Final Touches

7 months later and the final touches were put on the Tiny House. After struggling to find a donation, Sarah came through and found a company called Enviroshake to donate the roofing material for the Tiny House. The product is made out of recycled plastic, rubber and cellouse natural fibers. It is very easy to work with and has breakable joints to help reduce waste. One would think the roof would be put up in a jiffy, but no, four days later we were still at it. I guess when you are working on a very sloped roof and needing to make so many weird cuts, it is going to take longer. Good thing Roby was a high diver in college and has great balance!

The house is all ready for the winter rains.



As part of our sustainability mission we wanted to provide all the electricity from renewable energy. We had Alex one of the instructors for the SLI come and help do an assessment. We calculated all the KW's of the home to determine how many modules would be needed. Next we had to find the right location to place the panels. You have to position them on the south side of the house to capture the sun and angle them according to the latitude of the region. Initially we were going to put them up and use them as a shade structure but it was going to be difficult to try and place the inverters and charge controllers and batteries. However, we realized the Real Goods store had a SOLMAN system on display so we asked if we could use it for the tiny house. The Solman is made by a company in Willits which is only about an hour away and they specialize in Micro-Solar systems so it was perfect for the tiny house. It is an all encompassing system and is on wheels so you can take it with you. The batteries, inverters and controllers are all enclosed inside the panel. A pretty cool system. No need for building any fancy contraptions just plug and play. So a 10 hour job turned into a 15 minute one. Just had to wheel it down from the store!