And just like that, I’m everyone else’s problem
“And just like that, I’m everyone else’s problem.” Because; We have arrived!
2 hours it took us. 2 hours to move 25km (or about 15 miles if you are into silly measurements. I might as well include that according to AI, it would be 52,000 housecats laid end to end).
We decided to move the tiny house in the dead of night (1 am) as we knew we would be a hazard. It wasn’t a long distance, but we moved…. slowly. I really mean slowly. Our top speed was about 40km/h (15mph). What was nice, was that it was pretty much a straight run down the highway. Meaning traffic had more lanes to overtake us, not that there was much of it, New Zealand is pretty sleepy at this hour.
We arrived outside the property we are going to rent at about 3am in the morning. It is a very wooded property, with a lot of trees and bushes on both sides of a long driveway. So there was no way I was going to attempt to get the Tiny House down the driveway at that hour. We ended up just parking on the side of the road, and then crawling into the tiny house and falling asleep with an alarm set for 6am.
After a lovely 3 hours of sleep that night. It was time to tie back some heavy tree branches and hope for the best (why do my plans always just involve hoping things go right?)
But surprisingly this time at least, things did go right. We did get a pretty heavy scratch on the metal side of the house from one overhanging tree, and some of the exterior floodlights took a beating (we lost 1), but it went quite smoothly in my opinion. The rest of the morning was spent hooking up fresh water and power (so it turns out I didn’t need all the tanks, water collection or solar panels at the moment). As well as digging a gravel pit for grey water.
We found a sunny spot.
As far as our location goes, It is about 20 minutes north of my work. We are surrounded by native trees and fruit trees. The land owners are really quite lovely. The Tiny House is shielded from view of the road (as we didn’t want any issues with the council). But best of all, the rent is cheap.
We are technically ‘on grid’ at the moment. We do still have solar, but it will just be for things like the lights, computers and other electronics. Bigger stuff such as the washing machine and heating I might as well use the 240v power available.
About all that’s left for the next few weeks is to build some stairs and then take a break for a little while. It has been a hell of a journey, with an unimaginably tight deadline to get this far… I think I need a holiday.