Episode-1851- Chris Haynes on Off Grid Tiny Homes
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Chris Haynes is an electrical and software engineer. He moved from a full size grid connected house to an off grid tiny house located on a rural lot. He has built a very small (66sf) tiny house and a code compliant 252sf tiny house where he currently lives.
He has been living off grid for over 4 years using a very simple and inexpensive solar system. He shares his experiences in tiny house living at conferences held in the northeast US.
He just released a new book called “Tiny House Engineers Notebook: Volume 1, Off Grid Power”. Its written in a style that is suitable for folks with no electrical knowledge.
Chris originally joined us at TSP on Episode 1365 that is almost two years ago, he now has a lot more experience actually living the Tiny House way. He has been though Snowpocalypse and a hell of a Heat Wave for a summer as well. So we will discuss somethings he has done to make his home more livable.
Resources for today’s show…
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- Grandaddy’s Gun Club
- Tiny House Engineers Notebook Website
- The Tiny House Engineers Notebook on Amazon
- Seven Spanish Angels – Willy Nelson and Ray Charles
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Jack, have you gotten your Sept/Oct issue of Backwoods Home yet? Just got mine yesterday, and there’s an article about setting up and equipping a small off-grid cabin based on a prefab shed. Off to listen to this podcast now, can’t wait to compare the two approaches.
And the chief difference is that Chris knew what he was doing, where the couple in Backwoods Home figured it out on the fly! Two different starting places, two interesting paths, two good results.
A few days ago, haven’t read it yet but it is likely the second installment of a series the first one was called “My Life in a Shed”, looking forward to it.
Self Reliance Magazine may be the BEST THING Dave Duffy and the BWH crew have done, but I fear the mistake is doing it as a quarterly. Just so long between editions, a bi monthly would only mean two more issues a year but would get to readers before they forget about it again.
The TV likes to show families downsizing from over 3000 sq ft. to less than 200. For the “reveal” at the end, it shows everyone all excited about moving into a very cramped existence. Yeah right! With a couple teenagers, that’s really going to happen. I doubt they last a week. This “feel good” made for TV garbage is nonsense.
I can’t find the article but there was one stating something akin to 75% of people featured on that show are not living in the tiny home within one year of the show being made.
Small tip for Amazon Kindle users:
I was very pleased to see not only a kindle edition of this book, but it’s featured in “Kindle Unlimited” for free (with subscription). However this title does not appear compatible with the basic e-readers, like the Kindle PaperWhite I have. I was about to pull out my remaining hair getting this to download before I figured out WHY this was not working. My device was simply grayed out in the delivery drop down box on amazon’s website.
I suspect the author/publisher did this on account of graphic heavy content. Should be fine on tablets and phones.
The e-book is very graphic heavy because of the software I used to write it. It basically exported each page as one large JPG file. Figured it was better to have a large klunky electronic format than none at all. Sorry about that.
I really enjoyed the honest discussion with Chris and the Tiny House subject matter. There certainly is a place for the off grid to the back yard “Granny Cottage”.
Jack, I’d love it if you could expand upon the “Compound” concept. Much like a small village of yore?
As the show was concluding one song kept pounding away in my head and I was really hoping it would be the song of the day, but alas….
Might I suggest “Simple Life” by The Weepies for future consideration?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VyqMWV8tUQ
Brain worm! How am I gonna get Seven Spanish Angels out of my head? Dang it Jack…
It is an intensely emotional song isn’t it?