Sunday, March 24, 2019

Tiny Flush Camp Toilet

You would not believe how many people ask me about the toilet arrangement in my Tiny Home. Like they're obsessed with thinking about their poo and what to do with it. And they can't believe when I tell them I take care of business in a corner behind a screen.

You see, we built our Tiny Home in November, just before the coldest winter in history. So my first weekend, there was no way I wanted to go outside in 2 foot snow just to use a loo. We considered composting toilets, and will probably purchase one this spring and build some kind of little house around it beside our Tiny Home. But they aren't cheap ($800), and more importantly, they don't work in the cold. We heat the Tiny Home when we visit, but not when we're not there. So in the winter, composting toilets aren't a great solution for us.

Instead, we purchased this little camp toilet. It's a Dometic toilet purchased at Canadian Tire in the camping section for $170. It has 2 reservoirs - one on top with a special RV Plumbing antifreeze liquid for flushing and one on the bottom to gather the pee and poo plus flushing liquid. This bottom container is sealed off, so there's really no smells between uses. We empty it out on the farm with the other animal manure when needed, depending on how often we use it.

We don't have running water, but we keep hand sanitizer handy, and really it feels quite civilized and convenient. It doesn't take much room, but gets the job done for us. (And don't you adore the little floor rug to keep our feet warm that my great grandmother made from rags many years ago?)

Sunday, March 10, 2019

400W Power Bank

It's really hard to know one's power needs up front. There are plenty of websites that have calculations, but unless you're electrical-minded and can figure out your personal devices, it feels like a shot in the dark. Certainly beyond MY skills. So I just jumped in. That's my basic Tiny Home strategy. Start small and jump in, and learn experientially.

So we started out by purchasing this 400W power bank made by Yeti and purchased at MEC. It cost $800, so it did feel like a bit of an investment. But the best part about it is that it is EASY. You use it like an electrical unit in a house. It's a little dark in the picture, so maybe you can't see exactly. This one has 2 AC plug ins, 2 USB plug ins, and a DC cigarette lighter-type plug in. If you plan in advance and use your power bank only on weekends like us, it can be easily charged using an electric plug at our house.

400W is a good size to power LED lights, computers, and phones. In fact, one charge can easily last 2-4 days, depending on usage. However, this size is too small for our 1500W heater (I kinda guessed by the numbers), the electric kettle, or our electric 2 burner stove. So that means it will work well in the summer time when we don't need to heat the home and when we can use our propane stove and cook outside. For those 3 items, we use the single plug in provided to us from our friend's barn.

I do love how there is a digital display and you can see how much power is going in and how much power is going out. For example, I can see that the LED light we use at night to brightly light up the whole room uses only 27W per hour to use, whereas the cord of LED lights I brought for ambiance lighting uses up 39W per hour with way less light output. I can also plug in my electric bed pad at night and use less than 100W for a night of warmth, rather then using the electric heater for the room as often. Next is hooking it up to solar panels!