Tiny House Living

This is little adobe house in northern New Mexico is a bit bigger than tiny at 700 square feet; but I have a special place in my heart for nice little adobe homes so I wanted to be sure to share it with you this week.

Rina Steen’s Adobe House

I always learn new stuff while reading Lloyd Kahn’s blog. This week I spotted this funky little tiny house built by the folks at Living Earth Structures in Petaluma, California. These folks build all sorts of earthen structures including benches, walls, ovens, and houses. They also offer adobe and cob workshops for those who want to learn about building in this extremely low-cost and sustainable building method. Below is a video from their website.

Living Earth Structures

I’m starting to think that building with earth makes more sense than any other building method.  I must admit I’m terribly biased because my real professional training and education is in the ceramic arts. The main disadvantage is that they are no portable like so many of the tiny houses I write about and explore through design.

Here’s another great find from Lloyd Kahn’s blog… it’s an article on 10 Amazing Earthen Buildings.

One of my readers on Tiny House Design sent me this very nicely done adobe casita near Abiquiu, New Mexico. Three months out of the year Samuel Grey lives in this tiny house. In a few years this will be his full-time home.

Adobe Casita

A few weeks ago I drew up a 3D drawing of Michael Thompson’s rammed earth wall former and posted the drawings on Tiny House Design. He’s now getting more press for his low cost rammed earth homes and small buildings; read the full article in Eastern Daily Press.

Read more at Shedworking

Learn more about his rammed earth workshops

If you have a subscription to Mother Earth News you probably spotted this cute earthbag building. While it’s small footprint (8-foot diameter) is probably too small to be a tiny house for most people it is an excellent example of how easy an earthbag home could be built.  There are lots of books and plans for earthbag homes available but you can find a lot of information on the internet about building with earthbags online.

Ziggy (a.k.a. Brian Liloia) has moved into his cob house at the Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage. His blog is now filled with cob house construction photos and information. The most recent post is on laying his earthen floor. Read more about building a cob house at Ziggy’s blog.

The folks over at the Earthbag Building Blog point out how easy it is to learn a lot about building these inexpensive homes for free online. Taking workshops can be wonderful and give you first hand experience but get started online. Read how at the Earthbag Building Blog.