Musician and photographer Jamie, 28, has spent five years living in a shed on land in Oxfordshire. Since the summer he’s been building himself a new cabin of his own design. I talked to him about the process of building, the benefits of using natural materials and why he chose to live off the grid and outside the law.

I’ve been living on this piece of land for almost five years. I was in another wooden structure before which was a flatpack shed/summer house I had inherited from someone else. It was un-insulated and it had less space and single glazing. Yeah my lifestyle was quite difficult I suppose, especially in the winter. I had to burn quite a lot of wood to stay warm and I had to wash-up outdoors.

That was quite a big learning process and over the course of that time I was designing the new cabin. So all of the things I found lacking in the shed that I was in, I addressed them in the design of the new cabin. So making it insulated, double glazed, having a sink and water drainage for doing washing-up indoors – various different things. The design of the new cabin was based on things that I’d learnt in the old one.

My cabin is on the upper, south-facing slopes of a valley under a big tree – I’m not allowed to say where because living off the grid has become seen as a naughty and subversive thing to do so I won’t tell you where it is but it’s in a field in Oxfordshire.

It’s a timber framed building, clad with timber with double-glazed windows and wool insulation. The floorspace is rectangular but the end profile is pentagonal so it means that it’s wider at the eaves than it is at the floor. There’s a mezzanine level for sleeping.

That’s got some good thermal properties and its also very beautiful and it means that shelves and things don’t impinge so much on your living space because obviously the walls slope backwards so anything above floor level is set back. It’s a design that someone showed me that had been built in France and I took a liking to it. I have seen it in one other place I think, there was an ‘interesting cabins’ book where someone had a pentagonal-profiled building.

It’s quite distinctive looking, and there are some advantages in terms of catching sunlight. In the winter when the sun’s lower in the sky you get sunlight coming in through the windows, warming the space when you need it. Then in summer, because of the angle of the sun it gets blocked out by the roof so you’re not absorbing heat into the space and it stays cool.

Materials wise, I’ve chosen to use natural materials as much as possible because of their environmental impact being low, timber and wool, these are renewable materials and they’re also low-imput manufacture. Sourcing of materials is really important because there are a lot of systems involved basically, in the production of materials and they’ve all got an impact on the environment, on people’s work, how they’re manufactured and I wanted to make sure that this is a sustainable-consumption sort of thing.

Beyond that there’s also the legacy the building leaves. So one day when I’m no longer around the materials can be either recycled or disposed of easily. Materials that are biodegradable are a lot easier to handle and have a lower environmental impact after they’ve been used. If my children and grandchildren don’t want to maintain the building and it is going to fall into disrepair then it’s something that will just rot into the ground or can be used as firewood.

A lot of love I suppose and a lot of hope, has gone into the design and construction of the new cabin. I have been looking forward to the new space, having designed it myself I was excited to see how it would look in three dimensions. Some parts of doing it were very difficult. Without having a proper workshop, doing everything by hand, things do take a long time. But that’s just like any kind of building project, it’s always over budget and behind schedule.

My name’s Jamie and I am 28 years old and I do a mixture of things. I’m a musician, just like everyone else you’ve interviewed about living off grid. I also do some carpentry and building work and some photography work, I make ends meet from a variety of things.

I like to be flexible with my time – that’s important – I don’t want to dedicate all of my time to working a nine-to-five. In part that’s a lifestyle choice that I’ve made because it suits me but also I think there aren’t many opportunities around for making money in a meaningful and satisfying way.

From my point of view rents are unaffordable and mortgages are unaffordable. I think it’s an inflated cost that doesn’t truly reflect the real value of these things so purely on an economic level living like this makes a lot of sense. That’s something that informed my decision to live off the grid and to do something for myself.

The rules and regs restrict this sort of thing from going on. Not only that but the cost of land is prohibitive. So it’s very difficult for anyone to even make a start on doing it or to have the option of doing it without having access to land, whether that’s through having bought some which is very expensive or someone in their family having some or a friend who’s willing to let someone use it.

A psychological or emotional factor in my being here is the knowledge that it’s not backed by the law, I don’t have a legal right to do what I’m doing. But then that’s a only one side of things, I suppose. You’ll also have your moral standpoint on things and for me that means I want to live sustainably and I want to have a low impact on the environment and I want to actually see what’s going on for myself which is very difficult to do when you’re just pressing buttons and paying bills.

When it’s all on-tap you can’t really easily see what you’re using. It’s very easy to see how much water you’re using, how much electricity you’re using or how much fuel you’re using when you’re actually looking at it and and you’re carrying it and you’re moving it and you’re generating it. It’s a connection with reality.

The costs are a lot less in monetary terms living like this, because it’s not a question of buying everything. There is a question of the time it takes to saw and chop the wood, for example but financially it’s going to be very very low. My girlfriend lives in a room in a shared house and pays £250 a month, which is nothing by most standards, but the cost of me being in the cabin is going to be much less than that.

It’s about financial resilience. Say I was going to have a dry patch at work, or if I was in full-time employment and I was made redundant. I wouldn’t be completely up against it, I’d be able to take care of myself – there would be a lot of resilience in that because I’m less dependant on money. That does put you in a strong position. I suppose it’s similar to the energy thing, you’ve either got to produce more or use less and the same goes for money.

Jamie went into much more detail about the individual systems he’s designed to make life comfortable: his solar setup, his wool insulation and his brand new, wood-fired range scratch-built from scrap metal. If you’d like to hear about that please leave me a comment here or on Facebook and if enough people are interested I’ll upload Part Two of our chat.