Meet Laura and Dan, who had been living in living in their vans when they met and were both content creators. They found a Portuguese farm, that has a 100 year old abandoned barn on it and are now turning their farm into a beautiful off-grid homestead.
You can follow their journey with the links below.
https://www.youtube.com/@theoriginhomestead
Links
Planning on living off grid? If so, check out this major league system, install. Need help with designing your off grid options? https://practicalpreppers.com/consult…
This beautiful property in Alabama is on over 100 acres and features a new construction home, a large garage building, and a tiny house that we are taking fully off-grid. We’ve been communicating with this customer for some time planning their home’s off-grid infrastructure and are finally able to get to the exciting part of putting it all together. If you need help with your off-grid project, you can start a consultation with us using the link below Get a Consultation https://practicalpreppers.com/consult…
00:00 Intro
01:00 Site Walkthrough
02:00 Mech Room Walkthrough
04:21 Tiny House Sub Feed
06:04 System Specs
11:42 Hotspot Energy ACDC12C
12:26 Is solar possible to DIY?
15:02 Solar Panels Required for HVAC
16:22 Finishing up the Tiny House
In just two years, Kelly and Beau sold their house in the suburbs, bought 7 acres of raw land in Texas, started a permaculture homestead, and transformed a 16′ x 48′ shed into a beautiful and functional small home where they live, work online, homeschool their kids, and run their growing homestead. Their goal is to be debt-free in their 30’s so they carefully spaced out each building project to avoid financing and stay out of debt. In this video they’re going to give us a full tour of their shed to house project, including the spacious open-concept kitchen and living room, the kid’s sleeping lofts, the single bathroom they have for all 6 humans in the house, and the outdoor laundry room, and they’re also going to talk about the building process and why they chose to convert a shed into a house.
For more on this couple check out their youtube page
This week, I began manicuring one of our wooded bluff lots in Granbury that not only have an amazing view at the rear of the lot, it also backs up to the same active creek that flows at the rear of 7 of our lots. I had no real idea what I would discover as I began cutting underbrush and low lying limbs and burning them in the process. The underbrush was so thick, I had not been able to see much of this lot.
The first 65′ feet in length of this lot is pretty flat, which is where the house will be built, but at that point the lot begins terracing downward with large rock formation that creates some pretty great mother nature scenic views and atmosphere. Today, I realized that just beyond where the home and its large rear patio will sit there is a section of land that has two rows of flat rock formation that run the width of the lot and there’s about 3′ to 5′ feet of space between those rows of stone, and in that space the land drops down about 2′ to 3′ feet providing a perfect opportunity for a earth made, stone lined Koi pond, if I build stone dams at each end of the formation. Once the little damns are built I can then install a pond liner and water proof the stone sides of the pond with black water proofing material that is troweled on. The Koi pond will be used as part of the grey water and kitchen sink water filtering system I designed last year and been planning to use with some or all of the homes we will be building on these Granbury lots in-conjunction with composting toilets or some of the other toilet waste management options we will offer customers who not wanting composting toilets.
The rock formation continues terracing downward, but due to the land being fairly flat in between the terracing sections of the lot, I envisioned some steps and possibly some mini bridges being built so our customers could have some featured areas of interest on different levels of the rear portion of the lot; including a fire pit with a built-in stone bench surrounding the fire that would great setting for fall, winter and spring parties at the home.
The above image is an edit of a picture I took today from the higher elevation where the home will sit. I added the coy pond to help visualize it, as well outlined the flat portion between terracing where a fire pit with a stone decking could be built.
New Plan Design – this is a new Texas Tiny Homes plan design in the works for a small, 3 bedroom, 2 bath luxury home for some of our Granbury lots. It will feature a simple, low cost to build elevation and amenities unlike most of our original, one-of-a-kind plans this size. However, it will be super energy efficient with its 2 X 6 exterior walls and close cell blown attic roof rafters. The homes heating and air conditioning system will be located in the much cooler attic environment and provide dramatically reduced utility bills. The main room of the home will feature a flat 10′ high ceiling and the rest of the home will have 9′ flat ceilings.
Healthy Home – the envelope of this home will be super tight, so we plan to install a fresh air system incorporated into the heating and air-conditioning unit that removes dead air and any toxic off gassing that develop inside the home from cooking, furniture, building products, etc.
Square Footage and Appraisal– the square footage for this plan has not been fully determined yet but the goal is to be under 1100 conditioned square feet. The design has now been handed off to one of our architects to produce it in their 3D Autocad, which will provide the exact footage, as well as 3D rendering of the exterior and interior. This home will have much smaller covered porch footage than most of our small luxury homes and are doing so in an effort to make it more affordable, and be more in line with what some of the other home builders are offering in the community. Most of our small home designs far exceed what they will appraise for due to their large covered porches, vaulted cathedral ceilings, exposed rafter tails, and standing metal seam roofs and lots of eye candy that dramatically increase the cost to build, but far exceed lender appraisals. This design was done to be more inline with the comparables for the community our lots are located in, but will still be one of the nicest new homes being built there.