Tiny House Design

I ran across this whimsical little cob house on YouTube the other night and was really impressed with the organic nature of the home. Here’s what they say about the home in the notes at YouTube:

Construction took about 2 years. Inside area is about 230 sq. ft. (22 sq. meters), plus a sleeping loft bringing the total to about 325 sq. ft. (30 sq. meters). The foundation is rubble trench, about 4 ft. deep (below frost line). The stem wall is about 2ft. high, made of urbanite (recycled concrete chunks) and earth bags (polypropylene feed bags rammed with lime-stabilized earth). Walls are cob, about 2ft. thick at the base, tapering to 18 inches.

The outside walls are plastered with lime. The inside are plastered with an earth plaster (kaolin clay, manure, sand, wheat paste), and painted with a home made milk-protein (casein) paint. Floor is poured adobe (well, basically the same stuff the walls are made of), sealed with boiled linseed oil and beeswax. Solar electric, wood stove for heat, gas (propane) refrigerator, hot water and cook stove. We hired someone to do the roof, but the rest of the house was done by us, with some help from friends.

I spotted a link to the movie Urban Danger while reading Yonderosa, one of the tiny house blogs I follow. The movie is about preparing for widespread calamity and advocates self-sufficiency, sustainability, and moving away from cities.

I personally didn’t care much for the first 21 minutes of the movie because, in my humble opinion, it focuses too much on negative motivators. Instead of fearing what the future may bring I prefer to focus on the positive reasons for working to achieve a truly sustainable life. I figure in the end this approach will get me to where I want to be which is a lifestyle that is naturally positioned to be sustainable through good and bad times.

Buried in the movie is a wonderful tiny house tour by Roscoe Bartlett, a congressman from Maryland. I don’t know anything about his politics but his cabin is cool in a funky cobbled together sort of way.

The cabin measures 16′ by 20′ and was built originally for about $1,000. The house has many interesting features.

• A gravity fed water system with a hand pump that taps a natural spring that’s under the house.
• A wood stove with a clever thermal siphon hot water heating system.
• Many space saving features like a murphy bed and fold-away table.
• Two loft bedrooms accessible by ladder.
• Clever built in storage.
• An unintentionally hidden root cellar.

If you don’t want to watch another movie about what other people think might happen when we run out of oil (or some other calamity) skip the first 21 minutes and jump ahead to this great tiny house tour. There are also several other simple living stories in the film after the Bartlett cabin tour.

Here’s a link to Urban Danger.

The folks at the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company just posted a new video of Jay and Greg’s big adventure. This past summer these Small House Society Co-Founders took Jay’s tiny house on the road and traveled from the Canadian Border to the Mexican Border stopping along the way to give workshops and have open houses.