This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. Join us as we take a detailed walk-through of the planning and installation of our 3kW - 5kWH - 120V off-grid solar system that powers a rehabbed shipping container! Hi there, we’re Jonathan & Ashley from Tiny Shiny Home. Our family of 6 spent many years traveling full-time in our renovated vintage Airstream before finding some off-grid property in Cochise County, Arizona to settle on. Our dream here is to build a sustainable off-grid homestead from the ground up using solar power, wate ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. In our first series of roundhouse videos we designed, planned, and set the foundation for this unique eartbag home. This series of videos will focus on building the earthbag walls, installing doors and windows, and more. The Exciting Next STEPS on our HYPERADOBE ROUNDHOUSE! We continue our Hyperadobe Roundhouse build, picking up where we left off with our floor level bags, and installing our first door forms while wrapping and sealing the foundation layers ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. Hi there! Today we’re going to share the process of installing a Wi-Fi Mesh that not only covers our 7 acre homestead, but also puts that fast internet inside multiple buildings made out of metal and 16” thick earthbag walls. Sections Existing Internet Setup Goals for New Setup Researching Options Why We Chose UniFi Making a Plan Wi-Fi Mesh Setup & Installation Problems We Encountered How Far Did our Mesh Reach? How's it Working? Shopping List Wiring Guide Disclaimer:  ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. Today we’re going to share everything we know about hyperadobe earthbag building - these UV treated raschel mesh tubes present exciting new opportunities, safer build sites, and huge cost savings for those of us building with soil. Since hyperadobe is so new, there’s not a lot of information out there. We’ve been furiously experimenting the last 4 years with it, building a solar shed office, a large outdoor chicken garden, a small composting toilet outhouse, and have taken everything we’ve ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. Since moving to Arizona 4 years ago and starting our own natural building journey we’ve seen an explosion in interest, ideas, methods, creativity, and community - all around creating a life that’s more natural and sustainable than the one we left behind. Hi there, we're Jonathan & Ashley - aka Tiny Shiny Home.  Our family is building an off-grid desert homestead from the ground up - literally. Today we're here to ask why? Why are so many of us searching for something simpler? Why ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. A project to rehab an old shipping container into the coolest goat barn you've ever seen. Dreamed up by our oldest daughter Adali. From the very beginning of our homestead journey Adali was totally invested in the animals. She basically raised all our chickens for eggs, pigs and chickens for meat, and goats for milk. She took on the responsibility of feeding and caring for them, waking up early every morning, and getting her own great pyrenees guardian dog to protect them. By last season w ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. Back at the end of the summer, we shared our hyperadobe roundhouse plans for the very first time. It was years of designing, experimenting, and planning finally becoming a reality. And a huge inspiration for our design was the WillowEnd RoundHouse, the first permitted earthbag structure in Australia. Turns out this guy Hayden from Curvatecture was hired to manage the earthbag construction of that house, and we both already followed each other without realizing the connection. A whole l ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. Our family spent the last month building an open air outdoor shower out of hyperadobe earthbags and glass bottles. So many glass bottles. This was a fun little project that included our first exposed aggregate concrete floor, a drain that flows directly to our permaculture berm and swale, a ridiculous amount of glass bottle bricks, a multi day earthbag workshop, a portable outdoor water heater, and the fanciest shower head we’ve had in over a decade. After showering in our renovated vintag ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. After 3 years of building, preparing, learning, and experimenting on our off-grid homestead, it's finally time to begin work on our home. This is by far the biggest project we've tackled yet! Behind the scenes we've been planning, designing and organizing everything, trying to get to a point where we can actually break ground and share the process with you.  We'll use this space to share each step of the process. Laying the Foundation (Step 1) Join us as we share the months long pad p ..read more

This post may contain affiliate links or compensated reviews. Please read our disclosure for more info. Hello friends, today we’re going to tell the story about how a rogue lighting strike cost us thousands of dollars, left us without power for almost a week, and the changes we’re making to our system to make sure it doesn’t happen again. If you’re not familiar, we installed a large fully off-grid solar system for our desert homestead about two years ago. All DIY, pieced together ourselves. It’s got 7200W of solar panels, a 28kwh lithium battery bank, and a 5,000w AC Inverter. The video expl ..read more