hi there my name is handyman and this is
my wife Hagar of Hannah and this is our
24 foot long tiny house that we built
ourselves in Tucson and we are
completely off the grid and it was just
so easy for us to actually move out here
do our own solar system do future you
know homes or you know future garages
and we can really kind of do whatever
you want out here and so that was one of
the main deciding factors plus I mean
the climate out here is absolutely
tremendous and it's beautiful and we
have 40 acres and great so peaceful and
quiet like ground pan around to the
mountains over there it is just like it
is amazing so beautiful
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so some of the most important statistics
that a lot of people want to know about
our tiny house is how much it cost how
long it took to build so we actually
built it in a friend's backyard in
Tucson it took me about six months to do
from scratch the only thing that I
didn't do in the tiny house myself was I
didn't do the insulation and I didn't do
the drywall but the rest of it including
the plumbing the electrical the framing
the siding the cost of the tiny house
was about $35,000 in materials and it
took about six months to do from start
to finish we'll talk about our gray
water basin so all the water from our
kitchen sink and also from our shower
and actually from the urine part of our
composting toilet goes directly to water
these trees out here so we've got a
pineapple guava tree we've got an apple
tree we've got a what's at a peach tree
and we've also got a cherry tree what's
really nice about that is that we don't
have to provide any external water
sources for them to be watered so we
live completely on rainwater out here so
every drop of water counts and it's so
beneficial to be able to take the water
that it's gonna typically to go into a
septic system or a city sewer system and
instead of been doing that we can use it
to go in water trees directly so that
definitely cuts down on our water bill
these trees should start producing
fruits I would say next year so this
season we actually just planted them so
just because of the transplant and the
shock that they had they might not
produce fruit this year but our mulberry
tree over here which is watered
exclusively just by our washing machine
in the shed here but the most important
thing that you want to know if you're
gonna be using your grey water to you
know water fruit trees for example is
that you have to use the right so dr.
Bronner's you can use it for pretty well
everything and then you can just use it
as like a normal body wash as well one
of the things being out here that I'm
definitely most proud of is our solar
system so I actually worked as an
electrician for five years so wiring up
the solar system wasn't necessarily that
difficult for me but the fact that we're
totally off-grid with electricity is
just something I just absolutely love we
didn't buy use batteries or anything
like that we actually use recycled
batteries that came from a fully
electric smart car we've got our charge
controller we've got our inverter and
then these are the Tesla battery modules
so it's actually pretty cool that I
actually ripped the the module apart
that these all came in that actually
came from a smart car so I absolutely
love this this is clean
silent green energy this provides all of
our energy needs for us I've got a lot
of really great YouTube videos on my
channel that kind of goes over actually
I documented most of the installation of
this so definitely getting that really
good source of information especially
from YouTube you can really set yourself
up for having a very successful system
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so down here in the desert Southwest we
get about 11 or 12 inches of rain per
year it is definitely possible to live
entirely on rainwater so our rain roof
which I'm going to show you in a few
moments it will capture between 18,000
to 22,000 gallons of water per year but
we get almost half of our rainfall in
three weeks during the monsoon season so
we want to capture and harvest as much
of that water and hold on to it and so
that's why having so many tanks is so
important out here right now we've been
running on rainwater for just about over
a year now and it's doing doing real
nice with the tiny house in the awning
we only have about five hundred square
feet of catchment surface and in order
to catch enough water throughout the
year to come up with a bit of a creative
idea in order to create more catchment
surface I decided to design and build a
roof that is on the ground so this roof
here it's about I think 72 feet long by
about 40 feet tall so it's just over
2,800 square feet so it being in the
desert and living on rainwater something
else that we obviously want to do is we
want to do a lot of gardening the
problem is that gardening requires water
so what we've actually done here is
instead of using a standard drip
irrigation method for watering our
plants we actually use clay pots so what
these are referred to our oIA's so it's
like an ancient technique for for
basically watering your plants watering
your you know we've got carrot growing
here we've got some collard greens
behind me it's an ancient technique to
basically minimize how much water
actually goes into the garden so one of
the things that I talk to people a lot
about you know when they're deciding if
they want to build a tiny house or not
is to not only think about the the space
on the inside is you want also think
about the space outside as well so the
climate that you live in I think can
really make a big difference on whether
or not you're going to enjoy living in a
tiny house it's 300 square feet out here
so we can have friends out here I can
set up the lights
it's a really nice comfortable place to
sit outside during the evening
all right so coming inside the house
here the theme that Hannah and I wanted
we wanted things to be very simple very
clean very minimal so you don't see you
don't see like a lot of built-in storage
on the walls we wanted to keep the space
as open as we could I actually designed
it myself and Sketchup our design is
definitely very unique and you don't see
a breakfast bar
very often in a tiny house and the
reason why we had a breakfast bar is
because of my wife's YouTube channel
here channel is all about plant-based
recipes and weight loss wanted to create
a really nice place for her to be able
to record our videos so that's one main
reason why you don't see a window over
the over the kitchen sink which is very
common in homes because having that
light behind us would have just thrown
off the lighting in our videos
tremendously we love eating lots of
really healthy delicious food so we
spend a lot of time in here making
making meals and I'm really happy with
how this turned out it's such a such a
nice kitchen to be able to walk into for
any water that we cook with or that we
drink we put it through the Burpee
filter you put the water on the top and
it comes out really nice and clean at
the bottom so it's really cool about our
tiny house is that we have two different
lofts I would call this kind of like my
office loft and on the other side we
have our sleeping loft and by doing
those two lofts we're actually able to
create enough space in here so that we
not only have our shower we have our
composting toilet but then we also have
all of our clothes storage here when
we're doing the clothes storage in the
bathroom they immediately thought that
the basically the humidity and from the
shower would cause mold on our clothes
we haven't found that to be the case
actually probably the most common thing
that you see in most tiny houses is
definitely the composting toilet it's
just super simple to setup obviously
with the tiny house tiny shower turned
out real nice and just some final words
for you if you're thinking if you want
to build your own tiny house definitely
definitely give it a shot you're gonna
be so happy when you get a completed
house it's just so amazing when you can
say to somebody where you come
from a long day and you come to a heads
that you built yourself there's a ton of
research and there is a lot of worry
that kind of goes into something like
this but through just researching and
learning I was able to get a beautiful
end product I've written a book called
the tiny house blueprint which has the
installation photos and you can actually
go through all my videos and all the
tips and tricks things that I wish I did
do things that I wish I didn't do with
this build yeah it's just it's been such
a rewarding experience and if you have
the opportunity to do it then go and do
it thanks so much for watching guys I'll
catch you on the next video with Chris
purse
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