Interesting examples of small living spaces. That sheet metal house is pretty sharp.

Hey thanks for the head's up! The tiny house blog has some great examples also.

Building a tiny home is a dream of the DW and I. We have taken some workshops and toured the homes of several folks that are listed in the slideshow on your link. Very inspiring! We hope to start construction this summer.

Cheers,
L

I'm a big fan of tiny homes not only because they're lighter on resources, but also because I hate cleaning rooms I don't go into very often and more space allows me to collect more things I don't need!

They are basically recreating the size of a metro area efficiency apartment. Nothing that radical. Not denigrating them in any way, just saying they are not on the cutting edge of anything. The "green" appeal is what makes the story.

The only thing that can be prohibitive is what the building codes say for size. Where I live about the smallest you can go for a stand-alone structure to live in (plumbing/electric) is 180 sq ft. We had a guy here build a 15x15 house in town. It is pretty slick.

Anyway you look at it it is still a cool idea.

I imagine its also a way to stay out of the mortgage trap. Running a 12V system in a place like that would also be easy to do and give you more options.

423 square foot cabin at 7,500 feet elevation in the San Bernadino Mountains, built in 1943 and still in excellent shape. It has a small kitchen, bathroom, and medium sized living room with an airtight woodstove, and is fully plumbed and electrified. It has a large propane tank in the back yard that the stove and heat run off of. I also built a 10 X 12 foot two-story storage shed out the back that also could be easily lived in, if necessary.

Tiny Cabin.

I always thought modern yurt living would be a cool compromise. I would still like a little compartmentalization, though, just to keep the living space a bit more varied, and to maintain a certain level of privacy.

Cool, tiny homes.
Thanks for the links guys

Lee

i lived in a "tiny" home for 25 years--think four room summer cabin--the thing that made it "do-able" was that it was off in the woods but still within walking distance from a village.being able to walk out the door and thru the woods for hours or down to a river and canoe for days made that tiny indoor space a happy place and not a "cell"..it was also a great place to come home to after a hard day at work with a 50 mile commute.

Sounds like a lot of ranger stations I have known.

I'm looking for plans now, looking at making a small cabin on the farm land in WV. I'm liking the ones with the loft design where you have the one main floor then a steep roof and sleeping loft up there.

Eugene: I think the steep roof A-frame design resulted from the need in heavy snow environments to keep snow from building up on the roof (it can get very heavy and collapse a poorly designed structure). Maybe this isn't really needed in your WV local. Re-roofing those steep roofs can be a nightmare unto itself. Since those steeply sloped roofs also really cut into your useable floor square footage, you might want to consider the benefit of having regular vertical walls with a shed style roof. Then, you can build the roof up high enough so you can have open-beamed ceilings and actually put sleeping platforms/lofts at each end of the shed, keeping the middle open. You can hang a beautiful rustic light fixture there'll that'll help illuminate everything. That's how I built my 16 foot high 10 X 12 foot storage shed, and it worked out very well. You can pitch the roof just enough to get good rain or snow run off, but still making it very easy to stand on and re-roof. Facing the roof pitch south helps keep the snow off and forms a good surface for south facing solar panels or solar collectors for hot water if you want. You can also put a row of windows up near the roof on the high side of the shed out of the reach of potential burglars/vandals to give you a lot of light and ventilation in the lofts with a couple lower windows on the back or sides of the structure if you really need more light or want to see the view. I left the windows off my shed and use a steel door for better security.

nothing extra.



also of interest:
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2010/01/watch-tiny-transformer-apartment-video.php
http://freshome.com/2010/01/06/amazing-vertical-apartment-from-csd-archtecten/

i rather fancy the hobbit hole myself
http://freshome.com/2009/12/05/incredible-underground-residence-in-switzerland/

and the cave
http://freshome.com/2009/12/08/phenomenal-villa-built-from-a-solid-cliff-rock/

My wife and I lived in a 264 sq ft. apartment when in the Army. Never again, especially with kids...

I liked the hobbit home in Wales, though, it would be cool to live somewhat underground. I've always wanted a missile silo - without the missile, of course...

I'm going to need the steep roof. My cousin just built a modular home (well had one built and brought in to his property) up on a mountain and he's had to shovel snow off this roof as it piled higher than the exhaust for the furnace. Northern WV has had 90 inches of snow total this season and 60 since the Jan 1 as of the last big snow storm a wekk or so ago. I'm looking at that metal roofing that designed to allow using of the water runoff so its coated special and lasts forever so I won't have to worry about roofing. There is a small hang dug well up there but not much water in it so I'm going to have to put a big tank underground to store roof runoff and/or grey water.

Please fogrive my lack of knowledge here. Lets say you had a 12V system set up. Would it be possible to add a few auto cigarette lighter plugs around the house? Most gadgets like cell phones, battery chargers, etc. have 12V auto plugs. That way you wouldn't have to always use an inverter, which wastes a lot of power no? Or is the energy loss using an inverter negligible.

Depends on the inverter, the higher end ones $$$$ are pretty efficient but the smaller store bought ones are wasteful. But I am working toward a 12v system myself, for one thing that means all my equipment can work easily from a vehilce in between home and the cabin. The other thing is the inverter is an extra piece, point of failure, etc.
I'm running automotive (cigarette) plugs in parallel with Anderson power poles and some 12v power cords I'm converting to them.
I'm also using automotive wiring, fuse blocks, etc, same small metripack as my vehicles so I can have fewer types of spares (allow for stocking more) and borrow parts from vehicle for cabin or vice versa.