Our little house has been tested this winter. Not by snow (we haven't had much of that), but by single-digit temps. It's been the coldest weather since we moved in a couple years ago, and it's supplied us with more than a few lessons learned:

Floor insulation. The cold that seeps into the house comes up from the floor. We thought the few inches of rigid insulation we put between the floor joists was enough, but we probably should have doubled it. It would have been worth the additional $$. We're thinking we might add insulation underneath the trailer.

Skirting the trailer. We would also benefit from skirting around the trailer, to cut down on the wind running under the house and chilling our floors.

Water pipe insulation. A year ago we happily reported that we'd completed enough upgrades to our system to have flowing water all year, which is something you learn to be happy about when you don't have any running water your first winter. We were wrong. Though they didn't burst (yay!), our pipes froze in a couple places, temporarily cutting off our water supply. The hose from our friend's house to our water tanks should have been deeper in the ground, to get below the freeze line. (If it ever bursts, that's just what we'll do when we replace the hose.) The pipe that runs through the floor joist under our insulation needs heat tape and more insulation, so it won't freeze. 

Cut-off valve. Adding a water cut-off inside the house means we can drain the pipe under the floor when we go into a deep freeze. Hopefully, this will keep the pipe from freezing until we get the chance to add heat tape and insulate it better.

Electric loads. We came home to a 36-degree house when the breaker popped while we were away. We had someone visiting and hadn't warned our guest about issues we've been having with the space heater, water heater and pump drawing power on the same line. If they all go on at the same time, they flip the breaker. We need to take a long look at what we have on each line, what we have on solar (we could move the refrigerator to solar, as it turns out) and how to better manage our electrical draw. (This is Bill's domain; if you have questions, let me know and I'll ask him!)

Wood. We're trying to get better about staying ahead on the log supply for the wood stove. When you need it, you need it—and a cold, winter night is not the time to be out in the dark splitting and sawing. We have one, big metal trashcan full of right-sized logs up in the garage now, and four small cans that sit outside the door on the deck, so we can grab more wood without going anywhere.
 
Backup bucket. We finally remembered to buy a spare 5-gallon plastic bucket, so that we don't have to walk up to the compost barrels in the middle of a snow storm or single-digit temps when the bucket in the toilet gets full. We can just snap a lid on the full bucket and leave it outside the door until a convenient time to bring it up the hill to the barrels.

Air exchanger. The past two winters, we've had to open windows (despite the prevailing temps) if the carbon monoxide alarm goes off, signalling the need for fresh air in the house. Now, with our  exchanger, air is efficiently coming in and going out all the time—with the windows sealed tight.

It's been about a week since we got brave, cut a hole in the roof and installed the pipe for our Kimberly wood stove. The first time we lit the stove, the two of us sat watching wood burn for a good part of the evening. Several fires later, it's still rather captivating to watch as the flames start swirling around when the gasifier kicks into action, and the secondary flame burns off most of the smoke.

Standing outside you can see when this happens. The first smoke is clearly visible, a white stream coming out of the black pipe. We look again about 15 minutes later, and we have trouble sighting so much as a whiff of smoke.

The stove magically heats our space. I say "magically" because though the top and front heat up significantly, the heat spreads across the tiny house evenly. I boiled water for tea the other night by putting a kettle atop the stove; I was amazed by how fast the water reached a boil. 

I'm not going to do a full-blown review yet of the Kimberly Stove from Unforgettable Fire. We're still figuring out which wood at what size works best and trying to see how long we can get a fire to stay burning through the night. (We aren't anywhere close to the "up to 8 hours" we've been told a fire can burn in one of these stoves.) We also got some compressed sawdust logs to try out, after seeing them recommended as a good backup/supplemental fuel.

In the meanwhile, it's simple to light the stove as the temperature drops in the evening. And it's still novel enough to stoke the fire, lingering each time to watch the flames flicker and dance. Much technique to learn, much warmth to savor.

We have a roof that doesn't leak (insert a "knock on wood" here). Why would we want to cut a hole in it? It's a reasonable question. Except that "we" (perhaps one of us more than the other) don't like to be cold, and our future warmth is dependent on cutting a big, gaping hole through our currently pristine roof.

Inside the house, our shiny Kimberly wood stove awaits that hole in the roof, through which it will vent what little smoke it produces straight up, out of the house. As we summon the will to cut a hole in the roof, we've gathered up the pieces of stovepipe, the ceiling box, the rain shield, the end cap. We've built a woodbox that the stove will sit atop. We've started the fire resistant base (cement board to be topped by ceramic tile) and installed heat shields (metal panels "floating" an inch out from the adjacent  walls). Outside, we've set up the ladder and plugged in the drill that's ready for our new, super-long drill bit and hole saw kit. It's go time.

To be continued...but, in the meanwhile, I'll say a word (or two) (or many more) about wood stoves in general and our wood stove in particular.

Burning wood produces gases, particulate matter and other pollutants harmful to us all. But not all wood burning is equal. New designs for wood stoves, in particular, have dramatically reduced emissions while enhancing efficiency—which means less wood burned to begin with, plus what wood is burned produces a fraction of the harmful byproducts of open fires or old stoves.

A prime example of this: our Kimberly wood stove by Unforgettable Fires. Currently, the EPA certifies new wood stoves that produce no more than 7.5 grams of fine particulate matter per hour. That number is being slashed by the agency; soon, new stoves will only be allowed to produce 4.2 grams per hour. The Kimberly produces 3.2, but even that performance will have to improved if the EPA moves to the proposed 1.3 grams/hour in five years. Stove makers, like Unforgettable Fire, are answering the challenge to reduce the pollutants released while increasing the heat output from each log burned through the development of increasingly efficient internal gasifiers.

Besides performance, we love the love the look and footprint of our Kimberly. It's a two-foot high stainless column only 10 inches in diameter. It fits easily into a tiny, 250-square-foot house like ours, though it could heat up to 1500 square feet. And because the stove's designed to draw in outside air for combustion, it addresses air quality issues in a compact space. (We'll still run a carbon monoxide detector!)

I'll do a review of how the Kimberly works for us after we've had it fired up for a while. Right now, keep your fingers crossed for an easy, leak-proof install.  

We've been puzzling over power for our tiny house ever since we made the decision to build a house. We want to reduce our carbon footprint, so renewable energy seems a clear choice. But wind, solar and the like are sizable investments, and our budget is less "sizable." Lots of tiny housers go partially solar for lights and outlets, then augment with energy-efficient propane for cooking, heating and hot water units. But that re-raises the eco dilemma: we don't want to buy new technology (stoves, hot water heaters, etc) that rely on a non-renewable, fracking-associated fuel like propane. 

A solution that balances resources (both financially and ecologically) came to Bill as he was stringing wire through the framing of the house. Why not buy as much solar as we can afford now and take advantage of the generous offer of our landlord to tie into her grid electric for additional power. Hopefully, down the road, we'll move off the grid and go 100% renewable. 

Then we moved on to agonizing over what solar panels, batteries, charge controller and inverter to buy and where to buy them. We don't want the panels on our roof; the house isn't in an ideal spot for sun, and we want a system we can easily expand in the future. A ground-mounted system works for us. We researched and read about battery life and storage capabilities, about sun requirements, about pure sine wave inversion and...the learning curve was steep. So when we heard about an integrated, portable system that comes ready to plug in and power up, it seemed the right fit. It's more expensive than cobbling together our solar setup ourselves, but it meets all our needs for a reasonable markup.

And the winner is: the Solman Classic by SolSolutions. The all-in-one unit comes on wheels, so we will be able to orient it for maximum sun as often as we want. (Evidently, adjusting position to track the sun a couple times a day can bump up power production by as much as 30%.) We can also situate the unit in a field some distance from our shady tiny house site. The 3000 "usable" watts of battery storage (batteries store more watts than can be drawn from them effectively) should have no trouble handling our all-LED lights, outlets (largely for charging devices) and ceiling fans. 

For things that draw a lot of power, we have a hybrid approach. Cooking will be on our alcohol-burning stove/oven by Origo. We'll heat the house with our super-efficient wood-burning stove, the Kimberly by Unforgettable Fire. Our hot water heater and water pump (both still TBD!), Energy Star refrigerator and, should we decide we can't live without one, our microwave all get tied to the grid. The local electric cooperative has a less-than-stellar portfolio of energy: lots of coal power,  no renewable. But it's available on site we can always "un-tie" ourselves down the road. In the short term, we can move more over to solar if we see we're producing enough power.

To make this magic happen, Bill installed two breaker boxes. One will be powered by our battery bank, which in turn will be powered by our three solar panels. The second breaker box draws from the local electric grid. Once the two grounding rods get stuck in the ground and connected to the ground wires, we'll be all powered up. Now, if we only had walls and flooring and...

We haven't posted anything about building lately...because, well, we haven't been working outdoors much these sub-freezing days. (And there was that wedding in Mexico to blissfully distract us.) But we've still made progress, spending time reading and calculating and dreaming—and shopping. We've made a boatload of decisions: from lighting and heating to our wall paint and our composting toilet. 

Some of our picks:

The Kimberly Wood Stove. This sleek, stainless "gasifier" wood stove burns efficiently and cleanly, with less than half the emissions allowed by the EPA. It could heat a space six times the size of our tiny house, and one load of wood can burn up to 8 hours. So, as long as it works as advertised, we should be toasty all winter next year. Not to mention, we can do a little cooking atop it and, if we opt to buy a thermoelectric generator, we can produce a little power to boot.

Origo 6000 Oven/Stove. Electric stoves are energy hogs; using one would tax our solar/battery system (still in the planning stage). While some "tiny housers" opt for propane cooking, we're trying to steer clear of fossil fuels associated with fracking. The Origo runs on clean-burning, non-pressurized, denatured alcohol. We were lucky enough to see a couple in use at the Tiny House Conference we attended last April. Our two-burner stove and oven is designed for boats—but it's also a great choice for off-the-grid tiny houses. It may take us an extra minute to boil a pot of water, but we think it will be a well-spent minute.

BioLite Basecamp. No more propane grills for us. This wood-burning grill makes good use of the sticks that fall to the ground all around our tiny house. A built-in thermoelectric generator charges the internal fan that improves combustion and enables a cleaner burn. Plus, it generates enough extra energy to power its built-in light and charge a phone.

Ecovita Privy Kit. We're building our own composting toilet. Not the most glamorous of subjects—but quite essential. The short story is that keeping Number One separate from Number Two makes things easier and neater. This privy kit will work in combo with a plastic gas can, plastic bucket, coco fiber and a wood base we're working on. Enough said...