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What's the biggest challenge in terms of materials?

• internaut 10y ago
  Just getting solid wood is a challenge. Take a look. http://thecraftsmanblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/old-growth-wood-768x1024.jpg http://thecraftsmanblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/old-g... Item on the left is old growth, and is a century or more old. New growth is 'cheaper' but quality has gone way down. You also want to avoid buying any wood that could have come from South of the Equator, it'd be like handling conflict diamonds. Happily since a Tiny House requires 5x-10x less material than the average house, you get to pick and choose and the premiums are manageable. Another challenge is that many useful things in a house off-gas dangerous chemicals like formaldehyde. Woods natural and artificial, insulation, paints, plastics, chaulk, they all give off gas for years. It is widely acknowledged in the building industry that this is so, builders do warn their clients of this, but home buyers optimize for sq ft (making the use of superior materials much less likely) + time to move in. Now that regular houses are using passive house principals for air tightness this is going to be a big problem for health. Because a Tiny House is small, this is an even bigger problem. So you need to do your research on VOCs with respect to woods like MDF, insulation foam or chaulking. If you ventilate correctly or have a HRV and you wait for a month of venting before moving in, that would be an intelligent thing to do. Chances are that you'll live longer by at least a month!