Solar Cooking Hour With Patti and Roby

With temperatures reaching 102 and no air conditioning, can't do any cooking inside our 96 square feet. Instead we have pulled the mini parabolic cooker from the oasis area down to our yard. We now have the parabolic cooker which is more like a stovetop and a solar oven. The parabolic reaches 400 degrees and cooks as well as a regular gas stove. The solar oven will reach about 250 degrees so we have to usually plan ahead if we are going to use it. It works more like a crock pot.

This Week's Menu:

Cherry Cobbler made from our homegrown cherries on site and homemade organic crust baked in Solar Oven

Homegrown Beets, Kolrabi, kale, aztec spinach, and potatoes roasted in solar oven

Homegrown garlic, onions and eggplant sauteed on parabolic cooker and then baked as eggplant Parmesan

Quesadilla with tuna and tomato grilled in solar oven

Split Pea soup heated on parabolic cooker

Tonight Brown Rice and Sauteed vegetables with freshly picked figs and peaches with honey from our own beehive.

Anyone want to come over for dinner?

Tiny House Tidbits

We finally rigged up a makeshift shower curtain for the tiny house and resolved the dilemma of keeping water from spilling into the luvable loo compost toilet. Roby created a bamboo shower curtain to cross over the section where the toilet is located to close it off when taking a shower. Now we have to test it. Lately it has been so hot we have been taking outdoor showers. Reminds us of the awesome shower at our friend Thad's house on the Big Island of Hawaii.

Last bits of odds and ends. We have a second closet and we are using it to hang our towels. Roby also made me a special toilet paper holder in the closet for those late night ventures outside. Don't tend to use the compost toilet too often because we have not set up our compost bin for it yet. Thankfully it is not raining or too cold at night.

Roby, Cuatro and Chris put together the grey water system from the sink and shower. Good thing the trench they had to dig was only three feet long because the clay soil was not cooperating with the pick ax. All the water is going to water a new almond tree. The system is very simple. An underground trench takes it to a bucket which encapsulates a designated rock area which is then heavily mulched to absorb the smell and promote drainage. We were going to follow the Bee Love farm concept and include our worms in the process but the tiny house does not generate enough food scrapes to keep the worms happy. At our next house we will try it!

Next week we will be designing the photovoltaic system for the tiny house and hopefully the eco-shake roofing material will be here. A company who had donated to the SLI in the past agreed to send us some shingles for the tiny house. Third time is a charm.

Our goal is to have it completed for our big annual festival in September called Solfest. It is the 14th annual event and we were able to get Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to speak. The tiny house will be on display to represent a self sufficient sustainable home. We agreed to allow them to take it to the event as long as they put us up at the Hyatt!!

It has been a big hit when we show it to people on our tours. Many are impressed by our sacrifice but in reality it is all we need. No need for stuff just the essentials. Didn't George Clooney say in his last movie- all I need fits in my backpack.

Still waiting on the roof. A company which donated some materials to the SLI in the past is sending us new eco-shake for the tiny house. We are keeping our fingers crossed it actually arrives. This will be the third company which said it was going to ship us some shingles. With any luck the tiny house will be complete by the end of the month.


1st official shower was taken in the tiny house. I tested it and no leaks. You have to be quick because it is only a 5 gallon hot water heater and you have only a 2 inch range of motion. After a hot long day working outside it felt great. Once you finish you climb up the ladder and hop into bed.

New Home

June 18 2010

Our last task before moving the tiny house to its final destination was to apply our natural paint to the wood trim. We met an artist at the Real Goods Store who was painting with natural pigments and he showed us how to create the mixture. We went to the neighboring hillside and collected some red dirt. In following the recipe in the natural paints book we mixed milk casein, wheat paste, lime, linseed oil and our natural pigment. For about $1.50 we made enough paint for the entire house. It went on perfectly. No oily smelly toxic paint from Home Depot.

Before the paint was even dry we hitched the tiny house trailer up to the Ford F250 Work Truck and drove about the length of a football field. We maneuvered the truck through a small opening between two strategically placed trees and unhooked the trailer. We have shade on the house and patio from the trees and the 132KW Photovoltaic Array on site pretty much all day.

What a great feeling to be away from the traffic and noise of the 101 Highway. We can actually open our windows without being blasted by the air brakes on the big semis rolling through Hopland. We now have the peace and serenity of the neighboring vineyard. Even better is having our own kitchen. We no longer have to share the kitchen yurt with the interns (nicely dubbed "animal house living").

Green Acres here we come.

Tiny House Living

Now that our house is starting to become a home our routine is becoming more comfortable. I get up early in the morning with the morning sun beaming through the window right in my eyes. I try to hide behind the curve in the barn styled roof for as long as I can. Once the stock market opens I head down to the great room and work on our solar panel desk. Roby is lucky because his side of the bed is not affected so he sleeps in for a few extra hours. Before he heads down our newly created wood ladder, he has figured out how to do his exercises in the loft. Based on the celing structure he is able to get himself perfectly positioned into downward dog for some yoga moves. In the escape hatch he can do his tricep dips and on the bed he gets in a few sets of pushups and situps. It is truly a multi-purpose room.

Custom Bathroom

Sarah has developed a new work plan for the site crew designating which days we devote to photovoltaic work, gardening, and infastructure. Now we work on the tiny house on Tuesday and Wednesday. We are getting down to the nitty gritty. I spent time cauking the cracks around the window frames and finishing up the trim work in the kitchen. Roby has dedicated himself to tiling the shower and toilet room. He has never done it before.

Instead of making it easy on himself and picking the perfectly square tiles to just install in a few minutes, he decided to let his artistic brain convince him to do a custom mosaic pattern. He figured how long could it take to tile a 2x2 room. (Three eight hour days later he finished his masterpiece.) He started by cutting out the hole in the wallboard for the compost toilet. He installed the toilet-a 5 gallon bucket with a fancy recycled wood toilet seat over it. Next he went through our recycle yard and picked out the different tiles he was going to use. He used a white square tile for the base layer and cut out an organic pattern which he filled with blueish green broken pieces. He had to improvise because he did not have the proper tools to cut the tiles. He used a small dremel with a tiny blade on it and cut through it to lay out his patttern. A job which would normally take a few minutes to prepare for such a small area took 4 hours and several cuss words with the dremel saw. He used a hammer to break the blue pieces to fill in the design. The next problem was re-creating the pattern he designed on the tabletop to the bathroom floor. We thought of trying to slip a board under it and moving it carefully but it was not going to work. Instead he took a mental snapshot and did it blind. He said it was a lot of fun but very stressful because he had to make sure the mud did not dry before he got his mosaic set. After a full eight hours he had the 2x2 shower floor finished. You would have thought he would decide to take it easy on the toilet seat area but no, he got even more ambitious. This time he spent 6 hours designing the mosaic and another 8 hours installing it. He said the best thing about being a construction worker is the beer you get to drink after work.

Roby was pushed to get the tiling completed because while we are on vacation Cuatro and Chris are going to lime plaster the shower walls. Hopefully we will be able to use it when we get home.

Our goal is to move the tiny house to its final resting spot mid-June. The only remaining task will be to install the roof. We have two good leads on materials but nothing confirmed. Roby will then put his magic together and design a cute little garden and patio around it. We will have it set up as a display for visitors to see how to build a green sustainable structure. We are going to use photovoltaic panels for power and a solar thermal system for our water system. These along with our compost toilet will make us off grid completely. Many green festivals have asked us to bring the tiny house to their events to showcase it. Hopefully we will get to take it on the road to promote sustainable building practices. Burning Man here we come!!

Gift for the Tiny House

4-11-2010

Roby and I celebrated my birthday in style at the Vichy Hot Springs in Ukiah. (Read Off the Grid blog for details). On our way back to Hopland we did a bit of shopping. Always need to gather supplies when you are in town. Roby has been wanting a memory foam for our futon mattress. He complains it is too hard and matted down. He does not seem to have any trouble sleeping in till 8:00 am though. We tried a mattress shop but they did not have one. The lady suggested we try Kohl's. We have never been to the store before and realized it was a glorified Target. They did have the real memory foam but it was beyond our budget. They did have a supped up "egg crate" style memory foam on sale for 60% off. He said he was buying it as my birthday gift. I knew better. We decided to call it a one month anniversary gift for the tiny house. Roby now sleeps in till 9:00 am.

Back on Track

April 3rd 2010


The house had been put on hold for awhile and we tended to tasks around the site. Really we were waiting for Phil to come back to fix and repair the shower. He pulled into town the first part of April and he was a welcome site. In one day he had the shower pipes resoldered and ready to go. He spent the balance of his time waterproofing the shower seams and putting in the "dirt" shower floor. It works well because you can mold it according to the slope you need. However, it needs several days to dry and harden before we can put down the tile. Unfortunately it is not very warm and has been raining non-stop for a week so the drying time will be extended. We are back on track though. Maybe we will have a bathroom by the end of April.

We got super excited because Lawrence who is a professional furniture and cabinet maker has come to help out with the closets and shelving. The final pieces are getting set in place. We arrived home today from a quick trip for my birthday and found four shelves built in our closet and hopefully we will have a bamboo rack to hang some of our clothes up on by the end of the evening. He is going to make some bamboo doors for our closet and kitchen cupboards. This place is shaping up!

Almost ready for a house-warming party.