Extreme Simple Backyard Living

[steveo73]

I reckon that looks pretty sweet although I think I'd like a bigger house. I read some of the other links though and a lot of that doesn't appeal to me. I have 3 kids. I have no pressing concern to worry about the environment or devote myself to some higher cause.

Still I could live like that for a while assuming the kids were out of home.

[TheWanderingScholar]

Meh. Even though my focus is on the environment, that sort of living, while efficient for a singular person, is not that really efficient for an entire population. For mass group of people, an efficient, modern apartment complex that has a community garden and solar panels would work for a mass population.

And honestly it just looks ugly, which sounds petty but people will have complaints of that.

[JamesR]

I'm guessing you think it looks ugly mainly because of the camp-out feel of it, with having the kitchen and other equipment exposed like that. On the other hand, he's surrounded by nature. It might be a bit bare right now in that video but as the plants develop hopefully it'll be a lot greener too.

[sky]

I like the low cost aspect of it. A fence, a trailer, water collection, composting toilet, kitchen table, storage closet and a bicycle. It takes the right climate, though.

$5,000 plus a piece of land to get started, and your monthly costs are food, property tax, health insurance, bicycle maintenance. 1/2 Jacob?

It is not surprising that backyard living is illegal.

[thrifty++]

This is very cool and inspiring. However I would be worried about living in a house that small. I don't know if it would be that good for spine health or depression risks. I would like to follow this model but with a much higher ceiling and slightly bigger and more light filled house or caravan that I can stand up and walk around in. Have seen amazing examples of such elsewhere.

[7Wannabe5]

I agree on the need for more height and light. That is why I am including a 30 inch deep keyhole pit and transparent half dome in my mini-earthship structure. After I build up the soil and counter level a few inches above ground level, I will be able to work on tasks such as potting at a comfortable table level when I stand in the pit and the top of the dome will be only around 45 inches above ground level (easily masked from street view with shrubbery), but 75 inches from the bottom of the pit (therefore, only somewhat limiting my ability to overcome difficulties with bringing quality mates back to my den, as suggested as possibly problematic above, also located just a couple blocks from the cool coffee shop where I usually meet my dates, so easy-peasy) It is going to be so super-cool. My pit is now officially 30 inches deep, but still somewhere between cone and cylinder. I regret being too cheap to buy a digging stick. It is hard-going with just a shovel. I have my plastic sheeting and my lithium battery pack drill and my clips that attach plastic sheeting to pvc. I just need to scavenge 12 more tires. The main problem with the mini-ness of my structure will be inherent limitations in rain/snow water collection. My initial cistern will be fashioned out of a rubbermaid storage tub, pvc and duct tape. Also, I don't know where I will be able to eventually fit my composting toilet. It might have to be pulled in and out of a closet in the side of the pit like a Murphy bed?

[sky]

A mini earthship is a very cool idea. Pics?

[7Wannabe5]

I will post pics when I am done. Right now it is just a hole in the ground. I found a very heavy old roofing spade at a junk store yesterday, so I'm hoping that will aid my progress.

[Dave]

I'm really interested in seeing some pics, too. A mini earthship is an excellent idea .

[Sclass]

How do you prevent flooding in the pit?

My college girlfriend was very proud of her sunken living room at her folks till El Niño turned it into a Roman bath.

[Ego]

I found a very heavy old roofing spade at a junk store yesterday, so I'm hoping that will aid my progress.

http://www.roberttwigger.com/journal/20 ... lence.html

I had simultaneously discovered that using a mattock- which looks like an adze- to clear my vegetable garden was far more beneficial in mind and body than using a spade or fork. The adze chops. Not in a crazy aggressive way, in fact if you watch women using axes in the third world they do so with a minimum of fuss and wasted energy, they raise the axe and let it fall. The axe does the work, they add direction and a little committment. That little extra, directed violence, is what has built this overbuilt world we live in. We chop, we pick axe, we break down walls- we escape to freedom and then build those walls all over again.

Every exercise routine needs an element of simple percussive action- chop wood, do karate or aikido, break the soil using a mattock, do press-ups on your fists, chop everything before you cook it. Control and use the violence. Find freedom.

[akratic]

This guy rocks. Thanks for the link. Here's another good video from him:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaCpsxk ... Greenfield

[7Wannabe5]

@Sclass: I am an ENTP , the enthusiastic inventor type, not an engineer. If I have to fuss about every tiny detail before I get started with a project, then I will never get out of the planning stage ; ) The pit is on level ground and will be covered by a plastic dome and the near interior will be sort of like a raised bed or counter-top. If I find that my design has created an opportunity for water flow then I will make use of it in some manner yet to be determined.

Here are the 3 ideas/designs I am going to morph together with some of my own ideas (such as drilling circular holes in the sides of the tires) for this project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hV8Teiskfo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTqSpx0Vgv4

https://simplydifferently.org/Wigwam

@Ego: Cool link. Lack of freedom leads to violence, but dominance or authority over self and environment (in measure) leads to freedom. By being my own b*tch, and using MY energy to dig a pit according to MY plan on MY domain, I am creating an edge and a gradient where my energy will be stored. Pretty cool, huh? I started placing and filling the tires with the dirt I dug out of the pit, so now I'm really getting a feel for the structure. The 3 ft. of circular floor space between the pit and the tire/dome walls seems both ergonomically correct for my arm-length reaching across while in pit and adequate for width of sleeping bunk. Those of you with a mathematical bent may be wondering how I am going to have enough dirt to fill all the tires? The answer is that I am going to saw the sidewalls off of the top tires and fill them with leaves, urine and other compost, but I haven't quite figured out how to integrate this with water collection yet. My initial plan was to just wake up one morning and go over to my land and try to live there until I encountered my first problem. Then the next day I would solve that problem and again try to live there until I encountered another problem. Etc. etc. etc. However, it became very clear that my first problem was going to be having somewhere to pee in privacy (unless I was willing to walk to the closest public facility- decided "No.") , so pit, pot, privacy shade and pile of carbon on which to dump the nitrogen will serve.

[Sclass]

Thanks for sharing the vids. Good luck with your project.

This looks like a ton of work. I'm letting go some land in the CA desert I inherited. It's going to foreclosure in a month. Not worth what I owe in taxes. If I had the time and desire building something like this on it would be fun. But the neighbors would prolly turn it into a methlab when I wasn't around.

[7Wannabe5]

No shortage of meth-users in my neighborhood, but the women who already put up a greenhouse told me that nobody has disturbed it. There are so many abandoned houses with broken windows, I don't know why a vagrant would choose to break into my structure for shelter. I'm more worried about unsupervised children, so I am not including anything like an open pond in my overall design. OTOH, I wouldn't spend the night in the structure myself without the company of a dog. It is legal to keep up to 3 poultry of any kind on each property in the city, so I might also get some guard geese.