Ariel has lived off-grid in a tiny house in the Wyoming mountains for 6 years now. She has first-hand experience on how to deal with heat, water, and electricity without a reliable connection to the grid or even consistent sunshine. Ariel is a generous guest who offers an inside look at how she has set up the systems in her tiny house.
In This Episode:
- 6 years after moving into her tiny house, Ariel still enjoys answering questions and inspiring others to build their own tiny houses
- Things always seem to stop working when the weather is coldest! What has Ariel learned through her experience with extreme cold?
- Where does Ariel get her water?
- Off-grid requirements are based on your lifestyle. What do you really need?
- What happens when you leave your house for a few hours? Do you need to prepare?
- Dry heat, condensation, and preventing cold feet
- How Ariel has enjoyed the last 6 years in her tiny house
Links and Resources:
- After Five Years of Tiny Living, What’s Broken and What’s Changed?
- The Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins
- Jay Shafer
Guest Bio:
Ariel McGlothin
Ariel has lived off-grid in a tiny house nestled into the western mountains of Wyoming, a little over 6000 feet above sea level, since 2014. She splits her own wood for heat, carries water by hand, uses a composting toilet, and attempts to grow as much of her own food as possible between the weather and wildlife she's surrounded by. As a child, she was fortunate enough to be able to spend much of her free time exploring and playing in the woods. Little has changed now that she is older. She moved to a place with bigger woods and still enjoys spending her time outside hiking, backpacking, gardening, and photographing the natural world with Burley, a wonderful English Shepherd who accompanies all adventures. She loves sharing what she's learned about living in a tiny house, being off-grid, living in a very cold climate, shoveling lots of snow, gardening, cooking, nutrition, backpacking, heating with wood, composting, wildlife, and more.
mewe.com/join/arielcelestephotography
This week's Sponsor:
Tiny House Decisions
Tiny House Decisions is the super helpful guidebook that I wrote 5 years ago to share all of the knowledge and decisions that I made to build my own tiny house, along with what I did right, what I did wrong, and how I would change things. The guidebook, now in its second edition, has been completely rewritten and expanded to reflect how tiny houses are being built today and it also includes several new tiny house stories from other tiny house dwellers. The guidebook has been expanded to include things like SIPs, metal framing, and different types of insulation, and I seriously think this is the most helpful thing you can buy if you are thinking about living in a tiny house. If you go through the guidebook from start to finish, you will have a solid plan for all the systems and everything else that’s going to go into your tiny house. The second edition has been a long time in the making and I’m really excited to share it with the world.
To learn more you can head over to thetinyhouse.net/thd.
More Photos:
Ariel's tiny house with lots of blooming flowers
The solar panels that help power Ariel's tiny house
A warm glow in the middle of the snow
That's a lot of snow.
Fireside kisses
The wood stove
The kitchen with Ariel's custom cabinets
Food preserved from Ariel's garden
Looking down on the living room
The living room
Nightime is lit by oil lamps, instead of electric lights
Coat and shoe storage
Ariel's compost toilet
Ariel's garden
Beds defined by cinder blocks with wood mulch in between
The generator
Solar batteries
Ariel hauls her water from a neighbor's well and pours it into her tank
Storage in the stairs and a fold-down table
The bed in the loft
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