DIY Prefab – Design & Construction Resource
One of my long time readers, Malcolm White, has launched a blog that focuses entirely on do-it-yourself prefab topics. He was also especially helpful to me by providing valuable feedback and input on my ebook, Tiny Prefab.
Most tiny prefab homes are sold as kits but there is a growing interest in do-it-yourself fabrication from people who want to build their own tiny houses, home offices, and cabins. Prefabrication is attractive because it breaks up the construction progress into small manageable projects, for example individual 4′ by 8′ wall panels are easier to tackle especially if you have limited time to work. Individual panels can then be stored temporarily until the full set is complete and ready for assembly.
Since the first of the year Malcolm has ramped up his writing and there’s a growing wealth of knowledge growing at DIY-Prefab.com. If building your own prefab structure is a dream of yours, I highly recommend that you bookmark Malcolm’s blog and add his RSS feed to your RSS Reader.
Some of the recent topics are:
- Why DIY pre-fabrication?
- Modularity and how it applies to pre-fabrication…
- Design hierarchy based on function and longevity
- Global design considerations
- Material handling and parts lists
- Repeatability – reusable jigs and fixtures
- General-purpose layout table
- More layout table details
- Markings on your layout table
- Brackets on your layout table
- Storage
- Shipping and handling
- Assembly – panel expansion
- Panel junctions and corners
Photo credit Malcolm A. White.
Tiny Prefab – eBook & Plans
Last night I put the finishing touches on a 65 page house plan ebook. It’s called Tiny Prefab, A Do-It-Yourself Prefab Building System and contains the plans and instructions for creating tiny prefab structures that are easy to build from common building materials. The book is a bit of a hybrid between a set of plans and instructions for building and assembling a panelized prefab tiny house. A wide variety of sizes of buildings can be built but the roof plans in the ebook are designed for an 8-foot deep tiny house. The smallest size building is 8’ by 8’. If more space is desired it’s length can be increased by increments of 4 feet so if you want a structure that us 8′ by 20′ this DIY prefab system will work fine. Below are small screen shots of all the pages in the ebook so you can get a good idea of what is included before you buy. Just click the thumbnails to see more.
Tiny Prefab Plans
You might have noticed that I’ve not been posting much the past two weeks. I’ve been working every night on this panelized prefab design and finally have the free plans ready for you to see. The ebook version of the plans will be available soon too. The drawings are all complete; I just need to finish writing all the descriptions and instructions. The ebook contains dozens of illustrations that show all the construction and assembly steps as well as an 8×12 and 8×16 versions. Once the ebook is online I’ll adapt the design once more for the 16×16 House for Khayelitsha.
House of Cards -or- DIY Tiny House Kit
After posting the latest design variation for Nine Tiny Feet I got a few requests to make the house more lightweight. This seems like a pretty good idea since that project is really about getting the most value from the least amount of space. Initially I was thinking this only meant square footage but it seems perfectly logical to make it lightweight too. If I could find a way to make it super lightweight nine tiny feet could even be pulled by a bicycle.
But I digress…
These recent reader comments got my brain cooking up ways of building inexpensive ultra-lightweight panel walls. Then on Sunday night a very simple approach to making panels occurred to me. The design below is not for a nine square foot house, although I’m considering something like this for Nine Tiny Feet too. This design is 49 square feet and could be built for about $1200 in new materials, (less if you’re resourceful and scavenge a little).
Small Living Journal: Issue 4
The latest issue of the bi-weekly webzine on the small home movement is now online. This issue is focused on Do-It-Youself Projects. My contribution is a video that shows how I draw the 3D drawings you see here on Tiny House Design using Google SketchUp. The video is a little rough but shows you how easy it is to draw a quick tiny house illustration. I hope to refine my video tutorial skills and post more tiny house design tutorials in the future.
