Welcome to the off-grid mountain cabin! This humble abode has all the amenities that make it truly an off-grid experience. Self-sufficiency is the key theme for this Lego set: a theme in which kids can learn. To be self sufficient, a number of features are a must. A fruit orchard and organic vegetable garden provide sustenance. Scattered throughout the cabin’s yard are a variety of other fruit trees. All this requires a lot of water! For its water system, it has a 400 foot well, solar-powered pump, and a 2500 gallon water tank. The cabin’s gutters also capture rain water in a rain barrel; used mostly for the garden and trees. The cabin comes to life at night with brilliant LED lights. To power these lights and appliances in the house, a solar panel system and windmill are used to charge the batteries. No battery power left? No problem. A bio-diesel generator will kick in!

The biggest problem this household has is predators; particularly bears. To protect the inside of the cabin, wood shields for the windows and doors are used. And spikes for each doorstep… Note how the bear stops on the steps in front of the spikes and won’t continue on his rampage. In addition to bears, coyotes can threaten their chickens and pets. The dog house just isn’t enough to product their dogs. The kitty cat (notice no rodents) takes refuge under the house or on the roof. The pets know all to well to keep away from the scorpions. What a sting!

There is no TV for this cabin! Who needs a TV in the countryside? There’s too much to do. It does, however, contain a satellite dish for Internet connectivity. Also with a Ham radio and scanner, one can communicate with the outside world for fire notification and neighborhood watch. At night under a blanket of stars, a telescope provides hours of night viewing. While doing that, others can enjoy the patio furniture and BBQ.

A true off-grid cabin doesn’t have a physical mailing address. This is because the post man doesn’t come out this far. Notice the missing mailbox… For correspondence, a post office box is used in a nearby town. Also, off-grid means no city sewer! An outhouse will do; just as humans have been using for thousands of years. Only this one has a flushing toilet made possible by a gravity-fed water tank specially devoted to “the water closet.”

Anyone living off-grid needs to be handy. Stuff happens. Chores like putting up barbed wire and making repairs are all part of the experience. The Off-Grid Cabin comes equipped with a full-on set of tools with a choice toolbox.

The Off-Grid Cabin is a great Lego play set because all the steel roofs are removable to show the contents inside: a bedroom, kitchen, living room and dining room. A refrigerator? Yes! …powered by propane. Notice the tank just outside next to the cabin’s wood pile. Other accessories will be popular with kids like the Bio-Diesel Ford F150 pickup truck, tools, chainsaw, motorcycle, minifigure, three dogs, and one cat.

I hope you enjoy it! Please don’t forget to support my other projects:

http://ideas.lego.com/profile/cmortay/projects

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