Tiny House Blog

I am looking for other co-owners or investors for a perfect property for a tiny house eco village on Vancouver Island. This would be a permaculture site for tiny homes with organic gardens, chickens, rainwater collection, and greywater recycling.

The property I am looking into is 5.5 acres and has one conventional house, three mobile home pads – ideal for parking Tiny Homes, and an RV pad (which could also be used for a Tiny Home that uses less electricity). There is also a workshop on the land, where you could work on building your home!

The mobile home pads have 70 or 100 amps and a fresh water hook-up. This is the ideal set up for a Tiny House ecovillage! It is very difficult to get zoning for this kind of set-up, and on top of that it can be expensive to set up this type of infrastructure. This property is very unusual in it’s zoning and is a perfect opportunity. I am currently looking for other co-owners or investors for this property.

The property does have a septic system but I am interested in sustainable permaculture systems that save money, recycle wastes and turn them into resources. To his end, our grey water would drain through an outdoor filter system and the water would be reintegrated to treed parts of the land. The toilets in the Tiny Homes will be composting toilets, eliminating the blackwater issue.

The conventional house can be used as a shared building with a communal kitchen and dining space as well as shared laundry. It could house wwoofers or other volunteers to help with the garden. We will save money by pooling our resources, buying food stuffs in bulk, and cooking en masse. You could have your own kitchen as well in your Tiny Home, or choose not to!

The tiny homes can be DIY or built by one of the many budding Tiny House companies. They would be made of salvage or other green materials. I am currently building a Leaf House, pictured above, with totally chemical-free materials, as I suffer from Multiple Chemical Sensitivities. Therefore this community would be ideal for others looking for a scent-free and chemical-free environment or simply those interested in sustainable living systems and leaving a smaller footprint.

There could be room for more houses if others are interested in living off the grid. Especially for seasonal visitors or for houses not containing plumbing (to get around zoning laws).

If this property sells, I will be looking at other options on Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. For a link to the property and other options that could be considered please see my blog: http://mychemicalfreehouse.blogspot.ca/p/tiny-house-eco-village-bc.html.

I write about how to build a chemical-free house for anyone interested in exploring that further.

Please feel free to contact me at corinne_segura(at)hotmail(dot)com

April Blankenship shared her story about four years ago on the Tiny House Blog and recently she published a picture on her Facebook page that I thought was a perfect Tiny House in a Landscape feature. She has agreed to let me share it with you and you can learn more of her story at the blog post I spoke about earlier. Click Here.

Thank you April for sharing your piece of paradise with us.

You may remember Pepper Clark from our posts about her work on the Towhee or the Priya. Though she’s honored and excited to work for Tumbleweed Tiny House Company teaching workshops, she and Dylan Pankow are still bringing their unique skillset to the community with a new project from Bungalow to Go. After hearing many requests for it from tiny house fans, they’re planning to launch a live building education experience and they’re looking for feedback from the community.

Their idea is to present the sequential process of building a tiny house live, in person, in a similar format to cooking shows. First they would show you the materials involved and discuss terminology and theory. You’d watch the crew set up and perform some of the work in front of you, then see the project in a half completed state. Each section would wrap with up a Q&A session. It would be a seven day series, with a day devoted to each of the major segments of the building process. Attendees could sign up for individual days, or take the entire series at a lower daily rate.

Their questions are:

• Would you be interested in taking this workshop?
• If not, what format would you like to see?
• If yes, which parts of the building process would you be most interested in seeing?
• How far would you be willing to travel for this experience?

Because of insurance costs, having guests participate hands on makes this kind of event much more challenging and expensive. Would it be more compelling if there were some parts you physically did yourself, even if it only involved hand tools?

Pepper and Dylan want to serve up the best possible learning experience, and would be grateful to hear answers to these questions or any other input or ideas you may have.

Goldfinch

Hi Kent,

I’ve been following your blog since November when I finally moved into my own tiny house on wheels (136 sq. feet) on Whidbey Island, Washington. I started blogging about, downsizing (‘right-sizing’, as I refer to it), tiny living and on-going improvements in October.

Since January, I’ve attended a Tumbleweed workshop and, more recently the PAD’s La Casa Pequena workshop in McMinnville. I’m in the process of deciding the next step in tiny building, teaching and consulting. Here are a couple of full moon shots I took of my wee house. Thought one of them might fit will under the ‘tiny house in a landscape’ theme.

Thanks for all you do. The tiny house blog is truly invaluable.

Cheers!

Angela Ramseyer
MightyMicroBuilt.com

This week’s Tiny House in a Landscape is of a photo I took recently across the valley at Pepper Clark’s and Dylan Pankow’s business, Bungalow To Go.

This photo was taken down beside the pond where they build their tiny houses. What always catches my attention when I visit is the reflection of the house in the water and the beautiful redwood trees surrounding the area. A more beautiful location would be difficult to find.

I’ve also featured this photo on the 5th issue of the Tiny House Magazine that was just published on April 24 for the iPad. And for those of you who requested the magazine in a form for everyone to read I have great news. The Tiny House Magazine will be released in PDF format next week so please stay tuned!

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Guest Post by Linda

Living in a tiny house is not for all because society has embedded pride to our subconscious that you have to live big to be successful but, building a tiny house was the best decision we ever made. Being enslaved by 30 – year mortgage was out of the question. “Less is More” so they say.

It is easy to live in a tiny house, space is limited but our house has endless possibilities and it meets our needs. The fact that we are not bound by the monthly pressures of paying the bills is our advantage over today’s bigger living options.

I am sharing our tiny house located in Upstate New York. We decide to leave the increasing cost of living in Long Island, New York and New Jersey behind and settled in a quiet town of Upstate New York. The house might be small, but the surroundings are vast and after a while you won’t notice the house’s small size. Continue Reading »