Tiny home for me - Large, excellent home for rodents

I recently insulated my sub floor with wool insulation from Oregon Shepherd, added some rice hulls to absorb moisture, and realized I’d made a rodent’s dream nest.  I mean, really, what more would they ask for in a nest?   Warm, dry, cozy… 

I’m not 100% sure that the wool insulation will work as well as some of the more engineered products, but have my fingers crossed.  I loved putting in insulation that I could handle without a mask and gloves, and I really enjoyed not having to worry at all about toxicity.  The larger environmental question comparing grazing, feed and water to synthetics and toxics would require some lengthy, complex assessments, but I suspect that comparisons of life cycle impacts and benefits of the various kinds of insulation would provide some good arguments for using wool. 

My dad helping to spread the wool out into the floor bays.

Could it look any more homey for the average rodent?

With cloth over it to keep the insulation from blowing away while I cut the plywood for the floor.

I’ve since put a layer of plywood over it, which should keep those rodents out, but it’s been raining like crazy here. This has limited my time working on the project and next steps.  Hoping for clear weather soon.   In the meantime, I’ll be shopping for windows and doors.

Visiting other tiny homes in various stages of construction.

Colin’s place:  A friend of a friend recently completed his tiny home and moved it out to beautiful Inverness Park, a tiny town near Point Reyes CA. He let me stop by, pick his brains for a couple of hours on details, and take photos.  Colin chose a fairly simple structural design, and decided to spend his time on beautiful woodwork details. He spent a lot of time on salvage, and ended up with great wood for his siding, interiors, and floors as well as some very nice windows and doors.  He also built his cabinets, furniture and ladder-shelf himself, using recycled redwood, cedar, and Douglas fir, among others.  His two solar panels can run his appliances for up to 5 days without sun, and his cool little Hobbit stove keeps the place toasty.  Awesome little home.  I hope I build something as nice to be in.    

Boneyard Studios in DC

I stopped by a couple of weeks ago to check up on friends at the Boneyard Studios.  They’ve been plugging away at their three tiny houses since this summer, and were recently written up in the Washington Post.  What’s great about their site is that they are trying three very different designs, and sharing what they learn while they go.  They're also experimenting with different siding, sealants, attachment to frame, and much, much more.  Everyone has progressed rapidly since this photo was taken, so check out their blog for more recent photos.

Jay built a standard wood frame (house on right), but has gone with a very boxy design to fit his modern sensibilities.  For more details, and some fun construction time lapse videos, check out his blog on the Matchbox. 

Brian decided he’s okay with a wide load (middle house), and extended his prefab SIPs panel home (which he designed with engineers and architects) out to 11 feet.  This gives him a bit more breathing room, and less of a long narrow feel.  For more details, including his cost estimates for the curious, check out Minim House.

Lee’s gone with the dormer look, after extensively modifying a tiny house started by someone else (on left).  Who knew you could buy a tiny house shell on craigslist?  She and her building experts have taken that shell and modified it almost beyond recognition. 

Do 3.5 inches matter?

It’s been a few weeks, and my trailer has arrived.  It’s of course taken longer than expected, with truck repairs and holidays getting in the way of prompt initiation of work.   I ended up opting for a design used by another tiny home builder who had purchased a trailer from the same dealer.   (By the way, not only does my sister know my tiny home compatriot and trailer designer, Colin, but he also built his house at another friend’s shop.  Very helpful guy) 

I wasn’t exactly sure how it would turn out, and hoped for the best.  It’s sturdy and clean looking.  The drop axles may make it hard to take the trailer over big bumps, but lower the bed by about 4 inches, which will allow me to sit up in my loft bed.  Otherwise, it’s a pretty standard flatbed with extensions on the side.  

tada!

My friends at Vital Systems Natural Building & Design are generously letting me occupy a covered space in their yard for the duration of the build, so here's the trailer at the shop, loaded down with materials for the framing and sheathing.   I can't thank them enough for a roof over my head, with electricity to boot.  Makes my life a lot easier.

But the question at hand (Do 3.5 inches matter?) really comes down to the age-old battle between the simple, affordable, and lean options, or complex, more time consuming/expensive, but potentially improved options.   My three constraints are weight, size, and budget, all of which leave room for a great deal of creativity.  

Since I know about 20 builders and plumbers and electricians, added to the natural building guys, everyone, including my cousins, is now giving me great additional design ideas, better material suggestions, and more storage space options.  All of which entail more $$ and/or time, but could really add to the functionality of the home.   The question of the week is, do 3.5 inches in floor height and about 10 fewer joists make a big difference in the long run?  The max height of the house is 13.5 feet, so every inch in floor height takes an inch away from the loft head room.  Every extra piece of wood adds to the total weight of the house, also a limited resource.

Here’s the logistics:  I laid out a sub floor to support my joists for the real floor on top of the trailer ribs (see picture below).  The only reason to add a floor above the current trailer bed is to make room for floor insulation.  This is actually important to do, even in the milder climes of the California Coast Range.

HOWEVER, as Tony from Vital Systems pointed out, there’s room under those flat boards to create a sub floor cavity for insulation.   The draw back:  complex, and could take me a few days to work it out, and includes a lot more drilling into the frame.  The benefit:  I get 3.5 more inches in height to play with, and the trailer’s a bit lighter.  Not much, but some.

After bolting down the “sub floor” to the angle iron, I’m not so excited about putting 50 more holes in even thicker steel of the trailer frame.  Framing out the floor on top of the trailer bed would take me a day.  The other option, who knows, with all the special cuts and crawling around under the trailer.  Then there's the plumbing to think about.  Would there still be room for it?  ARGH, decisions.  

Shopping for trailers

It helps not to be the first person to try something new.  There a few tiny house bloggers and companies out there that have trailer advice (like Tiny r(E)volution, and Portland Alternative Dwellings’ book, Go House Go!).  On top of all this advice, every trailer dealer I went to this week has sold trailers for tiny-home builders.  They each had their opinions and pieces of advice.  It sounds like it won’t be a problem to get the “right” trailer. It just might take a few weeks, and I have to decide which advice to follow.   

What kind of trailer to buy for a Tiny House” and “How to determine trailer weight for your tiny house,” from Tiny r(E)volution, recommend a flatbed with at least a 7,000 lb GVWR (gross vehicle weight rating, or the total weight capacity of the trailer, including the trailer, and its load).  Their estimate is that the house weighs about 6,000 lbs.  My completely uninformed guess is that mine might weigh more.  All I know is that I recently shipped most of my books, gear, clothes, etc. on Amtrak, and they weighed 1,300 lbs.  A small house has to weigh more than 6 times the weight of my belongings, right?  Even if I do own more books than most people.

Other sites recommend looking for a trailer with a 14,000 lb GVWR, but according to the dealers I visited, tiny home builders purchasing their trailers have used 10,000 lb GVWR trailers.  The extra beefy 14,000 lb GBWR trailers require a commercial drivers license, and add about $1,000 to the price tag. 

Some people have even refurbished old travel trailers, which I’ve found online for as low as $375.  They do end up putting a lot of work into them, and I think I would need to hire a welder to shore it up, which could add at least $1,000.  Still cheaper, but this is the foundation for a house, right?  You want to make sure that a trailer is sturdy enough, and I’m concerned that a used trailer is a bit of a gamble.  There’s a balance between trying to build a house with as much salvage as possible, and skimping on safety.

All that said, I think I found a place that will build a trailer for me for about $3,500.  I need to make a couple choices, about length, and whether or not to go with drop axles, but hope to get an order in tomorrow.  

The new trailer will look a bit like this, but longer and wider, with no bumpers, and no wood on the deck.  Basically bare bones.

Side note:

On the latest trailer shopping trip in Sonoma County I ended up running into a few nice surprises.   Sonoma County (and Mendocino) seem to be a hotbed of small to tiny homes.  Check out some of the houses we encountered.           

An office / coffee shack on the side of the road in Hopland, CA.

A tiny house company in Petaluma,
with a couple of their projects on display.

Their model office space/spare room.

A tiny house on display at a trailer dealer’s…. apparently one of their experiments. 

Alaska: the land of the creative small homes

I just took a break from being a responsible working human to visit family in Alaska.  Added to the grandeur and beauty of this sparsely populated landscape is a population with a phenomenal tendency toward individualism.  This tendency is definitely reflected in their houses. 

Inside of the city limits of the few Alaskan towns, there are building codes that regulate engineering, and home sizes and shapes.  Outside of city limits, people build what they think the need and want.  Apparently, Alaskans need and want smaller homes, with more access to the outdoors.   

Here's my sister helping her neighbor Ian to butcher his pig.  His home is the tiny cabin behind them, consisting of a sleeping/living area, and a kitchen area.  

You see it all, except for a tiny bit of his roof.  He's lived in it for about 7 years, and is just now building a 16' x 24' palace. 

Side note: here's the pigs before they ended up on the above picture.

Alaskans think about housing a bit differently than we do in warmer places.  First, winters are a tad colder, so they focus on design for efficient heating, and then on keeping that heat in.  Many Alaskans build exterior walls at least 6 inches thick, often using triple paned windows, and roofs as much as 10-12 inches thick.  Check out Jana, Mark and Jack's 16' x 24' (plus ~ 16' addition) house, with the simple exterior, and thick roof:

They don’t worry as much about the exterior aesthetics.  If you’re house is in the woods, who’s there to impress?  Most people seem to focus on making the interior a place that fits their personal taste and habits, and the exterior tough enough to withstand the weather.  Many houses never get past the plywood siding stage, but they might have entry rooms with two arctic doors (6 inches thick, with foam and cordura to seal them off) before you get into the main house.   The interiors are pleasant and comfortable.

Many interiors probably wouldn’t meet building codes in some places, but make for aesthetically pleasing, functional homes, with character.  This tiered house was build by a ship builder, with a "study" area above, sitting area at the base of the spiral stairs, and a "den" below the kitchen.  The ladder provides access to the lowest floor.  The boat influence is clear with the recessed shelves in lateral support walls, efficient use of every bit of space, and the cozy, rounded shapes where ever possible.   The total sq. footage is around 1000', but if feels bigger. 

It seemed like small houses were everywhere in the Great Land, like this tiny shack on pallets in a driveway.

And this cute, tiny cabin in a "dry" neighborhood (no running water).

Or, one of my cousin's husband's creations - a bulging cabin with about 8 different roof lines. 

That's all for Alaska, tomorrow I go shopping for a trailer for the base of my tiny house.

The Beginning

The first time I ran into a tiny home blog, I was hooked.  This was my kind of home.   I've moved about 20 times in the last 20 years, maybe more.  My life just doesn’t seem to settle.  I could personalize a house, build something exactly how I like it, and move it with me next time I change jobs.  More importantly, I would have a home of my own in spite of the itinerant lifestyle.  

I was also excited to experiment.  Just how much space do I need to be happy?  How much of my building materials can I salvage?  After two years of working on greener products policy, can I use what I learned on this small, very practical scale?  How "green" can my little house be?

I wandered through pictures of creative truck houses, obsessed over tiny house blogs (more links later) and We the Tiny House People videos, and decided to take the fall off and build my own tiny house in my hometown in Mendocino County.   So, I’m moving from the heart of Washington, DC, where my life is a bit like this: 

to something that looks more like this:

Serendipitously, a couple of weeks later, a friend mentioned that she was building a tiny house in the heart of DC with a couple of other folks, in a community called the Boneyard Studios.    I’ve been able to watch them start their projects, and enjoy the novelty of their very urban experiment in tiny living. 

As I get ready to cross to the other coast, I’ve been planning, but so far, just that.  I’m playing with creating a series of designs.  Here’s one idea of how my house could look… more to come.  

Thanks, DC, for a great time, wonderful folks, and endless learning opportunities.  I'll miss you!