A new community of 193 tiny homes on 60 acres will open in the coming months in Travelers Rest.
Mountain Grove Tiny Home community is the latest development from Eclipse Cottages and Eclipse Villages, the team behind Creek Walk Tiny Home community. But unlike Creek Walk – which is located just five miles south of the planned site – Mountain Grove will consist almost entirely of “net-positive” homes built by Eclipse, meaning they’ll put more back into the environment than they take out.
The homes have roofs made entirely of solar shingles, smart LED lighting, 99% energy efficient Ohmic water heaters and off-grid options like rainwater filtration and incinerating toilets.
They’re the first off the production line of what owner Justin Draplin plans to be a series of separate production facilities located in the Upstate, which will supply tiny homes to community across the country. Vertically-integrated, the production facilities will manufacture every individual piece of the home, rather than rely on an outside vendor and an increasingly unreliable supply chain.
“The point is to do a ‘gigafactory’ of houses,” Draplin said, referring to the production facilities of electric car company Tesla. “We’re the first ones taking all of this technology and putting it in this form of scale, with everything vertically integrated in-house. This allows us to innovate faster while also mass-producing the product so the end-user can actually afford them.”
Eclipse Cottages, which handles the production, has already raised $600,000 in capital and is seeking another $5 million, Draplin said. Current production capabilities allow for the production of one home a day, although with 1,000 homes already preordered, he said they’re back-logged three years at their current pace.
“We have a sales funnel already built. Right now, it’s just about ramping up as fast as we can to fulfill the demand,” Draplin said.
Prospective residents of Mountain Grove can also bring their already-built tiny homes to the community, a first for Eclipse Villages.
