Incredible Mini Earthship Style Cabin – Tiny Off Grid House with Solar Power
In this video, we tour a mini earth ship style cabin at the Terra Perma community ( to learn how the building is designed to produce heat, water, and power; all while being 100% off-grid.
The interior design of the tiny house is not only functional, but incredibly beautiful as well: It features relief cob sculptures on the interior walls, a dazzling recycled bottle wall, and floor to ceiling south facing windows.
The tiny home away from home was built using over 200 recycled tires that were filled with earth and stacked in a semi circle to create the main wall of the cabin. This wall was then covered (backfilled) with a mound of earth to create a thermal mass that will store energy from the sun and help keep the home at a stable temperature year-round.
To mitigate temperature fluctuations, there is a wood stove and radiant in-floor heating for cold months, and when it’s warm out, there’s a low-tech air conditioning system that cools indoor air by circulating it through a pipe that is buried under the mound of earth at the back of the house, and bringing it back into the house at a cooler temperature.
The metal roof is built on an angle to optimize rainwater collection (their rainwater ducts had not yet been installed when we were there), and the overhang at the front provides shade to the structure during the summer to avoid overheating.
To power the in-floor heating system, the air pump, the lights, and the electrical outlets, there is a 1000 Watt solar power system installed behind the cabin.
You’ll notice that there is no toilet or shower inside the earthship. To keep things simple they built an outhouse toilet, and a communal shower block for all of the eco-lodges (kind of like what you’d find at a campground).
Terrasol is one of several miniature green building structures at Terra Perma that are rented to the public as vacation rentals. They’re also a great way for people to experience living in different types of sustainable, hand built structures to see what living off grid is like. In addition to the earthship, they have a mini cob and straw bale house, 2 yurts, a tiny house, and a mini cordwood cabin.
Terra Perma has property lots for sale for anyone who wishes to live in the permaculture community, and they also have cooperative business opportunities for eco-entrepreneurs.
Mat and I met Elan from Terra Perma during the tiny house festival in Lantier, Quebec in July 2016 and adjusted our filming schedule to stop by and check out the super cool buildings he was helping to put up in Harrington, Quebec, Canada. We camped in our van at Terra Perma for 2 nights and had fun exploring their mini sustainable buildings, swimming in their private lake, and tasting their homemade maple syrup!
To learn more about the Terra Perma project and their eco-lodge rentals, check out their website here:
You can also follow Terra Perma on Facebook here:
If you’d like to book a stay in the Terrasol mini earthship you can rent it out on airbnb here:
Thanks for watching!
Mat & Danielle
————————————————————-
SUPPORT OUR CHANNEL!
————————————————————
If you like our videos, please consider supporting us on Patreon:
————————————————————-
STAY IN TOUCH!
————————————————————
Blog: www.exploringalternatives.ca
Facebook: /exploringalternativesblog
Instagram: @exploringalternatives
————————————————————-
SUBTITLES AND CLOSED CAPTIONS
————————————————————-
A very special thank you to our subtitle and closed captions contributors!
Korean Subtitles by Gaedong Kim
If you would like to contribute subtitles or closed captions to an Exploring Alternatives video, please click here to see which ones need your help:
To learn how to create and submit subtitles and closed captions, check out this YouTube info page:
If you would like credit for your subtitles, translation, or closed captions in the description of the video, please email us with your full name, the language of your translation, and the video title that you worked on. You can email us at: danielle.is.exploring@gmail.com
————————————————————-
VIDEO CREDITS
————————————————————
Music & Song Credits:
All music in this video was composed, performed, and recorded by Mat of Exploring Alternatives.
Editing Credits:
Mat and Danielle of Exploring Alternatives
Filming Credits:
Mat of Exploring Alternatives
off grid, off the grid, living, off, grid, earthship, earth, ship, tiny house, tiny house tour, off grid house, solar power, solar, sustainable, minimalism, …
Deforestation.
This reminds me of the Findhorn community I visited many years ago. Would love to see your vlog visit and feature some of the whiskey barrel houses there! Fancy a trip to Scotland?
https://www.ecovillagefindhorn.com/index.php/building
https://youtu.be/8yT_h_ZOc98
https://youtu.be/AX_9oNwBn0s
Cool house, but that is the worst solar panel placement I have ever seen… One of those panels in the sun would produce twice the power of all 4 vertically mounted in the shade.
Don't forget your insulation to make the thermal battery work optimally!
5.20 is the best part of this video. The rest of it was awesome as well
It’s prob been said a thousand times… but deff would have put the earthship water system in~ catch rain water, store in sister water holding tank… then I would have built a small bathroom to the left or right of the main room, it would be tied into the earthship water system and all the water would have been used 3 times – basically a mini earthship … which I’m super excited to see come about 🙏🏻💙
Give it Time.. and they will improve even more, and even more folks will have the knowledge to build them 👍🏼👍🏼
The people doing it now are pioneers… and we should all be greatful- thankful to them for paving away 🤙🏼
The whole concept of an 'earthship' comes across as being pretentious.
Ah ben tabarnak.
Why is it called an earthship and not a just home or cabin ? This isn’t the first eco friendly home, they’ve existed a while.
Liked it lots, but must have closet space and indoor plumbing.
Omg i live in quebec and did not know about them, thank you for showing me this! Im going to go this summer to visit for sure!! 😍😍
Love more information about the tires and how they are used to attract and retain heat for the Earthship home. Brilliant reduce, reuse and recycle philosophy.
Very nice, I wondered what the glass ratio was.
roof cantilever blocks sun?? what were you thinking man!!
Is she a real estate agent? Great place, but I'm tired of feeling like everything is a sales pitch
I would have enjoyed this much more if a craftsmen talked about the materials a construction instead all the selling points of a real estate agent.
Absolutely Amazing !
This is in no real way a “Earth-ship”. Earth-ships recycle everything. To say the least here they recycle their water which in turn grows their food in fish and plant forms and I do not see any of that here. A diffeniate thumbs down for misleading the subject matter.
Does anyone else imagine her boyfriend wears hiking jandels, cargo shorts, loves playing chess, reads Lord of the Rings and bird watches? Second thought: do you think she cums really loud?
Nicest looking earthship i've seen.
I'd never seen your face prior to this!
That bottle wall is such a cute idea! I love it! I love all of the large windows, as well! Very cool place!
THANKS! that was gorgeous!
What if a bear tries to get in?
With plans from Avasva you can make it really easy.
WOW
I did it with the help of Avasva solutions.
I wish most homes were earthships.
'earthship' is not conducive to also being 'tinyhouse', the two concepts are mutually exclusive, imo.
Me like likeeee.
Gotta get those panels out of the shade.
Awwwww I wanna build an EARTHSHIP…….IN SPACE! I'd even settle for the Arctic North for practice! Who's comin?😝
Get those solar panels out of the shade! Love the Build!!
"Mini" earthship? "Such a small place"? This is bigger than most 1 bedroom flats in the UK! Would definitely prefer living in this beautiful place as well
It is beautiful that gives us good ideas about the front we building a sandbag house right now.. we started with the tires but then we decided to go with sandbags and already having four rows up making us very proud
Half ars earth ship
What took hundreds of hours was drinking all that wine 😀
Love it
Amazing home
Sounds utterly cool!
Thank you for another beautiful video. This house looks great and very liveable.
한글 자막 감사합니다.
Bull$hit
CAN ALL OF YOU YOU TUBERS PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE SKIP THE FREAKING MUSIC!!!!!!!!! SP AGGRAVATING TO HAVE THAT DISTRACTING RACKET IN THE BACKGROUND!!!!!
Skip the propane and use some sort of cooking appliance that is powered by solar energy the propane tank is a real Downer
If it was me I would earthbag instead of using tires. Also I would use a binding agent in that layer and pin the bags with steel reinforcing. Concrete block could also be used to streamline the manufacturing process. These structures only make sense if you have a huge amount of free labour. Also you might consider using a polymer in the adobe and using the money you save by building smarter for some HVAC automation to help regulate the temperature. There are some great ideas incorporated in these structures but the development of them has stagnated it seems.
Why propane? Why not electric heating?
Does that count as an earthship though