I could be a fool, but here are some of the more unique design and construction choices I am making and why I'm making them.
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| Hand-drawn floorplan. From bottom center, clockwise: entry door with landing; pantry cupboard/cabinets; apartment-sized fridge; bathroom with composting toilet and 32"x32" shower; kitchen counter with drainboard sink; stairs; half-loft with bed beneath. Also shown: upper and lower level windows, location of wheel wells. Not shown: storage loft above bathroom, climate control appliances, hot water heater, flip-up section of countertop, curtain covering bathroom door, closet area in loft. |
1. No sleeping loft. Many tiny houses include a sleeping loft to free up space on the main floor. A queen sized bed is nearly 35 square feet, which is a gigantic chunk of real estate when the whole house comes in under 140 square feet! However, there are a couple of disadvantages to this design that made me opt against building a sleeping loft and instead go with a half-height loft with the bed underneath and storage/seating space above.
First, I don't want to live with the low headroom offered by the typical sleeping loft. Since the overall height of a tiny house is limited by the Department of Transportation to 13'6" (including the trailer), and the space under the loft needs to be usable for normal standing activities, that usually leaves just enough room in the loft to sit up in bed under the highest point of the roof. That's a bit claustrophobic for me. I need at least 4'6" of headroom--enough for me to kneel upright--across the whole bed to feel comfortable and use the space to full effect. (No, I don't need much headroom to lie down and sleep, but who says sleeping is the only thing I do in bed, eh?)
The other thing I dislike is how high off the floor a loft puts the sleeping area, and the fact that usually only a ladder--not stairs--will fit in the house to provide access. I don't have a habit of falling out of bed, but I do often get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. I don't trust myself to successfully negotiate a 6+' climb down and up a ladder while groggy with sleep, let alone while sick, under the influence of cold medicine, with an injured limb, or so forth.
My first stab at the loftless design involved a 7' storage-bench sofa where I would keep my Japanese-style floor mattress during the day, to unfold and lay on the living room floor at night. It would be a lot of work, but after all, I already own and use that style of bed and that's how it's designed to be treated. If it's good enough for the Japanese, it's good enough for me, right?
But in early November, 2014, I went to Portland, Oregon, with my dad for Portland Alternative Dwellings' Tiny House Basics Workshop. The workshop included a tour of the Caravan Tiny House Hotel, where we were allowed to explore all six of the hotel's tiny houses. (Dad and I also stayed at the hotel that weekend in Roly Poly, the smallest of the tiny houses. Those two nights confirmed in my mind the awkwardness of the regular sleeping loft--and in my dad's, especially after he hit his head a half a dozen times on the ceiling!) One of the houses, the towering, shed-roofed Skyline, features a half-height loft, about 4' high, with a cozy bed nook underneath and a sofa bed on top. I took one look at that layout and I just knew that's that's what I wanted. For my design, I call it the half-loft.
My half-loft will be higher than Skyline's to accommodate the extra headroom I want for the bed downstairs, and instead of a guest bedroom, the upstairs will act as my living room and dressing room. It will be furnished with clothes storage, a mirror, and low furniture for floor-level seating and dining. Since the loft is higher, there will be less headroom upstairs--room to stand only at one side--but I feel comfortable making that sacrifice for the sake of headroom over the bed.
Later, I found out about another tiny house with a bed-under, living-space-over half-loft design. Love it!
2. Big kitchen. I'm a pretty serious cook, and the two-foot-long countertops, bar sinks, and dorm-size fridges that feature in many tiny houses just won't cut it for me. My house will essentially be a kitchen with a bed/loft at one end and a bathroom at the other. It will have eleven square feet of usable counterspace (including a three-square-foot fold-down section), a full-sized kitchen sink, a pantry cabinet with roll-out shelves and approximately 18 cubic feet of storage, and an apartment-sized (7.4- or 10-cubic-foot) refrigerator. I plan to cook using individual induction burners and an electric multi-cooker, which I can put away when not in use, and I'm considering a 1.5-cubic-foot combination convection/microwave oven for roasting, baking, and reheating food.
3. Bucket and sawdust toilet. I never really considered using a normal flush toilet in my tiny house. Convenient as it is, I have no desire to continue contributing to the bizarre first-world system we have of spending billions of dollars cleaning our water, pooping in it, and then spending billions of dollars more cleaning the poop out of it again. As an alternative, there are a variety of waterless composting toilets available commercially, and many tiny housers have happily bought and installed them... but they usually cost upwards of $1,000, take up a lot of space in the bathroom, and have various moving parts and even electric fans. I want something compact and dead simple. Enter: the bucket and sawdust toilet (also known as the Loveable Loo, popularized by The Humanure Handbook, by Joseph Jenkins).
The basic idea of the bucket and sawdust system is, well, just that. You take a five-gallon bucket and build a box around it with a toilet seat on top, then keep a container of a dry, carbon-rich organic material--like sawdust or coconut coir--nearby and sprinkle a couple handfuls in the bucket after each use. The dry material covers up the sight and odor of the deposits and helps keep the compost well-aerated and balanced in nutrients. When the bucket fills, you add it to a compost pile (or the dumpster, if you can't have a compost pile), rinse it out, and start again. You can also use multiple buckets and let them sit, covered, and moulder for a while before adding them to the pile. A year or so later, you have perfectly good compost and you've used a bare fraction of the water you would have used with a normal toilet.
4. Sinkless bathroom hand-washing station. For ease, cost, and environmental reasons, I want to limit the number of plumbed items in my tiny house as much as possible. I decided that the two most essential water-using functions are bathing and cooking/cleaning--therefore, a shower and a kitchen sink. However, it doesn't seem hygienic to wash my hands at the kitchen sink after using the toilet, so instead, I'm going to install a faucet at hand-washing height (3' 6" or so) in the shower. I'll be looking for either a low-profile or folding/articulated faucet, so I don't bump into it all the time while showering--something like this, this pot-filler faucet, or (if only!) this.
After coming up with this "original" idea, I found that it has already been implemented in at least one small house design. I'll be in good company, then!
Originally, I had planned to use a 24" x 32" RV step tub, with the idea that I could sit on the step and wash my hair with the flow of water from the faucet. (I have very thick hair and find that a stream of water works better than a spray for wetting and rinsing.) I scrapped this idea for two reasons: one, all the RV-specific tub/showers in that size range had terrible reviews for durability, in concurrence with what I've heard about RV appliances and fixtures in general; and two, man, 24" is really narrow. I decided that a somewhat larger, but still inexpensive, option designed for residential use would be preferable, so I'm going with a 32" x 32" shower pan.
5. Simple shed roof. Basically, I wanted the simplest possible roof design and as much interior volume as possible. A shed roof is just a single plane sloping from one side of the house to the other--no funny angles or corners. The drawback is that the slope is low--3:12, that is, the slope rises 3" for every 12" of run--and will not shed snow very effectively. I will need to be wary of moving to snow country, but that's about it for concerns.
6. Structural insulated panels (SIPs). (Disclaimer: I am not an expert on SIPs, and as I write this, I have never built with either stick framing or SIPs. My present knowledge is based on what I've read and seen on the websites listed on my Resources page. Check them out!) I intend to build my tiny house walls using SIPs, probably with a stick-framed floor and roof. Most tiny houses are built entirely using stick framing, where the "sticks" are pieces of 2x4 lumber that are screwed and glued together to form the "skeleton" of the walls. SIPs are an alternative construction technology that was invented in the 1930s, as I understand it, but has only been in relatively wide use since the 1990s. A SIP-built house is made of large, prefabricated panels consisting of rigid foam insulation sandwiched between two sheets of structural sheathing--replacing the interior sheathing, exterior sheathing, insulation, and stick frame, all in one chunk of wall. Grooves are cut out of the foam on each edge to accept pieces of lumber (called splines; sometimes made of other materials, as well) which are screwed and glued to the panels and to each other to hold it all together.
To my mind, the only real disadvantage of using SIPs for a build-it-yourself tiny house is the cost. If labor expenses are factored in, the cost of SIPs can be quite competitive with normal stick framing, since the walls can be assembled in so much less time. However, when labor is free one way or the other, your own time is the only upfront savings, and it may not make up for the added expense.
On the other hand, the advantages of SIPs are fairly convincing. First, yes, the speed of assembly; if you need your tiny house closed in and insulated in a hurry, SIPs seem like a great way to go. Second, SIPs are prefabricated and can be delivered ready to install, so there's relatively little waste and do-it-yourself work (i.e. opportunity for error) at the job site. Third, SIPs are very rigid and square, creating a stiff and solid building that will resist the shaking and blowing to which tiny houses on wheels are subjected during towing. Fourth, they create an exceptionally tight and well-insulated building envelope, which will save you money down the line on heating and cooling. Fifth, they weigh less than the stick-built alternative because there is much less lumber involved, and with a house that will be towed on a trailer, weight is an important consideration.
For me, the advantages seem to outweigh--no pun intended--the disadvantages.
A note: I intend to use regular stick framing for the floor because I haven't figured out, from others' experiences, how the SIP floor would fit properly in the trailer. It seems like it might have to sit on top of the trailer bed, eating up a bunch of interior vertical space, unlike a stick-framed floor, which can be built into the bed. But... I'm not sure. There's a dearth of information in the tiny house blogosphere about SIP floors! And I have chosen to stick frame the roof because SIP panels seem awkward, difficult, and potentially dangerous to maneuver so high up, and because Jenna and Sean from Vagabode reported difficulties with preparing and installing their SIP roof. Installing it piece by piece actually seems easier than installing big slabs of roof.
7. Door over wheel well, entry landing, and shoe storage. Placing the door over the wheel well did not begin as a conscious design choice; rather, a necessity, because with a bathroom at one end of the house and a loft at the other, there were few other options for door location. I had the idea to build a landing inside the front door, so rather than step immediately down into the house--which might take a visitor by surprise--there is about 2' of platform before the step down. Nice spot for a welcome mat, tidily conceals the wheel well box... and then I realized it could be used for storage, too. My plan now is to build a ledge or cubbies around the edge of the landing to stow the two or four... or six... pairs of shoes that I wear most often, so I can easily slip them on and off when I leave and enter the house.
Clever, huh?
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