A shipping container-turned-sustainable farmhouse on the Fleurieu Peninsula

When you think of a farmhouse, chances are what comes to mind isn’t much like Jennifer Waters’ tiny home on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia.

Waters, 48, admits that the shipping container conversion wasn’t what she and her daughter Emily, 20, envisaged living in either. They bought 17 hecatres (42 acres) of land – a blank canvas – in 2016 with plans to build a large home on the property.

The shipping container was supposed to be temporary accommodation they just threw together, something to house them while the main house was being built.

“It ended up being not so temporary, and not-so-slap-dash,” Waters says. Living the tiny lifestyle ticked a lot of boxes for the mother and daughter duo.

For starters, they didn’t need a mortgage to pay for it, plus it was very easy to clean the two-bedroom, one-bathroom space. After deciding on an industrial aesthetic, using recycled timbers and making considered choices about the lighting “it was really cute, and really liveable, and we just really liked it”, Waters says. “It just worked. So, I went with it.”

Waters has long been interested in sustainable living, so perhaps it’s no surprise that she embraced a home with a smaller footprint. After a long stint in the Adelaide Hills and working in the corporate world, living out on the land surrounded by animals had been calling her for a while.

“The idea of living simplistically and enjoying a true rural lifestyle was a real draw for me,” she says.

The tiny house allowed Waters put her knowledge of off-grid power and water systems into practice. The only “outside” service to the home is for the internet and mobile phones. The property is independent of the grid – power comes from a ground-mounted solar system and battery storage, and the water supply is dependent on what falls from the sky (and the occasional water delivery in very dry periods). The home is also serviced by a full septic system.

“I’m quite passionate about being self-reliant,” Waters says.

Insulation of the container home, which is essentially a steel box, had to be thoroughly considered to make it comfortable for living in temperatures that range from close to zero into the 40s. Walls are well-insulated, thorough ventilation has been included, and the placement of the container itself makes the most of the available sun and shade at appropriate times.

Waters says having a low-maintenance home has allowed her and Emily to spend more time on their passion – the animals living on the farm. Emily runs her own Suffolk sheep stud on the property, and there are also resident goats, alpacas and horses. It’s a busy, outdoor lifestyle for the pair, especially during lambing time.

The longer they’ve lived on the farm, the more they’ve taken it upon themselves to do necessary repairs, both outside and inside the home.

A recent cracked tile in the bathroom led to such extensive water damage that all the tiling and some of the walls had to be removed for a thorough clean up. Mother and daughter got on the tools and did a lot of the physical labour themselves.

While no one would wish for such an event, Waters says it provided a good opportunity to think about other upgrades they could make. They decided to maximise available technology in the house to make their lives more comfortable and efficient.

“Because we are off grid, and we are on a farm, and we don’t rely on anything apart from the internet – it’s the only outside resource we’ve got – we thought it would be really cool to make it a smart home,” Waters says.

Installing smart technology will allow the women to control functions in the house while they are out working with the animals.

“I can access the lights and airconditioning and heating, and whatever else from one of the paddocks on the farm. We can check the solar system and turn the generator on if we need to.”

Waters and Emily are also really excited to begin using voice-activated farming apps on their phones to help them track sheep breeding and fleece management.

“There are a lot of things that can be done on the apps that make life so much easier,” Waters says. “We’re trying to modernise the farming a little bit. Trying to do it the smart way – work smarter, not harder.”

Waters finds it amusing that some people think she can’t even watch television in her off-grid farmhouse let alone power anything else. It’s a far cry from the reality.

“Most people would expect an off-grid home to be like a little shack in the woods that doesn’t have electricity,” she says. “How different is this?”

This article is part of a series on Green Homes, brought to you by Belong, Australia’s first carbon-neutral telco and winner of Finder’s Green Telco of the Year 2020.