Living Off Grid in the Tiny House

Spring has finally arrived and working outside is a more pleasant option.  My husband is finishing up the siding on the tiny house.  I will go back with waterproofing sealant once he is finished so the colors will match.

We have found a great deal on barrels and are using them anywhere we can.  Pictured above we are doing rain collection for use in watering the pigs, guinea pigs, chickens, and plants, washing buckets, or anything else that doesn't need pure filtered water.  One day of rain easily fills our barrel.

Spigot with running water. Set upon blocks so we could fit a 5 gallon bucket underneath it.  

Cut a hole in the top to push through bendable guttering

Gutter from house

He figured out how to attach his fishing pole
on the front of his bike with a bungee cord.

Once the snow melts and the temperatures warm up my son starts fishing and we are outside most of the day. If you want to live in a tiny house you need to like being outside. It is a very small space and boredom or cabin fever can set in after a few days, depending upon your personality. I have noticed that my son has done more tinkering, building, and using his active mind in lots of creative outlets.  Here is an example: He made birthday candles for our homemade cake, with twigs, hot glue, and wick. He can make anything with hot glue! He also makes blow guns and the darts that he sells for a very good deal of $5 each with 5 darts. If interested they are great at shooting at balloons, trees, and target practicing. 

 We love getting out and exploring whether walking, bike riding, skiing, ice skating, going to the beach or mountains etc. 

First catch of the year. He cleans it and I'll cook it.

Pond at the end of our road

Exploring Rye, NH

Caught a glimpse of an awesome rainbow for Mother's Day at Rye, NH

We are still using solar and happy for the longer days of spring and summer!! We are definitely going to need to look into more batteries to keep us going. Our refrigerator, although it is small, tends to bring our batteries down throughout the night and now that we have pigs we use electric fencing, which I will discuss later.  We are also looking into using wind generation, especially for the fall and winter when the days are much shorter and we get lots of wind. We are very thankful for our generator.  It has been a great back up because the oven (it's gas but uses electric for temperature stability and ignition), water pump, gas dryer ignition, and washing machine take more power than we are storing at this time.  When we run the generator I bump the temp up in the fridge so it gets really cold and uses less solar power later.

When the days are nice instead of the dryer I hang out the clothes.

Has off grid living been easy...no but it is doable. It is definitely not like camping for the weekend. We enjoy it and it can be challenging but it is worth it.