This Tiny House Is Off Grid Perfection

Written by: Arron J. Staff writer @ Hyggehous.com

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This tiny house on wheels is a good example of off-grid small house living.

Paul and Annett have been living in this tiny house on wheels for more than a year in Byron Bay, New South Wales. The couple is on a mission to set up their tiny home design to run entirely off of renewable energies, utilizing solar power, solar water heating, rainwater collection, and a biogas generator. The couple built a tiny house on wheels to try and live a more sustainable greener life in the Byron Shire. Shop Tiny Homes

They started with a vision in their heads of living in the countryside far away from the noise of the city, powering all of their appliances and electric devices with energy that comes from renewable sources and eating their homegrown vegetables.

They created a blog to document their tiny house build from start to finish as well as their approach to a more sustainable and self-sufficient lifestyle. In addition to that, they also wanted to inspire more people in Australia and around the world to build small(er) and to consider a more green lifestyle. They wanted to show that this can be achieved without sacrificing modern-day amenities. They wanted a permaculture garden because they wanted to grow their fruit and vegetables in the most natural way possible. Ideally, they wanted to start on the garden while building the tiny house. But that didn't turn out as planned as they were so busy with the building. So they instead opted to start with small gardening projects.

For the solar power set up on their tiny house on wheels, they went with a package solution from Aussie batteries.

Depending on where you are in the world, when setting up solar power you will want to start by doing your research, and talking to different companies who supply solar setups in your area. The solar set up for this Australian tiny house on wheels wasn’t cheap but that’s mostly due to the batteries. The solar package came with six solar panels, an inverter, 24 batteries, and a cabinet to store everything in. Each solar panel in this particular kit brings in 310 W, so in total, they will get around 1.86 kW of continuous solar power. On a sunny day, they will get even more than that. The solar batteries are deep cycle gel batteries and should last us up to 10 years if they maintain them well, this means they will need to watch their discharge.

When it comes to solar power and your tiny home you want to be prepared for overcast and cloudy days.

It's a good idea to not just rely on solar power only. This will especially depend on where you live, but for this Australian couple who live in a very sunny place, they still have days that they get overcast and cloudy days. On those days they have to watch their electricity usage and make sure that they don’t discharge their batteries below a certain percentage. That’s why they added a small biogas unit to the mix. The biogas will run their gas cooktop in the evenings or on overcast days.

There is a lot of technology and systems that go into making this tiny house off-grid design work, and sometimes that means they have to make adjustments to the way in which they live in a tiny home and by reframing their relationship with energy.

There are lots of lessons to be learned for anyone who might be considering going off-grid. This tiny house on wheels is just one of the examples of off-grid living that you might consider.