Tag Archives: Tiny Houses

Tips for Tiny Houses (or any off grid living)

There are plenty of benefits that come with living the tiny lifestyle. Flexibility,  freedom, and ease are the advantages that usually come to mind, but reducing your environmental footprint is another big bonus. Reducing living quarters doesn’t automatically make your lifestyle more eco-friendly, though. There is plenty more to it. That’s why it’s important to develop some of these green habits while living life on the tiny side.

Source: Sustainability Tips and FAQs for Living Tiny – 84 Tiny Houses

Click the link for some common sense tips for off grid living

It’s especially important if one is to be off grid to learn to think in terms of power usage.  Solar power enables us to live far from the city, but one is now the power plant manager.

While using energy efficient appliances and lights is very important, it’s vital to pay good attention to which appliance use the most electricity. For example, one should generally stay away from anything electrical that produces heat. Those electric space heaters are death in an off grid system. Likewise, pumps, microwave ovens, toasters, electric coffee makers etc. will draw a lot of power and need to be used sparingly. Replace with propane whenever possible.

At home we have a propane/electric refrigerator. It’s not terribly efficient when on electric, so it will always stay on gas, unless we have power to spare. It’s a Godsend on those cloudy days though.