Exploring Alternatives

The Uhu is an incredibly beautiful tiny A-frame cabin perched 40 feet in the air on steel stilts. The exterior is all windows and angles, including a diamond shape on one side, but the interior is full of curves and cozy ambiance. Getting to the cabin is a pretty cool experience: you climb an enclosed spiral staircase and once you reach the top, you cross a 20-foot bridge to get to the cabin's front door.

Inside, there's a surprisingly spacious interior considering it's only 200 square feet. There's a small entrance closet, separate toilet and shower stalls, a kitchen with running water and a fridge, a Queen-size bed with storage underneath, and an eating nook with an incredible view!

It was designed and built by two brothers at Repère Boreal, along with help of an architect friend and a team of passionate people who each contributed something special to the project over the course of several years!

2 days ago | [YT] | 66

Exploring Alternatives

In this video we’re taking a tour of this really unique 15 foot long tiny house with wings! The wings are actually two swinging bump-outs that can be opened when the tiny house is parked, and they widen the home from 8.5 feet to 12 feet wide, so it becomes almost square. It’s built with nearly 100% recycled and reclaimed materials, and the beautiful woodwork – including custom doors and windows – was all lovingly handcrafted by Nick and his friend Jay on Salt Spring Island in BC.

1 week ago | [YT] | 80

Exploring Alternatives

This epic 2-storey log tree house is built around 9 hemlock posts and salvaged and reclaimed materials that Mike, the builder, saved for years before starting this 3-year project. The upstairs is a complete living area with two sleeping spaces, a kitchen, living and dining room, and a small bathroom. Downstairs is an outdoor lounge area and a full indoor bathroom. It's a really unique space and we're really excited to give you a full tour!

The foundation of the treehouse is 9 hemlock posts that are on concrete footings anchored to the bedrock and the treehouse has 420 square feet of heated living space. The home is on the grid for electricity, and it has it's own well and septic system.

It was really exciting and inspiring for us to meet Mike and his partner Gen, and to hear the story of how the tiny tree house cabin idea came to life after visiting tiny houses and treehouses on their travels, and how they made it a reality by building with scrap and leftover materials that Mike had collected from job sites for years.

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 106

Exploring Alternatives

Alicia is an extreme minimalist living in San Diego, California. Over the past 10 years she has gone through many phases of decluttering and this is the simplest she's ever lived. She is furniture-free, so there is furniture in her apartment (no couch, no bed frame). Just a futon mattress on the floor and a folding chair on her balcony. She also has a minimalist wardrobe, all of her photos and documents have been digitized, and she lives without a TV, computer or wifi (she does have a cell phone).

Being an ultra minimalist has allowed Alicia to make her home a calm sanctuary where she can recharge after working at her chaotic job. It allows her to spend more time practicing slow living, with time spent in nature, meditating, and listening to music.

By reducing her shopping and bills, minimalism has allowed Alicia to pay off her student loans, pay off her car, and set some money aside so that she has financial stability.

This lifestyle isn't for everyone, but Alicia has clearly put in a lot of time and thought into her decisions over the course of many years. And as she says in the video, this is not about deprivation or suffering. It's about finding the right balance, which is a personal journey for everyone. If she feels uncomfortable or misses something she has gotten rid of, she will welcome it back into her life.

You can follow and find out more about Alicia's ultra minimalist lifestyle here:
youtube.com/@Exploravore

Thanks for watching!

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 83

Exploring Alternatives

Leah and Joe are an adventurous couple who moved from a log cabin into a skoolie, and then into a yurt! The yurt is 20' in diameter and 314 square feet on the interior, the round structure is made of white pine lattice walls and roof rafters, and it is covered with wool felt insulation, a vapour barrier, and a canvas cover on the exterior.

You can follow and find out more about Leah and Joe's yurt life adventures, and find out about the yurt rentals they're planning to set up on their land on Facebook and Instagram here:
www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555845030001
www.instagram.com/mindful_makwa

Joe and Leah's yurt is a 20' Mongolian Yurt (or super ger). These beautiful yurts are made in Mongolia and are distributed by Groovy Yurts. You can check them out here:
www.groovyyurts.com/

At the time of filming, Leah and Joe had only been living in the yurt for 5 months, but they had already built a massive deck, set up their yurt as a cozy home, built an outhouse, brought in an electrical panel, built a woodshed and outdoor shower, and had a well drilled.

Their future plans include adding a septic system, and building a comfort station with an indoor shower and toilet, and they're also looking into setting up a small yurt resort so that folks can visit the First Nation reserve where they live, and experience living and sleeping in a yurt.

2 months ago | [YT] | 84

Exploring Alternatives

Stephanie and Joel share their 14-year journey of building a home from reclaimed materials, living off-grid with solar power, and growing a lot of their own food, from fruits and veggies to milk, meat, and honey.

They built their home on shared land using materials they salvaged from the dump, wood from a building they took apart themselves, and whatever free stuff they could get their hands on. They had no electricity in the beginning so they only had candles. Eventually, they got a solar panel and a battery to run lights, and the systems have evolved from there.

They now have a wood cookstove for heat and cooking in the winter, 5 solar panels and 4 lithium batteries for electricity (plus a generator to supplement on cloudy days), a washing machine, a propane fridge and stove for summertime cooking, and a thermostat controlled propane stove so they don't have to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the fire. For water they have a quarry on the land which they draw from to fill a reservoir in their loft. From there, the water is gravity fed into the kitchen and bathroom. Their drinking water comes from a well on the property. The toilet is an Airhead urine diverting toilet.

The cabin has a master bedroom in the loft and a main-floor bedroom that's split into two sleeping spaces for their kids. They have an open-concept kitchen, dining and living room area, and the bathroom is closed in with a beautiful bottle wall. There's also a sunroom they recently added to the front of the house to bring in natural light, passive solar heating, and to grow food in the winter (with the help of LED grow lights).

Thanks for watching!

2 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 95

Exploring Alternatives

Take a peek inside the SeaSuite tiny houseboat!

The SeaSuite is a tiny aluminum houseboat with loads of windows, a large dinette with an electric table, an l-shaped galley, a comfy Queen-size bed, and a modern head (bathroom) with a porthole window in the shower. There's also loads of storage space built into every area in the boat. For exterior space, there is an adorable miniature front deck, an epic rooftop deck, and an outdoor navigation station. It's 26' long x 11'6" wide and weighs over 8,000 lbs.

Mark Philbrook has always had a close association with the sea. He comes from a family of boatbuilders (his father and grandfather started Philbrook Shipyards) and Mark was a liveaboard on an Erikson 39 sailboat for 16 years. He designed the SeaSuite and began construction in 2017. His wife Nadine helped with interior design, his friend Craig Toby helped with the build, and the aluminum welding was done by Mark Keeler. It's a fully certified Transport Canada boat.

The boat is insulated with 1" foam board and has 2 sources of heat: a Propex propane heater, and a radiant electric oil heater. It can be operated on the grid by plugging into 30-amp shore power and hooking up to municipal water, or it can be off-grid with freshwater storage bladders, a Separett urine diversion toilet, 520 watts of solar power, 4 x 6-volt deep cycle batteries, and a Propex propane heater.

This is a unique and brilliantly designed tiny houseboat and we hope you enjoy touring it!

Thanks for watching!

3 months ago | [YT] | 101

Exploring Alternatives

This is a full tour of a cozy cob micro cabin built by Marie France Roy, a professional snowboarder from Canada. She wanted to build a home with natural and reclaimed materials so the main floor is built with cob – a mix of sand, clay, and straw – and the upper floor is built with reclaimed cedar siding. She also used secondhand windows and other materials that were used or on their way to the landfill to reduce the impact of her project.

3 months ago | [YT] | 103

Exploring Alternatives

Rachel, Russell and their two boys have been homesteading on the edge of the Australian bush for over 15 years. This family grows and raises an incredible amount of food with their fruit trees, vegetable gardens, laying hens and sheep. They preserve their harvests with canning, dehydrating, freezing, smoking and fermenting. They also try to reduce their impact by collecting rainwater for their home and gardens (except the kitchen sink), offsetting their electricity usage with solar power, cooking with their woodstove, solar ovens and home bio gas system.

Rachel and Russell and their two boys have done a ton of research and experimentation on their homestead and they have a lot of knowledge to share! We're grateful to share their story here, and hope you'll give them a follow over at @Bush_Edge_Homesteading_Aus :)

4 months ago | [YT] | 120

Exploring Alternatives

Ashley and Chad decided to build their own tiny home on wheels after not being able to go the traditional route of buying a house with a mortgage. They’ve lived in their DIY tiny house for over 5 years now and say this lifestyle has improved their quality of life in many ways. After the initial investment to build the home, the couple says their expenses are quite low, about half of what they paid to rent a studio apartment, and this affordable cost of living allows Ashley to be a stay at home mom with their two children, and makes it possible for Chad to work close to home doing a job he loves.

In this video, Ashley and Chad share their decision making process, how they built the tiny house, the cost to build it, their systems, and some insights into what it’s like to live in a tiny home as a couple and as a family with young children (pros and cons). We really appreciate them sharing their story and hope you’ll give them a follow!

4 months ago | [YT] | 63