Tiny House Ontario

A Very Special Guest

Posted on June 12, 2013 by Laura

I have lived a few places in my life, and quite a number of people who I love are movers.  This makes me one of those people who have loved ones scattered around the planet.

A couple of years ago when I started this blog, it was so that I could explain in one breath exactly what I was up to (building a tiny house).  One of THO’s most loyal blog followers and certainly one of the friends for whom I started this blog is my sister friend Donna.  We shared a lot of words over a long time when things were a little less easy for both of us.

Well… she is visiting from Jamaica and graced THO (and me) with a visit.   We had a nice lunch, a long drive, and a look around the house and gardens.

Beautiful Donna at THO

You have no idea how much I wanted to keep her… but she has a life elsewhere… She has to get back to it, I know.  Still… you know… I miss her already.

Categories: Friendship, Magical, Ontario, Open your eyes, Tiny House Ontario | 11 Comments

Total Darkness

Posted on June 10, 2013 by Laura

DARK

Three nights ago, I awoke… peeked at my light up watch.  It was 3:00 am and I was in my loft at THO.  It was dark.  I opened my eyes, but they did not adjust to the light.  I looked out the window but there was no light, I could see nothing at all.

It dawned on me that I have not, even in the forest of the tiny house been in complete and total darkness since I took a photography class many years ago.  I lay there, petting my dog who I could tell was Minnie by the way her fur feels in my hand.  She is the neediest of my dogs because of her being a runt perhaps and she is always cuddled right in to my tummy while I sleep.

I am not normally insomnia ridden but I lay there awake for about two hours until the daylight broke the darkness.  It was not restlessness or frustration that kept me awake.  I was looking at nothing because my eyes never adjusted.  I simply enjoyed the rare experience of living without light.

Have you ever been outside, or in a room with many curtain free windows and experienced absolute total darkness?

Categories: Forest, Off Grid, Ontario, Open your eyes, Tiny House Ontario, View | 4 Comments

Tiny r(E)volution and the Giant Hoax

Posted on June 6, 2013 by Laura

Tiny me has the pleasure of being interviewed by the charming and hilarious Drew (Andrew Odom) and my wonderful and inspiring twin Laura (LaVoie) of Tiny r(E)evolution.  Their funny and vastly entertaining Episode 37 interview with yours truly is here.

The unanswered question after the interview… is it too wild to live there full time?  Made me laugh a little (okay… a lot).

It is not all the fault of our American friends that this “WILD UNTOUCHED FREEZING NATION” is the understanding you have of Canada.  It is in movies, TV, books and truthfully from a Canadian perspective we like to emulate that we are all Bob McKenzie’s living in igloos to our American neighbours.  We can’t help ourselves!  We find it funny to keep this joke running.  So I vacillate between answering truthfully or taking the Canadian stance and to pull your legs.

Not that Canadians are liars, but we do enjoy telling a fish tale and afterward giggling… I am no exception.

So there are two equally good response questions…

1. Do I have to build THO a customary igloo covering in order to protect it from the elements and use sled dogs to get around 10 months of the year?

Or…

2. Do I live less than 50 km from the US border and have the same weather as New York?

I won’t answer rather I will show you the map of weather zones (for planting) and let you know that THO sits in the yellow zone that is right above Lake Ontario.

Planting zones in North America

The map will tell you that at THO we can expect similar winters to people who live in parts of Kansas and New Mexico.  It can also expect easier winters than those who live in North Dakota and significantly better than Minnesota.  We really don’t experience very hard winters in the most populated areas of Canada.  In fact, is is not until you get North of the 60’th parallel… beyond the tree line… where actually people once did (a hundred years ago) live in igloos.

This said, if you want to sleep in an ice house, in Montreal they build an ice hotel in the winter and you can rent a room there if this is your kind of thing.

THO is roughly 25 km (15 miles) of paved roads from Kingston.  The city itself has a population of 125,000 people.  Kingston is a foodie town with lots of creative people and amenities.  It is also the home of the Ivy League, Queen’s University and St. Lawrence College which makes it a very vibrant intellectually rich city for it’s size.  It has a lot of tourism not just because it is pretty, but because it sits at the Thousand Islands and the tri-county region is not only the home of these islands it also has over 1000 lakes so there are cottages everywhere.  It is also where the Rideau Canal starts and goes up to Ottawa.

I invite you to visit the city and partake of its culture and sites.

kingston1

Honestly, there is nothing dangerous that is keeping me from living in THO… it is just a matter of having the money to install a well, a pump, getting running water going, having regular heat, a septic bed to put waste water in and of course, a shed to store my igloo building kit in.

I am getting there a little at a time.  For now… I stay there a lot of the year and paint the town.

IMG_0227

Thank you Drew and Laura for having me on!  It was a pleasure and an honour to speak with both of you.  I hope you will get up for a visit sometime!  Don’t forget to pack your snow suit!

Categories: Kingston, Ontario, Tiny House Ontario, View, Winter | Tags: , , , , , | 13 Comments

Snake

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Laura

Snake Gif

I was driving to my sister’s house the other day and had just gone around the corner from THO when I found that there was a snake directly on the path of my car.  I was not driving fast, about 30 KPH (just under 20 MPH) so I was able to swerve to miss it.  I stopped the car and walked back to be sure I did not accidentally clip it and when I did, I was surprised by the snake I found.

I had fully expected to see an endangered grey ratsnake (commonly called  blacksnake).  These often huge snakes make their home in the area where THO is located.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not a snake lover.  I admit that am only mildly tolerant of their existence.  I am not scared of them exactly, but I find the way that they suddenly move when you are almost on top of them startling.  I have no desire to touch them either. I find the way the move and wrap around things very icky.  Still,  I certainly would not intentionally kill one, as a matter of fact I find the practice of those who kill them, distasteful at best.

The snake was fully unharmed by my drive by, but it was certainly not a ratsnake.  The thing is, that I can’t identify exactly what sort of snake it was… and is the part that has kept me from writing about it.  The snake with the closest markings (frighteningly) is the Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake but the snake was more slender than images I have seen.  I also did not notice a rattle but I did not get much of a look because it slithered away before I could get a good look (or my camera).  The only other similar snake (that I am aware of) in this area is the milksnake, which both the pattern and the colour were wrong for.

I have never known rattlers to be in the area, but I am concerned that perhaps they are now here because of the way that the climate is altering.

Does anyone have any ideas that are not included here?  If so, please do share a link to an image so that I can have a look and try to properly identify it.

Thanks!

Here are the Unique Features:

The snake was the same colour  as the Massasauga –  Tan/gold and brown.

It had a diamond pattern down both sides as with the Massasauga.

It was about one metre (a yard) in length.

It was a thinner snake similar to the common garter snake in breadth.

Categories: Nature, Off Grid, Ontario, Tiny House Ontario | 13 Comments

Insulation revisited

Posted on June 3, 2013 by Laura

I am on grid for a couple of days because I have a few things to take care of that require water and electricity.  Part of this is preparation for my interview with Tiny r(E)volution.   I wanted to catch up on listening to the podcasts I missed.

It got me thinking about my insulation.  Unlike a lot of tiny house builders, I chose mineral insulation.  I used R15 for my walls and R45 for the roof.  Tiny House Ontario heats easily and stays reasonably cool in the day as well, but this is not just because of the insulation.  Due to the fact that I took into account the location of the house on the planet, it is situated to get optimal sun in the winter and as little sun as possible in the summer.  The large maples around the house really help with this.  Because my house is in Ontario, I would have loved to use R45 for the walls too, but I did not want to lose the interior size to the walls.  This was a concern only because I had to keep the footprint of the house under 108 square feet due to building code restrictions.

My reasons for using mineral insulation are clear.  I don’t want to reinvent the wheel so here is an article that mirrors my own thoughts on the subject.  Plus, it is light and easy to use.  If I were to build a framed home again, I would use this product again.

I have to say that it is fun to revisit these early images.  It is just 2 years ago, and I know it is a tiny building but I really cannot believe how much the site and home have improved.  It gives me incentive to keep on keeping on!

Mineral insulation going in (2011) THO in 2011, with the unused insulation bags outside

Categories: Ontario, Sustainable living, Tiny House Ontario, View | Tags: | 4 Comments