Dorian Nouka

My father and I are looking to create an off grid tiny house for his retirement home. We've been looking all over NY and we both found a nice little area in Ostego county that was close enough to some small towns that we wouldn't lose our minds from lack of sociality (2 city mice here), but nice and wooded enough to do projects.

We called up the zoning person (I believe) and everything was great until we got to the idea of doing a compost toilet for the tiny house. That seemed to be this guy's specialty and he was not at all about that. He was talking about how we'd need to hire an engineer to approve things and how a septic tank is necessary to pass inspection. Thousands of unnecessary dollars spent on this water situation.

So I'm just wondering if anyone has any advice regarding this? Can you get around it if your structure isn't technically large enough to be considered a home? Do RVs get around this somehow? Are there any loopholes anyone has found? I wouldn't even mind hiring an environmental scientist to make sure what we were doing was good for the land but hiring an engineer to look at a few 10 foot holes in the ground where poop and sawdust will go and eventually turn to soil doesn't make sense to me.

If I can't get around this I think we'll have to move our searches to Vermont, which isn't the worst thing in the world but I was really enjoying the close by tiny towns within an eBike distance, and buses in that town that can lead you to other larger cities.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Physiccccssssss!!! Curses. Ok, I appreciate the wake-up call on this one. I'm still trying to not use any energy on this one. Part of that is I'm living off grid, and while a cheapy solar setup is within budget for environmental reasons I'm trying not to use such a thing for this.

I'm moving into summer here in Kauai so I'm not sure how much more it's going to heavily rain, but perhaps a rain catchment system might be my best bet, and have the waterfall only go in motion when it rains.

If anyone has any other ideas I'd love to hear em. Looking through the above linked thread now.

Ok, so I'm trying to build this piece for my house. It's essentially a waterfall that falls down into a water bowl and eventually, with the help of a bell siphon flows back up a hose onto the top of the waterfall and continues over and over.

I have a bunch of moss I collected on an amazing hike I went on recently that I want to propagate and work into the waterfall system, so that the water flows over/around the moss while doing its loops. Throw in some lava rocks, and shells (I live in Kauai) into the sloping area of the waterfall and bam, beautiful living waterfall.

But the thing is, I just don't understand the engineering/physics end of the bell siphon. I've looked up about 4 or 5 youtube videos, and I still just don't get it. I'm basically wondering if to you (someone who has messed with bell siphons) this seems possible to pull off.

If dimensions matter I'm thinking the waterfall peak (top of the hill for lack of a better word) will be 2 feet higher than the water bowl. I can probably adjust accordingly, if I have the dimensions wrong; I'm just looking for a proof of concept here, and maybe any advice you might impart.

Thanks,
Dorian


Edit: I guess I didn't put it in the picture, but inside the water bowl is where the bell siphon would live, and the hose would bring the water up to the top again.

So, I'm from the east coast. I'm a city boy; and I've been traveling and WWOOFing for the last 2 years. The city mouse in me, it turns out, is hard to quash. I want to do some homesteading on maybe an acre or so of land, but I don't want to completely lose out on cultural diversity and the dynamic variety that comes from cities or interesting towns.

The Pacific Northwest has always appealed to me. The lush greens of the fern forests have been calling out to me for years, but I haven't had a chance to experience it first hand. So I'm hoping people from around Northern CA, Oregon or Washington (or even BC) might be able to help me narrow in on a place that is to my liking.

Ideally I'd be looking for a place that is up and coming in sort of a Asheville NC maybe 10 years ago sort of place. Kinda youthful, kinda weird place that hasn't quite hit it's stride yet and thus property around it might be a bit cheaper.

I have this fantasy of being able to work and entertain myself in that type of atmosphere and then e-bike or public commute a little farther away from this fantasy town/city back to my tiny homestead house in a little nook of fern forest.



Anyone have any ideas or suggestions where to start to look into such a place?