Fertilizer on our Tiny Home

Travis Johnson wrote:
We were actually thinking about vertical ladders on the inside, alternating ends they are mounted on between floors so that if a person did fall it would only be 8 feet.

You might want to check on that, ladders for day to day access are typically prohibited in most residential building codes.  Ladders are typically only allowed for accessing utility/storage areas (unfinished attic, etc.)


P.s.  My wife is also 39 years old...with 15 years experience.

Travis Johnson wrote:  I think so too. One of the wonderful things about radiant floor heat is that the heat does not reach the upper floors because you are not heating the air, you are heating the contents in the room. Typically it does not go over 8 feet so with radiant tubes on every floor, it would heat a tower better.

Radiant heating doesn't heat the air as much as forced air heating, but it still heats the air, warmer air is going to rise regardless of how it's heated.  If you have openings from one floor to the other, then your third floor will get fairly warm just from rising air.  Well, unless it's not well insulated and ends up loosing heat faster than it can rise.

Travis Johnson wrote:The bad thing is, it would take a fairly substantial circulator pushing flow to the manifolds in order to circulate water to the uppermost level.

If it's a closed loop system, then the height doesn't matter, just the total distance.  For every lb of water you are pushing up, you have another lb of water falling down and pulling on it.  In other words, in a closed loop, you don't have to "lift" anything, all you have to worry about is friction from the tubing.

Think about a siphon hose going way up over something but still working as long as the output end is lower than the surface of the water.  There isn't much "power" pushing that water, yet it works just fine.

Peter VanDerWal wrote:

Travis Johnson wrote:
We were actually thinking about vertical ladders on the inside, alternating ends they are mounted on between floors so that if a person did fall it would only be 8 feet.

You might want to check on that, ladders for day to day access are typically prohibited in most residential building codes.  Ladders are typically only allowed for accessing utility/storage areas (unfinished attic, etc.)


P.s.  My wife is also 39 years old...with 15 years experience.

That could very well be, but I am not subject to those kind of restrictions, building wise.

I am leaning towards ship ladders though as it is the perfect compromise between space and ease of climbing. It takes a bit, but as any mariner can tell you, in no time you are scaling ladders and hatchways pretty quickly.

Kyrt Ryder wrote:Fair point about the local climate. Ice and snow are a rare concern in my neck of the woods, fungal slime being a more frequent hazard here.

Can you tell us more about the naval hatches? I don't feel very enlightened from my Google search.

Here is a photo of one in a residence...

Well today we started down the tiny living road; at least for us.

After considerable thought, we worked out a plan for moving into my Grandmother's existing house and came out with a rebuild budget at about $14,000. We developed a time line too, and figured out what needs to be done, and when. We have quite a few things to do to make it liveable, but managed to clean it out today of all the excess junk, and soon will get it cleaned up.

I found (7) windows kicking around, so we will need to put a few of them in, swap some doors around, and get the woodstove in. We have to turn the electricity on too, check the plumbing to ensure that works, and then should be all set for moving in.

At 1100 square feet, as a family of (6) we have to make some changes. The first is for Katie and I; we will have a pull-out couch as bed in the livingroom for awhile. No master bedroom suite with ensuite for us! No massive bedroom closet either. But the biggest issue is not having a specific spot for a kitchen table. We always eat as a family, so we will have to sort that out fairly quickly. We hope to build a mudroom/dining room addition in the future, along with master bedroom down the road.

Here are some pictures of what we are starting with...NOT MUCH! But we can hopefully make it work. In the meantime, I mentioned our move (250 feet East) and putting up our house for renton Facebook, and in 20 minutes time I had (3) people who wanted to rent our home. I don't thinking renting our home will be an issue.

Some from inside the house...

Travis Johnson wrote:Well today we started down the tiny living road; at least for us...

But the biggest issue is not having a specific spot for a kitchen table.

Have you seen these folding picnic tables yet?

https://permies.com/t/37509/picnic-table-ideas-fold-bench

We have made a lot of progress for this old house....and it needed it!

We have removed all aspects of this house at some point...siding, insulation, electrical, wallboard, sheathing, even the studs needed rework. Yes that is about every part of the house. The second floor stringers were the worst situation. Someone had removed a load bearing wall and allowed 2x5's to span a full 18 feet, 2 feet on center, with a load bearing wall above it. Yes we fixed that, and yes the 2 inches of sag were jacked out of the second floor by doing so! I have no idea why it did not go crashing down to the first floor.

It had a little wiriing, but we removed all the tube and knot wiring and instead installed over 1000 feet of new romex, and over 50 new outlet boxes. While we were there we installed a Green Switch so whenever we leave the home, all power to non-essential services are cut. The power going to the furnace, outside lights, etc do not get cut off. The whole idea being, if 90% of the power is shut off to a house it is safer and a lot more conservative. We also wired with #12 AWS wire throughout, and installed tons of switches.

Obviously living in Maine insulation is of the utmost importance and this home had NONE! We cured that with fiberglass insulation, and so far 18 cans of rodent proof spray insulation. Of all the crazy things I have seen in this house (and there are too many to list here), it blows my mind that my Grandparents never spent the $500 in todays money, it would cost to insulate that house. When done, we can heat this tiny house with a candle, yet they spent YEARS buying furnace oil to stay warm. That boggles the mind...

We even got the kitchen swapped around so the kitchen is part livingroom and part bathroom, and the old livingroom is now the kitchen. That took some doing but will make the house more user friendly.

Having a sawmill has been crutial to this renoovation because the wood is of such oddball sizes. Some of it is old school 2x4's rough cut, but the inside walls are 2-3/4 x 2's, so to match things, I have had to saw my own wood. The same for 2x5's, the only way to match that is to make them myself. I even figuured out how to mass produce clapboard siding on the sawmill so I have made 800 linear feet of that, but need another 1400 linear feet to complete the job. This is a Foursquare house so we are going with the traditonal claboard siding on the bottom floor, then cedar shingles on the top floor. For those that care about such things, the wood for this rennovation is coming from a Norwood Lumbermate, though I am not really fond of this sawmill. In fact, it is not an endorsement at all, but rather a suggestion to stay away from it.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:

Travis Johnson wrote:Well today we started down the tiny living road; at least for us...

But the biggest issue is not having a specific spot for a kitchen table.

Have you seen these folding picnic tables yet?

https://permies.com/t/37509/picnic-table-ideas-fold-bench

I LOVE this! In fact we are going to incorporate this into our tiny house.

I am not sure how I missed this, but am sure glad you contributed the link Joylynn...

We have moved in!

This was our third night here, and we are getting moved out from our house across the road to here. Katie took off from a week of work to make the move, and my inlaws came up for a few days to help. It has all gone pretty smoothly with only a few hiccups.

The first was a propane heater we had counted on, crapping out after we installed it. Fortunately we had an old pellet stove kicking around that we did not use anymore, so grabbed that, hooked it up to the chimney and had some heat at least. We do plan on replacing that soon with a wood/coal stove as I am not a big fan of buying pellets when I have about 30 years of firewod dried and ready to burn.

The other thing we had for a surprise was a kitchen faucet that no matter how many times we replaced o-rings, it just would not stop leaking water, and I mean in buckets. I think it must have frozen and busted itself somewhere in the 10 years this place has been vacant.

But all in all we like Tiny Home Living. It has been a challenge to rid ourselves of 2/3 of our stuff and prioitize, then assign a spot to each kept thing, but family life is better. Our old house was so big that we often spread out and were not as connected as a family as we are now. But despite being a Tiny House, we were able to make (4) seperate bedrooms for our daughters so they get the individual space they need.

Our biggest challenge now is decluttering the bathroom with shelves and cabinets so we can store the stuff we need for life, but ultimatly that will come.

For those keeping track of money, we were able to move into here on about $1800 worth of money, and in 5 weeks of working on it.

Some things are unfinished, like the drywall, I have another 20 sheets to put up, but for now we are warm and dry. After that it will be TONS of finish trim, but the sawmill will help in that. I have quite a bit of pine sawn and can use the sawmill to make the lumber for that. Then lots of paint! Outside, inside...everywhere!

Outside I have some trim to fix, then about half a square of cedar shingles to fit around a newly installed window, then bank the house with sheep manure to keep the stone foundation warm and my pipes from freezing. But as fast as this went together, equally I think those things can be knocked off the list quickly as well.

Tiny House living: what is it really like?

Honestly, we love it. Unlike our other 3000 sq ft home, we cannot get away from one another. Even though I might be on this site, I am in the living room surrounded by my wife and daughters. That is true family time.

In the tiny 18 x 12 kitchen, everything is right at hand which is far different then our old 24 x 24 kitchen that kept us hiking miles in preparing meals.

Our old house had big bedrooms, but only (3). That meant our (4) daughters shared bedrooms. In this house, while small, they each have their own bedroom. They really like that, with loft beds making things a lot more roomy in their tiny bedrooms.That means Katie and I do not have our own bedroom, but with a big bathroom, (10 x 16) we keep our bureau's there and sleep on the couch/recliner. In Tiny House concept, we are thinking about fixing up the basement so that we can have a master bedroom in a day-lit basement, and use every inch of this Tiny House without having to add on...eventually. Surprisingly, we found teh couch/recliner to be comfortable to sleep on.

Over the last few weeks we have just kept adding the little touches that make life easier. yes the oven and the dish washer, but lots of shelves and arranging, then rearranging, to make things work better for us. I even managed to get the backup generator shed added on so that if the power goes out, we can stay lit comfortably inside.

It is a little too early to tell what the utility costs will be like electricty and heat, but being 1/3 the size of our old house, and due to its shape (4 square), it should be less expensive. I'll keep you posted, but for now, we really like Tiny House living.