Tiny House Living

Tiny House Living is a weekly newsletter that covers the world of Tiny Houses and the people that choose to live this simpler life. Each e-zine entry will be a short summary that links to the original article.

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Here’s a slightly new take on a shipping container house. Like most it uses a reclaimed shipping container but in this case the outer steel shell can be closed up when not in use completely securing the house. This 8×20 tiny house is intended to be a fully off-the-grid too with a composting toilet, roof-mounted solar panels, and 12V refrigerator. Read the full article at TinyHouseBlog.com.

Now tiny houses have very small roofs so you’d have to live in a very wet climate to really be able to harvest enough water to meet all your needs, but here’s a great way to harvest and filter at least some of your water. Visit green book publisher Chelsea Green for more information on harvesting rainwater with sand filters and the book The Carbon-Free Home: 36 Remodeling Projects to Help Kick the Fossil-Fuel Habit.

A related story was posted on The Good Human this past week that asked the question Just How Much Rainwater Can You Collect Off Your Roof?

Jay Shafer and crew has been busy building the the new Tumbleweed Fencl. Kent Griswold from TinyHouseBlog.com has the latest photos from the construction site on his blog. The Fencl combines some aesthetic qualities from the Weebee and the size and shape of Tarleton in a 130 square foot home that measures about 8′ by 19′ and weights about 5,700 pounds.

There are a lot of great ideas built into this 36 square meter house (whic is about 400 square feet). The shutters that protect the large window on the second level is my favorite feature. I think I might add something like that to the tiny house plans I’m drawing over at Tiny House Design.

I also like the variety of materials: rock, concrete, stucco/plaster, wood, and glass. Visit the original article on this box house at LittleDiggs.com. It was designed by architects Alan Chu & Cristiano Kato.

Treehugger has begun a new annual tradition of announcing what they consider the Best of Green: Design + Architecture. This little shed won the Best Prefab or Shed under 150 Square Feet and is the creation of Friggebod By Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter. Treehugger has also put together a list of their favorite sheds. I first spotted this shed on Shedworking.co.uk.

The folks at Apartment Therapy have a content running right now on the coolest small house designs for simple living. They consider small up to 1,200 square feet but there still are a few cool tiny houses like Jay Shafer’s house. Be sure to vote at Apartment Therapy. I first spotted this on This Tiny House.

The folks over at naturalhomes.org have put together a nice summary of 10 tiny natural tiny homes that they’ve come across over time. These homes are all made from things like strawbales, cob, and earthbags and they are from all around the world too.

Another very cool feature on the natural homes website is a tiny house map. At the moment there are 29 tiny houses mapped and I’m sure they will add more over time. Be sure to bookmark naturalhomes.org and if so inclined follow naturalhomes on Twitter.

Until I learned to use Google SketchUp I would often built models of tiny houses I was day dreaming about building. I actually made several models of Nine Tiny Feet until I started drawing 3D drawings of how I imagined fitting a whole house in nine square feet.

When I saw this article on earthbag house model building I realized I wasn’t alone. The truth is taht no matter what drawing tools you use, it is very helpful to build models especially for small structures. Visualizing an idea is not always easy to do and it’s much faster to work out ideas in modeling clay, cardboard, or foam core. Also visit EarthbagBuilding.com for more on model building.