As many others, I've become quite fascinated by the "tiny house movement". They are often pictured nicely, at a beautiful spot, somewhere in nature, off the grid. It's a romantic kind-of-nice idea to live in a house, that survives completely by itself. In this post I'd like to share some of the more fascinating things I've learned from these tiny houses.
- Almost any electric appliance can be bought as a low-volt version.
This goes for everything like refrigerators, stoves, water cookers, and TV's, and computers. This is an important detail because the electricity created by solars is 12 volt. An important little detail. Not only does this mean that you can build a tiny house this way. It means that you can also power anything else where you need energy. For example here in Germany we have a lot of these small garden houses scattered all over the place. You don't have to think very far to realise that one can simply install a small solar array to power the fridge there. Germans sometimes also use these small self-owned properties for grill parties in the summer.
- A shipping container is not expensive but the small ones are a little small. Two however are quite a lot.
You can buy a used shipping container for around $6000. Depending on the condition it can be much lower, or even higher. The "small" shipping containers are 20ft in size. The dimensions are about 6m by 2.44m, so roughly 15 msqr2. This is not a lot of room to live in. Many of the more "luxurious" looking tiny houses therefore use two containers this size! The two can be combined in various shapes, and can form a little garden/front yard area. This makes the entire plot look more spacious. You can also put something on top of the container -- like a little greenhouse. It's tough to isolate containers!
- Isolation
These containers save a lot of heat. Isolation therefore is a must. While not impossible, isolating something also means, it loses the same amount of space for living. This makes a small tiny house, even tinier, but not as much that the entire place becomes unliveable.
- Plots are not that expensive either
Checking around for plots with no building, I found that those are not that expensive. As I'm investigating ways to live in my own home hopefully soon, I also look around for places to live. They are expensive, but not outrageously expensive.
- There's an entire community devoted to these houses
This is a good thing because now we can learn faster from others' mistakes. We can chat, write, exchange knowledge with others and build better homes for ourselves. This doesn't save us from first-try mistakes but it means we can get a general better start off into an own home.
- Utilising space is important
Using space intelligently is also very important for a tiny house. The good thing here is that there is furniture that is designed to have multiple purposes, and use less space. Here are two videos that come to mind, just regarding this topic.
She's been on this show before, watch it:
- If you really want a tiny house quick, without all the fun building it, buy one.
There are now companies that ship you a turnkey container home.
- Maybe starting small, and going bigger is the smartest thing to do.
Starting small gives the benefit that the upfront costs stay small in a certain way. This obviously goes against the available room for living. But my gut feeling is that as soon as you move to your own plot, the amount of money saved per month increases multifold. This means that living small for a year, gives a big boost on the budget, which can then be used to buy a second container, and increase the available space later.
- This is still the most impressive "tiny house" that I've ever seen. It's wonderful!
What would be interesting to know is your own experience. Do you have any links or material I can check out? I live in Europe (Germany) though. Not everything created by Americans applies to us here, but some does.
Don't forget to follow. I'd also appreciate an upvote!
This is a good compilation, thanks for sharing. I feel like for all the time spent in building one it might be worth it to buy it, although perhaps half the fun is getting it just the way you like it, so maybe building is better.
Great post, thanks for sharing your work and research on this! I'm an architect by trade, so naturally, I'm fascinated by the tiny house movement. Following you :)
Tiny houses are definitely on my FAVORITE topics list. This is an excellent post and I definitely would give an upvote for this post. Thanks for sharing. Please follow me... I will be posting similar blogs and LOTs of photos from my very own tiny house build in the near future. Until then, stay tuned for more! Thanks again for a great post!