Our Off Grid Tiny House On Own Land - How We Did It

I got rid of a lot of stuff and expenses dropped and just the experience of life dramatically increased. Well, you can see the Milky Way, falling stars, meteors, it's just an experience to sleep with this type of windows. Hi, my name's Greg. This is a Zook Tiny Home. Welcome to my home. The living room area is very nice. It's the first space you see when you walk into the tiny home. To the front of the tiny home is the primary bedroom and behind you will be the kitchen and the bathroom area and the storage area as well. But this is the first space you see and the most comfortable space in the home. The best place for us to kind of chill and relax is the living room with the two chairs here because we've got great views from all around. It's comfortable, close to the kitchen. It's also a space I will use to work during the week. I can work here with my computer set up, I've got plenty of receptacles, so it's very comfortable to work with as well. We currently have a couple of chairs. We're thinking about going to a couch, maybe even a sleeper sofa, we've thought about two for guests. We think a couch would probably work better because you get three or four folks on the couch compared to two people in two chairs. We're also considering our dinette, which we'll talk about in a minute, as far as incorporating that into our living room as well when we do have guests. We could also accommodate this area too if we needed some bar stools, you can eat off this area too. But there's a lot of space to work with right here in the living room. As far as a comparison to our previous residence, this area of course is a little bit smaller, but you just have to really dial it in and get it correct, whether it's a couch, two chairs. That's really the goal is to try to get it comfortable for two of us. We initially had thoughts on how we want to decorate or place furniture, but once you get the tiny home on site, you have the space, you can really feel it out and start experimenting with furniture and just the space itself. With a small space, you have to really be creative and really think about the furniture you purchased and how you utilize that space. So that's what we tried to do with the living room. The current dinette setup, we actually thought about a bistro table, which is a little bit higher, a little bit higher chairs, but then we were worried about transitioning to a common living room setting. So we went with the lower chairs. We could still use them for a common setting for guests or separate, have two separate spaces, living room, dinette set. Overall, I like the setup. I like the footprint and I like the design. Welcome to the bedroom. The primary selling point of the Zook cabin for me and my wife was the window situation. As you can see, the bedroom has windows that are just phenomenal. You can see the Milky Way, Orion constellation, falling stars, meteors. It's just an experience to sleep with this type of window. It is dual pane, so it's well insulated, so I don't notice any cold drafts. With the heater here, it's just a very nice sleeping arrangement. We did add this Renai supplemental heater. It doesn't take much power at all, works off propane, works perfectly, especially as well insulated as this Zook model is. It's just a perfect unit for this size space. One of the primary reasons for this floor plan with no stairs, no loft, is due to the steps. Stairs. As you get older, stairs and steps are not your friend. We have a king-size bed. The frame itself would accommodate a king or a queen bed, so we went with the king bed and the space works out perfectly for us. If we went with a queen-size bed, it would be about the same length as a king, so really not much savings there. We just saved some space on the sides. It does have accommodations for a TV if you need a TV, and this can actually be used just for a seating area as well to relax. As far as a comparison to our primary home, the only major difference would be the storage space in the bedroom, and we do have storage space in the common area. We'll see here in a minute. The overall feel of the bedroom is very comfortable. Lighting kind of splashes out the bottom of the bed, which is really nice, and the overhead lighting is excellent as well. The overall feel of the primary bedroom is very comfortable. Welcome to our kitchen. On this side is where the cooking takes place. On this side, we have our storage, our refrigerator, power station, microwave, pantry area, and primary bedroom closet. We have our two-burner cooktop stove. It's made by Summit, made in Italy. It's very efficient, works great. This was an upgrade that we did. The stock unit would have been electric model, but considering we're off-grid, we decided to go do it propane. We used to have a four-burner cooktop in our previous residence, but two-burner is sufficient for us. We're also thinking about, just as an option, to place an oven in this space, plenty of space for a small oven unit, so that's a thought as well. We've got a farmhouse, very large sink, nice faucet. In our previous residence, we did have a dishwasher, but this large farmhouse sink will satisfy the lack of a dishwasher. We can just use the sink. As you can see, we've got plenty of storage here, soft-closed doors all around. We do actually have a trash bin. We also have these floating shelves as well. They're also lit underneath the LED lighting, nice touch. As far as extra storage, we've kind of considered maybe adding something up here, but until we really get to use this tiny home, we'll kind of consider what options we have as far as additional storage. Overall, I love this space. It flows right out of the living room, dinette area, plenty of room for two people to be in here. I'm just really happy with this space and storage. Right here is a solution to our power needs. Getting power to this location is difficult and can be expensive due to the distance to the transmission lines. I looked into a lot of alternatives, and this is the best solution. This is the Titan 240SP from Point Zero Energy, and they are the sponsor of this video. This system is expandable, modular, and it can be used as a main power system or a backup system. I like the fact that this is stackable and expandable. Super easy to expand this. No messy wires. Simply stack, place the foot in the recessed foothold, latch the unit, and you're good to go. Right now, I have three battery modules for a total of 7,500 watt-hours, but if my needs increase in the future, I can actually increase this with stackable batteries up to 27,500 watt-hours. This unit has a pure sine wave inverter, can handle up to 4,000 watts, could also handle a surge up to 8,000 watts for 10 seconds. We use this for the big power draws, such as a microwave, hair dryer, and we've never had an issue. This unit is currently being charged by 2,400 watts of solar on the roof. If I need more power, I can simply add another MPPT charge controller, and it can handle up to 4,400 watts of solar. You can also charge this with an AC outlet in your home. If you're using this as a main home backup, you can leave it hooked up to your AC outlet and keep the batteries topped off in case of a power outage. It's been a safe, robust, dependable power system for our off-grid tiny home. Click the link in the description to check out this Titan 240SP. Welcome to the storage part of the kitchen. This is basically the standard layout that Zook creates for their Luna cabin. We've got a residential refrigerator, freezer, storage above it, got a space for a microwave, additional shelving behind the microwave, and we've also got kitchen storage, pantry area here, and then the primary bedroom, closet areas here. This space is actually stubbed out for a washing machine, and eventually we're going to move this out to a garage next door and expand the Titan and put a washing machine in here. Our plan is when we expand and put a garage next door for the car, we're going to add some space to store seasonal clothing such as winter gear in the summer, summer gear in the winter, so it'll free up some space here as well in the primary closet. When we decided to downsize, it actually came from my oldest son and his wife. They downsized and just streamlined their whole life and got rid of a lot of stuff and expenses dropped and just the experience of life dramatically increased. My oldest son moved to Colorado. We love the property that he bought and noticed a property nearby for sale. We took a tour of it and fell in love with it. We started looking for tiny homes. I was online looking at them, but it's hard to get the perspective of the size, the dimensions of the home until we actually saw one at the Royal Gorge, and we drove by and stopped by to look at it and noticed it was made by Zook Cabins. So I got in contact with Zook Cabins and started the whole process. Zook has many models. They range from $90,000 to $150,000. The Zook Lumina that we purchased, it was $150,000, and it has everything included, including the transportation to get it on site. We paid cash from the sale of our home. We did purchase raw land for $85,000, which does not include a water well, structures, septic, roads, nothing included, just raw land. So the price will vary tremendously depending on if you have structures, water wells, or anything else in place. And we did drill a water well. We were lucky enough to hit water, a 400-foot well, and it was approximately $25,000 to drill a 400-foot. When purchasing raw land, your financing options are somewhat limited due to the fact you don't have any structures on the property. Of course, the banks will determine how much down payment you need. It could be 20, 30, 40, 50 percent, depends on the bank. But without structures, it's a more difficult process to get financing. When we sold our primary residence, we used some of that cash to purchase this raw land. This is our full-size bathroom with a raised ceiling. It gives you that sense of a larger room. And the shower, we'll see here in a minute, it's a very nice shower. We have a full-size toilet. We've got a couple windows. This bottom window actually opens up. We've got storage behind this. Plenty of space back here, too. We could actually add a piece of furniture if need be for additional storage as well. Electric heater for those cold mornings. Also got a really nice sink, kind of floats on the wall. Plenty of storage, two drawers in the sink. And we also got a mirror, backlit mirror, with different settings, which is a nice feature as well. No real sacrifices as far as some of our previous residents to this bathroom. Just the space is a little bit smaller, and storage considerations are always key for a tiny home. We're on the shower side of the bathroom. And it's walk-in, which is plenty large. It's got a nice faucet set up. And on the back side here, we actually have a couple of shelves for shampoo and soap, which is a nice feature. But plenty of space, great tile work. Love the black and white contrast. Just a great, great feature of this tiny home. As far as the bathroom, I love the space. Great light in here, plenty of space to add furniture. Only one thing I may change is the door setup. I'd love to have a pocket door in here. But that's just a consideration I might change, would be the door itself. Tiny living, it's easier than I thought it would be to attain. Heading down the path, minimizing your life, basically, is really nice. It enables you to expand and kind of grow with your family, see your family more, and experience life, and get away from the city life.