Someone actually built a tiny house

Lets talk tiny houses, tumbleweeds etc on wheels

Postby Chip » Fri Jul 13, 2007 6:30 pm

Southern Living Magizine did a whole series of small cabin plans that can be easily built for vacation or perment living,,, some are pretty neat designs,,,

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Re: Someone actually built a tiny house

Postby Larry Messaros » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:57 am

wolfix wrote: Maybe someone here can tell me if radiant [floor system] is all it is cracked up to be. It seems to be a more cost effective way to heat


wolfix,

I used electric radiant panel (NuHeat) in our basement hallway in our previous house as a retrofit. Basement concrete floor was cold. We put standard sized panels in the hall, laundry room, and bath. When my girls were little, they used to play on the hall floor! When we reno'd the upstairs bathrooms, we had custom panels made. There is nothing like waking up on a cold winter morning and stepping on to a toasty tile floor! :thumbsup:

The one thing we found was the flooring contractor recommended to use ceramic tile as a flooring and not vinyl. Vinyl, if the floor temperature gets up to something like 86F, it'll start turning yellow after a while. We chose to just use ceramic, and we were really pleased with the results. :applause:

As for efficiency, I can't say for sure, as we had forced air electric heat, but the manufacturer said that the bathroom panel we used uses less than a 100 watt light bulb.
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Postby vintage » Sat Jul 14, 2007 4:04 pm

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/houses.htm

heres a company that builds tiny houses this was going to be my project before I decided on a tear drop. Some of em are even on trailers
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Postby Bobgorilla » Sun Jul 15, 2007 5:38 pm

July 15, 2007- Portland, OregonNews

Woman content living in 84-sq. ft. dream home




YouNewsTV™Story Published: Jul 14, 2007 at 2:35 PM PDT

Story Updated: Jul 15, 2007 at 8:18 AM PDT
By John Sharify
Video OLYMPIA -- Talk about down-sizing! One woman is living in a house that you really have to see to believe.

"It's 84 square feet, so roughly the size of a parking spot. Actually, smaller than a parking spot," says Dee Williams, who decided it was time to move. She was living in a 1,500-square foot home in Portland, but decided the house wasn't small enough - yes, small enough!

Dee built the tiny cabin herself out of salvaged material. She picked the door out of a dumpster and retrieved the floors from a house fire. Dee's new tiny home sits in her friend's backyard.

"In exchange, I do work on their house," she says.

It takes Dee five steps, sometimes four, to get from one end of her house to the other.

"Two steps through the kitchen and you're in my living room. Two steps into the living room, you bang into the wall," Dee says, laughing.

Two solar panels provide electricity. A tiny propane tank allows Dee to cook in her $10,000 home on wheels. Do her friends think the 44-year-old hazardous waste inspector is crazy?

"My friends definitely thought, well, they had some questions for me!" she says.

The obvious question: Why?

The simple answer:

"A simpler life, time, more money. I don't have a mortgage. I don't have a big utility bill," Dee says.

Her monthly heating bill in the winter is $6, less in the summer.

"I'm able to offer money to my family if they need it, (and to) my friends if they need it," says Dee.

To get to her bedroom, she walks up a step ladder to her loft.

"Every night I look at the stars and watch it rain over and over again. So this is it. Not much to it," says Dee.

And that's the point. Not much to it. Simple. Small. A dream house tinier than a parking spot.

"Right now there's nowhere else I want to be!"
Now this is a tiny house, I wish there was pics or a plan :lol: :lol:
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Postby lcurrie » Sat Jul 21, 2007 6:22 am

I"m very excited to see this thread!

I plan to build a modern tiny house as a guest house/MIL suite when i finish my TD build. All I'm planning to include is one room and a full bathroom.

Too many projects, too little time.
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Postby Coca Cola Teardrop » Sat Jul 21, 2007 9:33 am

I love these tiny houses...........

I told my daughters that if I outlive Charles I'm gonna build myself a tiny house, sell everything (except shop equipment) and alternate living on their property every 6 months.

They laughed at me. Sad thing is I was serious :lol:

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Postby apratt » Sat Jul 21, 2007 9:42 am

I could easliy see myself in a 700 or 800 sq. ft. house but I would definitely want a 2000 sq. ft. shop. :lol:
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Postby Bobgorilla » Sat Jul 21, 2007 10:31 am

apratt wrote:I could easliy see myself in a 700 or 800 sq. ft. house but I would definitely want a 2000 sq. ft. shop. :lol:

:thumbsup: I've often thought that an old business that had offices up front and a large working area would be ideal for me. I'd convert the office space to living quarters and use the rest as a shop of course :applause:
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Postby Gaelen » Sat Jul 21, 2007 10:50 am

I posted when this came up that I've actually lived in a tiny house. Well done, well built, it can be a joy. In fact, the basic NYC studio apartment can range from 87 - 400 s.f., and that's living that, for me, would be a breeze.

My tiny house--a rental after I sold my three story, 90 year old victorian rehab in the city-- was ~ 440 s.f., stick built on a slab. Pictures taken from the front made it look kind of like those stick built wooden garden sheds--but taken from the side, it looked like a typical 2 bedroom ranch house. It was three rooms, with a vestibule, kind of in a T-shape--shotgun style, but the doors were offset instead of all in a straight line. No hallways. You had to pass through the kitchen to get from back room to front room, or vice versa.

The entry/vestibule was 4 feet wide and 4 feet deep, placed offset to the right of a 16 foot long by 12 foot deep front room that had a modified 12' vaulted ceiling with two skylights. The middle room (the kitchen/laundry/broom closet/bathroom complex) was 12 feet wide and 8 feet long with an eight foot ceiling and a two foot crawl space above. The back room was originally 12 feet wide and 8 feet deep, but at some point when they remodeled, they added a closet that went the entire length of the room. So from entry door to far back wall of the closet, it was about 38 ft long.

I tried to type in an ascii floorplan but that didn't work. I'll have to draw it and upload it as an image. I did a little reseach; it is in an area that had a lot of factory worker housing constructed for the steel plant and chemical process plant a couple miles away. There are at least 15 other tiny houses (500 s.f. or less) in the same neighborhood. Most are single floor but some have basements or peaked roofs that would allow an attic/loft expansion.

It was probably originally a kit house from Sears, and it was about 50 years old. Mine had been completely redone inside to be allergy free (hardwood parquet, vinyl or ceramic tile floors, ceramic tile bath, mold resistant drywall throughout.) It did have a crawlspace, which had anti-mold/anti-fungus coating blown in to seal it before insulating. It was all electric, and every room had its own thermostat. My electric bills, for two months in the dead of winter, were about $100...and in the four months of summer, electric bill dropped to about $15. My monthly average electric bill was about $40.

Just under 500 s.f. is just perfect for me. I also loved that it was all on one floor, that I could reach just about any part of the house with a basic 12' step ladder, and that I could *really* clean the whole thing in under an hour. ;)

It was set on a double lot that was fully fenced, so my 'yard' was comparatively enormous (dogs loved that!) I had enough room in the yard to have four large pine trees, a 12 x 8 foot garden, and an 8 x 10 foot shed...and had the guy accepted my offer to buy it, I was going to put in a back patio from the L-shaped nook behind where the front room met the exterior wall of the second room along the side of the house to the far back wall. I would have liked more storage, but the shed took care of most of what I needed to store off-season, and extra dog crates, etc. It also taught me to *really* pare down. I don't have a 300-possession limit, but living in small spaces does force you to edit periodically and regularly.

Now I have a two story townhouse condo that's about 900 s.f. I mainly live downstairs and use the upstairs for storage and projects that I don't want to clean up from day to day (the upstairs is a dog-free zone...) So essentially I'm still living in about 450 s.f., with a 400 s.f workroom/storage area. And sometimes, I feel like I'm back to accumulating too much stuff. 8)

I keep my eye on the tiny houses in the area. Although my condo is almost paid off (just nine more months of mortgage!), I could sell it, buy a tiny house free and clear with the proceeds and still not have a mortgage if I played my cards right. I do like having my condo...but I miss the freedom of my own fenced in yard, and the ability to have a storage or workshed during CNY winters.

The problem with an 87 s.f. house in this part of the country is that in most local towns, dwellings have to be a minimum size. 300 s.f. (a 30 x 10 work trailer) is about the minimum acceptable dwelling size to get a building permit for a piece of land--and you have to go pretty far away from the metro area (and the jobs) to find a town that doesn't care how *small* your house is. Even the local lakes in one of the least regulated local towns insist on minimum dwelling sizes for camps, or the dwelling won't be approved for year-round use.
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Postby mikeschn » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:10 pm

Here's another tiny tumbleweed house...

http://www.solarwashington.org/tour/200 ... lliams.htm

Sorry if it's on the big side... I have no control over the size...

But check out the hot water heater... like the one you guys were talking about in the other thread...

Image

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Postby jimqpublic » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:37 pm

I ran across the Tumbleweed Houses when my folks were thinking of building a vacation cabin. He has a lot of cool designs. I'm thinking that two connected by a nice deck would be good- grownups on one side and kids on the other. Plus a 30'x60' garage of course!
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Postby mikeschn » Fri Sep 28, 2007 8:42 pm

The more I look at these tiny creations, the more I am tempted to build one. It would be too heavy for me to tow (5000+#), so I would have to leave it in the backyard.

But I would have to build the duallie version, just like Jay Shafer's original design. Although I like some of the other designs better, I don't think the village would let me build them...

Mike...

P.S. JimQ, did you ever see the love shack?
http://www.mikenchell.com/tinylittlecabin/
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Postby bobhenry » Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:07 am

wolfix wrote:. I promised myself I would never smell sawdust again......


Oh God someone just shoot me in the head. NO SAWDUST !

Oh what a sick and demented thing to say on this forum !

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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Postby Outlaw » Wed Nov 12, 2008 9:25 am

mikeschn wrote:The more I look at these tiny creations, the more I am tempted to build one. It would be too heavy for me to tow (5000+#), so I would have to leave it in the backyard.

But I would have to build the duallie version, just like Jay Shafer's original design. Although I like some of the other designs better, I don't think the village would let me build them...

Mike...

P.S. JimQ, did you ever see the love shack?
http://www.mikenchell.com/tinylittlecabin/


I fell in love with these tiny houses the first time I discovered the tumbeweed site. I own a teardrop, a Vintage Scotty (needs restored), and this is a project I've be considering for a long time. I had even considered building a TD style cabin with a chuckwagon kitchen in the rear for the ultimate throwback.

Thanks again Mike for adding this section. I feel more than confident that our users offer more building ideas than ANY trailer site on the planet. Weight has always been an issue for this type of build and I know we'll discover several innovations to keep our builds on the Jenny Craig plan. I can't wait to see some creations down the road!
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Postby CaptainKram » Wed Nov 12, 2008 12:51 pm

mikeschn wrote:Here's another tiny tumbleweed house...

http://www.solarwashington.org/tour/200 ... lliams.htm

Sorry if it's on the big side... I have no control over the size...

But check out the hot water heater... like the one you guys were talking about in the other thread...

Image

Mike...


Link's not working, Mike. Keeps giving a "Does not exist" prompt. What hot water heater are you talking about?

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