Tiny House Design

Brian (a.k.a Ziggy) recently reported on his blog that his rocket stove is not working. This is a handmade masonry heater he built by hand from cob, firebrick, and steel. It’s a very clever design that has the flu flowing through the cob bed platform. The problem is that it doesn’t draw unless there is a bit of a wind outside. His cob house is located at the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage.

I took a careful look at all of Brian’s photos and pulled all my old kiln building notes & memories out from my past as a potter and came up with a modification to his design. I’m not sure he’s game to give it a try, but I suspect it would work better with this modification.

Basically I’m simply suggesting that he digs into the cob a little  and connects the stove to the rear exit pipe leaving the other two pipes (white) burried in the cob and disconnected from the system. This would make it much easier for the air to flow because there are fewer turns and less horizontal pipe. My other suggestion is to experiment with a taller chimney.

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While this modern cabin looks like it was built with all new materials, it’s wasn’t. In fact it’s a bit of a Phoenix reborn from the ashes and uses many reclaimed building materials from a ruined building of the same size that once stood on the same spot – plus some easily obtained industrial materials. It’s located in Arruda dos Vinhos in Portugal and was designed by the architects at Plano B.

The framing lumber is Tasmanian blue gum, a generally unstable wood for construction. The benefits of choosing this wood was that it was easily obtained and did not need any additional chemical treatment. But it did require what first appears to be an over-engineered post and beam structure… which is really an amazing work of woodwork in itself. Many other natural and local materials were also used including earth, metal, and concrete.

There are a lot of construction photos, information, and plans on the project blog. If you don’t speak Portuguese you might find it useful to view their blog on Google Translate. I first spotted this on Arch Daily.

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The latest issue of Small Living Journal is now online and for this month’s issue we focused on Small Space Tricks for making the most out of tiny space living. There are four articles in this month’s issue including a guest post by Ryan Mitchell of The Tiny Life.

Small Living Journal – Issue 15: Small Space Tricks:

• Organizing small spaces: 10 tips to make the most out of your space – by Ryan Mitchell
• Thinking Big, While Living Small: 4 Design Ideas – by Tammy “RowdyKittens”
• 10 Guiding Principles for Living Tiny – by Hillary “Tinyhouse
• Space Saving Furniture – by Michael Janzen

Next month the focus will be on How To Design & Build a Home.

I think this might be the anti-cubicle. It’s a backyard home office workspace called the archipod. It sure looks cool but it just seems really really weird when you stop to look at the combination of details. The first thing, after the spaceship hatch, that I noticed didn’t seem right were the shingles that cover the ball body of the thing. On the outside it kind of screams – I’m a rustic wood spaceship… and on the inside it’s all spaceship antiseptic white. Don’t get me wrong… I like it a lot… it’s just really weird.

Thanks again for the tip Dave!

It’s always nice to see tiny houses and simple living featured in a main stream publications. My friend Kent Griswold just had his story written up on Aol Housing Watch by Kaomi Goetz. Kent runs TinyHouseBlog.com and has been blogging about tiny houses full-time for some time now.

It was actually a combination of Kent’s blog and Jay Shafer’s writings that convinced me to begin designing and blogging about tiny house design. Over the last year and a half Kent and I regularly talk shop about blogging and share what we’re learning. Kent even uses a customized variation of the WordPress Theme I developed, which may explain why our blogs look a little bit alike.

We also don’t see each other as direct competitors but stronger together as part of a wider community of tiny house and simple living advocates. I think it’s important to point this out because it illustrates a wide spread common thread that has emerged in our fast growing community; which is that when people come together (readers, designers, builders, bloggers, home owners, the vaguely curious, EVERYONE!) we really do become greater than the sum of our parts.

Congratulations on the article Kent!  - Aol Housing Watch article on TinyHouseBlog.com