The Girls’ Guide To Off-Grid Living

Because I grew up in Thailand, my acquaintance with squat toilets was that it was beneficial, which we we are now is realizing that here in the West because of the manufacture of the little steps.

Welcome to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast, the show where you learn how to plan, build and live the tiny lifestyle. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and this is episode 257 with Amanda Kovattana. Amanda Kovattana is a six year veteran of tiny house living, and she lives completely off-grid in the drought ridden landscape of

Thank you.

Yeah, it's great to have you here. So tell me about your tiny house. This is a podcast so most people who are you know, consuming this or just listening? Can you can you describe your house for us?

Oh, I It's a smallest tiny house I've ever been in.

Okay.

It's built on a seven foot by 14 foot trailer.

Okay.

So in the actual footprint is I think 85 square feet. And it has a loft, which brings it to about 130 square feet. So it reminds me of the sailboat style of living.

Yeah.

For my childhood, my parents and I would like to say Oh, in the San Francisco Bay and we had a 20 Um, no, it was a 32 foot sailboat outfitted for living.

Nice. Yeah, so the tiny house is a lot like a sailboat, isn't it?

Yes, yes. When I fitted it out and completed it. It even had something Have a nautical look to it in my eyes. Yeah, so I felt completed.

Yeah, I love your siding is it looks like cedar shingles and it's got that Dragon's tooth profile, which I've always loved that that look.

Yes, yes. It's the look of it really sold me on it. It was built and designed by a roofing contractor. So he did what he did best even though in looking back he said it was so much work he probably would go with another siding.

Yes. Yeah, I did that just for basically my loft is under these two dormered parts of the house and I did that dragon's tooth cedar shingles under there and it is quite time consuming. But actually kind of fun. I enjoyed doing that part of the of the siding, there's something I can envision that that's how houses were cited hundreds of years ago and you can envision doing it you know, all you need is a is a hammer and nails to put up that kind of siding.

Yes, I preserve it. The nice rich see the cover color by staining it every two years.

Okay.

Which is a half day project.

Yep.

So I feel that I am acquainted with all of its many characteristics. Yeah, bad.

So, your your book, The Girls Guide to Off Grid Living. I'm assuming that you live completely off grid in your tiny house.

I have solar power and a battery bank.

Okay.

I am hooked up to a hose that my landlord offers. And the water comes from a reservoir in town here.

Okay.

So in a way the town itself is self sufficient. Water wise, so I okay. But I also collect water in I have about 550 gallons just around the house in storage.

Okay.

And that is what I use for my garden.

Ah, so I was going to ask about that. You have many of the, let's see, I've seen them at Lowe's and Costco and all the big box stores those black plastic bins with the yellow lids. They're great. I love those things. Ah, but it looks like you've drilled lots of holes in the covers and then you've got them situated kind of around the tiny house. Is that your water catchment system?

Yes, it is. It just came to me when I was wandering around Home Depot looking for containers and they happen to have a sale on these huge five gallon boxes and I was like 55 gallons. That sounds familiar. And that's how much you get in a drum which is usually used. But water catchment right. So I was putting the two together and it works great because I could just lay them all under the eaves. And it also worked to keep the wind from blowing under the tiny house. Right. So in a sense it

right. So it's a it's almost like a skirting for your tiny house but it's a functional skirting.

Right, I did have to fill in the gaps with I used silver emergency blankets. Okay to make an actual skirting and some black plastic bags that I filled with old pillows I would stuff in the cracks. Uh huh. So this this tiny house living is an ongoing Do It Yourself management project.

Yeah, absolutely. So sticking on the on the water I love I love the simplicity of the system because you haven't had to put up any any gutters or any piping. Gutters are notoriously expensive and finicky. The water just rolls off the roof. And then the lid of the band kind of functions as as a filter.

It does it keeps the leaves out and everything.

Yep.

And critters.

Yep.

And then in the summer, I can take the lids off and just dip a bucket in which is a lot faster than waiting to fill up with a spigot from the usual water. Yeah, bye so that people can install.

Yeah. So do you have any kind of plumbing or piping going from those bins? Or is it just like completely manual? Like you fill up a watering can? Or you fill up a bucket?

Oh, it's definitely our manual because part of the benefit of keeping everything manual and direct is that I get a lot of exercise hefting five gallon buckets.

Yeah. Well that you know, it's it's a saying in wood stoves that wood stoves warm you three times. One when you chop the wood to when you build the fire and then three the stove.

Exactly, yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Cut it, split it and burn it. Yeah, that's, that's the same. So you have a great blog that I that I was checking out kind of a journal, a memoir almost of your, your systems and your living tiny. And you have talked a lot about your compost toilet. And you know, how that system works, and I actually had never heard of, you know, the system that you use and tell me if I'm pronouncing it correctly. Bokashi?

Yes, Bokashi is a Japanese fermentation system, also used in Korea and, and other Asian cultures.

Okay.

In fact, all cultures have fermentation of some sort in, in our food history. But Bokashi was developed more recently by Japanese, in agriculture to make compost faster with agricultural waste, okay. And I was introduced to it by an American who had worked with it in Hawaii, and seen it, seen it in production. And she showed me an American site where you could buy these book Kashi kids, and they have a pet waste Bokashi system that they sells, so I could just buy everything I needed.

So how does it How does it work? Can you I mean, I've never heard of it and I'm sure that our listeners will will be interested you can you describe kind of how the fermentation system works.

The pet waste system comes with two screw top suite gallon buckets and you put in two gallons of water a cup of effective micro organism in a in a liquid form okay and then with that, after every deposit, you sprinkle across the top this brand like rice husk, other kind of vegetative brand that has been infused with the same effective micro organisms, okay. And then spray it, they also want you to spray a bit more of the liquid that has been in water dissolved in water a bit.

Okay.

The process is that the effective micro organisms, eat the pathogens, and then another tear of beneficial by bacteria eat those and the process keeps going until the whole bucket is neutralized as far as being a pathogen and then I it's recommended to dig a hole in the earth to pour it into and bury that and then you leave it for a month or so before trying to plant anything into it. I've worked with it and change the

Interesting.

So that's basically the process.

Yeah, a fermentation process. So how, you know, I'm guessing that the pathway system is, is a bit smaller than than a human might need. How Oh, hey, had to adapt. I'm guessing you've had to adapt. And I guess, you know, we're not shy on this show about talking about poop because that's what most people you know, who don't live tiny are the most curious about so

Oh, good.

Your collection. So like in the house, your toilet. You know, so in my tiny house, I use the humanure, you know, the Joe Jenkins Humanure Handbook System. So essentially, the toilet is a five gallon Home Depot bucket. And when you go you know, everything gets mixed in. Pee and poop go in the same bucket and sawdust is added each time you go. So what's the like inside collection system for you? Or like, or actually do you have a toilet in the house? Or do you do use this outside?

I do I have that was the first thing I built was my suppose a composting toilet. Ah, and it collected pee separately into a oil container that you can just get that at the auto parts store.

Yep.

And then originally, I would I had placed a bucket on top of that oil pan. I mean that oil container for poop and did the sawdust.

Yep.

And that was my original design. But when I was introduced to the Bokashi design and it came with the bucket not all then I just kept the bucket separate to poop into Okay, and I use my original toilet which has a toilet seat and everything. Yeah, for pee.

Okay.

So it's a, it ends up being a squat toilet my poop toilet, because I use it with a little bench next to it.

Okay.

And because I grew up in Thailand, my acquaintance with squat toilets was that it was beneficial. Right, this was the beneficial position. Right. Which we and we are now is realizing that here in the West because of the manufacture of the little stone steps, the squatty potty and a squat. Yes, exactly. Which was so amusingly advertised.

Yes, yes, it was.

Well, that's and then it takes about three weeks or so three or four weeks to fill the bucket. Okay, just by myself. So, the chore of having to carry it out and do all the processing only comes you know, 11 times a year or so. Because I'm on vacation part of the year too.

Nice.

And then the toilet. That is I still use for the pee toilet. I have to empty it every two or three days. Okay, which is similar to the one that everybody else seems to be using the one built for boats. The head, Nature's Head.

Hature's Head, yeah.

Yeah, right. Mine doesn't overflow though. I know that the Nature's Head one has been known to overflow if you're not watching,

Right. If you're not watching the the urine container can can overfill. Yeah, and those, you know, those Nature's Head and those other commercial units are quite expensive. Oh, yeah. Compared to you know what it costs to build a humanure toilet or something like yours, you know, plastic buckets, plastic funnels, these things are very inexpensive.

Exactly. $20.

I'm curious to know what what I like about the, you know, humanure system is that I'm not relying on any, like company to provide me with the materials once I've built it. I mean, I do have to find sawdust. But you know, where my tiny house used to be, I was about 20 minutes down the road from a sawmill and I could go and fill up a trash can of sawdust there. Now we're right, I'm right near like a woodworking school. And they don't you know, they, so i i Take their dust from their dust

I really don't have to buy it very often. I am remembering like, once a year.

Okay.

So infrequent, and I basically buy a gallon of the liquid microorganisms. And then a few bags, like three pounds of the bran. Okay, which I also use to compost kitchen waste in a similar way. Because I once I got into it, I was like, Yeah, this could also work. So I cost them that I think it's maybe $60 or something to replenish, but you can, if I were motivated, I could make my own bran.

Ah, okay.

But that's, you know, in this homesteading life, I can't be doing everything. Right. In some countries like Thailand, where I am also visiting, you can buy at the local Home Depot type plays the effect of micro organisms, because they use it in other applications. So it's more common. We haven't quite adopted it as as much for it to be available to buy locally,

Right. It's not it's not commonplace here.

But I am always aware of, and I could easily go back to the sawdust system.

Right. Well, that's the beauty of it. It seems like you kind of can, can do whatever is whatever's convenient. Whatever is working, you can always switch back.

Yes, being flexible is a good thing to build into your tiny house for resilience.

Yes. What's the saying? Two is one and one is none when it comes to resiliency of systems, you always need a backup.

Yes, yes.

In the photos you sent which are which are great. And they're just I just want to ask you about what these things are. So there's a there's a photo that you sent. It looks like it's near the the ceiling of your tiny house and it's some kind of net. It's like a black net suspended by a bungee cord. So what what is that and what like what problem is that solving for you?

That was one of my more imaginative workarounds to be able to hang laundry.

Okay.

Inside the house, in my case it got it. You know, the sun went down and I hadn't been able to dry it completely. I could throw this up and have it up in the loft.

Nice.

But I ended up not using it like that. Okay. In fact, I because I was doing laundry outside. I was just using a wooden rack. Yeah, that most people are familiar with. But it would blow over in in the wind.

Right and then your laundry gets dirty.

So I took my my netting which is a cargo net from the auto supply store and they rigged it into I hung it from the tree just outside and that worked just as well to clothes pin my laundry to.

Nice. Nice. I love your hammock that you have you that that looks like is that kind of your main seating in the house? The hammock?

Oh, yes it is. It's hung from one end of the house to the other. So I'm basically lying in the hammock in the middle of my house. And everything is within reach. From the kitchen,

Oh, so, this hammock can slide on a rope?

While the rope that holds the hammock up is connected to both walls so it doesn't really slide is just that, it's the length of the house. Okay, and hammock ends up being in the middle.

Okay.

And so it's great for flying in and typing on my laptop. I can change positions and plump up my backrest with pillows and things. And then because I have it facing my larger monitor that's connected to my laptop, I can watch movies permit to so it's been our purpose seating for many applications.

Nice.

But I also have folding captures for a great variety and to take outside for company because it's much easier to sit outside in the garden on my little turf of astroturf.

Right right. I love the way you're storing your your knives and other metal kitchen utensils. Can you can you talk about that setup?

Yes, I during the lockdown. I just found little projects to amuse myself and I glued magnets to the siding of my kitchen. It's corrugated metal. And then I could just hang things like a spatula and a kitchen knife and a little knives. Love it. So it also made it easier to just wash those implements and hang them up to dry right over the shower pan.

Nice. That's I love that.

It has a fun look to it. Kind of like psycho's kitchen knife inside.

Yeah, the knives are all kind of every which way. And so, you know in your bio, you know I mentioned this and you talk about it too is that you live in a very drought prone area. So can you talk about you know, how you use water at your tiny house and or how you use and rainwater you reuse water at your tiny house?

Yes. It's very easy to just walk my dishwater to the door and pour it in a five gallon bucket. And I don't use my shower in the conventional shower way. Because when I took the workshop and how to build a tiny house, the woman who was teaching said she basically abandoned her shower because it steamed up the house. And then everything gets too damp. So she preferred to bathe by going down to the beach and jumping into the Pacific Ocean.

Sounds nice.

Yeah. So I did not put in a showerhead or any enclosure. I decided to go the Asian way of using a dipper in a sink full of water and kind of sponge bath type method that way.

Yeah.

Which I was already familiar with from Thailand.

Showers definitely take up a lot of space in a tiny house and your tiny house is particularly tiny so I can I can certainly understand not wanting to put one in.

Right I haven't missed it. I mean I do go to other people's houses and have I showered at their houses just for a change.

Big shower day.

Yeah. I used to do laundry at other people's houses too. But during during the lockdown, that was another thing to expand on.

Yep.

To figure out,

Do you do just do laundry by hand like in a sink or in a bucket?

In a bucket with the plunger.

Oh, okay.

Laundry machine that you can get an Amish outfits now on Amazon, okay, now that makes them plastic rather than galvanized metal, the they hold up better. And it's actually works better than an agitator, washing machine? I think you can because you can do spot stains you can scrub them individually.

Yep. Yep. And then the plunger type thing just lets you kind of agitate the clothes back and forth.

Yes. And that's really the main action of of this five gallon bucket. Laundry method.

Nice.

But what really what really, you know, laundry seems to be the one of the prohibitive barriers for people to live off grid. So a lot, a lot of attention has been paid to it. And I discovered that the hardest part about it is ringing out the clothes. Washing is easy, but trying to get the water out of the clothes is a challenge. So I did buy one of those hand crank roller things.

Okay.

That, you know, we've seen in from yesteryear. Yeah, and that was difficult to use, because it seems to presume that you'd have two pairs of hands one to crank and one person to feed the clothes in. And then it didn't really get the clothes squeezed out enough. So I was looking for other newer inventions. And again, in in Asia, in tiny Japanese apartments, they someone had contrived to make a spin dryer that is hand operated, okay. Much like a salad spinner. Only with rope and handles.

Okay.

And I got one of those, and it does a great job.

Nice.

It pulls the water out. That can then drain into a bucket in to use in the garden. Okay, and it will. You don't have to handle each item individually. You're just cramming it into this little basket inside the spin spin thing.

Spin thing? Yeah. Okay. I just found the picture of you using it on your blog. I'll I'll, I'll add that in for the show notes. Because I think people will be really curious to see it.

Right. There's also an electric spin dryer. Yes. That I haven't used to. But then you're using electricity. Right? Right. But it's a very low use of it's only like three minutes. Right? It's real quick.

It's like, people are probably familiar sometimes at the gym, they'll have a spinner so that you can like if there's a pool, you can spit out your wet bathing suit. Okay, before you before you go home.

Right, right.

Yeah, you also have I would describe it as a like a it's a it's a board. It's a piece of wood or something with a whole coil of black piping kind of attached to it and a hose coming out. Is that Is that some kind of hot water setup?

Yes, I tried that. Okay, you know, it's like laying a hose out in the sun. And I was really intent on it, as you can see with all the zip ties that I had to use the keep, to mold that garden irrigation pipe to this frame.

Yeah.

And it worked great, but it didn't keep the water hot once the sun went down.

Right.

So to do that properly, you'd have to make up like a solar oven box around it that was insulated. So it didn't seem worthwhile. It's easier just to boil water. But my my go to during the summer months is to just put out my solar oven, fill three bottles, glass bottles with water and put them in the solar oven. And, you know, in a few hours, it's hot water. And I pour it into thermos carriers, you know, you're gonna get a gallon or two gallon thermos. And that keeps the water hot enough to use to

Brilliant, brilliant, I love it. I love talking to someone who's lived tiny for for long enough that you've you've come, you've run into problems, you've designed solutions for them. Maybe those solutions haven't worked the way that you've wanted them to. And then you kind of you keep iterating you keep kind of right, you can improve the system a little bit at a time.

Because that's the whole point of this experiment in just living is to see what actually works over the long haul.

Yeah. So you've been you've been living tiny for five years. Do you? Do you have an end date in sight? Are you you know, you're just going until you until you don't want to keep going.

I don't have an end date. I mean, people who were watching me doing this were like this is I look forward to the day that you come back to indoor plumbing. And I'm like, No, this is the whole fun of it.

Yeah.

If anything, it would be to be able to stay fit for as long as I can climb up into the loft. And yeah, for as long as I can carry these buckets in and out. Yeah, but at the same time, this is what is keeping me fit.

Right, right.

Yeah.

Well, that's awesome. It's almost like the tiny house, that tiny house puts you in shape to live in the tiny house and vice versa.

Yes, it's built in that way. I do have the option of living in a larger house, my mother's house because she needs someone to take care of it. So I go to her house a couple of nights a week. So in that sense, I am getting the best of both worlds. Okay, I can go there to do laundry when it's you know, bad weather. Yeah, to cook casseroles, which I really can't do here in the tiny house.

Right, right.

And in the winter when it rains for several days, I run out of power because there's no solar. Ah, and my power bank is only really good for that day's accumulation. I could expand the battery pack so that it can hold more energy for the days where there are no sun. But I'm putting that off for the time being. In fact, I bought some of those portable batteries that are now so frequent the Jackery line two as a stopgap for when the power does go out

And that's, that's sad.

So you know in the winter maybe I give up ice cream a little and my only refrigeration is a freezer, which I keep outside to make blocks of ice in containers plastic containers that I then could into the cooler. So outside I have the freezer running off of solar power. It's plugged directly into the components and when it when the power shuts off, it's okay for the freezer to not have power because nothing really thaws out. It takes a while. It'll take a day or two for anything to be damaged.

Yeah.

Okay, so I live with that I live with the freezer cutting off and coming back on in the morning. And those are good things to know to like, because I mean, California, we not only have the threat of earthquake, but the fires, which means that power is cut a lot. Especially areas that are wooded. Like the town I'm living in. The power was off a lot in the summer, but I didn't notice at all. Because I was off grid, of course. And then in the winter, I do notice, but

You could, right, but even then you might have to share it with them.

Yes, yes. I mean, tiny house living is not to live in isolation, it actually helps you to live more in community.

Absolutely. And you live you mentioned that you live in the backyard, or on another property.

It's a beautiful rural property.

Okay.

People keep horses in this area. And so my landlord, his house is down the hill, at one end of the property, and I'm living at the other end.

Okay.

And part of my rent is to help manage the vegetation, which is a fire danger.

Okay.

And that's very satisfying to do to cut away all the dead flesh. And that accumulates.

I'll bet. I'll bet.

And helpful to the town.

Yeah, yeah. And important for for yeah, for more than just you and more than just that property?

Yes.

Have you? I know that that fires are unfortunately becoming more and more prevalent in the West. Have you ever had to, like evacuate and like move the tiny house?

I did not move the tiny house. I, when we had evacuation orders in 2020, because of these lightning fires that were really freakish. And the town was ordered to evacuate. And I went back and forth in my mind, should I try to drive this rig out? I don't even have a truck to drive it. So it's a big deal to rent one. And getting getting in here was difficult enough. And I thought about it and I was thinking, Well, if the place burned down, what would I come back to? I'd be stuck looking for a new

Okay.

Luckily, we were not even encroached by the fire. It was like a two towns away. And there was lots of water with bridges that would break up the possibility so it wasn't as dire as

That's good.

it could have been.

I'm glad to hear that.

It was interesting watching what people hauled out of here though. Their entire collection of rocks. Crystals and that's what one person loaded her car with, along with her cat.

Well, everyone, different things are important to different people, right?

Yes, exactly.

So tell me about your your memoir, The Girls Guide to Off Grid Living?

Yes, I was first intending just to write a pamphlet about how to build your own composting toilet. But then, of course, YouTube took over and making it much easier for people to learn visually. So I thought, well, maybe I will write about why I wanted to build a composting toilet. And then that led to well, maybe I will write about why a woman would even want to design a life around a

Yeah.

So it all became quite a book. Some would say it's a little long story, they don't know what it's about. But I feel that it all is on the one theme of why would you go this route, this us non-mainstream off grid, free range child grows up and builds around house kind of thing

Becomes a free range adult, right?

Yes, exactly. It gave me great pleasure to write it to, to get down my life story in this fashion. So and I also did the off grid, publishing route of self publishing, nice designing the book and the covers and the interior. So that too, was a fun experience to upload it myself to the Amazon platform.

Nice.

Which of course, it's not awkward at all.

Of course.

But but that's the irony of our life, isn't it?

Exactly.

We use tech to connect and talk about how we disconnected?

Yes, we are. We're nothing but paradoxes.

Exactly.

And then tell tell us about your your other, your other memoir.

The other memoir, Eiamonds In My Pocket, was mostly about my life growing up in Thailand. Okay, because it was difficult for me to sort out what had influenced my life. Why was I so different from my peers here in America. And it had a lot to do with the Thai culture

Nice. Are you are you working on any writing projects now?

Oh, yes. I'm continuing to write. The tiny house is ideal as a writing shack.

Yeah, I'll bet.

Because there's, there's far less temptation to get up and clean something.

Right, right.

My my writing powers. They often talk about how they can't sit down to wait until the kitchens are being cleaned up and everything finished. So there's less maintenance. Since I live alone, there's no nobody to have to accommodate as far as getting time free. And it feels like it's far away from the madding crowd.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Well, one thing that I like to ask all my guests, is, you know, what are two or three resources that have helped you out on your tiny house journey that you'd like to share with our listeners, and that could be books, or YouTube channels or products, you know, tools really open ended? What can't you live without?

Well, at this point, YouTube is just a profound

Yes.

platform of just about anything I would try to do. It sure is. People who have proud to show how they work things out? And it's a very folk art to making your own videos and it's gotten the the level of production values have also climbed.

They sure have a sure have.

I mean, I used to go to the library to read all of those hippie how to make your own clothes, books and make your own camping equipment and how to build an igloo. But that that takes a different skill of trying to translate words and diagrams into actual reality. Yeah, so that I can't think of any better resources. There's always discussions going on around people writing books about what would be the best what social thing to do to improve our sustainability that I keep up with too.

Nice. Well, Amanda Kovattana, thank you so much for being a guest on the show today. I loved learning about all of your your systems that you've developed, and I'm looking forward to continuing to follow your journey on your blog.

Thanks very much for having me.

Thank you so much to Amanda Kovattana for being a guest on the show today. You can find the show notes, including a full transcript of this episode, and photos of Amanda's various tiny house systems over at thetinyhouse.net/257. Again, that's thetinyhouse.net/257. Thank you so much to PODX Go for sponsoring the show today. Don't forget to check them out at PODXGo.com. Well, that's all for