There’s a craze going around in the “sustainable” world of climateers and greenies about “Tiny Houses”. They tout the “smaller carbon footprints” and in one video saying ” …tiny house living can lead to a more ethical relationship with the environment, and might possibly lead to a mitigation of climate change.” Yeah, sure.
The two most common benefits often listed by Tiny House proponents are:
Environment-Friendly
– Since your Tiny House is going to be small, you can make a lot of it out of recycled, repurposed, and salvaged materials. In addition, to make your house look cool and unique, it also saves the number of new materials from being made.
Energy Efficiency
– The energy needs for a tiny house are much smaller than the energy needs of a traditional home. Smaller appliances and a smaller space use less power to heat and cool the air.
I don’t think I’d ever be ready to move my entire life into a tiny space like this, nor do I think I’d want to live in one that looks like it was salvaged from a scrap pile…
But, I can think of one good reason for having one in my backyard: extra relaxation space doubling as a guest house.
Plus, guess what I found out? You can purchase all the parts and instructions on Amazon. It reminds me of the way Sears-Roebuck used to sell entire kit homes shipped by rail during the early part of the 20th century.
This one looks pretty cool, and it is said you can assemble it in about 8 hours.
In the description, the plans say that this kit house can be built in less than a day – about eight hours, when two adults team up for the job. Well…. maybe, assuming the instructions aren’t written in Sanskrit. That also doesn’t include pad preparation time.
But, you can probably pull it all off in a weekend. It can also be a studio, sun-room, garden house, pool house, mother-in-law sequestration facility, or truly anything your heart desires.
There’s no HVAC, electricity, or Internet to this DIY home, you’ll need to do that yourself. But that’s all pretty easy. I can see solving the HVAC problem with one of these roll-around heat/cool units once you get some electricity, and you could probably get WiFi or wired Internet using either a power line LAN extender or a WiFi extender.
There are other models too, ranging from a traditional log cabin look to an external office style.
I can see adding a tiny house to extend the American Dream of “living large” in your backyard, but not for a primary domicile.
Plus, imagine the looks on the faces of your green oriented friends when you tell them you are now a tiny house owner, but you had it shipped to you (using fossil-fueled transportation) and added it to your existing home.
The result: schadenfreude, via priceless political incorrectness.
Tiny Room with Porch would be more accurate description. Probably violates building and zoning codes in most places. So say I, a registered architect with over 30 years of residential design experience.
Most cities in my area allow for “mother in law” homes in the back yard. They can only be 600 sf max and must match the architecture, colors and veneers of the main structure. The structure pictured is not one of those.
I own a home that is a Sears Kit home, but it is from the early 70s. My MIL and her husband live in it. It was delivered as a kit and built on site. Very plain, but very functional. 3 BR – 1.5 bath.
There is a show on ABC Family about these tiny homes. The ones featured on the show are far from being inexpensive. The budget is usually $60K-$80K for 200 to 300 sf. That is with no slab and the need for a septic system. Funny thing about those septic systems, they require at least 3/4 of an acre in our area. Add 1 acre of land, a slab and a septic system and the total reaches over $100K. That is a VERY expensive structure per s.f.
I have a 9.9m2 cabin with small wood burner, external outhouse with composting toilet, rain tank for water and solar power – alot of which is recylced. Its enough for just me, am happy in a tent to be honest. I am planting 1ha of native forest around.
Many of my neighbours live the same, albiet the majority live on house buses. They are all lovely and normal people with normal jobs so it can work, so long as you have plenty of outdoor space, good weather and firewood!
Its nice to not feel judged for how you live or have to worry about others. Am happy with a roof over my head and power, its more than most have.
Dunno how you people arrive at your prices, it has to be one of those new “lefty” scam things again run with tax subsidy like Elon Musk and his ‘lectric cars.
Up here in the Baltic states covered with masses of forest they export log houses to all over Norway, Scandinavia, and Northern Europe to as far away as soggy Ireland.
You don’t have to live in some overpriced ugly bit of crap sold by that crapshoot Amazon and worry about warmth. You can even get a Bullerjan from Latvia to keep it warm (sauna type HOT!) in winter.
Here they make some truly beautiful stuff, take a look!
http://estonianlogcabins.com/products
http://ss-buve.lv/en/prices/
https://www.timberliving.ie/latvian-log-cabins/
Here and there throughout this thread, heating with wood keeps being mentioned. In the little BC community I live in most do – its cheap. For the long term residents, the stove is also where all garbage, plastics to potato peels to meat bones are disposed of. Across the bay there is one house in particular that seems to consistently burn old tires and green wood. Some winter mornings you cannot go outside without choking. It seems that the anti-smoking crowd has no concept that smoke is dangerous. Wood heating, except for the guy with 17 acres of woodland, is really not that great, and cooking over open wood fires is responsible for most lung cancer in the third world.
I’ve seen some people do the ‘tiny house’ thing as a young couple to save up money for a real house. That’s the one instance when I think it’s actually pretty smart.
DIY is not as easy as described here for men with family.
After WWII workers in steel works or for the railroad had 2 motorcycles: one for the summer time and a second with sidecar for the winter operation – with a sidecar there’s 2 tracks through snow and ice.
Mostly cheap used machines.
During the winter, the wife and children had to settle down with children on the ground floor while the man occupied the first floor to completely rebuild the summer machine for the next season.
That means every screw, every seal had to lie on “the right place”, nothing should be moved – disaster if an amateur “caring” a handful of savingparts e.g. deposited on the windowsill.
This work took up all winter time during which the sidecar machine was in operation.
The sidecar machin was restaurated during the summer in the garden equipment house.
During the summer, of course, the garden equipment house was taboo for the family.
There are other forms of small homes — apartments, condos, row houses, trailer parks — so this “new” concept may appeal to somebody for various reasons, such as being cheaper, downsizing, less maintenance, lower costs. And houses were smaller in previous generations, with bigger families. You only have to drive through an area with the mansions of the rich to gag on the excesses. Has everyone forgotten Goldilocks? Going to either extreme, tiny or humongous, is for showing off your money or your virtue. Go for the “just right” house.
See also: cob houses and straw bale houses.