>> gabriel: it's my house, it's not in a mortgageto a bank that if i lose my job i have to give it back. it's paid. so that's one of the things i like most. [music playing] i've lived in my tiny house for about a yearand a half i decided to live in a tiny house really toprove a point that it was doable. in quebec. in northern climates.
one of the winters i lived in it was the 2014/2015 it was one of the coldest winters we had sincelike 100 years or so. it was really cold. and it only cost me $100 bucks to heat upthe whole place all winter. my temperatures were between 17 and 25 degreescelsius all the time. really it was my solar heating that was givingme a lot of free energy and i only had to heat up at night with asmall electric heater. so it was pretty much like $20 bucks per monthof heating. the first thing we have here is the diningarea.
we have a lot of storage underneath it. we also have the table right here. so we just put it there with the naval foot. it transforms into a table and a bed. up here we have a bed in the mezzanine. we have another mezzanine at the other sidewhich is more for storage. here we have my desk, my computer, my monitor. you have some storage under here.
we're already in the kitchen, it's not a bighouse. here the more interesting thing that you cansee is the fridge which runs on solar. completely off-grid. for the water it runs with a solar pump. a 12-volt pump. you have also...this here gives a little morespace for chopping the vegetables or that kind of thing. here we took in the wall to do some storage.
these are shelves not steps. so it's really in the wall. and lastly we have the toilet and shower. it's a compost toilet. and a small shower. and all the interior is in pine and cedar. and it was covered in oil. it's a mix of natural oil. i park it in my family's backyard.
it's really quiet. we have the river nearby and good neighbours. so yeah, pretty much there since the beginning. we constructed it here. i had some fears: could i live in such a smallspace? will i have enough heat for the winter? will everything work out? will the house crash on the road? yeah, a lot of doubts.
but overall it did really well. i can live in a small space. i'm never too cramped. there's a lot of space. i don't know if you'll be able to see it onvideo but in real life it's really...it's spacious. we have to manage resources better. like energy, water, it's really that sortof thing that is challenging. my monthly income is low but the things ihave to pay are low also.
so i don't have to work that much. well, i work a lot i work too much but i wouldn't have to, like if i had a normaljob. i would have to work like 10-15 hours to paymy bills. so my bills are really low. so yeah, it's a really great lifestyle forpeople who want to live better lives, work a little less. it's really great.
[water running] this here is a vertical garden system. it's made of pouches from recycled plasticand it's really great, you just put in your soil, your plants, and when you water it, it really contains...there'sno leakage. so it's a really good solution for small space. and for the air quality in the house it'sreally great. this here is a box containing all the electricalsystems for the solar.
i have about 750 watts of power on the roof. and it powers my fridge, my lights (it's allon led), usb powered things, my solar heating (the fan inside of it), and we also have an inverter that transformsthe 12-volt into 120-volts. my water pump also. my main heating solution is called e-solar. it's a wall heating solar panel that you can see on the side of my house.
most of my heat comes from that. so it's really just, it's attached to thesecond mezzanine and you just take it out and there you go. some stairs are like, really inclinated, likethis and i don't feel safe on those. this one is really great. it was made with fence posts. cedar and fence posts. so it's light, durable.
my company is called microevolution. we do mostly assistance to the auto-constructor [diy] so i do workshops, i do construction plans, i sell a specialized trailer. so really i am there to help people buildtheir small houses for mostly cheap, not a lot of money. 50% of a house total [cost] is labour so when i help people auto-construct theirhouse it's mostly cheaper.
a lot cheaper. and i like it. really, it's cool to assist and meet supernice people that want to live that kind of life. it's a really great sentiment. it's really positive.