I spent the better part of last week traveling to Los Angeles. Visiting that town always makes me think about sustainability and self-sufficiency because the whole place seems so dependent on outside natural resources; although you could probably say that about most big cities. As we drove up and down Interstate-5 past all the dried up farms I couldn’t help but think about how much rainwater my nine square foot concept house could actually capture.

I came up with this slight refinement to the previous design which has a larger single roof surface that spans the interior space, porch, and bay windows. This roof is about 50 square feet and if my math is right this roof would collect about 425 gallons of water per year here in Sacramento, California. An inch of rain on a square foot of roof is good for collecting a half gallon of water. Here in Sacramento we get about 17 or 18 inches of rain each year. So correct me if I’m wrong by 17 x 50 / 2 = 425 gallons of water per year. The water tank in the illustration is 500 gallons.

You may also notice I took the house off the trailer for this illustration. I still plan to someday built this tiny house on a trailer but it seemed that for this iteration it made more sense to leave it out since a 500 gallon water tank would weigh over two tons. Yeah yikes.

The good news is that 425 gallons of water a year would keep one person alive and relatively clean. I’m pretty sure there would not be enough water left over to grow any food except for the few plants that could use the grey water from the sink and shower.

Anyway it’s nice to be back home again, drawing, dreaming, and blogging. Traveling is not one of my favorite things to do. For those of you who enjoy tinkering with Google SketchUp, here is the original file for you to explore. Enjoy!

Nine Tiny Feet – Google SketchUp File

I just spotted this on Shedworking and had to share it with you. As you can imagine I see incredible potential for leveraging some ideas from this design for Nine Tiny Feet. The man  in the box is a DJ and this is a mini studio but I can totally see using this approach for achieving useful alcoves, benches, and storage. This clever use of unconventional walls is definitely thinking outside-the-box. You can see more at the website of Thomas Scherzer, getaglimpse.nl.

Last night an unusual solution for Nine Tiny Feet popped into my head and I decided to stay up and draw it. This morning I added some color and detail. Tonight I think I might have found the final design that would make this nine square foot house concept habitable.

Why design and build a nine square foot house? Basically I wanted to explore the extreme end of tiny. I picked nine square feet because I think that’s about the amount of space I take up laying on the ground. It seemed like a good baseline and even though this house is still only in pixels it looks like it would work to me.

Below is the water collection system. Water would run off the roof and porch into a storage tank on the trailer tongue.

On the south side of the house solar panels would turn the sunlight into electricity. I’m also looking into portable wind generators, like those found on boats. The batteries would be below the floor.

Below the solar panels is a soil box grey water system that would process the shower and sink drain water. The floor of the house is fairly high because the shower drain must be higher than the top of the soil box reservoir.

The tiny kitchen would have a sink, a little storage, a tiny stove, and a 12VDC cooler below the sink. The main room is also the shower with a drain in the floor. Everything would need to be water proof. Storage for things that must remain dry would be stored on a shelf above.

The sawdust toilet would sit below the seat. A vent would pull the potentially stinky compost smell outside.

Two pieces of plywood would hinge down from the south wall to form the bed. The bedding would be stored above to keep it dry while showering. To get into bed you would flip down the first piece of plywood over the seat, climb up, and then flip the other board down into place. Your feet would basically be in the kitchen sink’s bay window and your head in the other bay window. A cutting board would cover the sink and the faucet would need to be secured to prevent a midnight foot washing.

Here’s what I think this design accomplishes:

• Nine square feet of interior space (24″ by 54″).
• Relatively aerodynamic for easy transportation.
• Relatively short in height and low center of gravity.
• Two very small bay windows that add just enough length for a 6-foot person to sleep.
• No loft.
• Place to sit and relax, work, or eat.
• A shower.
• Sawdust toilet below the seat, and vented to the exterior.
• Storage above the living area for clothes, food, and other personal items.
• Kitchen with sink, stove, storage, and 12VDC cooler.
• Rain water collection system with a relatively large roof area.
• Grey water system for handling waste water.
• Solar panels for electric power.
• A front porch for spending time outside in the shade. Also keeps the rain off you while unlocking the door.
• Easy to build. No complex framing and an efficient use of materials.
• Traditional appearance.

This is quite a departure from the other designs I’ve come up with so far but I think it’s by far the most successful. It takes many of the best features and wraps them up in a completely different form.

• I liked the first design for its appearance.
• I liked the shed design for its simplicity and added water collection and treatment features.
• I liked the ultra-aerodynamic design for its crazy bullet shape.

While these other designs still have merit, I think this latest one might be the house I build. I’ll let it sink-in and do more research on how I’ll handle heating and cooking. I’ve been considering a trombe wall for heating and an alcohol stove for cooking. I want to stay away from using any fossil fuels of any kind in this house.

If you have any ideas or questions I’d love to hear them. Please post a comment below.

As I mentioned previously the camping cabin and this super lightweight design for Nine Tiny Feet have been bubbling in my head for the past couple of weeks. Now that I see it in pixels I’m not sure what I think about it. I can’t help but like the traditional style of the original design but I do appreciate the extreme aerodynamics of this variation.

I also like that the addition of a rain water collection system and soil box grey water system. Don’t worry I realize that the amount of water these two systems could process is minimal. In fact this tiny roof would not collect enough water to survive and the grey water system would probably overflow with excessive use; but I like the idea of experimenting with as many self-sufficient low-tech ideas as possible. After all that’s what this house is all about, getting the most out of the least.

I’ll put a more detailed description of the design on the Nine Tiny Feet project blog for those curious about learning more about this variation. My plan is to take this design, the shed roof version, and the original version and mash them together into a design that leverages the best from all three.

One of the more extreme design concepts I actually want to build is an ultra-tiny house called Nine Tiny Feet. It’s a nine square foot house plus a sleeping loft. It would contain all the necessary things a house needs like a toilet, shower, stove, refrigerator, sink, bed, chair, desk, and some storage. I’ve posted other ideas for how this micro house would look but this new design has been brewing in my head. I took a few minutes to draw it for you.

The main floor would measure 24″ by 48″ with a 1-square foot triangular space toward the front of the house. This triangular nose plus the shed roof would make this house much more aerodynamic than previous designs too.

The toilet would most likely a sawdust toilet. In the drawing it looks like the toilet is always open but there would be a hinged cover that seals it up when the occupant is using the toilet as a chair. There could even be venting to keep the house from smelling too much like compost.

The kitchen would include a 12VDC cooler below the sink and alcohol stove.  A few cabinets for food storage would be above the counter. I also imagine fitting a 5 gallon water jug above the sink but forgot to add it to the drawing. Everything on the lower level would also need to be water proof for when the occupant took a shower. Notice the shower drain in the floor.

Above the main living area is a short loft. Just like a normal house this loft space is not technically included in the square footage calculation because it is not tall enough to stand up. Unlike the previous designs this one does not have bay windows which is another way to add more space without technically adding more square feet.

Out back under the loft is a gray water soilbox that recycles the waste water. There would need to be some kind of catch basin below the shower drain in the floor to hold the water until it can be pumped into the soilbox.

I didn’t draw it but I’ve also imagined that there would be a way to harvest rain water. Also on the roof would be a solar panel or two and would provide all the electricity.

Nine Tiny Feet is to houses what ultra-light backpacking is to camping.  It’s a fully self-contained portable house that uses the least amount of space to provide a useful and habitable home. It’s not an ideal home to say the least, just an extreme example of how small a house could be.

If you have any feedback or suggestions for squeezing more into less space I’d love to hear them. For example I’d love to get rid of the loft but that would mean for a six-foot person to lay down the room would have to be 18-inches wide, and I’m really trying to avoid the shape of a coffin.

Update: I posted a few more screen captures of Nine Tiny Feet on the project blog.

As promised here are the revised plans for Nine Tint Feet. It might not look that much different from the one I posted last night and this morning but this one uses less lumber, will be better insulated, and is built more like panels than normal framed walls. Each wall piece would be build separately and one side (usually the interior) covered in plywood. Then the wall pieces would be assembled. After the house is plumbed and wired the exterior sheathing would be added.

The benefit of doing it this way is that the plywood becomes part of the structure and not just an added surface. This will eliminate the need for so many 2×4 in the corners and should make the whole house stronger. I’m not sure this approach would work well for a larger structure but it should work fine for this micro house. My next step will be to work up a materials list and figure out how much the basic shell will cost to build. Click the image for a closer look.

Last night I stayed up late drawing the framing plan of Nine Tiny Feet and posted the work-in-progress plans here at about 1:00 AM. I realized that there had to be a much more efficient way to enclose nine square feet. Well when I woke up I had an idea. Not sure why I’m suddenly obsessed with Nine Tiny Feet; blame it on the arrival of spring.

Instead of framing it like a normal house I think it makes more sense to build panels, screw them together, wire, plumb, insulate, and cover them with the exterior plywood. The bay windows would be built-up separately and insterted into the window openings in the wall panels. The floor and loft would be built similarly. The roof would be framed in the usual fashion. By doing it this way many of the 2x4s in the walls are not needed and there’s more space in the walls, floor, and ceiling for insulation.

I think this will work because it’s so tiny and using the plywood as part of the structural framing will be fine. Here’s the revised framing plan and an exploded view so you can see how the separate pieces would be built and assembled.

I’ve really had Nine Tiny Feet on the brain the last few days. This is the ultra tiny design concept I came up with at virtually the same moment I came up with idea for the Tiny Free House. Both houses explore two extremes, one size and the other cost.

Drawing the free house plans recently motivated me to draw up the plans for Nine Tiny Feet… I mean how hard could it be to draw the plans for a nine square foot house? Well like most little things it turned out to be much more difficult than I expected and as this first pass shows. If you frame a micro house like a normal house you use way too much lumber.

As I have it drawn above the walls alone would take over 40 2x4s to build including the bay windows. So I’m going to start thinking of this tiny house more like a big insulated cabinet. It’s so small it has different structural needs than a normal house so then theoretically it should need a different approach to framing.

At the moment I’m thinking about building insulated panels. I’m hoping to finish up the drawing on Sunday night and have a materials list and rough estimate for construction complete. I’m guessing the shell is going to cost less than $500 but we’ll know soon enough.

I’m really starting to have fun with Google SketchUp. Last weekend I started this drawing simply to give myself practice with SketchUp. Tonight I put the finishing touches on it. It’s a design I came up with last year called Nine Tiny Feet, a nine square foot house. Actually I came up with the Tiny Free House idea and this design at virtually the same time but decided to build the Tiny Free House first. When I finish that house I hope to build this one.

The design includes all the main elements that make up a house. Only the shell is represented in this 3D drawing but the final house would have a toilet, sink, 12VDC cooler, propane heater, bed, chair, fold-down table, and storage. I came up with the size by asking myself how what the absolute minimum amount of space would be needed for someone to live. I did a quick calculation in my head of the amount of space I took up while laying down and came up with nine square feet.

Since I like a design challenge I then asked myself If I’d need anymore space and quickly came up with a couple ways of cramming all essential items into nine square feet. The design you see here is the result of trying a few other ideas. I even built a few models in foam core about a year ago to help me land on this simple approach.

The floor space is 38″ by 34″ which is just shy of nine square feet. Additional space is provided by bay windows which would contain some cabinets and shelves. The loft would provide the sleeping area. Lofts and bay windows are not technically included in square footage so I figured it was fair game to use them to get a tiny bit more space.

The entire main room would be water proof and a shower drain would be installed in the floor allowing the occupant to shower. A composting toilet would site below the hinged bench seating. Clothing and other personal items would be stored in the loft and on high shelves.

The only part I’m not sure how to handle, and I think I’ll need to have it framed before I’ll land on the final solution, is how would I get up into the loft and then close the trap door behind me so my feet don’t hang into the lower area. I guess I’ll just have to built it and figure it out. A 3D model is pretty useful for picturing the concept but some thing just have to be worked out for real.

Anyway I hope you enjoy this crazy idea as much as I do. Below is a video that shows more detail than the image above. I’ve also added 10 screen shots of the 3D drawing to the Nine Tiny Feet project blog if you want to get a better look.