tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55798959428387278662024-03-19T02:34:14.437-07:00Tiny Red DeskLiving The Tiny LifeAKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-49806186083298476372023-05-16T08:34:00.004-07:002023-05-16T08:34:42.167-07:00My Interview with Ethan of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast<p>Ethan Waldman did me the honor of interviewing me. I had followed Ethan for some time as he devolped his informative blogging about the many flavors of tiny house living. So when he asked for stories from people who had bought a partially built rig and what the advantages of outfitting a tiny house at this stage offered, I wrote to him my answer and offered to give an interview. We did not end up focusing on this aspect of my tiny house experience, but on other aspects I had created that was unique to my set-up. It was interesting to see what such an expert on the lifestyle found unique in mine. He also gave a very nice presentation on his podcast page with pictures he chose from this blog. Have a look and listen. https://www.thetinyhouse.net/amanda-kovattana/</p>AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-68560820595328271392023-01-17T12:12:00.003-08:002023-01-17T12:12:29.603-08:00 Power and Refrigeration<p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHt5_m2ScOCi5WR73qNkCkbZ02FZ5pjU-LHdFhsOij4K7hMHa_cihOPSinSphsHKlYCVdEY5juH5F-R5gz62ne9a_mBrl0YJMbkGleujZBUsBiTgmRROW0e_gJMhrY6-yVTAdcsDWe7DX2VTjT2rx9nYsrLOuh91wvBIDqhie-3ADIcXHocsvkv_P3/s4608/Xijia%20Inverter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHt5_m2ScOCi5WR73qNkCkbZ02FZ5pjU-LHdFhsOij4K7hMHa_cihOPSinSphsHKlYCVdEY5juH5F-R5gz62ne9a_mBrl0YJMbkGleujZBUsBiTgmRROW0e_gJMhrY6-yVTAdcsDWe7DX2VTjT2rx9nYsrLOuh91wvBIDqhie-3ADIcXHocsvkv_P3/w200-h150/Xijia%20Inverter.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>My <a href="http://tinyreddesk.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-leap-to-solar.html" target="_blank">solar power system</a> has stood me in good stead for three years now, though the battery pack is fading. If the sun doesn’t shine I may not have power the next day. I had to replace both the inverter and the controller along the way. I got the exact same components as I had before, but when the inverter died again, after a little over two years, I decided to look for something better. My freezer had also died the month before causing me to question why. My old inverter was a modified sine wave model and this might have had an impact on shortening the life of the freezer, so I went looking for a pure sine wave model among all the cheaper Chinese imports. It took me an entire evening until midnight to read all the reviews and watch YouTubers give their opinion until I found and settled on a beefy looking Xijia 3200 watt inverter with four sockets. Thank you to all the geek brothers out there reviewing equipment in such detail.<p></p><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">My next project will be replacing the battery pack. I am reluctant to go to lithium even though they are supposed to last longer. I worry about all the lithium being strip mined in Africa. We, at least, seem to have lots of lead which can be recovered. I do have a couple of portable lithium battery packs to tide me over and a couple of strings of Christmas lights I plug into the packs for on board lighting. As long as I have power for my computer and modem I can remain in residence, it doesn’t matter if the freezer isn’t running for a night. It just becomes a fridge temporarily. I can’t keep ice-cream in it, but otherwise can live with it. I am still able to get ice from it for my cooler. </div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 14px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDLQ8uYVtFNQMF7xWaazbZSeKO_l6keK9Un-HT_Ev9rwbE53F4CxKpacXMY6RmLk-uI_5qC4HJaI0cu9AHqQhZhigWfUD75Rj-J0qK3ljYXcz3wFMJNJM89-i7dUI70QjSEruQPYaR1-NzKE-SSQGAxCAzWmQWUgF1oTopo-fKhNbNroOKQKTNjHwb/s2818/Vejibag%20as%20Evaporative%20Cooling%20(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2818" data-original-width="2076" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDLQ8uYVtFNQMF7xWaazbZSeKO_l6keK9Un-HT_Ev9rwbE53F4CxKpacXMY6RmLk-uI_5qC4HJaI0cu9AHqQhZhigWfUD75Rj-J0qK3ljYXcz3wFMJNJM89-i7dUI70QjSEruQPYaR1-NzKE-SSQGAxCAzWmQWUgF1oTopo-fKhNbNroOKQKTNjHwb/w148-h200/Vejibag%20as%20Evaporative%20Cooling%20(1).jpg" width="148" /></a></div>In the summer when I eat more salads I keep lettuce and other veggies in a vegibag that I keep wet. This is basically a Terry cloth bag that is meant to be used in the fridge, but it will keep food fine if hung inside the tiny house or kept hanging up in a net shopping bag.</div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQizJ7hgdRTXiXC1VqlqkK3zVZ0p5Fh-m4HzbzfMz2tHvn64FaeOE2KhSJf-zW9Kvo6qjVBO43miMYkMlG9Vwg53NdzZlxmyhlhw5de-JeWzTsNs8ZkBaVIYo2wGrZ3Yi8OlxuuuNHGYHX78NuWUHOacginapAgi7FCLRBnvzzmWYE1Bum5UNebC3T/s4608/Frige%20Thermometer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3456" data-original-width="4608" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQizJ7hgdRTXiXC1VqlqkK3zVZ0p5Fh-m4HzbzfMz2tHvn64FaeOE2KhSJf-zW9Kvo6qjVBO43miMYkMlG9Vwg53NdzZlxmyhlhw5de-JeWzTsNs8ZkBaVIYo2wGrZ3Yi8OlxuuuNHGYHX78NuWUHOacginapAgi7FCLRBnvzzmWYE1Bum5UNebC3T/w200-h150/Frige%20Thermometer.jpg" width="200" /></a></div></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">I’ve become a lot more relaxed about storing food. As long as the temperature in the cooler is 50° or less its cool enough to keep food from going bad, despite the dire warning on my temperature gage. In the past people kept their food cool by floating containers such as mason jars full of food in a stream. They would also dig underground chambers called root cellars to store food longterm. I have has containers of yogurt grow a bit of mold in the summer and the cheese too, but otherwise no serious food harm was manifested.</div>AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-15061371112678229632023-01-17T11:39:00.000-08:002023-01-17T11:39:36.945-08:00Heating and Cooling<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYv6zYtcvq3a9XdvAgPFFKoSlpGsuNRn2arA5j-ym3tDcYVUfNaKqSi_yQoY1PktlLB8qTJYWectnRRA3GKGweYmXYakkC9Nza2Sa6-d5mmMJsiMSt3OSltBQY2cx3eguoZk_MR_PcFvCkI4mT3Mx7WrAiG-Ed4Qdkmxf8tjUaL9xAJ9u5QXt4m840/s2592/Buddy%20Heater%20II.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1944" data-original-width="2592" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYv6zYtcvq3a9XdvAgPFFKoSlpGsuNRn2arA5j-ym3tDcYVUfNaKqSi_yQoY1PktlLB8qTJYWectnRRA3GKGweYmXYakkC9Nza2Sa6-d5mmMJsiMSt3OSltBQY2cx3eguoZk_MR_PcFvCkI4mT3Mx7WrAiG-Ed4Qdkmxf8tjUaL9xAJ9u5QXt4m840/w200-h150/Buddy%20Heater%20II.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><span face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="font-size: 12px;">One of the reasons I wanted to live in a tiny house was to find out what such a lifestyle would teach me. What I learned is that we don’t ask much of ourselves when it comes to external temperatures. We are used to a controlled household temperature of 68°. I heat my house with my buddy heater only when I really feel the cold. I upgraded from the (Little Buddy because the button on the Little Buddy was so hard to hold down with just my thumb.) By waiting until this point I have taught myself how to keep warm by putting on more clothes, by always w</span></span><span style="font-size: 12px;">earing a warm hat, by drinking hot tea and insulating my hammock. My body also becomes acclimated to the cold and I find that I don’t have to heat the house until the temperature drops down to the mid ‘50s. And when I’m sleeping I’m fine under the covers down to 49°. </span></span><p></p><div style="font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMgMFtfRAb4KswmS6jnEVm2k1-qbAcrALhDQrXhiSFBQO2mna3mSd-jLEB1_ZaOvRusiwRNUe0-UTVbJ1MG4K-HY0F2Q_qSm1Q_CL_oACZKvLevaXSszlTovzwoisEINl3hUSor3_5Ywz8d4DmxQEyD6yH30wYT4YWtWJeckiJbxg8TE2QYBbMxHJL/s2592/Candle%20Making.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1944" data-original-width="2592" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMgMFtfRAb4KswmS6jnEVm2k1-qbAcrALhDQrXhiSFBQO2mna3mSd-jLEB1_ZaOvRusiwRNUe0-UTVbJ1MG4K-HY0F2Q_qSm1Q_CL_oACZKvLevaXSszlTovzwoisEINl3hUSor3_5Ywz8d4DmxQEyD6yH30wYT4YWtWJeckiJbxg8TE2QYBbMxHJL/w200-h150/Candle%20Making.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">I have also kept up with using my f<a href="http://tinyreddesk.blogspot.com/2019/08/heating-options-and-upgrades.html" target="_blank">lower pot heater.</a> It dries out the air, is a nice hand warmer, offers a warm glow as a night light and seems to keep the temperature from dropping as quickly once I turn off my buddy heater. I just let the candles burn all night. I made my own jar candles in my solar oven, melting down my collection of used candles that clients and friends would give me. When I finally exhausted this source, I upgraded to buying bags of soy wax. The soy wax burns nicely with much less soot so it keeps the house from getting so dusty. The homemade candles stay lit better than the votives I could buy because the wick I use is thicker. I can make candles during the summer in my solar oven or by boiling water on the stove at my support house. </span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Helvetica; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">In the summer, temperatures have gotten hotter too. I got myself a little fan and a spray bottle. Also a large polyester scarf I use when traveling worked very well to turn myself into a swamp cooler. I just got it wet, wrung it out and threw it over my head. The fan blowing on me created the cooling effect.</div>AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-62640599003257003932023-01-10T17:44:00.004-08:002023-01-17T11:07:27.425-08:00Off-Grid Laundry<p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9w01hXA-esvPdyA0usb0ZSvrjf1GtQrSMZRN84GTzxvmQrH2eKcmwKISmhuDIZO3PKJHjhKmatQe7qEAh6zbZAlsVOczvuPIeBchrGZYeaqOIKdy495OsRNENPErvVABerLcQ02yOcbliSfdepJm-FYfag_Ji0nQGVGakr960f3uX6nHK6R4ZQbRK/s4608/Laundry%20Equipment%20Storage.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4608" data-original-width="3456" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9w01hXA-esvPdyA0usb0ZSvrjf1GtQrSMZRN84GTzxvmQrH2eKcmwKISmhuDIZO3PKJHjhKmatQe7qEAh6zbZAlsVOczvuPIeBchrGZYeaqOIKdy495OsRNENPErvVABerLcQ02yOcbliSfdepJm-FYfag_Ji0nQGVGakr960f3uX6nHK6R4ZQbRK/w150-h200/Laundry%20Equipment%20Storage.jpg" width="150" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">During the pandemic lockdown, I had limited access to a support house, so I developed my tiny house laundry facility. It is fun to do laundry on a hot day. Plus you can reuse the water for thirsty plants. I tried a lot of different clothes washing equipment before I found what worked for hand washing. The hand crank tumbling washer called a WonderWash did not impress me though it looked good in the catalog. It was too complicated to get water hot enough to create pressure in the chamber The lid had to be screwed on and off which was not really worth the effort for this supposed pressurized effect. It didn’t hold very much and had to be emptied carefully so water wouldn’t run all over the counter. I also tried a washboard, but that was time consuming to apply to every item individually so I keep a small glass one for collars and cuffs. What did work was the plunger style hand washer made from galvanized metal, but the metal would rust if it wasn’t dried carefully and mine would fall off the handle regularly. Finally someone thought to make a plastic version with a firmly attached handle and that is what I use for agitation in a five gallon bucket. I mostly soak the clothes in half a bucket of water with the soap and give it a plunge or two every time I walk by as I’m doing other things. I save that water for another load and transfer the clothes to another five gallon bucket to rinse in a bit more water so the clothes can move freely. I do about three rinses.</span><p></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">For wringing out wet clothes, I loved the hand crank vintage rolling dryers that pressed the water from your clothes, but it’s hard to use. It really takes two pairs of hands. One to feed the clothes into the mangler and one to crank the clothes through, plus it took quite a bit of strength and didn’t really wring the clothes out as much as I would’ve liked for the effort. I sold mine back to bay.</span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBftXFb83lHxURtvRSpv9p3wseourCQefhlGU6lJx2Sukbyztuw3x-rLczp5APr46w7oFuHMZnxVUT5ZmCzaKUtDnCjjK9eKlddTkKtK34Ct5T27G0XdmmBl8Rcg8W-HyI0aaX94XjEKUrVLxY9kfasnMXLLY9xOkmVsoPTBLbGkQit6GHDKhF0QpT/s2592/Laundry%20Spin%20Dry%20In%20Use.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2592" data-original-width="1944" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBftXFb83lHxURtvRSpv9p3wseourCQefhlGU6lJx2Sukbyztuw3x-rLczp5APr46w7oFuHMZnxVUT5ZmCzaKUtDnCjjK9eKlddTkKtK34Ct5T27G0XdmmBl8Rcg8W-HyI0aaX94XjEKUrVLxY9kfasnMXLLY9xOkmVsoPTBLbGkQit6GHDKhF0QpT/w240-h320/Laundry%20Spin%20Dry%20In%20Use.jpg" width="240" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: helvetica;">As I browsed for ideas I tried the double bucket system for the DIY savvy. One bucket I drilled full of holes. That’s where you put your dripping wet clothes. Then the second bucket is put into the first bucket and by sitting on this second bucket I could squeeze quite a lot of water from the clothes. I had a shallow garden trug to put the bucket in so I could keep the bucket clean and save the water that was wrung out.</span><p></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I also found that the Asian market really had this down for apartment dwellers with a hand crank spin dryer. It works a lot like a salad spinner. I got myself one of these nifty machines and got my workout pulling on the handles to operate the spinning mechanism. The clothes came out dryer than they did from the old washing machine at my mothers. </span></p>
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<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">A vintage style drying rack was my go to for many years, but when I set it up outside a strong wind could blow it over. I could weight it down, but I found something else. A bungee corded cargo net for strapping luggage onto the roof of your car could be stretched from tree limbs and weighted down with lengths of pipe. Then I just hung my socks and underwear in the holes of the netting. Shirts and pants I dried on hangers I could hang in the tree. It was easier to store than a folding rack too. All the equipment could be stashed in a big storage box.</span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-family: helvetica;">I could also iron clothes inside the tiny house with a small ironing board I could lay on top of my pull out cutting table. I used a travel iron. When you have to go to this much trouble to clean your clothes you tend to wear the same clothes quite a bit more. Thus having one's own labor invested automatically reduced the tendency to use water and energy. </span></p><div><br /></div>AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-27913841806471945142023-01-10T17:27:00.004-08:002023-01-10T17:27:28.734-08:00 The Dtao of Poop Update<p><span style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px;">Of all the aspects of my tiny house living that people are most curious about, longterm, is my composting toilet. Yes, I am still using the <a href="http://tinyreddesk.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-toilet-report-and-bokashi-upgrade.html" target="_blank">Bokashi fermenting system</a> to process my poop. It works great. I really only have to process it every six weeks or so. I have devised a routine and have set up a poop processing station here at my current location.<br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The usual practice is to bury the contents in a trench in the ground. Curiously one of the effects of this burial is that for a month or so nothing grows where it was buried. Thus it is an effective weed killer. I think the acidity of the fermentation is what does it. Nowadays I seldom dig a trench because I’ve run out of places where I can dig as I have more of my garden laid out. Also in the summer months the ground is so dried out, it is too hard to dig into the ground. So I get help from the gophers. Every week I collect the soil from their mounds in a bucket and take it to my composting station to use as a cover. </p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8kNIJ0OFXScMRgAAyT9UqI6NCteCFXseovFQu4LbTR_Idt69KUPuWCk33ufFtHY3O7lMa_auQZWJ1GJGvvI6i6M6J0EFjtnijlrkR1oVIDspBAMB9MmEm0cGo-daToFjXi57D4rtYHKu_FkZ77Oc9T11fiffjUm2nxTuTj3wcTB-USWqJ_EcxBRjo/s1280/Composting%20Station.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="1280" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8kNIJ0OFXScMRgAAyT9UqI6NCteCFXseovFQu4LbTR_Idt69KUPuWCk33ufFtHY3O7lMa_auQZWJ1GJGvvI6i6M6J0EFjtnijlrkR1oVIDspBAMB9MmEm0cGo-daToFjXi57D4rtYHKu_FkZ77Oc9T11fiffjUm2nxTuTj3wcTB-USWqJ_EcxBRjo/s320/Composting%20Station.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>For processing the poop I use an old plastic tub, the kind with rope handles. I made a few holes in the bottom and put it under an oak tree where any liquid can drain into the ground and into the leaf litter. In fact the contents of the bucket is mostly liquid so I pour off the liquid first into a large planting pot which allows the liquid to flow though the drainage holes in several different directions at once. What is left in the bottom is a sludge I put into the tub. But first I cover the bottom of the tub with a layer of the gopher soil to give the sludge something to work with. As I pour I stop to add more soil until the sludge is totally mixed with soil and is no longer visible to the eye. <p></p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">All that is left to do is to rinse out the bucket. I also have a dedicated brush to scrub the inside a bit so I have a nice clean bucket to take back into the house. I put two gallons of rainwater from my rain catchment system into the bucket and I’m back in business. </p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I leave the poop in the processing tub alone for a couple of weeks at least. The resulting soil is very nutritious for plants. You cannot detect any poop in it all. I use it to refresh the soil in my planter boxes between seasons or spread it over the hillside on top of the grass during the late summer when all the grass is dead and cut down. In terms of soil restoration I am doing what a herd of cows would be doing as they graze a pasture. </p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I also add urine to the soil on a regular basis. The urine tank needs to be emptied every two or three days. I empty the tank into a three gallon bucket inside the house. Then I pour some into a watering can and dilute it with three or four times the water. In the summer months this is how I water my plants. I don’t use any urine water where I’ve planted radishes as it keeps the radishes from forming a bulb. I learned this from another off-grid homesteader. The rest of the garden does great with this ongoing drink of nutrients. </p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">For the winter months during heavy rains I have dug a trench alongside my garden beds. I filled the trench with manure from the pile across the street where my neighbor, who keeps a horse, has helpfully created such a pile to offer to gardeners. This trench is where I pour undiluted urine and diswhashing water when it rains or I have excess water. Storing water in the soil is what we want to do to contribute to the rain cycle and soil restoration. </p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I also ferment urine for it has many uses as a cleaner when it becomes ammonia. This ammonia works for cleaning the shower pan in my tiny house. I have also used it to soak my clothes when doing laundry. It helps to lift the ring around the collar when I go to scrub it with Dr. Bronner’s liquid soap. I have even washed out a paintbrush with urine and liquid soap. A paintbrush I use with wood preservative. To find out more about my discoveries with urine and it’s many uses for healing and personal care, check out my book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/1093980893?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860" target="_blank">The Girls' Guide To Off Grid Living</a>. </p><div><br /></div>AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-76739539545371808252023-01-06T13:01:00.001-08:002023-05-16T08:13:57.515-07:00My Off Grid Living Memoir Published!<p><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><br />During the pandemic lockdown I lived in my tiny house full time which allowed me to explore more options in tiny house living such as doing laundry, showering or more to the point not showering, gardening and cooking in my one burner kitchen. I was surprised at how self-sufficient I could be. I even had entertainment using my laptop to play DVDs onto a larger external monitor that I could view while lying in my hammock. But most of all the lockdown year was an opportunity to finish my book.</span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ5_YZkWkoGuwqqrRZlQFtW3JLFArpEngWDcY3P351s2QyTA0vGSo8ULCWtP94oSiXuexZCjrcIF0-HMV5bYPQ2p0Io_uxzgFXyks9PaMGQUpJjPiz-yRQTCE-BtyoXVoo5wpMFvBRFk5Cog1pKEGKcUxuoXV_4uV3IWTv_hjS9CdhgvplS384hD31/s2592/The%20Girls'%20Guide%20To%20Off%20Grid%20Living.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2592" data-original-width="1944" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJ5_YZkWkoGuwqqrRZlQFtW3JLFArpEngWDcY3P351s2QyTA0vGSo8ULCWtP94oSiXuexZCjrcIF0-HMV5bYPQ2p0Io_uxzgFXyks9PaMGQUpJjPiz-yRQTCE-BtyoXVoo5wpMFvBRFk5Cog1pKEGKcUxuoXV_4uV3IWTv_hjS9CdhgvplS384hD31/s320/The%20Girls'%20Guide%20To%20Off%20Grid%20Living.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p></p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">I hadn’t intended to write another memoir, my first, Diamonds In My Pocket having been well received by friends and colleagues if not fully appreciated by family (except for my mother who was very proud of the book). I was thinking to write a pamphlet about how to make your own composting toilet and manage the composting part of it, but YouTube was best for such DIY projects. I didn’t want to give up entirely on writing a book and it occurred to me that a more interesting story could be written about why a woman would want to design a life around living with a composting toilet. When a favorite teacher announced she was going to give a memoir writing class, I signed up and thus had the help of a supportive group of women who let me know if my topics were compelling enough to merit a book.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">Once I got started I found that the desire to go off-grid was an incremental journey that brought forth stories going back to my first consciousness of my own thoughts as a largely free range child growing up in Thailand when it was not quite a fully industrialized country. The influences of a culture that sustained itself on so much less consumption than the one I would immigrate to, helped me retain this knowledge of how things could be done much more simply well into my adult life. The journey also offered a chance to investigate parts of my life I had refused to touch until now as society itself nudged me off the mainstream and into the American gay subculture. So much did my sexuality inform my life along with my spiritual quests and my thirst to understand how the world worked, that eventually every aspect of my life had veered off the conventional way of doing things. Moving into a tiny house tipped it over the edge completely and provided more details and practical aspects of my unconventional life.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">It took me until the middle of 2022 to finish the book and publish it independently which was an off-grid project in itself and required that I learn how to use book publishing software. This took months and prompted a computer upgrade. I still had my graphic design skills to help me design the book and get a dynamic cover on it. I didn’t fuss with it too much. It didn’t have to be the best designed book. It just had to look professional. I also had a great deal of help proofreading the book which will spare the reader the distraction of my negligent punctuation. I was very pleased that I had come so far and having accomplished such a feat, I could envision many more books I wanted to produce just to leave a legacy of all that I had learned. It made me quite proud, too, that having witnessed so much history of the Bay Area, the emerging gay culture and the technological changes that took place I had captured a piece of local history. My love of film and movie theaters, in particular, as I worked as a projectionist during the transitional years when home video impacted this industry was also a significant part of my story.</p>
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<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;">The tiny house thus became the perfect writing retreat, sheltering me from the demands of the outside world. I named my publishing company after this blog, Tiny Red Desk Publishing. There are, now many accounts of people going off-grid mostly about logistics and the build, but rather short on character development. I often felt short changed; I was sure that there must be particular traits that would lead someone to seek such a life. My book is a long view with a deep dive into questioning how we live. It is also a woman’s journey, indirect, serendipitous and non-linear, with lots of tangents influenced by the people I met and loved. My early readers have found it to be a satisfying read and some have been quite moved by it. I am confident it will find its audience. You can buy the book in both hard copy and digital at https://www.amazon.com/dp/1093980893?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860</p>
<p style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 14px;"><br /></p>AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-64515879690702403612020-05-24T21:47:00.000-07:002020-05-24T21:51:40.823-07:00Hardscaping and Homesteading<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQj6JTkPKNBBmRHn8fbYWO9tELffy_1whG6Hh8Y71_ZG7i4j4Qc8iPhKXfWZg4bJFgIEgOXiC4vYNgCSuFP_iptCbRzlmGh3ChYPv7F7kAOPieAjByaSh89ALu5E_a6p5aQ-aCd7UC6zU/s1600/Wheelbarrow+At+Hill+Bottom.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQj6JTkPKNBBmRHn8fbYWO9tELffy_1whG6Hh8Y71_ZG7i4j4Qc8iPhKXfWZg4bJFgIEgOXiC4vYNgCSuFP_iptCbRzlmGh3ChYPv7F7kAOPieAjByaSh89ALu5E_a6p5aQ-aCd7UC6zU/s320/Wheelbarrow+At+Hill+Bottom.jpg" width="320" /></a>My new site presented a lot of challenges in that it was a virgin hillside full of weeds. And in the winter the mud. So my first order of business was to lay stepping stones and provide cement blocks as boot scrapers. I then discovered a pile of shredded wood chips at the bottom of the property that I was free to use. Pushing them up the steep hill provided me with leg strengthening exercise.<br />
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I also wanted to create a garden and had seeded a semi-circle of fava beans just to see what would happen to them. Those that survived the slugs provided a row of beans that was also in effect a fence. The gophers bit through one bean stalk and left the rest alone. The deer didn't seem to like them either. I also had plants I brought from my previous space, agave succulents mostly and a bucket of soil in which I had mixed bokashi poop mix. This bucket provided me with a brace of tomato seedlings and I decided to build a planter of the scrap redwood cut-offs I had been saving from the rebuilding of my mother's deck a few years ago.<br />
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The planter was a mathematical challenge so I eyeballed it and was pleased with the resulting planter tower reinforced with hardware cloth on the bottom to ward off gophers. Having fended off the gophers I also put up netting to fend off the deer. As the fava beans came to maturity I seeded some scarlet runner beans which are barely making it through the slug fest. In my hopes I took out some landscaping poles I had long had in storage and lashed together a bean teepee.<br />
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My gardening attempts were proving to be a wonderful pastime during this stay at home quarantine, giving me something to look forward to checking on every morning as I monitored the gopher activity and collected the soil they mounded up. It took over ten buckets of this collected soil to fill my planter. I filled the planter with tomato seedlings and had more bean seedlings of another variety and assorted other seedlings in my homemade newspaper pots.<br />
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These pots turned out to be a good choice. The seedlings thrived in them and their roots easily found their way out of the bottom of the bots so were not root bound.<br />
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I disassembled the toilet after months of looking at it as a discarded toilet as a note of irony from living with a composting toilet. It had come out of my landlord's bathroom when he remodeled.<br />
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The upturned toilet had a certain sculptural kneeling temple elephant look to it.<br />
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Before the ground could dry up much more I decided to mulch the patio area in front of the tiny house where my battery bank lived thinking to plant camomile between the pavers, but the ground was already too hard for much more than one.<br />
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I also got it into my head that I would recycle all the tree clippings from my fire maintenance chores last fall by incorporating them into a hugelklutur bed which I dug out on contour just above the incline of my field. Cutting up all the little branches was time consuming, but was a meditative activity and it was done in a couple of days. This activity also allowed me to get to know the neighbors as they walked by with their dogs on this busy corner. One even remembered he'd seen me on TV. And another complemented me on my homebuilt planter tower. Just about everybody has made me feel at home in this mountain retreat full of DIY homesteading sorts.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxDSHsi2aXChUKDf8ShVL3d4ggz621yNX_Bbb4gyup2RXgzHHWP_XQeoHCzdbwMf3yp3HMcC5qmaLGmNpci_mUP-vc6MHkLsVgbUCIdH1iHE_71AKUEgOgSQtdsPiKe_9UBCl_qyd6BFc/s1600/Twin+Bean+Seedlings.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxDSHsi2aXChUKDf8ShVL3d4ggz621yNX_Bbb4gyup2RXgzHHWP_XQeoHCzdbwMf3yp3HMcC5qmaLGmNpci_mUP-vc6MHkLsVgbUCIdH1iHE_71AKUEgOgSQtdsPiKe_9UBCl_qyd6BFc/s320/Twin+Bean+Seedlings.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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With all this activity I was exhausted, but happy wth my plant companions.</div>
AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-11002997882810502852020-04-30T12:51:00.000-07:002020-05-24T12:52:23.294-07:00Mail Ordered Accessories For Full Time Living<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwCC6YQwIr1Clpa1zrTtqoQGjujS7c9GhMLIjI_1yzPaA7nmCc1ENJxg_8HbuA3TUoHWXYAtIuawvmGIcJZNEYgyzg1a2mqLVAkfLdMnjnyCs1qUsqlyw9_kpThb4nMlxMNef3FkdzdDQ/s1600/Bokashi+Bucket+W+Food+Waste.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwCC6YQwIr1Clpa1zrTtqoQGjujS7c9GhMLIjI_1yzPaA7nmCc1ENJxg_8HbuA3TUoHWXYAtIuawvmGIcJZNEYgyzg1a2mqLVAkfLdMnjnyCs1qUsqlyw9_kpThb4nMlxMNef3FkdzdDQ/s320/Bokashi+Bucket+W+Food+Waste.jpg" width="320" /></a>Like many home bound shelter-in-place people I took to mail ordering items to upgrade my existence. Now that I was cooking a lot more dinners at home with the Farm Fresh To You delivery of vegetables Catherine and I were sharing I had enough food waste to warrant a composting system. I didn't have an area protected from marauding beasts so I ordered the system offered by the same Bokashi company where I had bought my pet waste system. The idea being that you fill the two buckets with kitchen waste that when sealed begin to work their fermenting magic assisted by the bokashi bran provided. There was also a faucet at the bottom of the bucket to drain off liquid that could then be used as a fertilizer. I already had a built-in niche for my indoor composting bucket which hadn't seen much use until now so it was a perfect match.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEoXVkwI9sVSGhk4k6YkpxoADnCIC8XHyrOnRVUl1VptNamPuNoTpd6WBAo2YuHIGUhlSe_WJsbNwqk23EL0I0fCjMVxuL3v-SfYjRsMYjp31KFHuoO3Ig246wVfmuZGrjWNaRarMUZ58/s1600/Scrubba+Open.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEoXVkwI9sVSGhk4k6YkpxoADnCIC8XHyrOnRVUl1VptNamPuNoTpd6WBAo2YuHIGUhlSe_WJsbNwqk23EL0I0fCjMVxuL3v-SfYjRsMYjp31KFHuoO3Ig246wVfmuZGrjWNaRarMUZ58/s320/Scrubba+Open.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="text-align: center;">I also ordered a Scrubba, a traveling washing machine suggested to me by a mud hut sister in Bangkok who read about it on a blog. This turned out to be quite useful as a pre-wash device that could also tote my wet shirts to my support house on laundry day. It has an internal washboard which I didn't find particularly effective so I brought out of storage my Amish glass washboard and used the Scrubba to soak my clothes in first. Then I pulled out a sleeve or a collar that needed attention and applied some scrubbing with the glass washboard. Since I was using a non-biodegradable soap I just poured the soapy water into the Scrubba bag for portage to the washing machine at my support house. So the Scrubba proved useful as a missing link. I'm a firm believer in missing links solving problems to keep an existing system simple. </span><br />
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The Scrubba was also useful for washing a few items between my two week laundry visits. It was quite fun like kneading bread.AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-85949583291349813662020-04-18T12:17:00.000-07:002020-05-24T12:22:46.665-07:00Shelter In ParadiseShortly after I returned from Thailand having already gotten a taste of the mask wearing pandemic response in Bangkok, the Bay Area became the first lockdown area in the United States. At first I tried to commute the half hour drive to my support house as usual, but it soon became apparent that this was impractical and anxiety provoking for the household especially for the new housemate who didn't know me and had issues with my coming and going. In the 3 years I had lived in the tiny house I had not really lived in it full time. I was really only there for bed and breakfast as I spent a lot of time on the road going to clients and then having dinner at Catherine's house where I would cook for the both of us or she would.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Wlvs6I2ZXLYlkznUU9MlxF8VWA1m-jsUK4bwAHwUr9HgJa8bta6IJVuONtqQMX6lx1KC-5O2BpPXoNtKuwKMHBxnsEqOyCuaJezI6VAzEK5VKSbVld889bftER9P9_E8umCT56uNt2Y/s1600/Amanda+w-+Million+%2524+View.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Wlvs6I2ZXLYlkznUU9MlxF8VWA1m-jsUK4bwAHwUr9HgJa8bta6IJVuONtqQMX6lx1KC-5O2BpPXoNtKuwKMHBxnsEqOyCuaJezI6VAzEK5VKSbVld889bftER9P9_E8umCT56uNt2Y/s320/Amanda+w-+Million+%2524+View.jpg" width="320" /></a>Once we decided it would be best if I stayed at the tiny house I asked my friends who lived down the street from me if they would host me for showers and laundry. They were happy to and I would return the favor by making a meal for us all every now and then. The local country store had also re-opened with new owners so the town felt self-sufficient again. Once I settled in I felt enormously blessed to be in such a beautiful environment.<br />
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I had hiking trails I could walk to straight from the property that were not closed to residents and the views from on high were spectacular stretching all the way to the ocean.<br />
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Living full time in the tiny house became my sanctuary. I really had everything I needed that it made for a very efficient living space.<br />
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I just needed additional seating especially for zoom calls. I had two classes that would keep me in this chair for four hours at a time once a month.<br />
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For company I had my friends on FB to show off my endeavors. One of the friends commented that it was my smugness that made my reports so endearing so when John Kernohan and his wife Fin of United Tiny House Association invited me to participate in a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U78jrVGQkS4">video</a> they were making which would require me to choose one word to describe how I felt while sheltering in place in my tiny house. I set about to show off my location with the new solar panels and my solar oven opened up to signify my off-grid independence. I chose the word "smug". It was my little inside joke to myself.<br />
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Posted May 24th. Backdated to keep timeline.<br />
<br />AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-82046981085750220332020-03-03T12:24:00.000-08:002020-05-24T12:25:17.680-07:00Tiny House Presentation at EM Workshop, Saraburi Thailand<div class="p1" style="background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">In February while visiting Thailand my farm partner Clasina suggested we go to an organic farming workshop </span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "arial"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">on </span><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">effective microorganism technology or EM as it is called. EM technology was the game changing piece I had implemented for my composting toilet poop processing. This was the method that had allowed me to dispense with the required dedicated outdoor humanure composting bin and instead bury my fermented poop directly into the garden. I had been doing this successfully for two years now so I was eager to share my experience with this professional EM workshop being given at the International Kyusei Nature Farming Center in Saraburi just an hour and a half from Bangkok.</span></div>
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<span class="s3" style="background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">This university level facility with its modern buildings and extensive campus included a working farm. Clasina </span><span class="s4" style="background-color: white; font-family: "arial"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">was</span><span class="s3" style="background-color: white; font-kerning: none;"> particularly impressed by the sparkling clean bathrooms. The program was created in collaboration with the Japanese EM industry (so they would not be teaching us how to make EM ourselves, just how to use it as much as possible so they could sell product). Indeed the Japanese EM technology was being quietly introduced to all of Asia through such outreach while being offered to the public through spas, hotels and wellness centers with EM fertilized organic food, lush gardens and EM disinfectants and cleaners. It was through such a wellness center in Hawaii that a friend had heard about it. The same friend who insisted that I trade out my traditional composting toilet method for this superior (and faster) EM technology. Instead of waiting a year to season a humanure composting pile, the EM process only took 2 to 3 weeks to reach a pathogen free state.</span></div>
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<span class="s3" style="background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">EM was a disinfectant we learned. It was spritzed into the air daily to fell harmful bacteria. It was made into non-toxic household cleaners and hand sanitizers. From the first day we were given our choice to use EM hand sanitizer or the usual alcohol based ones to fend off the virus.</span></div>
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<span class="s3" style="background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">The center was part of the Asia Pacific Natural Agricultural Network and our workshop was attended by a huge group from Malaysia, but also Myanmar and Japan along with one other woman from South Africa and me the lone representative of the U.S. Lectures were given in English with detailed powerpoint presentations in the air conditioned fully technical lecture hall. In the afternoons we boarded a people carrier much like a an amusement park train to tour the working farm. Students showed us how mushrooms were cultivated and served vegetable roll snacks. We saw how biochar was infused with EM to make a more potent fertilizer. We toured the lush fields of vegetables and the chicken and pig houses. I was bowled over by the use of EM technology in animal husbandry. There was no odor at all not even in the pig pens. </span></div>
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<span class="s3" style="background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">EM was also added to the animal feed as a probiotic supplement. The EM infused feed kept them healthier and they grew bigger than with conventional methods. Every time their pens were sluiced down the pigs came running to slurp up the EM infused waster. Their waste was washed away into large concrete pits where the mixture became fertilizer (just as my own poop did inside my three gallon bucket). Imagine such a solution putting an end to those problematic lagoons of manure that stink for miles and sometimes blow up like a geyser or overflow into waterways choking fish with algae blooms. EM worked in the same way I understood my composting toilet to work. The effective microorganisms ate all the harmful bacteria and were then eaten themselves in a probiotic fermenting process that ate up all the pathogens. This process was given the Japanese word bokashi. “Bokashi!” we shouted in every group photo.</span></div>
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<span class="s3" style="background-color: white; font-kerning: none;">We also saw how food scraps were treated with EM in 50 gallon drums from which the liquid was collected for use as a plant feed. This you can do at home too in smaller buckets. Hands-on demonstrations had us shoveling and mixing together ingredients so the EM infused bran could ferment the compost. The following day we returned to find that the piles were so hot they would turn our hands red and I wondered aloud if I could heat my tiny house with such piles or at least heat water. For fisheries EM could be made into softball size balls and thrown into the ponds to keep them clean. We had great fun seeing how far we could throw when we were all offered a turn. The EM balls reduced sludge at the bottom and had other applications including the clean up of latrines. In shrimp farming the shrimp poop is food for the microorganisms so EM made the water clear and cut down the stench. The meat of cows raised with EM technology was lower in fat and higher in vitamins.</span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">We concluded our workshop with a visit to a recycling plant in Bangkok. Here the use of EM cut down on the biggest neighborhood complaint—the smell. Plus they were able to make toilet cleaner and dishwashing products from fermented rice water and other captured waste products. No harsh chemicals were used at all in this recycling</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "arial"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"> and green waste</span><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;"> process</span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "arial"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">ing</span><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">. EM technology had also been introduced to the Thai military and was adopted as a method for large scale clean-ups. In the city it was offered as a drain cleaner in one of my friends apartment building. All of these projects had support from the Thai government which gave grants for outreach into the community to teach people how to make organic fertilizer from their kitchen waste. And because the late King Bhumipol had long been an advocate of a self sufficient economy and had been voicing his concerns about global warming since 1989, the reduction of carbon in the air through the use of EM technology and the concept of zero waste was considered a project of the King. This had enormous appeal for the Thais giving them not only a shared mission, but a way to further implement the King’s legacy for the good of the country.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;">In the evenings of our 4 day workshop participants representing EM companies made their presentations touting the benefits of their product while farmers showed their agricultural projects. I gave my tiny house presentation on the second night. I had rehearsed all my jokes and had enough pictures to show the whole tiny house trend to an audience unfamiliar with this American phenomena and its California origin.</span><br />
<span class="s2" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><br /></span><span class="s2" style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">I also explained about the composting toilet being a key feature of most tiny houses. They loved it.</span><span class="s1" style="font-family: "helvetica"; font-size: 12px;"> Having sufficiently explained why such a house needed to process their own waste, they had no questions about my EM methods so I was clearly doing it right. But the look of incredulity on the face of a Japanese woman who represented a health supplement company told me how out there I was. When I told them that in the course of a year I had buried 11 buckets of my EM composted waste they applauded. I have no idea why this single fact garnered such appreciation.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikfehFSXgGECQU4fpdj1visHkRoDccwAqZNLL4CJlJZ0AVxOdhHOfnr5s4ldZPAp4rL9auU5Lf4Gpq8c5HIg6IiMu1Yk2lME7hU2ZiyhEj7jnoqOsA09Np6mXhuJqYQvJmnSphi_HUcAM/s1600/I+am+very+pleased+with+myself.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="797" data-original-width="1395" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikfehFSXgGECQU4fpdj1visHkRoDccwAqZNLL4CJlJZ0AVxOdhHOfnr5s4ldZPAp4rL9auU5Lf4Gpq8c5HIg6IiMu1Yk2lME7hU2ZiyhEj7jnoqOsA09Np6mXhuJqYQvJmnSphi_HUcAM/s320/I+am+very+pleased+with+myself.jpg" width="320" /></a><span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">None of these professional EM distributors had thought of using EM technology in such an application. They did not know about the pet waste disposal system I was able to purchase in the States and asked how much I had paid for the kit. ($100). Like any other first world society it had never occurred to them to dispense with the flush toilet. Nor were they about to. Some teased me about it later, but I was happy that I had earned my place in the EM technological revolution. It was by far the most fun presentation I had yet given on any topic. </span></div>
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<span class="s1" style="font-kerning: none;">Posted May 24th. Back dated to preserve timeline.</span></div>
AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-8637214152509246432019-11-07T11:40:00.003-08:002023-01-02T22:35:12.498-08:00The Leap To SolarWhile I was preparing to move, PG & E was subjecting the state of California to mandatory blackouts to relieve themselves of liability during fire season. My new mountain town suffered the bulk of these and it inspired me to think of going solar. And being 250 feet away from my landlord's house would mean daisy chaining three extension cords together to get power as it was. I didn't fancy this at all. The hillside I was on faced south so was perfect for solar. My landlord had himself wanted to try solar and readily approved my idea. With the help of a Kilowatt, I added up my power usage from my freezer (1Kw/day) and my toaster oven, electric kettle, stockpot, computer and lights. It came to a total of 4250 watts if I didn't count the stockpot which I only used to cook beans once a month. As it happened there was a man on craigslist selling a complete set-up that was just about the right size for a tiny house with four panels for a total of 1040 watts of power generation and a 235 amp hour battery pack. All for $1400 with a Flexmax 60 charge controller and 24 volt, 2,500 watt moderated sinewave Aims inverter. And it all fit into my Prius.<br />
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I delivered the panels to the site, hid them in the bushes for a few days, then screwed the sides to pieces of lumber using ordinary angle brackets that I had bolted to the holes in the solar panels. Two panels screwed to three lengths of wood. Three 8ft lengths of pressure treated 2 x 4's cut in half. I used my stash of conduit pipe legs from another project to shore up one side. It was a little wobbly but would suffice. Later I would add an 8ft piece to the top of the frame to stabilize the structure and keep it from sagging in the middle.<br />
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I just needed a battery box so I dragged an old metal bathtub up to the site. It had been left over from a remodel and was just big enough to hold all four of the golf cart batteries. </div>
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I got rid of enough books from my offsite storage to liberate a shelf so I could build a bench for the charger and inverter. </div>
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Several you-tube tutorials later I was confident I could put the system together. I just followed how the wires were used by the previous owner. His battery pack must have been quite a distance from the charger so I cut the wire down to size. The wires from the panels were just long enough to reach once I angled the tub closer and pulled the panels up a bit.</div>
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And the hole where the stopper control was installed was perfect for the extension cords and the cable wires from the panels to enter into my ad hoc battery shed. I put it all together and had power. Such a quantum leap in off-grid living yet so simple. I needed 177 amp hours, 252 if I cooked the beans, but I could do that with my solar oven. I also purchased a mini coffee maker to heat water that used 600 watts as opposed to the electric kettle which used 1500 watts. Once hooked up the 235 amp hour battery pack just barely met my needs, but the owner assured me that the panels could handle another set of batteries in this size. So this project will be ongoing. I am also in the process of fabricating a cover for my battery box that would allow me to view the read-outs on the equipment. </div>
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AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-90868800969105630822019-11-07T06:52:00.000-08:002019-11-07T06:52:36.636-08:00Prep For A New Location<style type="text/css">
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Over the summer I learned I would have to move and spent 6 weeks searching high and low for another location. The drama of which I <a href="https://amandakovattana.blogspot.com/2019/11/tiny-house-on-move.html">blogged for my friends</a>. Thankfully I did find a mountain town to move to. It added some to my commute, but it gave back in a community full of DIY spirit and live and let live sensibilities.</div>
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My new parking spot was in an open field 250 feet from the home of my new landlord. It was beautiful, but would require the creation of a firm parking pad from scratch for the hillside was so full of gophers they would soon bury my wheels in the soft dry soil. I set to work right away and spent $100 renting a van to pick up free concrete from across the bay where a homeowner had been busy liberating his yard by jack hammering up the poured concrete. This concrete not being as thick as what would be poured today. It was the thickness of pavers, was not nearly as heavy and made nice pieces to work with.</div>
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My landlord gave me a roll of weed block landscaping cloth to lay down to create a barrier for both weeds and gophers.<br />
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I hired my handyman Tim to help me level the parking pad which required diligence and some spadework. Then he packed it down by driving his truck over it repeatedly. It took us three days and two truck loads (using his truck) of gravel and another run for concrete rubble and concrete driveway pieces I had scavenged for a project at my previous location. Tim used those to create a retaining wall on the downhill side. We then lay concrete rubble (picked up from the same guy) and a half ton of recycled concrete road fill from Lyngso a landscaping supply yard.<br />
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I love the rough mosaic of the pieces. It reminded me of what a Roman road might look like. We had enough pieces for the bulk of it and what holes were left in the middle we filled with the much thicker driveway pieces.<br />
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Once I swept the gravel into the cracks the surface was stabilized. It was ready for landing the tiny.</div>
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</style>AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-53171552466064116662019-10-22T17:04:00.003-07:002019-10-29T09:32:26.869-07:00My TV Appearance On The 11 O'clock News<div class="p1">
In conjunction with my being a speaker at the Tiny Living Festival John Kernohan asked me if I was willing to be interviewed by KPIX as an example of a tiny house dweller in the Bay Area. Of course I said yes. I love to give tours on camera. So I got a call from Susie Steimle the housing advocate on the program <a href="https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/category/project-home/?fbclid=IwAR07HPUDavXvnztRb6FVeFAuiHanCRXHkpH2ooS_ycIzsYlmu_Q5RlPE1ro">“Project Home”</a> which airs every Monday and Wednesday on the 11 o’clock news.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> A commendable program of investigative reporting with a social justice component. My appearance <a href="https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/10/14/tiny-homes-a-movement-or-a-solution-to-homelessness/">appears in this segment</a> for those who want to see it right away.</span></div>
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She brought with her Brian Yuen her cameraman with the largest camera I have ever seen. I’m glad I cleared off my dining table so he could set it down. I cleaned out a lot of accumulated clutter while I was at it. Just in time for my upcoming move. It’s still too cluttered for most, but Brian made it look good by avoiding my cluttered desk and such. His camera showed a lot of detail, but he also wasn’t invasive steering clear of personal stuff. And he had an eye for visual symbolism i.e. a doorknob as a symbol of home and security. He also made sure to get footage of everything I mentioned.</div>
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When she arrived Susie told me that her piece was going to be about tiny houses as a solution to homelessness because she was also going to interview a man who wanted to create a tiny house development for homeless vets. While Brian went to get his camera we had a chance to talk about my feelings about tiny houses for the homeless.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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“They should just build more low income housing,” I said and she agreed that was the crux of it.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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After my experience helping with <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/earthworm/36453085964/">a project in San Francisco </a>involving tiny houses for a homeless woman I was left very conflicted at what was being offered as a solution. So I had a lot to say on camera about the whole homeless situation. Too much so Susie came back to the subject asking me to just talk about the tiny house solution and I was able to give her a more concise response.</div>
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I was trying to make the point that what is being offered with tiny houses as a solution is substandard housing for people who are priced out of the market. I think its condescending of a society to ask marginalized people to live in situations that they wouldn’t tolerate themselves. There are laws requiring landlords to have adequate bathrooms. When I said my line about asking your friends if they would give up the flush toilet both Brian and Susie held their reactions as though I’d just said something totally off the wall. But later I realized they were practiced enough to recognize a good soundbite when they heard one and give it air space.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Meanwhile I was showing how I myself lived in substandard housing because I wanted to as my own personal experiment in reducing my consumption of resources. I’m glad Susie let me make this point about tiny house dwellers being innovators. The pair spent an hour and a half with me as I put the house through its paces. I even got Susie up in the loft so we could experience it as a living room and show off my closet which I claimed was the biggest tiny house closet I’ve seen.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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When Brian asked if she wanted to be in the shot when I got into my hammock she declined. “I like you,” she said, “but I don’t want to get intimate with you”. And she winked at me. Ha ha. I love it when a straight woman is not afraid to flirt with another woman.</div>
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I was nervous about how I would come across in the piece especially because I think tiny houses are a great solution if done right. What I left unsaid inspired me to really think about why I am conducting my tiny house experiment. The crux of it is that we who are fortunate enough not to end up homeless can be housing innovators and show that living simpler is a social justice choice. It is not fair to force the poor to live this experiment while the rest of society sets a cultural standard for a very high standard of living that is so expensive it is no longer a given that the poor will even have housing. It is this social justice component to the tiny house movement that inspires me as well as being able to live affordably myself. Tiny houses are the glamorization of simpler living much like the Tesla glamorized and elevated the electric car as a social status. Living simpler as a social good is the point I decided to make <a href="https://tinyreddesk.blogspot.com/2019/10/tiny-living-festival-speaking-gig.html">in my talk</a> at the Tiny Living Festival the following Saturday.<br />
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<a href="https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2019/10/14/tiny-homes-a-movement-or-a-solution-to-homelessness/">I was very pleased with the piece</a> and it was fun seeing myself on a news program. I liked that the report allowed people to decide for themselves if tiny houses were a viable solution. The footage of people in sleeping bags lying on the street making it obvious that anything would be better even the bunkhouses they showed. So many homeless people have mental illness and drug addiction issues that is compounded by lack of residential services for such people so the situation is more complex than just lack of housing, but housing is key to their recovery as Susie points out. But given the direction we’re going with the wealth gap more people will be made homeless who are not thus challenged. And our capitalistic society seems to be ok with this. Many people have suggested to me that tiny homes are a good solution to homelessness, but they don't usually want "those people" in their neighborhood. They don't even want tiny house homeowners in their neighborhood. Susie didn't talk about this in her piece as an issue and I wasn't quick enough with the soundbites to point it out, but then I decided it was better just to let people think that tiny houses are allowed in backyards. It will normalize them. And I liked how she pointed out that the housing crisis is so bad in the Bay Area you can now rent dirt for what an apartment would cost in more reasonable parts of the country.</div>
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Catherine’s favorite line is when I say I’m a housing rebel at the end. I don’t even remember saying this. But paired with the shot of me going in the door and shutting it with a thunk to punctuate my statement made a nice light hearted ending.</div>
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<br />AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-65455334622188534832019-10-05T18:48:00.001-07:002020-11-14T06:39:24.960-08:00Tiny Living Festival Speaking Gig<style type="text/css">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Through my <a href="http://amandakovattana.blogspot.com/2016/12/">main blog</a> I was discovered by John and Finn founders and operators of the United Tiny House Association. They were bringing their Tiny Living Festival to the Bay Area and were looking for local tiny house dwellers to speak at their two day event. I was happy to and wrote a speech on Friday which I then spent all night memorizing to deliver today at their location in </span>Richmond (in the East Bay north of Berkeley)<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. Three of my organizer pals came to root for me and quite a nice size group assembled to hear me. There was no AV so no powerpoint to show my notes and pictures. So I relied heavily on old fashion storytelling which I preferred. I achieved my goal of keeping the audiences attention and they asked some good questions. My pals said it was a very good talk. </span>The following is the transcript of the talk I gave.</div>
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<span class="s1">“I have been a professional organizer for 20 plus years here in the Bay Area. My work is all about stuff often in huge houses. At the height of my glamorous career I worked for a closet designer. Linda London would fly in from New York and design all the closets and cabinets, the pantry, liquor cabinets and broom closet. This being Silicon Valley the job was for a CEO of a tech company and his wife. It was a brand new house that was just being finished and it was our task to move all the clients clothes into the new closets and cabinets.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">On the first day on the job the construction captain came to us and told us that he had good news and bad news. “The bad news is that the elevator is out of service.” We all groaned thinking of all those armload of clothes. “But the good news is that we could use the elevator around the corner.”<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">One of my colleagues called this the house where the closets had closets. There was the usual walk-in closet off the bedroom with his and hers dressing areas, but then there was the elevator in one wall that went down to the basement where there was a room the size of a California living room and it was lined with closets. Closets for ball gowns, fur coats, hunting gear, one just for suitcases, one for the massage table and the clothes steamer. And in the middle was an island covered with a suede surface. That was for laying out a suitcase to pack for when you went to visit the house in New York, L.A., Palm Springs and possibly Hawaii. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">The final irony of this brand new custom house was that it was a one bedroom house. This couple knew exactly what they wanted in a house. And what they didn’t want were house guests sharing their space. They had a guest house built 100 yards away by the pool.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I tell this story as a tiny house dweller because not only is it such a contrast to tiny living, but we too know what we want. Just like Linda’s clients we want the best use of our space. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I thought a lot about Linda London as I designed the interior of my house. I borrowed her methods. She started by measuring everything the client owned, counted every shirt, every piece of jewelry, all the ties and shoes they had, what kind of bathroom products they used, what was in their pantry. And she built spaces to fit everything.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So I measured everything that was going to go in my house and I fit my shelves and my cabinets to the glass storage containers, my one pot and the wok. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I have a pull out island between my cabinets on which I can put either a cutting board or a table top ironing board and have somewhere to store those. So one unit serves two purposes.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">I didn’t want a fridge because they are not designed to be efficient. You open the door and all the cold air falls out. So I have an expedition grade cooler and I built a second bench that slides over it. Again I am using this space twice. I make ice for it in a medium size freezer I keep outside of the tiny house.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And yes I do have lots of books. I have 20 feet of books. And I built 16 feet of shelving for them plus installing <a href="https://www.umbra.com/conceal-shelf/">floating wall shelves</a>, which took a lot of tine and effort so motivated me to give up more books. But if you really love something you can make space for it. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">When you’re designing your tiny house it becomes obvious that you only have space for what you use and I mean everyday or at least every few weeks. One pot, one pan, a couple of mugs, just the dishes you use, smaller appliances, etc. A lot of what you owned you won’t be able to use in the tiny house. And there’s really no room for it might be useful one day.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">Still t</span><span class="s1">he best tip I got from a tiny house owner was that you can fit quite a lot in so don’t be too drastic about throw</span><span class="s2">ing</span><span class="s1"> it all out. Unless you want to. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">I had it easy when I moved into my tiny house I just left everything I didn’t need at my ex’s house. And I’m still downsizing my hoard 3 years later. I just sold the Olivetti typewriter last week and my old 35 mm Nikon camera earlier this year. I started in 2008 selling off the family heirlooms</span></div>
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<span class="s1">So if something is worth any money at all sell it and if you can’t take comfort in the fact that no one wants the heirloom china, the furniture (unless it’s mid-century modern), hardback coffee table books or the silver plated stuff, so there’s no need for you to hang onto it either. If you can’t sell it give it away. I have seen silver plated trays in the metal bin at the recycling center. It’s the copper underneath the plating that has value.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">In the end it will all have to be given away. The only difference is if you are alive to do it or not. And it’s better if you’re alive because you know the most about these items and how best to give it away. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">People pay me good money (up to $100 an hour) to coach them through the process of letting go because this isn’t an easy process. Stuff brings up some very emotional feelings of loss and regret. It requires making many many decisions and decisions are tiring. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">To help with this process make rules like if it’s broken, doesn’t fit, hasn’t been used in two year toss it. Sort by category. Sort room by room, drawer by drawer. Weed out a third of any given collection. Then a third more. Once you take stuff out of its home and put it in the giveaway area you will find that you are already letting it go. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">You have probably heard of the Marie Kondo method. Her Netflix show and her book <i>The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up</i>. I’ve heard of people being able to follow her method. One tiny house couple on youtube did their downsizing in four days with her method. But they were young and didn’t own a lifetime of stuff. Her method is very overwhelming and exhausting. What she asks you to do is pull out everything and touch all of it asking if each item brings you joy. </span></div>
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<span class="s1">It doesn’t work for the clients I work with because everything brings them joy; they get an emotional charge from everything they own. In fact we advise the opposite to the Konmari method to not touch an item, especially clothing. So have a friend hold up the item as you make your decision. Take advantage of this social component of organizing. Do it with your partner, a friend or several friends who’ll keep you on track.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Downsizing quickly will give you the advantage of momentum. If slowly you can take time to sell things, have more time to take things to the right person or place. And you can always keep moving stuff out.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">I didn’t grow up thinking that I would be living in a tiny house. I more had in mind that I’d live in a house like my great grandfather had in Bangkok. He lived in a three floor mansion with marble floors filled with dark furniture with mother-of-pearl inlay. He had rooms for each of his nine wives and all of his children. Off the kitchen were rooms for the staff. I loved the community of it. I liked the idea of the nine wives too. I grew up in Bangkok in an extended family compound that my grandmother had. She built herself the big house with two stories, but there was room for everyone.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">We each had a room. Me and my parents were in our own smaller house. My three aunts, the maids, chauffeur and gardener all had their own rooms at my grandmother’s house. It was great fun for a child to be able to visit all these people and be in so many different spaces. We all had what we needed and we all lived quite simply. My grandmother had just a mattress that was rolled out every night under a mosquito net.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Then my parents got jobs in the U.S and we came here to the Bay Area to live the nuclear family experience. It was very different for me. I saw a card once that said “one nuclear family can ruin your whole life”. That was my life at ten years old coming here. But I made the best of it.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">And over the years I watched as the houses got bigger and bigger. And then I heard that teachers and fireman could no longer afford to live here. And my friends and I barely managed to stay sharing rooms in houses. And when I became an organizer and was working in these houses I saw that our lives had become mostly about things and not so much about people.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>The contrast of it brought to mind a bumper sticker I remember from a few decades back </span><span class="s3">—</span><span class="s1"> Live Simply So That Others May Simply Live.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Tiny House living is not the anorexia of consumerism. It is an adjustment, a discipline of priorities. A way to be more mindful of how much consumerism has taken over our lives. But you don’t have to live in a tiny house to do it. And it’s never too early to start downsizing.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">That’s my introduction. And now we can go onto questions.”</span></div>
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<span class="s1">The following were questions that people asked that gave me a chance to offer more tips.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="s1">Where do you sell things? Craigslist, e-bay, Nextdoor</span></div>
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<span class="s1">What to do with old coins? Coin dealers, e-bay.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">Where do you give away things? Freecycle, Nextdoor, on the sidewalk, but only in San Francisco to discourage hoarding. Also Goodwill and other charities.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">My mother left me her paintings. I don’t have room for them, but I want them to go where they’ll be appreciated. Do you have any suggestions? I didn’t.</span></div>
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<span class="s1">What about garage sales? Yes go for it. Takes a lot of prep, but can get rid of all kinds of little things.</span></div>
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AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-13217728031241017722019-08-21T16:55:00.002-07:002019-08-21T16:56:10.239-07:00Video Interview Captures My Tiny House Story<br />
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Early on in my tiny house life I was interviewed by a pair of traveling tiny house dwellers who make documentary films about other tiny houses and their creators under the name <a href="https://tinyhouseexpedition.com/">Tiny House Expedition</a>. So naturally they could relate to my tiny house life better than any previous interviewer and were better able to capture the nuances of my build and appreciate the innovations I had included. </div>
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Christian and Alexis were such a pleasure to talk to that they brought out the best in me as I cracked jokes and showed off my house. They made me sound so charming and articulate I was immensely pleased. They also have high quality production values and photography plus they have a large audience. It took them a couple of years to edit and release it to their viewing public so I've built the table since and changed some things on the desk, but it's pretty accurate. My rent however is now $700 plus utilities which is more the going rate in this area. They also told me they would include me in a longer video they are making. In the context of their other tiny house interviews mine is one of the smallest and has an Asian sensibility regarding the bathroom.</div>
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbESzDk0FaU&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3PRzgIoNwTl8w0KO6tM6X8sDrhVaQfdwUsyLQOXoccjTxkoXkLBqQhZog">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbESzDk0FaU&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3PRzgIoNwTl8w0KO6tM6X8sDrhVaQfdwUsyLQOXoccjTxkoXkLBqQhZog</a></div>
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Nearly 24,000 views since they posted it mid July. Lots of people left some lovely comments too.</div>
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They also posted a nice picture of me to their Instagram account. <span style="font-family: , , "segoe ui" , "roboto" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">https://www.instagram.com/p/B0HlLSDhFt7/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link</span></div>
AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-17600630543490775592019-08-21T15:57:00.001-07:002019-08-21T18:14:13.778-07:00Heating Options And UpgradesThe tiny house is so well insulated that it is 10° warmer inside in the winter and cooler in the summer. When outside temperatures hover near freezing I do need additional heating. I tried various electric heaters that were under 1500 watts. I only kept one tiny one for the loft that is only 200 watts. I find that the ones with fans feel too cool. And the large disk one took up too much space.<br />
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My favorite heater is the flower pot heater so popular on youtube. I started buying $100 worth of votive candles by the case. I would burn 4 or 5 in each flower pot heater in glass votive candle holders. This was better than the tea lights which leave you with a pile of aluminum shells.<br />
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There was still a lot of candle wax debris and some candles that wouldn't stay lit so I decided to use up the leftover wax by making my own candles in a solar oven or at low heat in my toaster oven. I used jars and cut up and assembled wicks for them. The jar candles were better than the votive candles so I kept them going through the winter. All the leftover candles and wax that came my way was used in the process.<br />
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The heater is made using three flower pots of graduating size nestled inside each other and bolted together using lots of washers to add to the heat sink. I set it over the candles on two bricks which are in turn set on a ceramic floor tile. There is a warning on youtube about these heaters because when the tea lights are too close together they can ignite the wax altogether. But when the candles are inside a glass with the wick below the top of the glass then it is safest. I more found that they were apt to go out rather than flame up. The radiant heat and the candlelight is very pleasant to keep the room warm, but not so good for heating up a very cold room.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGe2gkJSyCjn_KPQozr083-FJdFQ4oYnlxfoLD1Sad6ndkptlPRT1o_V07U5nPgW9a8D_2YKGPs8fuOS8pyD7_bveQvQckPFtIKfZjhX3tHHmDlpRucxNLMS8oTVar_hcVT18Oxkd1vaw/s1600/Little+Buddy+Heater.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGe2gkJSyCjn_KPQozr083-FJdFQ4oYnlxfoLD1Sad6ndkptlPRT1o_V07U5nPgW9a8D_2YKGPs8fuOS8pyD7_bveQvQckPFtIKfZjhX3tHHmDlpRucxNLMS8oTVar_hcVT18Oxkd1vaw/s320/Little+Buddy+Heater.jpg" width="240" /></a>That's when I fire up my Little Buddy propane heater. These heaters are very efficient at heating up such a tiny space so I only have to have it on for about 10 minutes at a time. Some worry about the air quality of using such a heater, but I have had no problem with this. The drain in the shower pan allows airflow into the house too. The heater uses a one gallon canister of propane. I didn't want to keep buying the disposable kind so I tried to refill them with a $10 device. I was able to refill them, but one of them leaked immediately and there was no way to stop it from leaking. No amount of tape or glue. The gas always found its way out until I took it to hazardous waste drop-off.<br />
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So then I upgraded to a Flame King refillable canister and refill kit for just under $50 plus an extra canister ($16). Both sold on e-bay. Once I learned to refill the canister and was confident that it would not leak I had a source of free heat from all the half empty 5 gallon propane bottles people want to get rid of when they are moving. A refillable canister lasts about 3 nights. A bit longer than the disposable store bought canisters. And a win win for me and my clients who would otherwise have to do a hazardous waste drop off. I also have a back up stove that uses the one gallon canisters which I did use once when I ran out of the canisters for my stove in a drawer. I also have a stove that uses the 5 gallon bottles, but I've not yet had occasion to fire up that puppy and keep it offsite at another house. Such a stove would be useful for a household with an electric range so I've kept it. Just in case.<br />
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AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-10501114673877828022018-12-02T18:03:00.000-08:002019-01-02T18:06:37.469-08:00Guest AccommodationsOver the Thanksgiving break my landlady's brother came to stay and as there was no room in her two bedroom house which she shares with her boyfriend, she planned on having him sleep in a tent in the backyard and asked me if he could use my toilet should the one in the house be occupied. I didn't want anyone I didn't know using my house let alone a man using my toilet (since it is strictly a sit down toilet) so I offered to set him up with my guest accommodations in my Springbar cabana tent. It was never actually used.<br />
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And to sweeten the deal I offered to put up my largest tent and furnish it with my vintage cot and tent cot sans tent. One for sleeping on and one as a suitcase stand and bedside table. The best place to put the tent was under the arbor next to the tiny house. So it was very much like having a house guest since I could hear him snoring from my porch.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDnqaac-mBaJHrGpAPnV6b-LLLG4TEnFGyOrTf4iTUvzk4ye5zihlxHEKsCU8mNO4AS_ymJNksOjVuop9ftx73Ap6mWJ8jcEvwqS6wW1bM_EGm9nd4O25bQJvLjKxN0CG-qFsXPQdZHl0/s1600/Big+Tent+At+Tiny+House.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDnqaac-mBaJHrGpAPnV6b-LLLG4TEnFGyOrTf4iTUvzk4ye5zihlxHEKsCU8mNO4AS_ymJNksOjVuop9ftx73Ap6mWJ8jcEvwqS6wW1bM_EGm9nd4O25bQJvLjKxN0CG-qFsXPQdZHl0/s320/Big+Tent+At+Tiny+House.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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He turned out to be a very nice guy and I did invite him in for a tour of the tiny house and we ended up having quite a long chat while standing up in what was essentially my kitchen. He himself was thinking of downsizing to a tiny house back east where he lives in upstate New York.<br />
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Back dated to keep the timeline. Actually written 1/2/2019AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-89831624696152113312018-09-07T08:43:00.000-07:002019-10-02T18:15:54.308-07:00Outdoor Expansion And A Party<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigb5UDcpIq8CHzjgsaLaYJ9hecXqNISUyL1RCjMIeCddQdIYbeQx5bLbltbrVLnTN_LLfnwsMattHxzRx7LvrXlal3swwozTzQt3OJpZCqakg-2r7ZEAo4tOnNQJw3w_bc1Y0jVCg6jG0/s1600/Monday+Writer%2527s+At+Table.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigb5UDcpIq8CHzjgsaLaYJ9hecXqNISUyL1RCjMIeCddQdIYbeQx5bLbltbrVLnTN_LLfnwsMattHxzRx7LvrXlal3swwozTzQt3OJpZCqakg-2r7ZEAo4tOnNQJw3w_bc1Y0jVCg6jG0/s320/Monday+Writer%2527s+At+Table.jpg" width="320" /></a>I promised my writer's group that I would have a house warming party two years ago when I told them of my tiny house adventures. They were all very intrigued so when I met up with one of the members for a hike over the summer she encouraged me to do it and said she would help. The group had disbanded several years ago and we hadn't had a reunion in some time so before the summer slipped away we had our party. The prep for it was nearly as intense as my original work on the interior and took just as much brain busting for the space planning.<br />
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The only way to seat six people was to build an outdoor table, but the central space was taken up by two kiwi trees. They were too close together to permit a table top to be placed between them, but eventually I found a way.<br />
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I got my folding work bench out of storage and it just fit between the trees. From there I could build a table top around the trees using what wood I had on hand.<br />
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It was largely a matter of fitting a board on the workbench that would then support the "leaves" of the table. I also happened to have a framed board given away by an artist that fit perfectly in the remaining space between the trees.<br />
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For a table cloth I laid down two pieces cut from a canvas drop cloth we bought to cover the furniture once when the dogs were still chewing on things.<br />
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As a finishing touch I hung a tapestry of a pastoral scene that I thought was very tongue in cheek. A client off loaded it to me.<br />
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Then I bumped out one of my fence pieces and put one of my benches outside for seating.<br />
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I also felt the need to have a washing up station to do the dishes afterwards which would be the perfect opportunity to use the fish cleaning table I got off e-bay to use with my solar hot water unit and to use as a laundry table should I ever feel compelled to do off grid laundry.<br />
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This is a folding table with integrated sink. It comes with a detachable faucet that connects up with a hose. I used the top of my storage box as a dish drain. The faucet is the selling point of this unit as it allows for water to be turned on and off at the point of use.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ZMKUXaLxJjjU9gvH2sXxwPBfn10ipcTbuEBJ6XQiI2GQUuCAr1ZKjfAGzcWEgqQz1BL8mEFsw2PTdX3W_HTRTRVN0gcPDJDcczmwr-uKCedgL5U9ZJLZqFJkM_-38NZNiDolzpRfGY4/s1600/Solar+%2526+Sink+II.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7ZMKUXaLxJjjU9gvH2sXxwPBfn10ipcTbuEBJ6XQiI2GQUuCAr1ZKjfAGzcWEgqQz1BL8mEFsw2PTdX3W_HTRTRVN0gcPDJDcczmwr-uKCedgL5U9ZJLZqFJkM_-38NZNiDolzpRfGY4/s320/Solar+%2526+Sink+II.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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I hooked up my homemade solar hot water heater to the faucet, but there was not enough sun to keep it warm throughout the day. This was a project I had been meaning to do because it meant cutting a hose in half and finding fittings to connect it to the black irrigation hose. I did manage it, but later in the summer the fittings popped off.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDDMrLxUpY5Z48nESNfyV6X2kKqMxMMDa7Gsi2ZlTl7CQDrZkJkBcst4G4mHgEG6WsDeq50WLZNxOmyavq-L9l1QpNKf_LmwQYv-BrtgZCOuDzTeLb8x1b736uKiP-2Y0s7fcG9TXkBvs/s1600/Peace+Flag+Pipe+Stand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; display: inline !important; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDDMrLxUpY5Z48nESNfyV6X2kKqMxMMDa7Gsi2ZlTl7CQDrZkJkBcst4G4mHgEG6WsDeq50WLZNxOmyavq-L9l1QpNKf_LmwQYv-BrtgZCOuDzTeLb8x1b736uKiP-2Y0s7fcG9TXkBvs/s320/Peace+Flag+Pipe+Stand.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />
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And finally I provided guest facilities behind a privacy curtain made from bent conduit pipe that I stuck into a pot of dirt.</div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">The commode I borrowed from my mum from when she broke her ankle. I modified it with a $50 urine funnel I ordered from England off e-bay and never used.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">Because the urine separator would only fit metric fittings it was near impossible to find a hose that would fit it. Finally I found a funnel that would do. In fact it perfectly </span><span style="text-align: center;">connected into the gasoline container I had.</span><span style="text-align: center;"> </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">Behind the separator I put a waste basket partially filled with straw for a poop bucket. </span></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">Two of my guests used the toilet with good humor. It actually would have been fine for them to use my toilet inside, but this made things less complicated with the kitchen being in use.</span></div>
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<span style="text-align: center;">The weather was still just warm enough. Everyone brought beverages, salads et al and I made fried chicken. I got them all inside for a tour and they could see that I had indeed managed to fit my whole life into this tiny house. At least my writing life. They loved the hammock where I do my serious writing. Two of the members had moved into retirement homes. One commented that she thought her apartment was small, but now she could feel it was spacious by comparison. And that was one of the messages I wanted to impart. Here is our group photo taken with my camera on a tripod attached to the trellis.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times";">(This post has been backdated to keep a record of the timeline. Actual date of writing is 12/24/18).</span><br />
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AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-48762753675679987692018-09-02T07:20:00.000-07:002018-12-24T14:30:17.669-08:00Greywater Filter Upgrade<span style="font-family: "times";">The water draining from my shower pan into <a href="https://tinyreddesk.blogspot.com/2017/08/waste-water-chores-underbelly-of-my-tiny.html">the 11 gallon container that rolled under</a> the house had to be drained and distributed once a week. This water I would use to irrigate the garden. When I mentioned my system to my permaculture group it was pointed out to me that grey water that sits in a tank for more than 24 hours becomes classified as black water because of the growth of bacteria past that time period. I did not know this. I would more describe it as brown and the smell was minimal unless mixed with urine, then it could amplify the smell of urine to noticeable detection. Not optimum in a dense suburban neighborhood. </span><br />
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Once my attention was drawn to this factor I cut pipe to attach to the drain and had the water directed to the bare ground away from the cement pad directly below the drain. During the dry summer months the ants crawled into the pipe and into my house. They had not crawled in so easily before because the drainpipe did not touch the ground outside and there was a sizable gap between pipe and the 11 gallon container on wheels. I thought to have the pipe disconnected and the water fall onto a receptacle. I began to research bio filters on Pinterest and once I grasped the concept I could design one to fit my situation.</div>
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A bio filter allows water to fall onto its surface much like rain. A layer of sand filters the water of organic matter. But it can't just be all sand because the sand would drain out too. Plus it would take a long time for water to filter through so much sand. So a layer of small pebbles supports the sand and under that a layer of larger pebbles supports that. I just needed the right size container to fit under the house on a platform that would be raised high enough to allow drainage through the pipe.<br />
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I found a 5 gallon plastic storage box with a lid that was recessed. This served to hold water rather than shed it. Then I drilled holes at all the intersections of the grid pattern. Later I realized the holes were too big and too far apart to simulate rain so I drilled many more smaller ones.</div>
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I also had to drill a large hole in the bottom of the box and find a pipe fitting to connect the drainage pipe to the box so it would be water tight. There are not many options here because the connection has to make contact with the walls of the box on both sides. I eventually found such a fitting in the electrical department for making water tight outdoor connections between electrical boxes in commercial buildings.</div>
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The next step was to add my layers of large pebbles. </div>
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Then small pebbles.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEI0TEpYPZz0n_PNiDkL1ynqpfZDJzU6q451lbfKdpEja6mjKterPgyZYToUZrnv4nUcJ6dNReyZB4VDBrSdAFiaN03Zgl4YTaEKfyUcI6_hVOly9G-1geXGRbODDcJ8xVOnROe13XMYQ/s1600/Filter+Small+Pebbles.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEI0TEpYPZz0n_PNiDkL1ynqpfZDJzU6q451lbfKdpEja6mjKterPgyZYToUZrnv4nUcJ6dNReyZB4VDBrSdAFiaN03Zgl4YTaEKfyUcI6_hVOly9G-1geXGRbODDcJ8xVOnROe13XMYQ/s320/Filter+Small+Pebbles.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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And finally the layer of sand.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxk65jhT5TKaExhXXB64WdwYxNwo_eOpULJIrk4jAFJizNMD5oEt3ilKWf4A86QWm70ST22jsp03TQsLSlC7VStSDcUwnh1np4JZQDV7D_pTiu6dULQqdRgar0puECbon-ksvP2sbwcUk/s1600/Filter+Sand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxk65jhT5TKaExhXXB64WdwYxNwo_eOpULJIrk4jAFJizNMD5oEt3ilKWf4A86QWm70ST22jsp03TQsLSlC7VStSDcUwnh1np4JZQDV7D_pTiu6dULQqdRgar0puECbon-ksvP2sbwcUk/s320/Filter+Sand.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Once the filter is in use a layer of microbes grows over the sand and eats the organic matter so the theory goes.</div>
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Here is the filter in place under the house. I happened to have a wooden platform on wheels from another project to put it on. I then placed a plastic scrub sponge under one end to give it a little drainage elevation.</div>
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It appears to work perfectly. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyRtdyNNtp7_H8WtvbPiVTtpByx648_HXYng5IM_ggl52cLL2auckS50AJTlCG7MB-BA5CKdeOrrmKZJNMWGO5NvzfZdKtwhso3XborDAVARV901Sfd-AZFxSkwcViT3BIkB8RoyKZxtI/s1600/Waste+Water+Filter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyRtdyNNtp7_H8WtvbPiVTtpByx648_HXYng5IM_ggl52cLL2auckS50AJTlCG7MB-BA5CKdeOrrmKZJNMWGO5NvzfZdKtwhso3XborDAVARV901Sfd-AZFxSkwcViT3BIkB8RoyKZxtI/s320/Waste+Water+Filter.jpg" width="180" /></a>To assist with screening cooking fat (and large bits of food) I had already made a filter of straw that sits in the drain pan inside the house. I used an old collapsible water tote I had for camping. I cut the top of it to make a hatch for putting in the straw. I also directed the drain hose from the sink into it. The filter is shown here with the spout visible. This straw is replaced every week or so and used in the garden as mulch. The filter also serves as a compost bucket so I no longer needed the one I was using. I found that the spout would clog up way too often so I removed it and eventually replaced it with a rubber funnel (actually a<a href="https://divacup.com/"> diva cup</a> I no longer used, heh).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf0HtB3XPkRZthUW6VG-onfwt-AVTSDPrLNMwhdSUTodBhu8xRpELGc0juKdt108T3sYedsA8SbPXyEpvmYlD9Ra_0VNgcfzUCh9Cn-rhcXLJjN8fl4RWLjoXUn3bG-6eiSISvbcuc7Cw/s1600/Fat+Filter+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf0HtB3XPkRZthUW6VG-onfwt-AVTSDPrLNMwhdSUTodBhu8xRpELGc0juKdt108T3sYedsA8SbPXyEpvmYlD9Ra_0VNgcfzUCh9Cn-rhcXLJjN8fl4RWLjoXUn3bG-6eiSISvbcuc7Cw/s320/Fat+Filter+Cover.jpg" width="320" /></a><br />
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For a more finished look I made a cover from some silver vinyl to go over the filter.<br />
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The whole system took a lot of problem solving to work out all the details and to think of what I could use for each part of it. If there was more room under the house the straw part of it might be preferable outside, but I don't mind it inside once I had a cover for it. It makes it easy to change the straw plus being a compost bucket. </div>
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The best thing about this upgrade was that I no longer had the considerable weekly chore of dragging out the 11 gallon tank and draining water into buckets to distribute. Such a drainage tank would be more useful if I were traveling with the tiny house which is unlikely so the tank is in storage and I would be happy to part with it if there was someone who could use it.</div>
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(This post has been backdated to keep a record of the timeline. Actual date of writing is 12/23/18).</div>
AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-90185199610661863692018-01-25T05:38:00.000-08:002018-12-23T07:19:56.685-08:00Talking Tiny In ThailandThe first thing I realized about giving a talk about tiny houses in Thai was that there is no word for trailer. They are simply not widely used in Thailand. If you want to haul something you have an array of trucks to choose from, but none of them are equipped to pull a trailer. An expat living in Thailand told me that if you want one say for a boat you have to have it custom built.<br />
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The occasion of this talk was a presentation I offered to give at the <a href="https://amandakovattana.blogspot.com/2018/06/return-to-pun-pun.html">women's adobe building workshop </a>I attend annually in Northern Thailand. And as the building instruction was given in both Thai and English to accommodate the Thai women attending as well as our mud hut sisters from Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, Europe, Australia and North America I opted to give my talk in both Thai and English rather than have it translated by one of the instructors. This also served to keep my talk short I explained since my Thai was not as proficient as my English. Luckily I had plenty of pictures to use in my power point to show what I couldn't manage to describe. But no picture of a trailer so in the end I called the tiny house a car house. A house built with wheels like a vehicle.<br />
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To give my story context I opened the talk by showing pictures of houses in the Bay Area and talking about how very expensive they were, all of them a million dollars or more. And how much rents were. So post divorce I knew I could not find housing in my budget so had opted to buy a tiny house on wheels. The picture of said tiny house evoked a round of "aww" at how cute it was. Then I explained how I needed a place to build the interior and had had to ask my stepmother, who was living in the house of my deceased father, if I could bring it to what was now her house to work on it. In my Thai translation this part of the story took up a lot of space and I later realized I was telling my story of how a high born Thai person such as I was managed to become nearly homeless, but by virtue of my building skills had averted such an outcome. The fee for the other Thai women for the course was half what it was for foreigners. (Some had their fee waived altogether.) This allowed for women of all classes to attend including a woman from a hilltribe village and a lesbian couple from Northeastern Thailand. Two cousins living in Bangkok had family land they wanted to turn into a permaculture food forest and a third had been offered land to farm that belonged to a friend. They were curious as to why I kept repeating this course. The concept of finding one's tribe was not a quest for them as it was for me. Thai people are much more rooted in family and childhood friends.<br />
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They were also accustomed to living in small houses or living communally so the experience of moving into a tiny house was not nearly as compelling a story as it is for Americans. In fact I didn't even call it a "tiny" house. But to show the size of it I arranged the tables in the hall to outline the floor space. This also gave the presentation a special stage set. Nor was the off-grid aspect of it unusual. Because of the many street food vendors Thai people are very familiar with using chest freezers for keeping food cool as I do.<br />
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But most of the country now has flush toilets and septic systems so everybody was interested in the off grid composting toilet aspect of tiny house living. And as builders of houses made from mud and straw they were interested in the details. We were after all staying on a farm commune that was off grid where the flush toilets drained into a pit where the contents sat composting. And the toilet we used at the building site was just a board laid across a pit. So no one was squeamish about a homemade system. Nor was the concept of Bokashi composting new to them. In fact one of the families that lived on the farm was so enamored of the technique that they had named their daughter Bokashi. Still not even the instructors of the workshop had used Bokashi composting to dispose of poop. And this had prompted me to offer to make my presentation in the first place.<br />
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I also wanted them to know how hard it was to find a place to park the "car house" and how draconian the laws are in the states about housing size. I gave lots of information about how much things cost too since that is a universal measurement especially in Asia. Best of all my presentation made them all laugh throughout because I used a lot of pantomime to make up for my lack of words. And there are some words in Thai that really convey a sense of comfort and ease that resonated with my Thai audience, while my Western audience marveled at the minimalist aspects of it. It was one of the most fun presentations I've given.<br />
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(This post has been backdated to keep a record of the timeline. Actual date of writing is 12/23/18).<br />
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<br />AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-19002604283876681852018-01-02T19:42:00.000-08:002018-01-03T06:39:57.149-08:00Tiny House Living One Year Later<div class="p1">
<span class="s1">I have now been living in my tiny house full time for a year (and two months). When I moved in I was uncertain if this home would work out in the long run. </span><span class="s2">I had never lived alone before. At f first I had been afraid of being alone. It went against my upbringing to live out of community, outside of family. I felt loneliness when I returned to my tiny place. I would joke that I came home to an empty house, but it was so tiny the moment I got inside it it wasn't empty anymore. </span></div>
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<span class="s2">The cultural ideal of being in partnership was still strong in my mind so when </span>a new love who had reintroduced herself from my past engaged my heart<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> I willingly committed myself. Love is a potent incentive to reorganize and reshuffle one’s life and the mental exercise of envisioning what was possible forces you to consider every possibility.</span></div>
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<span class="s3">Our love was such that we felt compelled to explore how we might make a life together, but soon the challenges of our geographical separation stymied us. We toyed with the idea of shipping the tiny house to Hawaii where she lived and where I could continue my business, but I soon had misgivings. It had taken me 20 years to build my extensive social network here in the Bay Area and I was not ready to give it up only to start again in a strange place. I also knew instinctively it would just increase my loneliness to rely on a single person as my sole emotional support. On my own turf my tiny house was obviously too tiny for two and the housing crisis here in the Bay Area was just as financially impossible. The urgency of being now in midlife with no time to waste seemed to put a deadline on us. Within nine months of our correspondence she was telling me she didn't think we were meant to be romantic partners after all.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">I was crushed, but enough had been revealed to give me a new perspective. It was not I who had been in such a hurry. I didn't need to make a new life. I already had one. I thought I wanted a life with a partner, but I'd done that already. There was a reason I had built the tiny house with just me in mind. It was the only vision I had ever built for myself. I had too often just fit myself into someone else’s vision.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">Part of my journey into tiny house living was to come to terms with what I could make sustainable given the resources I had. And this goal had brought me to a very different way of living. One so different from the norm of flush toilets, showers, upright refrigerators and real closets that people did not quite get that anyone would entertain the idea of living without these amenities. This was a huge assumption on their part. I had given up these luxuries in order to embrace a more radical way of life. One that had long been in my mind as a way to change a centralized economic system that all our lives revolved around particularly the waste and excess of it.</span></div>
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<span class="s3">And now that I had manifested this life, the tiny house had become a retreat from all things that were not me. Inside it I was me in everything I did from loading ice into my cooler, to lighting the candles of my flower pot heater, to the maintenance demands of my composting toilet system (which my new love had helped me finesse as described in a previous post). This was a lifestyle that wouldn't suit most Americans. And I did not need to be rescued from it. I wanted to explore it further as my personal experiment in minimalism. Not that I was a purist. In fact tiny house living was often about how I could spend more time in other people’s houses.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">It was an integral part of my physical comfort to be able to go to my ex’s house to take a shower, do laundry or some sewing and any other project that required space. (In return I </span>walked our dogs while she was at work and fixed things.) <span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Some might think this was cheating in terms of being self sufficient, but tiny house living isn’t necessarily about being completely self contained. It was more about seeing what I could do in community. I had maintained a friendship with my ex to the point that we could have dinner once or twice a week and watch <i>The Crown</i> on her large screen TV. I cooked casseroles that I could portion off and freeze to heat up in my toaster oven on other nights. I joined a permaculture discussion group that met once a week and visited friends for dinner too so more could enjoy my company and facility for discussion. </span></div>
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<span class="s2">Once I realized that living alone didn’t mean being alone all the time my community became richer and more diverse. As a single person my life was much more flexible and accommodating to whatever opportunities might crop up week to week. And when I travelled alone I was more aware of where I was and enjoyed the camaraderie of other solo travelers. I began to feel liberated from the dominant paradigm. Taking care of others in a partnership in the domestic sense had grounded me and made me feel useful. But I had to use my mind and my projects to carve out a space for myself.</span></div>
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<span class="s2">Now not only could I take care of my original household I could extend my care to my clients or friends as needed. And having a tiny place to retreat to meant I didn’t have to work so hard to maintain my own perspective and peace of mind away from the anxieties of a partner. </span><br />
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent;">I turned to books for companionship filling my mind with new knowledge and the storytelling of erudite writers. In this cocoon like existence I felt myself expanding further off the mainstream, questioning everything, wondering if all I had been taught was a flawed compromise if not outright wrong and needing to be reinvented from the ground up. I felt on the cusp of adventure with these new eyes.</span><span class="Apple-converted-space" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: transparent;"> </span></div>
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<span class="s2">As for my first year in my tiny house, having worked out the bugs both metaphorically and literally after an infestation of fruit flies, I could turn to another aspect of my tiny life—gardening.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-13916303143314687452017-09-07T22:33:00.000-07:002017-09-08T21:50:50.385-07:00Good Book On The Disposal of Human Waste<i>Given the role that tiny houses are playing in leap frogging the old flush toilet/sewer system this book is filled with details worthy of a tiny house dweller since inevitably we will have many a conversation about how our composting toilet works. Plus it's a great read. I love accompanying a journalist in search of answers. Here I have noted my favorite takeaways from The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World Of Human Waste And Why It Matters.</i><br />
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Rose George, a British writer after my own heart, extensively explores the unmentionable topic of the disposal of human excrement. This sends her on a worldwide journey investigating toilets and sewage treatment or lack thereof. Her journey begins in the London sewers with the flushers—crews of professionals who maintain these underground pipes. The enemy of the flushers is restaurant fat. Massive amounts that stinks more than poo and is hard to remove. She does a similar tour in New York. Here it is confirmed that New York sewers (and likely the cities of many a reader) are designed to discharge raw sewage into the nearest waterway when overwhelmed by rain. This happens about once a week in New York.<br />
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At the opposite end of the system sits the throne toilet unchanged for decades until the Japanese took it to new heights of function by making this unmentionable household feature marketable for multiple upgrades–a marketing feat in this story. Japanese toilets famously can adapt to their owners habits and monitor their health while cleansing them with warm jets of water and heated air to dry them. I’m seeing them in the restrooms of high end shopping malls in Bangkok now.<br />
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But most fascinating of all is the human story. No serious book about toilets would be complete without addressing those who have none. For this we must visit the rural villages of India and Bangladesh and learn that just imposing toilets from on high does nothing to dissuade people from open defecation. Authorities armed with facts on the dangers of feces will not force sanitation to become a priority for poor people. It takes a skillful engagement of the villagers to realize for themselves that they want toilets. The slow way is to bribe with offers of running water and wash rooms if an investment is made in a latrine. The most effective way is to engage their disgust. Theirn lies a story in itself.<br />
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Next up is China for its investment in biogas digesters, a decentralized in-home system that makes methane for cooking and nutrients to put back into the soil. China has a long history of using night soil on fields and thus insuring the fertility of their fields for centuries. Lots of possibilities for innovation here.<br />
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She also includes a slight diversion to tell the story of a pair of inventors on two continents creating a hand pump for collecting privy contents by motorbike. A possible business opportunity in Tanzania.<br />
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And on our side of the planet we must also learn about hazardous sludge being used on fields. And no it is not the processed shit itself that is the biggest problem; it is the load of industrial chemicals added to the wastewater from every imaginable industry from chemical production to morgues that make up 25% of our sewage stream. Talk about the wrongful use of the commons. So many different chemicals that it is impossible to prove that such sludge is causing dramatic health problems for nearby residents. Dumping sludge at sea and in landfills also done and not desirable. By now it becomes clear to the reader that so much is wrong with using clean water as a vehicle for waste which then must be cleaned again. And that many, especially those who source their water from rivers, are drinking that water over and over again. <br />
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Back in China we are offered a possible future in a rural village where a urine separating composting system is being tested. Invented by the Norwegians, the Eco-san has a urine separator so the urine is processed separately making the solids easier to compost on site for use in the fields. In the city such compost could be put out for collection along with all our other recyclables. Such would be my ideal vision.<br />
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What makes this book such an interesting read is all the colorful characters she meets that have taken up the politically unpopular cause of sanitation plus the complex psychological issues of attempting to change human behavior. How culture and social protocol impacts behavior i.e. how the caste system of India created a population of people, the untouchables, who accept being covered with fecal matter as their lot in life. And to add another layer of complexity on the government and world aid level, how sanitation is discussed and addressed as the poor cousin to the much more sexy issue of clean water. How the connection between clean water and the contamination of water by people lacking sanitation is so rarely addressed as one and the same thing.<br />
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I am grateful to Rose George for cramming so much interesting detail and stories into this journey and resisting the urge to pass judgement or rant. She has also apprised me of the levels of denial humans are capable of if they don’t want to admit that something unpleasant is going on. And what I already knew to be the cultural dominance of the flush toilet as the pinnacle of human sanitation she makes clear is so not sustainable that the developing world needs to leapfrog this dinosaur whose infrastructure is now crumbling. There is a glimmer of economic hope in the passing mention of the rising price of nitrogen and phosphorus the two main elements of urine. So I’m thinking surely there would be a business opportunity to collect human urine from the source. A stimulating book of a reality humans have created and not fully addressed.AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-85592595093177597602017-08-13T08:01:00.003-07:002020-02-18T15:31:45.406-08:00The Toilet Report And Bokashi Upgrade Game Changer<div class="p1">
People’s reaction to my DIY toilet is out of fear for their nose. So sure are they that their sensibilities will not be able to handle it that they rarely ask me how I go about disposing of my own waste. Less you think my nose is impaired I will start by saying that if I make a tuna fish sandwich I cannot sit in my tiny house for long before the smell of tuna oil drives me to put the empty can outside. So we can start with this shared sensibility as a benchmark. <span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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The <a href="http://www.sun-mar.com/prod_flush_cent2.html">gold standard of composting toilets</a> allows your poop to fall into a chamber under the floor where the user can forget about their deposits for an entire year. At which point the poop is shoveled out from a trap door outside the house as close to compost as your delicate nose might require. The unit is vented with a fan that draws fumes away from the toilet inside the house and has a heater to bolster the composting process (or rather the dehydration process). The price of such a system is $2000. As you can imagine the elitism of this price is more offensive to me than any odor. It was so staggering that in response to the tiny house spokes person offering this information I felt compelled to post a picture of my $2 solution—a frisbee lined with a square of newspaper.</div>
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<b>My DIY Toilet</b></div>
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Ok let me back up a bit so to speak. Before I got my tiny house I had already made and used my own toilet on a week long urban camping trip. My design though technically a porta potty and not the more glamorous sounding composting toilet does incorporate the most advanced technology of separating the urine into its own chamber. This I did with a funnel that drains into an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/FloTool-42003MI-Drain-Container-quart/dp/B0171QLC4S/ref=sr_1_4?s=automotive&ie=UTF8&qid=1502634087&sr=1-4&keywords=oil+pan+drain+container">oil drain pan container</a> via a rubber hose. The orifice to this funnel being blocked by a plastic toy golf ball and the hose blocking the entry to the oil pan so no smell emanates from my toilet. I did not use this toilet for poop until using it in the tiny house. At which point I placed a small bucket (with sawdust in the bottom)<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>inside the toilet box behind the funnel. And after each deposit I covered the poo with sawdust and this kept any smell from emanating into the tiny house. This would have been the end of it had I not been subjected, as many were on FaceBook, to the marvelously funny animation describing the natural squatting position of humans when defecating which led to the invention of the <a href="https://www.squattypotty.com/">squatty potty </a>bench now being sold at a highly recognizable big box store near you.</div>
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This invention took me back to my childhood in Asia where the squat toilet reigns and I became obsessed with building an actual squat toilet for my tiny house. One I would decorate with mosaic tile and highlight as an icon of cultural pride. But I soon had to give up this idea. I just did not have room for it on my floor plan as the footprint of such a toilet was twice as big as the one I had.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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Then I found a frisbee in my dad’s garage and when you are obsessed with a design everything that comes your way is a potential solution. Thus the frisbee became my minimalist squat toilet accompanied by a bucket with a lid from a commode chair a client was giving away. I kept the frisbee inside my wooden toilet which is open on two sides so was it was easy to slide it in when not in use. This opening also made it easy for me to check how full the urine tank was to avoid it overflowing. If it did overflow I would soon smell it, but luckily the urine did not go anywhere as the tank was an oil pan and the depression to catch oil was equal to the task of keeping urine from dripping onto the floor of the box. I had also lined the box with plastic for easy clean-up.</div>
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To use my minimalist squat toilet I took it out from its hiding place and put it on the floor lined with a square of newspaper and a bit of sawdust. Then a covering of sawdust after use cut the smell immediately. The square of newspaper made it very easy to pick up by the corners and place in my bucket. Covered with the lid I was ok with it being inside the house in a corner of my bathroom.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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I had no intention of sharing this minimalist toilet with anyone even to talk about it for fear that y’all would think I had gone feral. The tiny house community are bashed enough without my radical contribution. I am well aware that in order to advance the cause of tiny houses becoming accepted within urban zoning plans it is best to assimilate and aspire to be as normal as possible just as gay people did while working toward marriage equality.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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I was urged by some to get a commercially made toilet that would compost or partially compost within the toilet itself. Most of these units had fans that had to be powered with an electrical hook-up and vented with pipes to the outside which would mean cutting a hole in the wall of my house. All of which violated my principles of simplicity. And none actually compost in the traditional sense of having enough mass to raise the temperature of the poop and sawdust deposits. I also suspected that there was a downside to many of these designs. The Nature's Head one seen in nearly all the tiny houses on TV has a hand crank to mix and aerate the poop to encourage dehydration. A user of such a toilet <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HkWckwXmC4">made a video </a>of all that could go wrong with this design which thoroughly confirmed my suspicions from pee overflowing onto the floor for lack of a viewport to mixing in with the poop and being made into a gooey dough inside the toilet. I was so glad I didn't spend $500 on this learning experience.</div>
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<b>The Poop Processing Part</b></div>
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At the time of my frisbee solution I emptied my poop bucket into the barrel of a rotating composter unit. I confess I had not thought this part out completely. The composter was one I had on hand found free on Craigslist. I put my poop into it and ignored it through the winter adding straw to aid in composting. I put the dogs poo from the yard in there too. But the poo didn’t really break down even after the spring heat waves. And rotating the bin just made the poo into cob like bricks. Now there are humans who make bricks from cow dung mixed with straw and if I sterilized my poop with enough heat to kill the pathogens I might have been tempted to try some building projects too, but I was too busy to entertain such a distraction.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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I returned to the <a href="http://humanurehandbook.com/">Humanure Handbook</a> which had first led me down this road of composting toilets. I was simpatico with the author’s philosophy of providing a simple, inexpensive, easily accessible method of processing human waste and returning it to the soil, but when it came down to it I didn’t have the space to commit to the whole process in traditional large outdoor compost piles dedicated to the humanure process. I did learn from their video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLFD5D0CE103FD3A56&v=Ul51Uz0qfHU">on building a composting unit from pallets</a> that the poop is never turned over as with other composting methods to avoid the spread of pathogens. I was also comforted by the fact that if all else fails it only takes a year to render the humanure safe as the pathogens do die off.</div>
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<a href="https://greywateraction.org/about/"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://greywateraction.org/about/">Greywater Action </a>in Berkeley with their urban household greywater system and built in DIY composting toilet have a <a href="http://greywater%20guerrilla%20laura%20allen/">convincing video</a> showing the benign smelling results of their toilet. They put the poop into bins and once filled leave them for a year, but this also required enough room to house at least two 55 gallon barrels for the allotted year.</div>
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<b>The Bokashi Upgrade</b></div>
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Fortuitously for the next stage of my education in the Dtao of Poo, I was in Maui visiting my new girlfriend who had serious experience composting having had a job managing green waste at the Maui recycling center as well as a degree in agriculture and a dedicated interest in organic farming. When I showed her on my iPad the bin I was using she read me the riot act on how this composter was the worse ever invented as it could never physically aerate all of the compost and would render some of the process anaerobic creating e coli in the process. All the reviews said so. She advised me to dispose of the entire thing as hazardous waste complete with warning labels. I assured her I would suit up in my hazmat outfit for the job. As this was the first heated conversation we had ever exchanged I was amused that it would be about compost so early in the morning. Then she jumped up and did an online search for a solution involving EM technology and presented me with a site that would sell me a kit for <a href="http://store.bokashicycle.com/bpcfs">pet poop composting</a>. I had barely heard of Effective Microorganisms let alone for fermenting poop. She told me later she had been introduced to this fermenting technology by a Japanese health institute in Hawaii and then visited a garden using EM methods that was the most fertile she had ever seen.</div>
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I had done worm composting when it was first made popular by the book Worms Eat My Garbage. I had made my own compost bins. I had done sheet composting of an entire lawn and anaerobic composting in sealed garbage bags. I had always been on the cutting edge I thought so I was eager to learn of yet another even more radical method. I <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVOsAyE5_Jo">watched the videos </a>she had so quickly located online to process poop. The Bokashi method is used in Japan and South East Asia for fermenting waste in closed containers. The actual bins in this kit took up no space at all with a footprint no bigger than a five gallon bucket plus I was very taken by the screw top lids that came with them. Within the hour I had ordered the kit for a little over a hundred dollars. It arrived before I got home.</div>
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I mixed up my first container which required two gallons of water and 1 cup of the EM solution<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span>plus a tablespoon of bokashi impregnated bran made from wheat chafe all provided in the kit including the spoon. Then I slid my poop into it which left me with a sheet of poop stained newspaper. I could throw that in the mix too as it was organic, but then after several days it dawned on me that I could skip the frisbee step altogether, dispense with sawdust (a difficult to find ingredient) and poop directly into the bucket. I just needed the height to reach it such as might be provided by a squatty potty bench. I pulled out my folding step stool and tried this out. It was just the right height. I squatted on it and hung onto the opposite end of the stool to brace myself.</div>
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The experience of using my new toilet was of such a visceral nature as to defy polite description. Shall I just say that it was emotionally akin to an amusement park ride<span class="s1">—</span>say the jungle ride over a crocodile infested bog scented with pungent tropical flowers. Adventurous rather than revolting. And too close to the water line for any back splash. The slightly yeasty smell of the bokashi also masked the poop smell almost completely. This novel act of pooping into a bucket of brown bog made me feel close to nature in a primeval and unexpected literal sort of connection. It may however make any normal person run for the nearest Jack In The Box restroom. Down the street two blocks and make a right. You can’t miss it.</div>
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After these bog visions I hopped off my stool sprinkled a bit of the wheat chafe on my deposit and anointed the bog scape with an additional spritzing of EM solution before screwing the hatch back on the bucket and placing it gently in a corner of my bathroom pan. As my mini bog filled and became firmer I could see things growing on the top—white patches of yeast. I was assured by the FAQ page that this was normal.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div>
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After several weeks the bucket was filled so I took it outside and let it sit closed up tight and undisturbed for another two to three weeks while I put the second bucket into service. All I needed to do now was dig a trench where the soil might benefit from this infusion of beneficial microbes. I am not fond of digging trenches in drought hardened ground so I soaked it first. When I opened the bucket I was surprised that it was now mostly brown liquid with a sweet smell that was of such interest to the dog I thought he was going to try to lap it up like a chocolate shake. Luckily I had chosen a spot where he would not be able to reach it. I poured the contents into the trench, mixed in some dirt and covered it all back up. The surface was as liquid as lava and some of the stuff oozed out nastily. I hastily shoveled soil over the ooze. It took a day or so to firm up again, but it was done. Bokashi was now my next big thing. Garden variety compost I had long suspected was underperforming, rarely getting hot enough to fill claims of being able to kill pathogens and weed seeds, being at best a cozy home for a rat. Plus rotting material releases gases as it decomposes thus adding carbon to the atmosphere. This fermenting method released no such gases and is sealed from animals. I could see I would soon be looking down my nose at the compost pile just like all the other Bokashi enthusiasts. </div>
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I am aware that this revelation of my tiny house lifestyle has likely made me unfit for normal society. I may never be able to live a mainstream life again let alone with a live-in partner. However when people ask me if I have a sewer system as someone did just yesterday while asking me about my tiny house I could proudly say I have a toilet system using cutting edge Japanese Bokashi technology to turn my waste into microbial rich water. My listener's eyes lit up at the mention of such water which for our drought state of California was nothing short of miraculous. I felt I had indeed arrived.</div>
AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-56278307966270170322017-08-04T21:30:00.000-07:002017-08-04T21:30:29.861-07:00Waste Water Chores: The Underbelly of My Tiny<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcKb16Zro4W_czNZju14wnyiIQQCB4zHXX45jFfJMxjsWe8EZ0ykT-Bm9Zs8I3UZ1o5f5vxsm9NkSQ6VO0JJ3Bw7O3cGfYiR8VjDcX6T_S__6AOjB0z6KMQpl4rbO656tZoeer-NabXNg/s1600/Waste+Water+Tank.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcKb16Zro4W_czNZju14wnyiIQQCB4zHXX45jFfJMxjsWe8EZ0ykT-Bm9Zs8I3UZ1o5f5vxsm9NkSQ6VO0JJ3Bw7O3cGfYiR8VjDcX6T_S__6AOjB0z6KMQpl4rbO656tZoeer-NabXNg/s320/Waste+Water+Tank.jpg" width="320" /></a>In designing the utilities of my tiny it was my intention to approach tiny house living in the simplest possible way even if it was primitive. If it didn't work out I could always upgrade. That I was actually able to buy a waste water tank on wheels was already a significant advance above anything I could improvise. These tanks were available from RV supply stores in several sizes. I chose the smallest 11 gallon tank which was already so heavy when full I could barely muscle it around.<br />
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So in the winter months I dragged the tank around the garden and emptied it at the base of trees. Little blankets of floating fat poured out too so when the rainy season was over I decided to filter the water before I poured it on plants. For this I made a bio filter from straw which I stuffed into a funnel that I place in the mouth of a five gallon water container. Then I made a ramp from a piece of plywood so I could get the tank up onto a pair of milk crates and let the water out while attempting to aim the stream into the filter. This actually worked to filter the solids out. But it took a while for the water to pass through the filter and I got tired of standing there so I thought I would try a filter inside.<br />
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After some thought about what kind of container I might use I retrieved an old collapsible water container from my camping gear and cut the bottom out on three sides. Then filled it with straw. The spigot I aimed down the drain. The plastic tube you see drains direct from the sink. This set-up did indeed filter out the solids and was big enough to easily empty my dishpan of dirty water directly into it. After a week it began to smell so I replaced the straw with fresh straw. It is definitely primitive to say the least, but it is biodegradable so I don't mind. Later I may try something more sophisticated or more solid like sand and gravel.<br />
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Now it does not take very long at all to drain the tank into a five gallon bucket twice. It is also a bit easier to carry buckets into the garden than to drag the tank over the mounds of grass. This chore is required about once a week. Once I forgot to check it and it overflowed which meant water on the cement slab flowing out to the road, but I am usually pretty good at checking how full it is. I can also pour the urine collection tank from my toilet into the waste water for appropriate dilution to give to plants.<br />
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All this might seem a bit much to do in day to day living, but when a friend told me how she spent all day getting a plumber in to clear a drain one Thanksgiving because she had put something she shouldn't have down the garbage disposal I felt fortunate I would never face such a job. I also will never have to have half the yard dug up to replace broken drain pipe at great expense. These are the worries that plague homeowners that are not even on my list of worries.<br />
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And best of all I get to re-use all my waste water on plants.AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5579895942838727866.post-89869322504238788912017-08-04T20:25:00.001-07:002017-08-04T20:25:37.440-07:00My Hermit LifeWhile I was in Bangkok for the cremation of a dear aunt I took along a book of photos of my tiny house to show relatives how I was living now. Since the tiny house trend has not yet come to Asia even via cable TV most were quite puzzled by my choice of lifestyle. Small wooden houses were associated with poverty and rural farm life. Nor had they ever seen one on wheels. "So is it a vehicle?" they asked me. They were so flummoxed they didn't know what questions to ask. What they could see was that I had made most of it myself and I was very proud of it.<br />
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Then I met a couple of nuns attending the cremation and showed them my photos. They asked me how big it was in meters and compared it to the size of their rooms. One of the nuns commented that I was living like a Hermit and this was a good start to becoming less attached to the material world, people, animals and plants. I was so startled by this reframing of the tiny house in a traditional Thai spiritual context that it was my takeaway moment of the whole trip. I <a href="http://amandakovattana.blogspot.com/2017/07/lessons-gleaned-from-dead.html">wrote up a post </a>describing the details of the traditional Thai cremation I witnessed and my conversations with the nuns as this self- revelation of the tiny house as hermitage unfolded.AKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12924051726529380446noreply@blogger.com1