Some of you may already know me from my life with the COMET (cometcamper.com), and my appearances at many tiny house workshops and events.
But for those of you who don’t, it’s nice to meet you, and please feel free to get in touch any time. If you’re in New England and have a tiny house you’d like to share, let me know! Now, on to the past!
Let’s start off with some vintage tiny house eye candy:
In last week’s article on passive solar design for tiny houses I briefly mentioned advanced framing and SIPs—two alternatives to conventional 2×4 stud framing.
Well, it turns out there are a lot of alternative framing systems out there. Why would you use one of them to build your tiny house?
In a lot of ways, conventional 2×4 stud framing is pretty awesome. This technology makes it possible to build houses quickly and cheaply. It’s flexible and can be used to create a wide variety of structures, including tiny houses. And it’s based on a standardized set of dimensions with which most other building products are compatible.
But conventional framing has some weaknesses, and the main one is that it’s not terribly easy to seal and insulate well, so it’s not very energy-efficient. That’s one of the five big factors we’d look for in an ideal framing system for a tiny house:
This is a little story about a tall tiny house with a covered porch and a tall loft. Since it’s not built on a trailer with wheels, you’re allowed to build taller since you never have to worry about driving under a bridge.
This is nice because you can actually stand up when you’re up in the sleeping loft so you don’t feel so cramped as many do in lofts where the tiny homes are built on wheels and have road restrictions. So what do you think? Are you going to build your tiny like this or on wheels?
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Photo via Lisa Swenson / Pinterest
One of the biggest challenges when downsizing to a tiny house is figuring out how much clothing to keep. With closet space at a premium, understanding your actual clothing needs—versus what you’ve accumulated—becomes essential.
This is a guest post by Jane Dwinnell as a part of her series Tiny House Travels: Chronicling Life on the Road.
February 5, 2013
We’ve settled down for several months — on a rooftop in the middle of big city. It’s a great place, and an unusual “tiny house” community. There are 15 homes up here ranging from our tiny house to RVs of all kinds to a fitted-out bus and van. There are water, sewer and electrical hookups — and a gorgeous panorama of the downtown skyline.
I recently asked my own Facebook community for some inspiration about topics for the various blogs I write.
One question that intrigued me was this one:
“I’d be curious to know where folks think “tiny” ends and “small” begins. I dream of downsizing to a smaller space, but I don’t think I could live in a tiny house for an extended period.”
This is an interesting question so I thought I might look into it a little more.
Photo by J. Andrew Flenniken
Read below for more thoughts on small versus tiny.
I still remember laying it all out on the living room floor the night before our trip, lining the items in rows like we were playing a game of memory.
Toothbrush, camp stove, cycling shorts, book of poetry.
How would we know for sure what we would need to live for three months on a bicycle?
Who knows what we would encounter, how many flat tires we’d get or how long we’d go before hitting the next grocery store?
In the summer of 2009, my partner Henry and I traveled 1,500 miles on a tandem bicycle, with just one Burley trailer carrying all our most-needed possessions. We didn’t know it at the time, but this trip would be a precursor to our next adventure- building a whole house on a trailer, (though not a trailer that could be pulled by bike!).
Many people are aware of the concept of passive solar design, but it’s such a big and potentially complex subject that it’s easy to get overwhelmed or lost in a few details that are only part of the whole picture.
In this article, I’ll walk through some basic steps for applying passive heating and cooling principles to a tiny house design. As always, you’ll get the best results by doing as much research as possible and/or working with an architect or designer familiar with the principles of passive solar design (all architects should be, because passive solar principles can and should be incorporated into every building built!)
Let’s define what we’re talking about: Passive solar building design involves using windows, walls, and floors to collect solar heat energy when it is needed (usually in winter) and reject it when it is not needed (usually in summer).
Here are the basic steps to take when thinking about passive solar design:
Step 1 is already difficult for some tiny houses—what if you decide you pick up and move your tiny house a thousand miles away? To design your tiny house, you’ll need to pick a location to design for, and know a couple basic things: your latitude (which determines the sun angles) and your climate region (which determines your passive solar design priorities).
Luckily, there is some good information on climate available online. The map below comes from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building America Best Practices program, which also offers climate-specific building advice.
Image credit: U.S. Department of Energy
Yes, even Tim Ferriss is interested in tiny houses!
The best selling author and entrepreneur talks about Tumbleweed Houses in the video you can watch below.
He mentions property that he owns where he’s interested in building a couple of tiny homes.
It’s great too because he’s alongside another famous entrepreneur, Kevin Rose.
Watch the clip below:
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