His Advice After 20 Years Off-Grid Will Shift Your Thinking

20 years ago I decided to go off grid here, so I bought this 40 acre lot, 35 minutes from Lake Tahoe. There's no power up here, wasn't a road to where we're at, and it made everything cheap as far as something in California. Welcome to my tiny house built out of rock. I'm Mike Basich, show you around. We're in a pentagon floor plan and it's about 20 years old. It's all built out of the rock within a probably a 200 foot radius of the property. The wood is milled by hand up here as well. It has a kitchen, it's got a shower, a little couch, lots of windows facing the south for warmth. I got a loft for the bed and my fireplace is kind of the center point. That's my heat source, my cooking source, have a little oven and the toilets outside. Pretty simple setup. Outside is also a hot plunge and a cold plunge, which is super fun especially when it's snowing and all the cement has been mixed by hand up here with creek water. That's with my water storage for 20 years and I have now a well, which makes life so much more simple, which now I'm kind of just enjoying the place. So the start of the kitchen is my wood counter, which walking in the front door, that's kind of like the first place you set all your stuff for the day. Moving into the countertop here, this is marble. This is off an old job site someone gave me, which actually holds a really nice temperature that doesn't freeze, doesn't get super hot, so you can store vegetables on the shelves and actually last a long time. This window opens, which is nice in the winter because you just open the window and you got an ice chest. So I don't use my fridge that much in the winter because it snows the temperature you want anyway. But in the summer I have a fridge, which is a hundred dollar fridge, runs on a cigarette socket. Not super convenient, but it's actually very little used up here. The temperatures are pretty cool. I've gone through different refrigerators. I usually turn them off anyway because I don't like the noise because it's very quiet up here, but that's when I need it. It actually works more of a storage in some ways. It's kind of wrapped around with granite countertops as a box and behind the fridge there's a vent that I can open to get the outside air temperature because usually this side of the hill gets buried in the snow. So the temperature stays pretty steady. So it keeps that, you know, 34 degrees. It's kind of perfect temperature. So that's why it's all kind of encased by rock. The kitchen is actually very simple, has a 12 volt cigarette sockets. I do have a power inverter when I do need it. I don't need it that much actually because I don't run toasters and hairdryers, that kind of stuff up here. That's a big equation to make things more complicated. And my drawers for silverware is very simple. So my kitchen has very few cabinets, but this is one that I have for more storing rice and stuff. Maybe a little mouse can get in the cabin, but not in there. And so that's my safe. I do have a mouse problem, which most people off-grid have that problem for some reason, but that's just kind of built out of wood that I milled from the property. So from the door, I have a photo of before anything was built here. This is kind of with nothing done. You can see that it's got a little bit of a boulder to boulder type of feeling. The golden ratio is what everything here is built on. That's why I have the pentagon shape is all the points of the body. In the old days, that's what everybody used to use because that was your kind of your natural instinct of measuring things is because your body's built under that same mathematics. What it does when you're inside the building is kind of makes it more fitting to the and then let nature help you guide the rest. Meaning like watch the sun, watch the wind, watch your temperatures, sounds. All these things I feel like are important to building anything that you're going to use. I think it's the most important thing we could do is pay attention to nature and to our instincts. What I had for a drawing on the plan, there was a kitchen actually was on that side. And then I realized that's the south facing side. If I build it over here, the temperature is going to stay cooler because this side part gets buried in snow, the sun's not beating against it. So I flipped the kitchen over here, which worked out to be amazing because it's in the shade as well from the big south facing windows. There's a few little adjustments. But when I drew my floor plan, I actually drew it on the ground in a flat area and just pretended I was cooking. I was going to go down and sit in the sun. And so that helped me shape how things are. Some of the walls are three feet thick, which hold a really good temperature, which I realized that as I was building, I'm like, Oh, I want to use that heat source, maintaining that temperature. So all the rocks built into the kitchen kind of help food last longer. When you're cooking with certain kinds of foods, you realize how hard it is to keep them fresh. So I actually, my diet's more like nuts, stuff that doesn't take refrigeration. So everything's really simple. I'm working with outside temperatures a lot. And that's why there's a lot of rock built into the kitchen. So my sink is a stainless steel homemade one. It's my first welding job for stainless steel, which is not easy, but it's fun. There's a 12 volt RV pump that runs the power. And I actually have the pump on a switch, which is down here. You kind of turn it on a little handle here that turns the water on and then you have water. I like turning it off because sometimes say a mouse bites through a hose floods the whole floor and had it happen once and don't want to happen again. So I have a 200 gallon water tank below the floor here, which is kind of like a wine cellar type of vibe, which is great because it does not freeze in the winter. I don't have hot water. I use, I heat hot water up on the stove. I have a little camp stove for quick, quick hot water if I need it. It's really helpful in the winter. So I have that. Otherwise I'm just dealing with cold, cold water, about 45 degrees, which kind of gets cold pretty quick when you got it in your hands. And yeah, my little drying rack, drying station, and everything's kind of close. I got my fridge, I got my sink, I got the stove. I do two different things here for cooking cooktops. Right now I have this little camp stove, which is kind of really simple, or the top here you can cook on that. Reason I have this is just if I'm only going to be here for a couple minutes and want to eat real quick and get back outside, I have that option. Cast iron pans work really good in this kind of environment because you're not washing them as like you would any other pot and pan. I cook a lot in the fire. Just that, it's like camping, which everyone enjoys camping. I don't know why everyone does it full time. Then we, maybe we'll go stay in a house as a vacation. You know, I think it should be that way anyway. So my fireplace, I bought this. This is for about a 1,200 square foot house. The smoke goes underneath here in a pipe and it goes underneath the floor of this little box, which I built out of soapstone. So the soapstone is actually that you can buy in a big sheet, a slab, it's about an inch and a half thick. You can cut it with a skill saw, you can sand it with sandpaper. And so I built, built a box pretty much that the smoke goes under it and around it and that makes an oven. So I can get this up to about 400 degrees. It's a great thing for baking pizzas, cookies. And so that's really convenient. This is soapstone as well. Again, you can kind of just sit there and sand it. Olive oil, great way to finish it off. And the fireplace is actually pretty convenient for heating the place. I have a drying rack here for snow clothes. So you just hang up, dry your gloves. And the fireplace is actually one of more of my exciting places to hang because I can cook, stay warm. It's more of a multi-use. It's beautiful to be around wood fire, of course. That's one of the best, I don't know, soothing thing after being out in the snow all day. Helps clean up the property as well, burning wood. I have a lot of standing dead beetle keel wood, so it's easy to get that and drag it over the snow cat. Yeah, so cooking definitely changed being up here off grid. When I'm buying something, you're thinking about that a lot. What you're putting in the grocery bag. I try to use paper as much as I can or cardboard packaging because that helps me start the fire. Anything that I have to haul out of here, I got to haul about three miles, which I'll do every three, four days. Take it on the snowmobile or a snow cat in the winter and get it back to the recycling center. And so that's changed the way I've shopped and the way I've cooked. It seems like it brings actually a more healthier diet when you have that. And so I've been rewarded by the hardship of that. I mean, this kitchen is the perfect kitchen for me. I can actually host up to about nine people in the wintertime in here and cook a beautiful meal for everybody. It's not that hard, so it's kind of everything I need. I feel like being up here, I don't feel like I've made any sacrifices on especially eating. Things simplified down are more rewarding to me, and I definitely enjoy the way I eat, so I get what I want out of this whole environment. You know, I used to own a huge house before. It was a 4,000 square foot house, and I realized most of my time went into cleaning, going to make money to pay for it, pay for it all. And I realized that's not worth my time for what I was getting out of it. So I actually sold my house, traveled the world in a car for two years, just trying to feel out what I was going to do, what kind of area I wanted to be at. I grew up not too far from here, so I realized I like the weather here. My love for snow comes from snowboarding. I started in the mid-80s and started competing as a professional athlete. That's where I made most of my money to be able to buy a house. I'm more of a builder than a snowboarder. I've been a woodworker my whole life. At some point in my early 30s, I realized I want to do both of those together, and so that's when I bought this place. I was 33 years old, and being up here in the snow was ideal because then I don't have to travel to go get the snow, get the best conditions. I don't have to wait in the lift line. I'm just walking out the front door, and I got everything right here. And so that was a beautiful goal to have come together. Got the best of both worlds, snowboarding and building. I stumbled across this property actually by just word of mouth because it was covered in snow. Snow will build up here, and realized like, wow, I'd love to be here. I can't believe this is for sale. My investment was $225,000 for 40 acres. Again, it was that price because I can't get here with a car in the winter. For me, it didn't really matter. So it actually became really great things that cost less for me. I didn't know what it looked like because it was just covered in snow. This was in November. I spent the whole winter with not even really knowing what I just bought, which actually was an amazing process. It was like a present being unwrapped in the spring. I realized I had waterfalls. There's creek over here. You know, you can see the Milky Way. There's a lake not too far away from here. It just got better and better, and I'm really grateful. So the cost of living in something like this, you know, you obviously have your property taxes. It's different for each state. So that kind of never goes away. My monthly utilities bills is pretty low. In the beginning, you got to invest a little bit more. I don't have an electrical bill. My batteries and solar panels I'll probably replace every 10 years. You know, so 500 bucks over 10 years. You know, I mean, if I was 20 minutes down the hill and air conditioning in the summer is, you know, three, 400 bucks a month. In the winter, there's more energy needed to stay warm, but I'm getting that from wood versus propane or electricity from the grid. So saving a lot of money there, but you have to put in the work. Water, I have a 2000 watt generator that pumps water whenever I want to pump a thousand gallons into a tank. So you're looking at 10 bucks in gas that'll last me a month. Probably the most thing I spend money on is gas to drive a snowmobile, drive a snowcat. It's interesting because I use less gas because I don't move around much when I'm here, but the gas is more in your face. Like you're dealing with it more and it makes you feel like you're using a lot of it. When things are more in front of you, it becomes more of a reality. And that's what I've learned a lot of doing this. This is why I actually did this whole project was I wanted to learn how to supply the things I needed. And it's all been in my face. You know, some things I'm like, Oh, I don't need that anymore. I'm just going to go to bed with the sun, you know? And so that's the beautiful gifts I've got out of this. And maybe you will as well. I'm still kind of pretty simplified here, which I enjoy. And now I have a family and things are growing and we're all enjoying this in a way for future ideas now. So moving along here, this is actually a shower. I know like it doesn't look like much, but this is a sit down shower inspired kind of from my travels to Japan. There's a drain in the floor. Any water that comes down here from the shower goes down into the drain. There's different ways of doing this. You can have a little pipe runs off the kitchen sink over for a cold shower or right here in arm's reach. You have a pot, just dump buckets of hot water on it. It's nice and warm. These rocks as the fire gets going. And so it's kind of pretty cozy, pretty comfortable, very intimate, of course, when you have guests, you know. But this has kind of been a place where it can also in the summertime just be a nice place to chill. Moving along from the shower, I have my lazy boy. It's at a rock. It's a very relaxing chair to actually sit in. It's one of those projects. Also, I moved a lot rocks around a lot looking for the perfect rock. And the bottom one has a little bit of a curve to it to keep your seat from sliding down. This is more of a just a straight up chill space, a place to read a book, watch it snow. It has the view of the mountains from here. And you can also just lay down and take a nap. It's a pretty nice place to get out of the sun later in the day. Across from the kitchen is my couch, dining, coffee table. This is kind of more like a chill area for different moments throughout the day. Usually I have breakfast sitting here because the sun is shining on here. A lot of people have actually kind of just chilled or even slept on this bench as a second bed. It's probably about seven feet long. I moved it about three times in the cement before I got it where I wanted it to sit comfortably. Working with cement and wood, you want to clear coat the wood before you start putting cement on it. Otherwise, your wood will get stained for good from the cement. And so that's what I did. I clear coated it, built it into the rock, brought the rocks around it, and then I actually sanded it again, took off the clear coat, sanded it again, and finished it. The wood on this one I milled out of a black walnut tree. The coffee table is an oak tree I milled. I went for a lower coffee table dining area because it just feels more cozy being closer to the ground, especially if I have more than a couple guests. People can sit on the floor on the other side of the table and we can have a big dinner here. This is kind of like a little more of the center points because you can sit here and enjoy the view. You can be out of the sun or in the sun and so it's a well-used area. I don't think I've made any sacrifices for what I think a living room should be. It's kind of nice because you sit here and someone could be cooking. It's a very social area being one room and it feels pretty spacious because everything's built into the wall. The couch is cemented in the rock. Everything feels pretty cozy. The actual whole square footage of the house is probably about 230 square feet with the lofts we're almost 300. This living room space I would consider maybe a third of the space. All the rock is really wonderful having on this side because the sun actually will come up and heat up the rock in the morning and then in the evening it starts to cool off and so it seems like everything works really well together for where everything's facing and I've been enjoying it. It's perfect for what I need. The way I started this process is there's a post in each corner of the house. I actually built the roof first and then I actually brought the rock up to the house. I wanted the house to sit on something more solid than cold mixing cement. Each rock is dry stacked meaning it just sits on the rock underneath it and then back filled with cement and there's actually a bubble wrap separating the outer rock from the inner rock but I tapered the rocks when I built it. I started about this wall is about three feet thick and at the top it's probably about a foot and a half. Working with rocks you kind of realize each rock is different. You got to figure out where it sits. Some rocks are great for walls, some rocks are great for chairs, some are for shelves. Some of these rocks are actually pretty heavy that I've dollied over. As I started building this people started sending me rocks actually and so I got some gifts of crystals I decided to put into the work and that was kind of fun just having that part of the process. There's a couple of crystals outside that light up at night so they're great night lights. The windows are all made in place. I've welded them all out of just simple angled iron. This has one hinge on the top so the window swings out that way and I did a little bit of decoration with mountains, stars, stuff like that. That was all done before the glass was put in and it took me about five years to where everything was enclosed. The glass was in, the rocks were done. Another two years to fine-tune this water system so seven-year project for 300 square feet. It's kind of all I really need because I usually spend most of my day outside and then this is more of a place to kind of feed yourself and place to rest your head. Another thing that I milled is also the front door. The front door is a mix of metal, kind of how I made the framing for the glass windows. This one is probably about two inches thick of wood and when you mill a tree that's green, I milled this one four years before I needed it. So I had a temporary door up but it takes about a half inch per year for a piece of wood to dry so I waited patiently for that. It's a fun door because at sunset these stars will actually light up from the sunset. There's a little hole with stained glass and same thing happens when it gets pitch black out. If there's a light on inside you can see the stars through the door on the outside. One interesting thing building your own door, things move when they're thick and heavy and homemade. Wood moves, metal moves and so when you're welding it all seems perfect which it was and then it cooled off and you started to hear this almost this tension of trying to open it. So it took me a while to figure out how to weld in different spots to make the door get tweaked back where I wanted it. Same with wood, once you get it in place it starts to acclimate and it kind of wants to tweak a little bit so you got to get to know materials that act different. It's one of the most things I've paid attention to on all this build is how different materials work together but you can make them all work together if you pay attention. I've broken three windows because the metal expanded and contracted at a rate I wasn't aware of and so that took me some lessons to learn that. Stuff like that's kind of as you go you know you make mistakes you learn and you'll get it right after a few times. We have the loft here which is the sleeping quarters. You can sleep three four people comfortably and it was actually one of the first things I actually had done and that helped me sleep up here even though the whole other part of the house was tarps trying to keep the snow out. It would snow down here sometimes but I was able to at least be up here in the winter and get to know the weather. Of course at night it's a place to just chill and there's a little window that opens which is very helpful for to regulate the temperature. Once you have a fire going you know heat rises and depending on what it's doing outside can like adjust things quickly so that's one of the main keys that I've found is having a window access arms reach from your bed. The lights are with arms reach there and a little charging plug so that's kind of like the only thing I need for not getting out of bed unless I need to. My clothes is up there. It's a pretty low head space. Again it's kind of just a place where I personally just go to sleep and call it a day and that's all I really need so that's what it is. We're outside now. This is the deck area. We're sitting on 40 acres. The front is all south facing for reason of the sun coming in. Also the view here is this way. That's why all the glass is on this side of the house and also the highest part of the roof is to give it a little bit of a high pitch to bring in more sunlight to help heat the place. The roof is about 10 feet tall on this end of the house and it tapers back to about seven feet on the front door. The roof is kind of curved which actually is amazing. The wind blows a lot of the snow off the roof because I'm up at a elevation that the snow load is about 500 pounds per square foot so you got to really deal with some weight. It's actually been a big process to to build the deck because I'm actually standing about eight feet off the ground. There's another hole another space underneath and it's a cement floor which is actually kind of nice being cement for snow. I can use a snowblower and also the hot tub when it's running the hot air actually melts the snow on the deck and also just keeps the cement warm. Sleeping out here in the summer is pretty amazing. With this big door open the house actually becomes twice as big. Having a flat surface in this kind of terrain is pretty amazing just to sit down and put your gear, mountain biking, whatever it is having a space to just chill is really helpful. If you go down one side of the deck there's an outdoor fire pit which is part of the summer cooking and that's really fun and then going the other way the stairs down into the yard so it's kind of like a multi-use. You've got the stairs going in the hot tub, the cold plunge. Before I put these big pieces of glass in the deck wasn't here which was how I was able to get the glass in its place. This size glass actually took me two years to put in. The reason is because the road in the summer is too bumpy for a truck like to bring this kind of glass up so I brought it up with a snowcat and literally like lift them right in because each piece weighs about 400 pounds and so it was quite a process to get those in place. The one swinging took me a lot of figuring out how to make it straight not flex and the hinge is all homemade. My biggest fear on having something like this is the wind can catch it so you don't want to let go of the door. Right now it's locked in place. Again like having this is an amazing space to just make your house twice as big because being outside is pretty amazing. The new addition to this whole area two years ago I dug a well. The whole structure is about a year old. Decided to build that out of cinder blocks just for time wise and being stronger. I added a septic in the last two years as well. It's not hooked up yet so right now I still have a compost toilet in the woods. Hopefully at some point I'll be have a flushing toilet. All that stuff slowly in the horizon but step by step right now. When I built this I chose to wire it all for 12 volt. When you charge your phone your camera they're all 12 volt anyway. If you go from solar panels which is 12 volt as well into a battery through an inverter which makes it 110 you lose actually a lot of energy. I just kept it very simple. My solar panels got crushed this last winter from the snow load but it's a 100 watt solar system. Two batteries about 200 bucks for the batteries and the rest is just cigarette sockets and USB plugs. It's like a $500 setup to run everything I personally need. That's kind of my basics of utilities so I'm slowly getting a little more somewhat domestic. The one thing I've learned if you go to bed with the sun you don't need all this stuff to keep things lit bright going so if you're into that you know it's a little bit more just feeling in sync with the world the earth and that that's actually been a really beautiful lesson for me. You know I think we all have dreams some come reality and some don't which is great. It's all fine. This is the one I wanted to see what it looked like and what I was going to get out of it what I learned and so this is a piece of me that I got to know in the physical world and that at the end of the day I have this beautiful place that feels safe. I have a place to call home and it's right where I want to be. So my biggest advice to anybody who wants to build something if it's a huge house or a dog house get used to materials work. Get familiar with how you move your body and it'll be very exciting. It's very surprising what you come up with. It's pretty magical. I hope everyone is inspired to reach in and whatever you bring is perfect. It might not be my idea and that's okay. If you fail that's awesome. Take a risk that you're willing to fail at. If you learn and be vulnerable listen and just get back up and do it again you'll come up with something pretty rad. Thanks for visiting my tiny house here. Happy to share with you guys. If you want more details or have any more questions you can hit me up on Instagram Mike Bassich or twoforoneclothing.com