Off Grid Cabin Design.

[Robson Valley]

The traditional winter homes for our First Nations in the interior of BC were pit houses. As much as 30' in diameter, 6' deep and 2' of the spoils spread over the roof logs. That's a good-sized floor area. I've seen a few that even have windows and a real door. The central fire pit often has it's own cold air draft intake, just a slate covered trench in the floor is enough.
Despite my age and physical challenges, I'd still like to try to live in one for a month or more.

I lived in a log cabin on the Churchill River for 5 months one summer. About 40 miles from the nearest road. Coleman petrol lantern. Coleman 2-burner petrol green box stove in one corner. Genuine Airtite wood stove in another corner. Bloody awful rainy wet weather, the river came up 12". The cabin was chinked with moss and ants chewed in the logs. No big deal. Glad I did that.

 

[Laurentius]

I have only ever built a shed on my allotment I confess, but since the water was cut off it is technically off grid. I've got a generator down there and can pump up water from the river, so who says what the rules are? The rules are of course that we are not allowed to sleep there, but I know some have ignored that before now. My shed and my greenhouses are mostly built out of salvage and that is part of the fun of it all but if I had to do it for survival I certainly could.

 

[Robson Valley]

Given the chance, I'd like to live in a functioning, productive green house.
In any event, I want a good sized box, say 12' x 20' with a wood stove for heat and cooking. Windows and several workbench/tables. Besides bunk beds (bottom sleep, top storage), that's all I had for 5 months.

You will know your place by the sound and the smell. Eat, putz around with crafts and foragings. Have a nap.

The day came that the plane came. A Norseman on floats. Everything was packed.
Some other guys went down river in the freighter, tossed all the gasoline barrels in the river to float down of their own accord. Shovelled everything into the plane and hated like hell to leave what had been a cozy home.
Slept in the sun on the wharf at Missinippi until I got transported back to the city. What a hell of a shock that turned out to be. I can remember the day.

 

[FerlasDave]

I would like to add “boss of the swamp” to peoples YouTube list. I’ve been watching his videos recently and it’s quite something to watch a full on forest become a workshop and kitchen garden.

 

[TeeDee]

I would like to add “boss of the swamp” to peoples YouTube list. I’ve been watching his videos recently and it’s quite something to watch a full on forest become a workshop and kitchen garden.

Subscribed

 

[Robson Valley]

The more I ponder this, the more I believe that the cabin, whatever size it is, needs to have windows in all 4 walls. I need to look outside as the very first thing I do every day, on my way to the bog. I just like to see out.

My house has windows and doors in the E, W, & S sides. I'd like a north window. The geometry of the village layout is such that a big north window would give me a great view of sunsets and storms.

 

[SaraR]

Unless you really want it to be a quirky construction, I would just go for an ordinary (modern) timber frame with proper insulation. You'd get excellent thermal properties with relatively thin walls and retain as much internal space as possible. It's an established method so less hassle with the authorities and future buyers.

Currently, you're allowed a structure less than 2.5 m high, I think, without planning permission and being able to stand up straight is important for both your back and the feeling of a place, so I'd avoid sleeping lofts and the like. (But if you do have one, make sure there is room to move around up there too!) Better to have a proper slope on the roof and a sense of space in the room.

There are plenty of examples of student pods (fully on-grid) and garden guest rooms (usually with electricity) that are of similar size online, so lots of examples of layouts available if you trawl the interweb.

There's a house we drive by on our way to work and they've built a cabin in their garden. I followed the construction with interest: they put vertical I-beams in the centre of the walls and then slotted the ends of squared off (thinner) logs into the brackets created by the top and bottom of the I-bar, but interlocked the outer ends on the corners like on a real log cabin. It looks really nice, but I'm not sure if they insulated on the inside. I'm not sure about those steel bridges across the walls, but maybe not an issue for their intended use.

 

[swyn]

Over the last fifteen years I have taken down, reclaimed and re-built a Victorian dairy barn. This brick building measures 5m x 25m. It has a wriggly tin roof because I liked the look of the buildings in New Norfolk from when I lived there.
The structure is aligned solar N S and is divided into one third and two thirds. The Eastern third is kitchen and washing area on the ground with a stairway up to the sleeping arrangements where there is a toilet, a wash basin, a workspace and the main controller for heating and hot water distribution plus an airing cupboard. Plus of course a light airy bedroom with a South facing window and a Velux roof-light over the bed-space for star-gazing along with meteorite spotting.
On the ground floor in the two thirds section is my interpretation of how the building was constructed.
A timber trussed vaulted roof space with a second stairway to a mezzanine with another work-space. A large South facing window, a smaller North pair of French doors and three Velux North-lights in the vaulted ceiling.
One of those dreadful Morso 3610 wood combustion things polluting the world but not often used as all this construction is heavily insulated (100mm in the floor and cavity walls. 210mm in the hybrid roof.) The icing-on-the-cake of two types of heating; water from a GSHP and electric mat in four zones over the wet system.
£1,350 PA to be at 22 degrees 365 days a year. Cooking is gas £3.61 per month over eighteen months for a £60 LPG bottle.
Daily Legionella control and a low/high pressure system with a heavily insulated cold water tank and with a minimum of 2400mm over the shower head so the flow is pleasant.

 

[Le Loup]

Over the last fifteen years I have taken down, reclaimed and re-built a Victorian dairy barn. This brick building measures 5m x 25m. It has a wriggly tin roof because I liked the look of the buildings in New Norfolk from when I lived there.
The structure is aligned solar N S and is divided into one third and two thirds. The Eastern third is kitchen and washing area on the ground with a stairway up to the sleeping arrangements where there is a toilet, a wash basin, a workspace and the main controller for heating and hot water distribution plus an airing cupboard. Plus of course a light airy bedroom with a South facing window and a Velux roof-light over the bed-space for star-gazing along with meteorite spotting.
On the ground floor in the two thirds section is my interpretation of how the building was constructed.
A timber trussed vaulted roof space with a second stairway to a mezzanine with another work-space. A large South facing window, a smaller North pair of French doors and three Velux North-lights in the vaulted ceiling.
One of those dreadful Morso 3610 wood combustion things polluting the world but not often used as all this construction is heavily insulated (100mm in the floor and cavity walls. 210mm in the hybrid roof.) The icing-on-the-cake of two types of heating; water from a GSHP and electric mat in four zones over the wet system.
£1,350 PA to be at 22 degrees 365 days a year. Cooking is gas £3.61 per month over eighteen months for a £60 LPG bottle.
Daily Legionella control and a low/high pressure system with a heavily insulated cold water tank and with a minimum of 2400mm over the shower head so the flow is pleasant.
View attachment 71130

Sounds like you are still on the mains power grid swyn or have I misunderstood? Pity you have to use gas for cooking.
Love the look of the place, corrugated roofing iron is the easiest to install for sure, & doesn't look that bad. I even used it for the walls on an extension to our cottage.
Again, great looking place swyn, well done.
Keith.

 

[swyn]

Sounds like you are still on the mains power grid swyn or have I misunderstood? Pity you have to use gas for cooking.
Love the look of the place, corrugated roofing iron is the easiest to install for sure, & doesn't look that bad. I even used it for the walls on an extension to our cottage.
Again, great looking place swyn, well done.
Keith.

I do love the sound of the rain on my wriggly tin roof.
One 47kg bottle every 18 months is v good value in my opinion. Way way better than anything else. I do have a Morso wood- burner but this only works in winter and then only when it is into minus figures outside.
My parents lived off-grid in Europe, there was always the faff of battery charging which put me off offset though by being entirely mobile.
I have allowed for PV in the future with a central distribution cable centre.
In all honesty I do not believe the UK is really suited to cost effective off-grid-living and a heavy investment onto an actual pukka workable AND reliable system seems like considerable sums of money down-the-drain. If you can build a small shed and use simple 12v then yes. Examples being a yurt or scandi type cabins.
For less than £1,400 pa I’m warm, have copious amounts of hot water, well lit, have the use of my work-shop, run my cordless tool set which includes a 450mm wide cut lawnmower. AND no faff!
S

 

[Le Loup]

I do love the sound of the rain on my wriggly tin roof.
One 47kg bottle every 18 months is v good value in my opinion. Way way better than anything else. I do have a Morso wood- burner but this only works in winter and then only when it is into minus figures outside.
My parents lived off-grid in Europe, there was always the faff of battery charging which put me off offset though by being entirely mobile.
I have allowed for PV in the future with a central distribution cable centre.
In all honesty I do not believe the UK is really suited to cost effective off-grid-living and a heavy investment onto an actual pukka workable AND reliable system seems like considerable sums of money down-the-drain. If you can build a small shed and use simple 12v then yes. Examples being a yurt or scandi type cabins.
For less than £1,400 pa I’m warm, have copious amounts of hot water, well lit, have the use of my work-shop, run my cordless tool set which includes a 450mm wide cut lawnmower. AND no faff!
S

Yes I see, I guess we look at life differently swyn, I have grandchildren that may not survive anthropogenic global warming & climate change, so I think more about fossil fuels & climate change than expense & "Faff". We lived for over 20 years without electricity, so for us solar power is a luxury, but when it throws its legs in the air we will go back to no electricity. All alternate energy hardware is dependent on fossil fuels for its production.
Regards, Keith.

 

[swyn]

When I lived near New Norfolk and built my cabin up in Molesworth I was entirely off grid. I had little money for anything else other than buying milled timber and kero for the lamps plus excavator hire and ready mix concrete. Other raw materials were collected in an old Hillman Hunter ute from the hillsides as I was using local stone for the base, being a Mason.
This was a carefully designed construction, following all the local planning requirements and able to be mortgaged so future-proofed. I can still visit via google maps when I’m travelling in my minds eye. When creating this building PV was in its infancy incredibly expensive and I wanted to get this job done so never went beyond a cursory glance.
Creating syphons was an interesting past-time. I had a spring slightly above the cabins roof line and a primitive solar shower that worked on the syphon principal plus of course the inevitable bush-bath!
I had installed two air source heat pump systems into new dwellings back in the UK with great success, heavily influenced by G Morgan-Grenfell and my father who were directors of CAT during this time.
Bringing water to 55 degrees with a GSHP was cheap power. Adding more heat by oil to 60 degrees became rather less financially painful. Bear in mind this was the UK in 1983 and 1987. Since this time renewable energy has become mainstream.

Murwilumbah, which I have an inkling you’re not too far from and which I have been through on my grand circular motorcycle tour of Australia, is in the perfect place for PV and if I had my time again in Tas I would probably look rather more closely at a system. Thirty years on the controllers and panels available today are much more affordable and also reliable.
I’m trying to persuade my brother in Hobart to fit solar hot water but this is an uphill game as he doesn’t want holes in his roof.
Right now my wiring terminates in a ‘Ready-to’ position. It is there and not forgotten!
My power comes down from the East Anglian cable network. Bear in mind that the UK is now able to produce 1/4 of its current needs from renewables and I have interests in wind-farm and hydro energy which is putting my money where my mouth is.
I have a Kensa ground-source heat pump loop system to install in April followed by the actual machinery so something to look forward to.
Whether any of my children will produce grand-children awaits to be seen but they are very aware of the knife-edge we sit upon. There is one Architect in amongst their numbers so I watch with interest as to how I have been an influence.
I think we’d agree on a good number of things Keith!
A well designed, well presented, well built house with all redundancies taken into consideration will pay for its self many times over. Just takes a lot of time and effort eh.
S