hey there welcome to my channel where I take you on tours of tiny and unique homes have you ever
dreamed of retiring to an off-grid tiny home in the woods well in this week's episode we're
going to meet Patrick who is doing exactly that Patrick's self-built tiny home comes with ample
outdoor space a beautiful vegetable garden a custom bathtub and so much more and while he's
giving a tour he'll explain how he was able to build this beautiful Oasis on his own land
but before we get started if you like videos like this one where we showcase
stories of people living alternatively make sure that you subscribe and hit
that notification Bell so that you know every single time we publish a new video
hi I'm Patrick this is barley and welcome to my tiny house
all right
ten years ago I started looking at tiny houses and bought the plant set from Tumbleweed it was
very therapeutic for me just to after work go out and work on the tiny house
so I've been doing minor construction my entire life my dad introduced me to various aspects of
construction but when it came to the tiny house I watched a lot of YouTube videos so I learned about
framing I learned about insulation and drywall and I just took my time and it worked out well
so 10 years to build the tiny house I was running a business at the same time and so there were
weeks if not months where I didn't touch it while I was working on the business and now it's time
to retire I moved the house from California and then I moved on to the property here last March
as far as cost I didn't keep accurate records but overall I'm guessing that it came in under
thirty thousand because I did so much reclaimed wood and all the labor myself
the big picture here on the property is I am going to build a 24 by 40 foot
shop two-story and then eventually a 800 square foot at home foreign
house it is a model made by Tumbleweed it's 18 feet long eight feet wide and about 13 and a
half feet tall at the time there weren't companies building trailers for tiny houses it was this was
uh 2014. so I used a trailer which was called a car carrier and that's what it's built on it had
the capacity of seven thousand pounds but after I got done I got it weighed and it was just below
ten thousand pounds so I had to put new axles on and leaf springs to bring it up to 12 000 pounds
so it's in good shape now the property is fairly unique on one side there's a salmon stream every
winter coho salmon spawn in it it's awesome so go down and watch them the property's five acres
it's about a mile away from electrical utilities so it's off grid in order for me to build on this
property I have to put in a septic system and a well because I'm off grid I needed a structure to
house the inverter and batteries for that system so this shed was built first before I had the
tiny house here over here we have a propane these are 40 pound propane tanks during the
winter when the sun doesn't shine I have to use a generator to create electricity and so this is a
dual fuel it uses either gas or liquid propane and I chose liquid propane it's a lot cleaner
the deck is made from Cedar I use cedar siding also but we use a technique called
shoshugibon where I take a weed torch and Flame the wood that increases its resistance to pests
and disease and then I oil it after so I did this both on the shed and on the tiny house
this is my dog barley she's a Husky and it's pretty warm today and she's got a lot of fur
don't you so we hang out here I eat out here she sleeps out here at night and
it's nice to have a covered roof when you go between the house and the shed
so I have the ecoflow Delta Pro with its extra battery the Eco flow it's the heart
of my electrical system it only puts out 120 volts and my well pump requires 220 volts
and so what I found was a Step up Transformer which will take the 120 and go to 240 and it's
working great I have a compact washer I'm able to dry my clothes during the summer and the sun
it takes literally an hour and in the winter I have a small little rack I put next to my
wood stove and it again it doesn't take long for it to dry so this has worked great in my
shop here I've got a lot of tools and a very small space so I found the this French cleat
system where you have a 45 degree angle and the opposing 45 degree on the wall which allows me
to create these holders for my tools and gives me Mobility to move things around
for the past year I've switched my diet to pretty much plant-based and a garden was an essential
especially with food prices going up so luckily I have great sun and good soil I've got beets
carrots chard lettuce all kinds of spices beans Tomatoes I got cucumbers and maybe even some corn
coming later so for water I have a 360 foot deep well but it's low capacity that means there's not
a whole lot of water at a particular time so it gets pumped when it's full up to a tank storage
tank and then when I use it it just comes from the storage tank so it's been working really well
waste water I have both black and gray water that's going into my septic system right now so it
enters into a pipe and then goes down the hill to where the septic is the water system is from the
tank down and then I have a hose that's insulated for winter freeze and that goes to the tiny house
the windows are Mill guard I use the awning style window because of the rain here I can open up the
window and the water doesn't come in it hits it and goes down you can also see the redwood
siding that I use the shishugibon technique on and that this was all recycled a barn on
on my the property of my old shop we tore down and we found these beautiful Redwood beams in
the floor and a good friend of mine Christopher Shepard has a cabinet company and a band saw and
I was able to cut the the siding out of these big beams and using a shaper we put a shiplap
joint on each on each side and that's how we we put it together and it came out really nice
for my solar panels I went with renegie 320 watt panels that works well to give me the power I need
so this is my utility closet my fresh water enters here I've got a filter set up there
and then this is the Rinnai on-demand hot water system again I've got a 40
pound propane tank I have to fill this probably once every five months so it's
not it's not a whole lot of protein and it heats up pretty nicely foreign
I had my friend Chris Shepard do this door for me which came out really nice
and doors are a big issue if they're not built right they warp and expand
and contract over time and he did a great job where the expansion and contraction is
hidden inside the framing here so anyhow it's been beautiful and I used a company
in San Diego to do the the stained glass and that worked out really well
so the square footage comes in at about 190 pretty darn small but it's very well planned out and for
the past almost year it's been a great space for me inside the framing is a closed sale insulation
I got prices for companies to do this and it was pretty expensive I ended up buying a kit
and did it myself and probably saved about fifteen hundred dollars all of the fur again came from the
barn that we tore down and it's old growth it's beautiful I used a three and a half inch tongue
and groove inside paneling in Pine and then I decided to use white wash instead of just paint
and white washing is taking pain and diluting it down with water because that allows some of the
Grain and irregularities to come through which I felt worked with the Recycled trim a lot better
over here there's a couch area a slash guest bed I built this with storage in mind this slides out
I have a panel that comes in on top of it and I take this cushion
and go on top of that and it becomes a pretty darn good bed for a guest up here is a secondary Loft
that I use for storage I've got a beanbag and my wireless printer up there right now I have more
storage under this section so this just flips up and quite a bit of storage under there I've
saw on the internet different ways of doing fold up tables and came up with this one here
this just slides up and I've got a pipe here with a threaded coupler and that produces a very sturdy
tabletop and I'm able to sit here and do my work I'm semi-retired from Bohemian Stoneworks they're
in Northern California and we do precast concrete countertops fireplaces tubs things like that
and so I'm still helping them out but in the process of retiring from the company this also
can be my dining table I've had three three people around here pull a stool up and it works well
for heating I only went with the wood stove I knew that my property had a lot of wood this is
a stove made by the company on fire it's called the Kimberly Heats really well I can also cook
on it so a lot of times I'm making a bean dish and like put the beans on here and they do great
with a wood stove you need a hearth and this is a concrete that I made and it's about three
quarters of an inch thick and it does its job we use recycled tongue and groove fur for the floor
you can see the imperfections in it but I really like it so in order to get to The Loft the typical
way is with a ladder that you have to move and store I saw a video from a Dutch I think it was
Dutch or somewhere in the Netherlands a micro apartment that had a pull out stair and so I
did the plans on that and made this this stair which works out pretty good
so in the Loft I've got a queen size mattress it's only four inches thick but it's fine for me I
originally thought I'd be spending more time up in the Loft but I don't I just come up here and sleep
and it's a great place to sleep all these windows I've got in here allows the cross Breeze to come
across me at night I wanted to put a ceiling fan in the house and but what I found is with this 12
12 pitch roof there wasn't enough space for a typical ceiling fan or I would have to drop it
down so low that it'd be a hazard for tall people so I found this beautiful one it's shaped like the
prop in a boat it's really cool the key part of the stairs is that there's storage all around them
and these are drawers I have kitchen supplies and clothes so I use this as a closet I've got a
a hanger bar across in the back there just reach in and that works out pretty good
so my ceiling between here it's six foot eight to the floor kind of tight but again
I'm not a tall person so it works out well for storage I buy a lot in bulk and then
fill my jars I built this shelf system which allows me to hold multiple jars
over here is a pantry I decided not to put a door on it just because of the space and it's
worked out great I have my dishes I sacrificed some countertop Space by putting this extra door
in but I just felt it was necessary and it gives me the option of doing an outdoor kitchen on the
deck out here which I might do in the future it really allows me also when I'm cooking to open
the door and if I'm creating a lot of steam it allows it to go outside so for countertops
again I use the concrete it's what what I've done for the last 20 years and it worked out well I've
got an under mount stainless steel round sink and it's worked well here for cooktop I didn't want
to commit to a integral cooktop in my countertop so I went with this Cuisinart induction double
it's 110 volts which is great it really does a good job it does require quite a bit of power
so I usually do my larger cooking projects during the day when the Sun's shining so I don't drain my
batteries at night during the winter I can also use the wood stove to simmer and cook things the
fridge is an under counter it's a small one it's like a dorm room fridge I guess you would call
it and it's worked well I do have to defrost the freezer portion which a little bit of a
hassle but if I stay on top of it once every four months it's fine because space in these small tiny
houses is so important I had a wall here which I utilized in putting these little Cubbies there's
a stud underneath the siding in each one of these it allows me to put in some spices and
vitamins and things like that off to the right is the bathroom I did a a door that models a
Japanese tradition soji screen I used rice paper it's a film that 3M creates so on the back it's
waterproof and on the front it has the rice paper which is really cool and this is a pocket door
sort of slides in there like so I decided to do a pocket door because there was really no room to
swing a regular door and I got so enthralled in making my pocket door that I thought why
not take that same concept and create sconces with it so I just found the light fixture that
is hidden underneath and created Created these um rice paper sconces so I always like a good
challenge and I saw this challenge of creating a bathroom vanity for a very small space so I
came up with this one here this is concrete again it's all integrated and it allows the plumbing to
be hidden underneath so I'm sure toilets are on everyone's mind who builds a tiny house because
I'm here in the future going to build a real home with the septic system I just went with an RV
toilet and it's really worked out well it allows a very small footprint so I kept the whole theme
of the concrete going I did the shower wall panels our company has developed a very strong concrete
mix that allows us to pour real thin this is just 3 8 of an inch thick which is pretty much unheard
of with concrete so I have the shower panels on three sides and then I did a concrete soaking
tub to validate that this would work as a tub I actually built a wood mock-up first which allowed
me need to get inside and to see how how it would work and I can get water up to almost the bottom
of my neck while I'm in the tub here so moisture can be a problem in tiny house especially during
the winter because when warm moist air finds a way to get out as soon as it hits the cold air
outside condensation happens and if that's inside your wall it could lead to a dry rot and mold so I
found these fans that automatically turn on when the relative humidity gets above I think it's 60
percent so I just leave it on during the shower it automatically turns on and pumps all that
moist air out and then I've got another one at the other side of the house to do the same thing
I've been quite surprised of how easy it is to live in a tiny house my motto
in building this was I think I can do it and it's just a matter of watching
some YouTube videos and doing your homework and you can do it it was fun
thanks for watching this week's episode I hope you guys enjoyed it please make
sure to like share and subscribe and I will see you soon with another unique home tour
foreign