Tiny Houses

[332nd]

So, it seems that wherever we wind up settling in for our home base, it'll be up north. Wisconsin, Illinois, Upstate New York, or Vermont. (Please God no! Mother in law lives there.)

I want to go tiny because of heating/cooling costs, doable solar power, & since I grew up in construction. (I'm an ok carpenter & pretty good brick/stone layer) Also, I'm planning a custom RV/mobile tiny home, either an old bus, trailer, or panel van that would actually connect to the... I dunno... Static(?) tiny house. 

Basically, it would be 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, two kitchens when all together with 650-700 SQft.

Anybody here live in or know anyone who lives in a tiny house?

[cookinbrak]

So stupid. Spend $75,000 to build a camper.

 

Just buy a trailer, or a camper.

Edit- OP is not stupid, just the concept of tiny houses. Bad television.

[Doyle]

 

[Hotsauce]

Look I watch those tiny home shows sometimes on HGTV, and yeah the concept seems cool. Unless your living alone, I think it’s absolutely a horrible idea.  

The main problems is 1) it’s way smaller than you actually think and 2) there are so many regulations about keeping a mobile home on a piece of land. Unless you know someone with land that will let you stay free/low rent.  Plus you have to consider power, water, and sewer. 

I’m assuming it’s more than just you, considering you say “we” and you need multiple bedrooms. Think about if someone has the farts. A good fart can stink up and linger 800 sq ft no problem. What if someone is sick, there is no way to isolate them.  Also, people need their space. Do you think couping yourself up with your spouse/kids in a shed over the course of months, weeks, years would be healthy?  What if you and your wife want to have sex or alone time?  Hell what if you need to rub one out?  Please don’t tell me you have pets. Pets literally make your space 100x dirtier, 100x faster.  The most troubling thing you said is your going up north...where it’s cold...for a long time. That makes walking outside to take a piss, getting out of the house because your wife is driving you crazy, managing your utilities, etc so much harder if it’s cold and snow is everywhere.  What happens if you take a poo and the water hose connected to your unit freezes because it’s 7 degrees outside and now you can flush a stinky pile of dookie down. What happens then??? What do you do if your super tired and you come home and you want to sleep, but your son has to practice his singing lessons because his school play is next week and now you can’t sleep because he is singing??? What then?  

[Bronn]

There is absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to decrease your footprint. I would rather be in a smaller house. We have two large rooms we barely even set foot in.

The biggest issue about tiny houses is zoning laws. You better make sure that you meet all requirements there, as well as local housing authority guidelines for square footage per person, etc.

Living tiny can and has been done many many times. Don't listen to the naysayers trying to talk you out of it.

The truth is, you're probably wanting an extreme. My advice would be to meet somewhere in the middle of what you are used to and what you think you want. That way, you get more space than you think you'll need, but less than you currently have.

If you're good enough with your own skills, you should be able to fund/build a 1,000 sq. foot or less house for probably 2/3rds of the cost of going turn key through a contractor. The biggest obstacles would be utilities setup and other licensed service work/installs, and footings (I would definitely build on a foundation and not a trailer,) but as far as the framing and the finishing work goes, you should be able to use your own labor.

I'd love to buy 50 acres and build a small <1,000 sq. ft. home in the middle of it for our family of 4. But my wife would rather live in a subdivision.

TLDR: Find compromises in what you think you want and what you end up doing. You can still make environmentally responsible decisions and do a lot of the work yourself.

[Bronn]

Another idea I've mulled over doing eventually is some kind of tiny/pod style designed living property.

Basically, you build your initial tiny house (living area, kitchen, two sleeping spots). During this initial phase, you use a composting toilet or some form of out-style bathroom area. Ideally, you'd build a separate, state park style shower/toilet combo detached from your main living quarters.

Then in a year or so, you are working in your spare time to construct a similar sized frame to your main living quarters adjacent to the original and the bathroom facility. This will eventually be BRs #2 and #3 (or #3 and#4 if you want to keep two options in the original (say, for a younger child.)

Eventually, the goal would to be to have at least 4 small buildings on the property. Two dedicated living spaces, a bath house, and a kitchen/eating spot/lounge.

Down the road, one of the living spaces could be rented out to someone and another dedicated bathroom facility could be constructed for it or onto it.

You should be able to build the four fundamental buildings in this idea for $50,000 or less, and you could phase it all to spread out the expense.

I think that is going to be the future of construction/living anyways. We're headed towards a more social/communal society. Shared spaces is where it is gonna be.

[SmokinwithWilly]

13 hours ago, 332nd said:

So, it seems that wherever we wind up settling in for our home base, it'll be up north. Wisconsin, Illinois, Upstate New York, or Vermont. (Please God no! Mother in law lives there.)

I want to go tiny because of heating/cooling costs, doable solar power, & since I grew up in construction. (I'm an ok carpenter & pretty good brick/stone layer) Also, I'm planning a custom RV/mobile tiny home, either an old bus, trailer, or panel van that would actually connect to the... I dunno... Static(?) tiny house. 

Basically, it would be 2 bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, two kitchens when all together with 650-700 SQft.

Anybody here live in or know anyone who lives in a tiny house?

You might want to try renting a camper for a couple of months and "test" the experience. Usually you can hook up at an RV park for about $300-$400 a month. This will give you the feel for being so close to other people. My wife and I have a 1500 sq ft house and use about 800 sq feet of it. I want to go smaller, she doesn't. I spend a lot of time outside, so for me, I don't need as much room inside because I'm not inside that much. It's basically a place to cook, sleep, poop and shower. If you're a taller guy, I'm 6'3", headroom can be a challenge. 

Some other things to consider is that if you plan well in design based on what you need for your home, you can actually design a lot of it for free energy. I'm desperately trying to convince my wife to let me build a hobbit hole. Our freeze line is 4 feet so I want to do a buried home with a sod roof, south face entry windows for sun on a stone floor for solar radiation for heat. Depending on the weather in the area, when you get below a certain level, ambient temperature stays relatively even winter or summer. Or if you place your windows well and position well, cross breezes can do wonders during summer. 

We also use our home as a reflective heat source for our gardens. They are all beside the south face of the house so everything grows about a month ahead of schedule and plants that normally don't do well here due to sorter growing seasons do very well. 

I wouldn't want to do tiny living close to someone else. I need a certain amount of elbow room outside. If it's what you want to do, more power to you. Just make sure that everyone else is seriously on board before you sink yourself into it. 

[Paa Langfart]

My wife and I lived in a 750 square foot house for about 15 years along with 2 dogs and 2 cats.  Luckily I also had a nice workshop and huge yard to retreat to, or we would have driven each other nuts during that time.  The tiny house thing sounds great in theory but you ought to have some way to get away from one another sometimes.  I now have a place of about 1400 sf and I would say it is about perfect for 2 people and pets.  If you are worried about heating and cooling costs build it with 6 inch studs and use the best insulation you can buy and go energy star appliances and bulbs everywhere.  That is what I did.

 

By the way - you will never fit 4 bedrooms and 2 bath rooms into a 750 square foot house unless they are all about the size of a frigin small closet.  We only had one tiny bath room ( only large enough for a toilet, sink and small stand up shower) and 2 very small ( like 12-12 foot ) bedrooms.  I have no idea why you would want 2 kitchens.  And if you're moving up north investigate alternate heat sources like wood stoves or one of the modern coal burners - once the power goes out up there you literally can freeze to death.

[Paa Langfart]

Unless you don't intend on having your house hooked up to the local power grid and having  county water and sewer then you always have to be aware of what your local zoning laws are and follow them or think of some sort of work around - they are very intrusive anywhere I have ever lived and will pretty much spoil a lot of your dreams.  Even then they might decide to forbid you from doing what you want on your own land.  

Before building my current house I built a barn/shop - took about 3 months doing  it all myself with the exception of pouring the concrete foundation and slab and electric wiring.  I didn't need a building permit because I have about 40 acres - enough land to get a farm number from the USDA - my county doesn't require permits for farm buildings and with a farm id, I was able to qualify.  I finished the upstairs enough to make it into a decent apartment of about 500 square feet, was able to get electric to it cause it was classified as a farm building with no inspection needed and I had a licensed electrician wire it for me, had a small working shower and sink ( tiny water heater ) which I drained into an old ditch that had been cut years before on my place - it basically became a wetland for treating grey water - got my potable water from a drilled well - had no sewer nor septic so built an outhouse for toilet use.  Lived there for a couple years while I planned and built our house,  which I acted as general contractor on and did a lot of the work on.  It worked well and saved us a ton of money. I would have been satisfied staying there myself but swmbo wanted a house and a working toilet so

[blackcat]

I wish they'd do a show on folks who move into these Tiny Houses.  I have a feeling it'd be very interesting.  Also, what can the resale value on a tiny house really be?