around the stove that absorbs heat so it keeps it from getting too hot and then when that fire goes out it releases heat the result is a building that stays pretty comfortable we have windows up in the bedroom area so if we end up having too much captured heat we can easily vent that off because it's up near the ceiling where the heat would be and so we don't have a thermostat here but we use thermal mass and the ability to let off excess heat as a way to control the temperature inside we wanted to have something like a canopy that could cover the house and extend our living space by creating the tarp system now the sudden we're not just stuck within a tiny house we freely can move in and out of it no matter what the elements are doing outside one thing that's nice with the wood stacks that we have is that it creates multiple space dimensions for this land so it's not just a house plopped down right in the middle of an empty field these little areas these alleyways are wonderful and visually exciting i think are stimulating to see and to interact with i had built a 16 foot long wood storage rack along the side of the house that was going to block the wind from getting into this small covered area on that side and i thought to myself you know what if we could take two of those wood storage racks and separate them by about six feet and put a roof across it we could have essentially a garage to store our tools and to store our quad when i was at the university of michigan i did a project called the future cycles in which i developed either human powered or electrically powered vehicles one of those vehicles is called the orbit the orbit is a fully electric vehicle and i regularly use it to travel back and forth to the university in the short time we've been here this is just my second year of gardening but i i chose to start with the food that i knew we would like so we've planted some basics uh potatoes and onions garlics herbs corn some tomatoes zucchini i found the site fairly challenging because it's really wooded here and also we have a steep terrain but one of the things i love is to be able to sit outside you know having morning coffee and see like overnight my garden just sprouting and growing and changing every day [Music] i taught art for 12 years to mainly high school students art and design and i have been painting full time for five or so years my background is in furniture design and five years ago i came here to appalachian state university and began teaching in the product and furniture design department i think one of the things that i appreciate about our project here is that the students live separately in their own housing but we often gather together to be in community we might share meals together talking to each other about future plans being a mentor if if they need one or a listening ear and i'm very thankful for all of those spontaneous interactions that we seem to have what's attractive about the project is the affordability the opportunity to have a new experience with friends and the opportunity really just to grow as an individual i study product design at appalachian state in addition to furniture design my primary passion is playing music songwriting i love to play guitar in drums [Music] it's always way more exciting to experience things with other individuals especially something that has its challenges i think what has surprised me most about this experience is how weirdly not weird all of the changes are that you have to make in your lifestyle like cooking outside you know whenever the weather's nice you walk outside with your eggs in the morning you cook them up and it was interesting how i would have never thought to do that in a normal living situation and there's something so centering about starting your day outside i chose to live here because of the connection to nature living off the grid was always something that seemed appealing to me and boone is beautiful and being in the heart of the woods out here just seemed like an amazing opportunity at appalachian state i studied product design and i minored in apparel design because the cost of living here is very reasonable it's allowed me to take the chance of starting my own business and working for myself which has been a huge learning experience and very impactful i really like the sleeping pods in this one the airflow is really good with the window right next to you so it's super easy to regulate the temperature in it our kitchen drawers are metal tool chests that we really store everything in from toiletries to a pantry to all my bike tools fit in there the rain water that we collect is just off the roof of our wood storage so we bring it from there and put it into our water filtration system that we can use for drinking water brushing our teeth doing our dishes the community aspect of living here has been really everything that i wanted it to be i enjoy being around cameron and rachel i think they have a lot of insight on different things i've definitely learned a lot and it's a very social environment we get inspired by each other living this way has really solidified my belief in maintaining a minimal lifestyle the reason i'm doing this is i want to integrate my life with my teaching and i want to tangibly exhibit good design i want to exemplify sustainability i want to share with my students a different way of interacting with the natural world i want to inspire them to think differently about housing but also maybe about anything it's the idea of questioning the norms and saying you know what this is what everyone else is doing but this was what feels right to me and i want to empower them to you know follow their own vision of what is the right path for them this kind of lifestyle strikes a chord with those people who are coming out of school and looking at the impossibility of both paying off loans and affording you know a home of their own we don't see this as the solution to housing we just see it as a solution to housing along with many other possibilities but it's clear to me that we need to start downshifting we can't continue to consume at the rate we have been if we all hope to have a safe and equitable life on this earth you know we haven't figured it all out yet we're giving ourselves some grace i like living simply and i like living simply outdoors but i still struggle with you know extra stuff that i have in my life i mean this isn't a purist experiment you know we are on a journey just like everyone would be and we're learning from it you know and it's just a matter of taking a step in the direction that you you hope to go and and to see what where that leads you [Music] please share this video if you liked it also be sure to subscribe to exploring alternatives and check out our playlists for more stories like this thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: Exploring Alternatives

Views: 1,007,497

Keywords: tiny, house, off, grid, community, village, sustainable, renewable, energy, solar, power, panels, system, rainwater, harvesting, collection, passive, heat, thermal, mass, wood, stove, composting, toilet, gardening, homestead, homesteading, students, professor, The Future Peple, Cameron Van Dyke, Rachael Van Dyke, Boon, Turtle Island, experimental, minimalist, simple, budget, DIY, affordable, temporary, home, housing, solutions, alternatives, exploring, green, self, reliant, reliance, ergonomic, design, tour, interior, unique, cabin, new, 2022

Id: 71F0XK1_u0I

Length: 18min 36sec (1116 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 12 2022