It’s all down the drain… or is it?

Outhouse - Photocredit: unsplash.com/Amy Reed (@amybethreed)

Since I’ve been asked some questions about the composting toilet I built, about how it works and what’s the goal of it, I decided to share some of the research I’ve been doing. Warning: I will not sugarcoat this topic, so if you don’t want to read about shit, just stop reading.

So what’s the difference between the good old outhouse and a composting toilet?

The outhouse was – as the name suggests – outside, so the problem of it being smelly didn’t really exist or at least wasn’t a focus. You just dug a hole, put a “house” over it and used it until it was full. In the early days they probably just dug a different hole at some other place. Later on it was emptied regularly. read more

Move your ass!

Move your ass!

Even though I wrote before that I needed the toilet to be fully functioning for me to move in, the whole process of building my toilet overlapped with moving in, since I just couldn’t wait any longer. So the big question was: What do you really need to live?

Well, “need” is defined a little different by each person at each point in time. But since I experienced that being too radical or fast in certain steps of a transformation can turn me off the path completely, I did “allow” myself to stretch the meaning of “need”. read more

I’m building a wall…

adobe wall

As I already wrote about in my previous post, the next step of re-doing my container is to put up a clay wall. Since pictures sometimes tell more than a thousand words, this one is going to be (mostly) a foto-story:

bags of clay

I had already bought the dry mixture for the clay. My decision in the bying process was random, because I can’t really tell the difference at the moment anyway. So first, I had to fix the soft fibre boards to the wall. The woman that had sold me the clay recommended I “stick” the boards on with clay. So I started mixing the sand-mixture with water – having no idea about the needed consistency, and started putting it on the soft fibre board (lying on the floor). read more

My tiny house project is still running

Tiny House Container

Finally, some updates on my tiny house (container) project. It was a little quiet on that front, because first nothing much actually happened, and then a lot happened, but I just didn’t take the time to write down everything, because I wanted to DO. Since I’m now almost finished with the first step, this is going to change.

I decided a while back that I didn’t like to keep the walls of my container the way they were, because they look (and are) cheap and also don’t create a good interior climate. Since the whole thing is a big experiment on tiny living, tiny experiments are always welcome. That is why I decided to try out putting up a clay wall inside my container. Just one wall for now, but if I like it – and also want to invest the money – a second wall might follow. read more

Interior Design – first draft

Plan Interior

It took me a while, but I finally finished the first draft of the interior design of my container tiny-house. Before I bought the container, I already had some ideas of how to organize everything on the inside, but the placement of the windows and the door limited my options greatly, so I had to re-plan the whole thing. I still haven’t figured out how to manage the windows on the short side, because the loft bed gets in the way of opening them completely. The height of the loft bed is kind of fixed, because with the container also came (among other furniture) two identical robust cupboards that I intend to use as base for the loft bed. read more

Power!

Power!

Just a short update: I finally have power in my container! During transport some connections were busted, and it took me forever to have it fixed. But now, there is no stopping me! It’s no “green” power yet, but that’s no priority for me at the moment. Soon some more updates will follow on my internal design, so stay tuned 🙂

My rusty bucket

My rusty bucket

Additionally to my “big” and relatively new office container, I also additionally got an old construction trailer without axis or wheels. It’s only 4m x 2,2m (compared to the office container that’s the standard size of 6m x 2,5 m) and is only the aluminum shell with a makeshift floor and I’m not even sure if there aren’t any leaks in the roof. Also it is/was “a little” rusty in places. Here are some first impressions in her new place next to my living container: read more

My new home

My new home

The idea in the beginning was – and still is – to build a wooden tiny house on wheels out of only or mostly natural materials myself. This takes a lot of time and money – especially because I don’t have any idea of what I’m doing… After a lot of dreaming and thinking and planning, but not really getting anywhere, opportunity stared me in the face and I stared back a second and then jumped on it. Opportunity came in the form of an office container. It’s like these standard shipping containers (6 x 2,5 m) that is minimalistically insulated and mostly used as office on construction sites. That’s how it looked when I first laid eyes on my new home. read more

The dream

Tiny House Waggon

A little more than two years ago – maybe even longer than that – I started to realize more and more that there was something “missing” in my life. Since then I embarked on a journey to find at least some of the missing pieces. And now I’ll tell you about one of them.

Among some other things, I started to downsize my life about a year ago. I got rid of a lot of junk that accumulated over the years, and still need to get rid of some more. Also a little more than two years ago I first got the idea of a tiny house on wheels. I had a picture of a wooden, modernized, self-sufficient gipsy waggon in my head – and still have. read more