Portable Solar Camping

80 watt solar panel

We spent most of last week camping at Big Bear Lake in Southern California. We were celebrating my mother’s 80th birthday and also my folks 60th wedding anniversary that actually happened back in June. Also it was the first time in a couple of years that all of us were … Read more

Taliesin West Miner’s Shelter

Most architecture students don’t have to build their graduate project first in order to be able to live and study. However, at Taliesen West, Frank Lloyd Wright’s winter office and now an architectural school, students have to sleep outside in the desert in either a tent or in a shelter … Read more

NOMAD Micro Home

This stylish and energy efficient 10×10 foot micro home from NOMAD in British Columbia comes as a flat-pack micro cottage that can be assembled in just a few days. The NOMAD can also be customized to include a wet bath and appliances or no bathroom or appliances at all if … Read more

Wes and Zamp Solar

portable and cabin solar

by Wes Nave Being from the era where we take a lot for granted, one thing constantly stands out in my mind. Why don’t we take advantage of our naturally occurring resources to provide for us? I remember my grandmother telling me about the early pioneer days when building sod … Read more

Erin and Dondi’s Off-Grid Tiny House

More and more young people seem to be ditching the typical suburban “first home” for a tiny house and Erin and Dondi Harner in Colorado are no exception. Their 100 percent off-grid tiny house has just recently been completed and contains all the necessities for a totally self-contained 181 square … Read more

MorningStar Solar Home

MorningStar home, built by the Penn State Center for Sustainability has been around since 2007, but it will hopefully be the home of the near future. The 799 square foot building is a net-zero home that produces more energy than it consumes, and it has been used for educational and … Read more

St. Croix Expat Home

Not that I’m looking to move to a tropical island anytime soon, but when winter comes along…sometimes it’s nice to dream about becoming an expat in paradise. Instead of dreaming, this is what Nate Olive of Atlanta did. After a few life changes, he moved to the beautiful island of … Read more

ClearSpace Modular Homes

It seems they have gone out of business, no longer can find their website. For lovers of clean, efficient, modern design with an eye toward outside living, ClearSpace Homes has come up with a few designs to appeal to people who want a tiny house. ClearSpace has been selling their … Read more

Ode to the Outhouse

The lowly outhouse may be making a comeback. Some tiny houses being designed these days are not being outfitted with a bathroom or even a space for a composting toilet. While a specific design or structure may be sound and even really beautiful, it may not provide people with one … Read more

House Arc

Bellomo Architects, in Palo Alto, wanted to design an IKEA-like house, only easier to put together. Just like the Swedish company’s famous furniture, this 150 square foot modular structure can be flat-packed and delivered in a box that is only 4x10x3 feet in size. When complete, it only weighs 3,000 … Read more

Powering our Tiny House, The SolMan Portable Solar Generator

TinyHouse with SolMan

Guest Post by Merete Mueller reposted from Tiny

Perhaps one my favorite things about our tiny house (other than falling asleep to the sound of rain on a steel roof) is that it is entirely off grid.

Christopher and I are both environmentalists of sorts, having spent chunks of our lives studying, researching, and telling stories about humans’ interactions with our natural resources and waste. Part of this tiny house experiment has always been about learning to lessen our own impact.

Tiny House with SolMan

And there’s also the practical side of things: 40 miles from a major town, our tiny house doesn’t have access to a “grid” of any kind. No gas lines. No power lines. No water lines or sewage system. We’ve had to figure out our own solutions for each of these utilities.

Park County, Colorado gets an average of 246 sunny days each year, so solar power was an obvious choice for our electric needs. Throughout the building stage, Christopher looked into rigging up a system of his own design, but when we heard about the SolMan portable solar generator, we decided it was worth it to purchase a professional, pre-made solar unit than to build our own.

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