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Micro-documentary on "A cool tiny home tour: living in 96 square feet"

51 points by sleepingbot 17y ago

Homes are shrinking in America. After doubling in size since 1960, the national average dropped for the first time in nearly 15 years (by 9%, the size of an average room). But far from this new average of 2,000 plus square feet are the so-called tiny houses. Also called wee homes, mini dwellings, or microhomes, their definition is not exact, but they run as small as 65 square feet. The video is worth watching.

andrewf 17y ago
My nearest IKEA has a number of "tiny houses" all set up that you can walk through. (I'm in Australia)
dabent 17y ago
I mentioned him in a comment before, but I think the way that the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company has handled PR is a model for any startup. The guy built a fancy trailer and landed on Oprah. I don't say that to put him or his company down. I think his houses are really neat. He found (or made) a niche and put together a campaign that makes him the iPhone of small houses.
amohr 17y ago
One of the books on his shelf is Suburban Nation (http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-American/dp/0865476063 http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-America...) - worth a read. It's interesting because that book is to Urban Planning what tiny houses are to Architecture.
- Luc 17y ago
  I loved it when they zoomed in on the book case (watch it on Youtube in HD). Instant ideas for further reading!
  - lacerus 17y ago
    In this video there is an even better close up of his books at 1:09 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaE4EvM-UF4&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaE4EvM-UF4&feature=playe...
    - sleepingbot 17y ago
      More close shots of his books in the photogallery of the visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/sets/72157622680688384/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/sets/721576226806...
KevinMS 17y ago
Ok if you like toy houses, but the points made are moot. This is just feel-good hippy shit that distracts from real progress. Already been done- called mobile home, trailer parks, etc. Next time you dry past a mobile home park in a relatively affluent region of the country, the cars parked there are not rusting and up on blocks, they can be pretty nice, the people there are not poor. People are often living there because its cheap and efficient, or a second home for work reasons. Cost - its the land that costs. As they say, a house is a wooden box that sits out in the rain and rots. If you want efficient housing a medium sized earth sheltered house is simply the best you can get. But you'll never get a loan for it. You can actually heat one of those in the winter with a few people and a few candles. Its because the 'outside' is always a constant temperature, about 50 degrees F. Theres no reason to think that one of those toy homes would be much less efficient than, say, if you scaled it 2x. The the shape and construction that would really matter.
- tome 17y ago
  Why would you never get a loan for it?
  - KevinMS 17y ago
    normally you couldn't get a loan because banks would be worried about the resale value of a "underground" house. But maybe recently you could have because they were just giving loans to anybody. But now you probably wouldn't have a chance. You'd have to build it with cash, and they cost about 20% more than a conventional house, last I checked.
  - jws 17y ago
    If your construction cost is significantly greater than your resale value, and you intend to borrow a large portion of this cost, then there is not enough collateral for the lender to recover their investment. A house which you will treasure, but is considered undesirable by the masses will be a problem.
- chrischen 17y ago
  Let's not forget tiny apartments. Not only space efficient but land efficient too (they stack up).
JoeAltmaier 17y ago
Sometimes I think it would be really, really nice to live small - maybe whenI retire and the kids are gone.
- dstorrs 17y ago
  Depending on the age of the kids, you can try it out pretty simply--while the kids are off at college / summer camp / whatever, rent an apartment for a few months. On the "paying for it" side, it's a balance between your financial situation / tolerance for risk; you can either pay the extra fee, or you can rent out the house (check out AirBnB, Craigslist, etc). On the "logistics" side, you will have a bunch of furniture, clothes, etc which don't fit in the apartment. You can either leave those in the house or put them in storage, whichever works better for you. Try to not go back to the house while you're living in the apartment, though--have your mail forwarded, etc. And if you find there is a box of clothes / books / kitchen gadgets / whatever that you haven't unpacked at the end of your apartment time, consider getting rid of it.
ars 17y ago
I have to say I really like all the wood. But did I hear him right that he just dumps the water from the shower? That's not good. If you put the water in the sewer it gets recycled. It's basically impossible to waste water from a shower if you are on a public sewer, since the next city downriver uses it. Also, never use a septic system, those are bad for the environment since they waste water. Very cool house though.
- patrickgzill 17y ago
  Where does the water go if it doesn't go in the sewer? Is it somehow destroyed, never to enter the environment again?
  - kirstendirksen 17y ago
    I think he was talking about how he has to carry water up to the loft in order to use his shower. It's a gravity system with just a jug of water above the shower which falls when he opens the tap (or it looks like just a PVC tube in his case). Though since he's in a trailer I'd guess he's not hooked up to the sewage system.. would guess it's similar to an RV in that sense. But he never discussed that in the interview.
  - ars 17y ago
    It seemed that he just dumps it on the ground.
    - nitrogen 17y ago
      How is that significantly different from any other method of disposing mostly-clean water? Either it goes through another use cycle downstream (if the sewer system drains into a river), evaporates, and is recovered as precipitation, or it just evaporates and is recovered as precipitation. The water is still part of the water cycle.
      - ars 17y ago
        The water cycle sure. But that's of no help to places with water shortages. If you return it to the sewer then other cities down the line can reuse the water. If you remember a while back when atlanta had severe water shortages. Part of the problem is that something like 40% of houses had septic systems, so cities downriver from atlanta did not get enough water.
dstorrs 17y ago
A complementary movement is co-housing (http://www.cohousing.org/ http://www.cohousing.org/). Co-housing is about intentional community--a group of people get together and deliberately choose to live in smaller houses with a shared common space. This space might include a library, playroom, media center, kitchen / dining room (although each house has its own, and you aren't obligated to cook or eat with the community), or whatever else the community decides. Every co-housing group does something a bit different. One specific example is http://www.mosaic-commons.org/ http://www.mosaic-commons.org/ (Full disclosure: I was involved in Mosaic for a couple of years until my divorce.) It's a pretty cool concept and tends to attract the kind of people that hackers like (smart, interesting, iconoclastic).
davidw 17y ago
Even people in Venice have larger apartments than that...
gcheong 17y ago
A tiny house, a few books, and a big bottle of Smirnoff. Could be paradise.

51 points by sleepingbot 17y ago

andrewf 17y ago

My nearest IKEA has a number of "tiny houses" all set up that you can walk through. (I'm in Australia)

dabent 17y ago

I mentioned him in a comment before, but I think the way that the Tumbleweed Tiny House Company has handled PR is a model for any startup. The guy built a fancy trailer and landed on Oprah. I don't say that to put him or his company down. I think his houses are really neat. He found (or made) a niche and put together a campaign that makes him the iPhone of small houses.

amohr 17y ago

One of the books on his shelf is Suburban Nation (http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-American/dp/0865476063 http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-America...) - worth a read. It's interesting because that book is to Urban Planning what tiny houses are to Architecture.

Luc 17y ago
I loved it when they zoomed in on the book case (watch it on Youtube in HD). Instant ideas for further reading!
- lacerus 17y ago
  In this video there is an even better close up of his books at 1:09 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaE4EvM-UF4&feature=player_embedded http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaE4EvM-UF4&feature=playe...
  - sleepingbot 17y ago
    More close shots of his books in the photogallery of the visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/sets/72157622680688384/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/sets/721576226806...

KevinMS 17y ago

Ok if you like toy houses, but the points made are moot. This is just feel-good hippy shit that distracts from real progress. Already been done- called mobile home, trailer parks, etc. Next time you dry past a mobile home park in a relatively affluent region of the country, the cars parked there are not rusting and up on blocks, they can be pretty nice, the people there are not poor. People are often living there because its cheap and efficient, or a second home for work reasons. Cost - its the land that costs. As they say, a house is a wooden box that sits out in the rain and rots. If you want efficient housing a medium sized earth sheltered house is simply the best you can get. But you'll never get a loan for it. You can actually heat one of those in the winter with a few people and a few candles. Its because the 'outside' is always a constant temperature, about 50 degrees F. Theres no reason to think that one of those toy homes would be much less efficient than, say, if you scaled it 2x. The the shape and construction that would really matter.

tome 17y ago
Why would you never get a loan for it?
- KevinMS 17y ago
  normally you couldn't get a loan because banks would be worried about the resale value of a "underground" house. But maybe recently you could have because they were just giving loans to anybody. But now you probably wouldn't have a chance. You'd have to build it with cash, and they cost about 20% more than a conventional house, last I checked.
- jws 17y ago
  If your construction cost is significantly greater than your resale value, and you intend to borrow a large portion of this cost, then there is not enough collateral for the lender to recover their investment. A house which you will treasure, but is considered undesirable by the masses will be a problem.
chrischen 17y ago
Let's not forget tiny apartments. Not only space efficient but land efficient too (they stack up).

JoeAltmaier 17y ago

Sometimes I think it would be really, really nice to live small - maybe whenI retire and the kids are gone.

dstorrs 17y ago
Depending on the age of the kids, you can try it out pretty simply--while the kids are off at college / summer camp / whatever, rent an apartment for a few months. On the "paying for it" side, it's a balance between your financial situation / tolerance for risk; you can either pay the extra fee, or you can rent out the house (check out AirBnB, Craigslist, etc). On the "logistics" side, you will have a bunch of furniture, clothes, etc which don't fit in the apartment. You can either leave those in the house or put them in storage, whichever works better for you. Try to not go back to the house while you're living in the apartment, though--have your mail forwarded, etc. And if you find there is a box of clothes / books / kitchen gadgets / whatever that you haven't unpacked at the end of your apartment time, consider getting rid of it.

ars 17y ago

I have to say I really like all the wood. But did I hear him right that he just dumps the water from the shower? That's not good. If you put the water in the sewer it gets recycled. It's basically impossible to waste water from a shower if you are on a public sewer, since the next city downriver uses it. Also, never use a septic system, those are bad for the environment since they waste water. Very cool house though.

patrickgzill 17y ago
Where does the water go if it doesn't go in the sewer? Is it somehow destroyed, never to enter the environment again?
- kirstendirksen 17y ago
  I think he was talking about how he has to carry water up to the loft in order to use his shower. It's a gravity system with just a jug of water above the shower which falls when he opens the tap (or it looks like just a PVC tube in his case). Though since he's in a trailer I'd guess he's not hooked up to the sewage system.. would guess it's similar to an RV in that sense. But he never discussed that in the interview.
- ars 17y ago
  It seemed that he just dumps it on the ground.
  - nitrogen 17y ago
    How is that significantly different from any other method of disposing mostly-clean water? Either it goes through another use cycle downstream (if the sewer system drains into a river), evaporates, and is recovered as precipitation, or it just evaporates and is recovered as precipitation. The water is still part of the water cycle.
    - ars 17y ago
      The water cycle sure. But that's of no help to places with water shortages. If you return it to the sewer then other cities down the line can reuse the water. If you remember a while back when atlanta had severe water shortages. Part of the problem is that something like 40% of houses had septic systems, so cities downriver from atlanta did not get enough water.

dstorrs 17y ago

A complementary movement is co-housing (http://www.cohousing.org/ http://www.cohousing.org/). Co-housing is about intentional community--a group of people get together and deliberately choose to live in smaller houses with a shared common space. This space might include a library, playroom, media center, kitchen / dining room (although each house has its own, and you aren't obligated to cook or eat with the community), or whatever else the community decides. Every co-housing group does something a bit different. One specific example is http://www.mosaic-commons.org/ http://www.mosaic-commons.org/ (Full disclosure: I was involved in Mosaic for a couple of years until my divorce.) It's a pretty cool concept and tends to attract the kind of people that hackers like (smart, interesting, iconoclastic).

davidw 17y ago

Even people in Venice have larger apartments than that...

gcheong 17y ago

A tiny house, a few books, and a big bottle of Smirnoff. Could be paradise.