The Tiny House Movement

I've been following the Tiny House movement for awhile now and think it's time permies start thinking seriously about this concept.  These are generally stick frame structures to be sure, but they make a lot of sense:

1)  They are cheap to build oneself with easily available, new or recycled, commercial materials.  (Check the 'vermont' link below.  Peter King teaches novices to build a shell, minus windows, for $1500.)  The wood can be precut.  Standard sizes mean it's not hard to find recycled materials to use.

2)  They are easy for the novice and the athletically challenged to learn and to construct. 

3)  They require less labor and equipment, and a lower learning curve, than many alternative building methods. 

4)  Since they're small (typically about 100-200 sq. ft; by definition under 500) they're cheap to heat because of square footage alone.  And they can be insulated quite well.

5)  Many of the houses are mobile with the obvious benefits.  Also, since you can put them on wheels they often fall below the zoning radar and no permit is required. 

6)  In many localities, just because of the low square footage alone they don't require a permit (in some places it's 100 sq. ft. while in others it's 200 sq. ft below which a permit is unnecessary).  And if you need to work with the zoning authorities, they understand stick frame so it won't be as much of a hassle.

7)  The small size of the structure means more land for planting or a pond, etc..

  It encourages people to downsize and become more efficient users and accumulators of resources.  (People tend to fill up whatever size place they have, regardless of need.) 

9)  Many tiny houses are really cute and livable despite, or perhaps because of, the size.  See links below.

10)  You can add on to the basic structures easily as/if your needs grow; something which can be difficult with some alternative methods.

So I don't think we should turn up our noses on stick frame construction and think that we have to reinvent the wheel in order to build something more 'environmentally correct'.  These are environmentally correct, IMHO.

Check these out:

http://www.tumbleweedhouses.com/
http://www.tinytexashouses.com/
http://www.resourcesforlife.com/small-house-society
http://vermonttinyhouses.com/

That would be like living in a travel trailer (rv, not mobile home). For me, that wouldn't work through a winter unless I could up and move it to warmer climate because a lot of my work is done outside the RV. No space for work inside one. 

We are an excessive society. It is good to see so many deciding to live in smaller spaces. However, that there is too tiny for a great deal of people. Kids, larger families (grandparents, parents, kids together), work at home, these are things that require space. Having a great room, entertainment room, dining room, breakfast nook, etc, are certainly things we could do without.

imo 

Yes, I think it would be very much like living in a travel trailer except, maybe, that they're built to look like houses from the wheels up, for those that have wheels, and are not at all streamlined or built to be continually mobile.  And most of them have at least a sleeping loft second story.  As such, it might be more like living in an over-sized doll house or something.

Your mention of travel trailers also brings to mind a disadvantage of tiny houses with wheels.  The problem is that if you have your own land then you're not building up as much equity in the property as would be the case with a permanent structure.  It would be little better than a rental in that sense; you probably wouldn't get your investment back; it would depreciate like any other vehicle.

The immobile tiny houses, I think, offer another advantage over the wheeled ones, especially for the financially challenged and those just starting out -- you can add on to them as a DIY project, or at least cheaply, to further increase the value of the property.   See for example:  http://www.bungalowinabox.com/index.html

I am building a house on wheels simply because zoning laws forbid more than one structure on a lot.

As long as it has wheels, no rules outside of no sewage dumping apply.

A mobile home, whether a tiny house or not, is a good start to a homestead- buy land and build up from there...

Also, if one has a chance to build a tiny house for homesteading purposes, one should do that as opposed to bying an RV / Camper/ Trailer.
A tiny house has a lot less toxic materials in it than a recreational vehicle, and it is much warmer too, if you want to add insulation, impossible in an average RV/trailer.

Yeah, I've been thinking about the big problem of insulation for a travel trailer.  There are some possible solutions, though.

One is painting the TT with one of the new insulative paints developed by NASA.  It's a ceramic powder that you add to standard exterior paint (it also comes premixed), which adds R9 to whatever insulation already exists. 

In addition, its important to skirt the bottom of the TT to prevent airflow from below.  Or you could dig a ditch the length and width of the TT and back the TT into the ditch so that the floor is at ground level.  Then fill in the gaps with earth.

Third, you could plant dense perennial climbing and creeping vines up the sides and over the roof of the TT.  I've read that such vines prevent up to 70% of the suns rays in the summer and 30% of the heat loss in winter.

Fourth, since there's so much window space in TTs, that has to be dealt with.  You could adhere bubble wrap to the window frames in winter from the inside and/or blanket some of them up.

Fifth, you could carpet the interior walls with sticky carpet tiles.  Some TTs use carpeting as a wall covering already.

Sorry about my penchant for listing things.  I'll break that habit, someday.

Oh, I have thought about it....

What  if you compare price of labor (your own) directed towards building a home, mobile or not, versus improving a trailer.

I can make a small house foundation and wall frame in a weekend, same it would take to dig a ditch for the trailer... if you dont have power diggers.

Over here in Sweden we have the arctic insulated model trailers, and people routinely line them with many iches of insulation inside and outside for wintering.
The trailers get several inches of ice on the outside wall in the winter, if you heat them.

And the mold, and the rot, and the complexity of repairs... I paid a thousand USD for my used camper, and it is the cheapest option for now, but oh boy, does it have leaks and gas leaks and rotting shower and the list goes on....

As you can see, I hate trailers, and I am living in one this summer and fall, as I build my winter house... maybe on wheels.
The local authority will not give me a building permit without taking thousands and thousands of dollars in surveyor fees....

I think this camper is getting a wall of straw around it for the winter.

I think they are intriguing! I could see myself building and livingi n one as a single person. before I met my husband I was saving my pennies for some land. My plan was to buy one of those portable wooden buildings with a loft and convert it to a tiny house. that was before the 'movement' that I was aware of anyway. but at this point in my life I am quite content with my nice big new to me house. in fact it finally feels like I can breathe! of course there are other possible disadvantages to a tiny house around here with the nasty storms that roll through.

Leah Sattler wrote:
I think they are intriguing! I could see myself building and livingi n one as a single person.

Oh, I think they could make any relationship "closer!"

EcoHouse wrote:
Over here in Sweden we have the arctic insulated model trailers, and people routinely line them with many iches of insulation inside and outside for wintering.
The trailers get several inches of ice on the outside wall in the winter, if you heat them.

Well Sweden would be the the equivalent of what -- hardiness zone 1,2 or 3?  That would definitely be pushing it for a TT and so would likely not be cost effective at all.  But in the US I could see giving it a try in zones 4 and below.  There are some TT manufacturers that offer winterized versions; eg, Arctic Fox, Alaska Camper, and Everlite but they're not cheap, even used.

EcoHouse wrote:
I think this camper is getting a wall of straw around it for the winter.

Somewhere Mollison talks about farmers in Eastern Europe who put bales of hay on their roofs in the winter for insulation (they also make their living quarters above the barn where the animals send up their body heat to help).  Of course straw bales are much too heavy for a TT.  But setting up a wall of straw ought to work, except that one stray spark and you'd be a crispy critter, especially given the tinderbox construction of the typical TT.

I used to live in Grande Prairie, Alberta, which is zone 2a. During the recent boom, housing was so scarce many lived in travel trailers. From what I heard, keeping them warm in the depth of winter was difficult, even the cold-weather ones. And even the cold weather ones aren't built to take temperatures below -30C. After a -45 cold snap, a local RV dealer was kept very busy replacing cracked flooring the following spring (under manufacturer's warranty).

bruc33ef wrote:
Oh, I think they could make any relationship "closer!"

or lead to murder!!! 

My brother spend two or three years living in an eighteen foot travel trailer in Tok, Alaska -- one of the three coldest inhabited spots on the North American continent (and the other two are within 150 miles or so of Tok).  He skirted it with insulation, but in the coldest part of the winter, even with the propane heater running full-blast, anything left out froze.  He had a good sleeping bag and plenty of blankets, so he did okay -- you can survive in one, but it might not be very comfortable, and I sure wouldn't want to do what he did with small children along.  In a warmer climate, it wouldn't be so hard, though. 

On the other hand, my mother and step-father lived in a succession of travel trailers in the desert in Eastern Oregon, and while they were getting older used trailers, they sure didn't last very long.  One came apart at the seam between the floor and the walls, and they got scorpions and large spiders inside. 

I think if you are going to spend money on a tiny shelter, it would be better to build from scratch, rather than getting a travel trailer.  I've thought about getting a flat-bed trailer and building one here, as we aren't here permanently, and it would be something that we could take with us when we eventually move on to our own place.

Kathleen

Freeholder wrote:
I think if you are going to spend money on a tiny shelter, it would be better to build from scratch, rather than getting a travel trailer. 

Yes, I think a travel trailer works best as temporary shelter to live in while building a proper tiny house.  Some people do this when they buy a piece of raw land far from their present location.  Then, afterward, you can use the TT for storage and ultimately use it as, or sell it for, scrap if it's too beat up to sell as is.

I think this topic ties in really well with another thread here: Can a 4000 square foot home be green?.  This references some stuff by Art Ludwig.

Are you familiar with the book "mortgage free"?  It covers a lot of this sort of thing.  Build something small and quick and then add on to it as the whim strikes.

I have the book, Mortgage Free.  It's got some excellent ideas in it. 

I've been looking more into earth-bag construction (DD has a long video out of the library about the construction of an earthbag house -- she loves documentaries of almost any kind, and the ones about alternative building really intrigue her, even the 'mud huts' ones [cob!].  She's autistic, for those who don't know.).  Been trying to figure out if it could be made to work in a really cold climate, and I think it could, although with a regular roof rather than the cone-shaped ones that many earthbag builders use.  It would need some insulation on the outside, and it would need to be earth-bermed with a sod roof.

Kathleen

EcoHouse wrote:
Also, if one has a chance to build a tiny house for homesteading purposes, one should do that as opposed to bying an RV / Camper/ Trailer.
A tiny house has a lot less toxic materials in it than a recreational vehicle, and it is much warmer too, if you want to add insulation, impossible in an average RV/trailer.

I partially disagree with this. While the potential for hazardous materials exist in a lot of RVs, I personally much prefer the idea of salvaging a vintage RV from the dump or, as seems to more often happen, simply rotting into the earth.

Also, far as staying warm, I currently live in a early 1960's canned ham style 16ft trailer in Girdwood, AK. (You don't get much more "Tiny House" than that!!!)

This particular rig isn't outfitted for the winter, but could be more easily than building a New tiny house. I know a number of people of survive just fine here under those circumstances!

My aversion to building something new as opposed to re-using something old took hold again when I bought a gutted 1970 Airstream trailer to convert to my studio apartment when I move back down South.

I like the Tiny House movement and see a lot of benefits to it, but aside from the above preference for utilizing "structures" that are already existing, I do have another issue:

Storage.

And I'm not talking "stuff" like we are all wont to accumulate, I'm talking recycling bins, bulk dry goods, pantry space, et cetera. The space I'm used to having to live more efficiently by allowing myself to buy in quantity rather than convenience-size.

It's made a huge impact on my diet and my life by not being able to have some of the luxury of space, and if I ever get set up in a permanent "Tiny House" i will definitely be building some kind of additional storage structure for these essentials of efficient living.

(PS, Hi everyone! Sorry to jump in without an introduction!)

I personally would love to live in a home of less than 200sq ft. However I'd prefer to live in an earthen based home. I've seen some videos of the Tumbleweed homes and too much wood is used. Wood already has a lot of pressure on it but clay is everywhere (almost).

A fascinating approach to a tiny home being .... spacious ...

Good example of stacking functions.  I also like how he increases the light value with mirrors.  I've always wondered about using mirrors to multiply sunlight for growing indoor plants and to feed more light to solar panels.  And I've always thought that Murphy beds are cool.  They're expensive but you can now find just the hardware for DIY. 

(His approach reminds me of a chain of coffee shops in Tokyo (Pronto) where at 6pm a wall rolls out to replace the old one and the place becomes a bar/restaurant.)

The only problem I see with his approach is that it would be difficult to do two things at once, such as watch TV and use the kitchen.  But I think it's great.

My only concern with the mirrors on the ceiling is that they are heavy and they are glass.  It just seems like an accident waiting to happen.

Imagine:  each component being exactly the same size.  You could, at some point, re-arrange your house.

Let me add a few sites I check every day:

http://tinyhouseblog.com/

http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/

And there is certainly no way to summarize this last one, except to say "Magical"!  Look through it when you have time, perhaps on a rainy day, with a hot beverage:

http://intothehermitage.blogspot.com/

Currently Rima and her husband are in a regular cottage, but her traveling house is a wonder!

For a good use of space demo... look up "Judy of the woods". Very small house (that she works out of) and still managed to have a bathtub in it. The tub was in line with the bed and the dresser/shelves/storage was on tracks above. When using tub it was over the bed... I think enough bed still stuck out to sit on the edge... when sleeping storage was over tub. All off grid.

I think for small house use there would be some things worth considering. Many cultures have or had a number of buildings where they lived that would be used in different ways depending on the season. The Mongols who still live in Yurts (or Gers) would have two of them for the summer and when they moved to their winter location would only set up one, but use the extra felt from the other to stay warm.

Other cultures had summer kitchens (easy to figure why), winter Saunas, where they spent most of their day as it was also a wash house and cook house. Or east Europe where the cook stove/heater was the center of their cottage. They slept on top of it at night. Even in north America, the idea of a workshop in a garage or barn or even it's own building is pretty common.

So, a kitchen/bathroom hut, a work hut and a sleep hut....  Depending on design some of these might be used more or less depending on the season.

A kitchen/bathroom hut/house would be the centre of a future larger house if desired and designed with that in mind.

Len

bruc33ef wrote:I also like how he increases the light value with mirrors.  I've always wondered about using mirrors to multiply sunlight for growing indoor plants and to feed more light to solar panels.

A good mirror reflects maybe 80% of light, but a good white paint can do mid-to-high 90s.

Mirrors make sense for solar panels, but the math is complicated. The short version is that passive optics can never make light any brighter, they can only make it seem as though a similarly-bright light is coming from a wider area. Because of that fact, it's important to position the solar panel so that it sees a large area of mirror, as directly as possible. You then need to get as much of that mirror area angled correctly as is practical. I dreamed up a lot of designs in high school, and my first semester of optics made me appreciate existing designs.

Joel Hollingsworth wrote:
A good mirror reflects maybe 80% of light, but a good white paint can do mid-to-high 90s.

Is this backwards?

one issue with small houses - less rain catchment area.  That means a lot to me and my family, as it is our only source of water in a semi-arid area.  Our roof is currently 1000 sf and growing. It has cost us less than $10,000 to build (owner/builder), using permanent materials (not wood) like concrete, compressed earth blocks, rock, and ferrocement. That price includes the windows, doors, and just about all the furnishings. We've got 8,000 gallons of catchment capacity.

This house is off the grid (solar and wind power) and is passively heated with solar, with a small wood burning stove as backup (rarely used).  It's half-buried into a hillside, so that helps a bunch.

I personally would never build any structure I planned to live in out of wood.  I like things that last centuries, not decades. I am surrounded by earthen buildings that are older than the USA, and I have eyt to see a wooden house in my area older than 60 years.  And the greenest building is one that is already built.

Earth construction seems to be the best balance between cost, environmental damage, longevity, and ease of use.

Tiny house have their place, but larger homes can be economical and efficient, if done properly.

One of the big reasons people seem to have for a tiny house is no permit. The first complaint about tiny seems to be storage. The complaint about permits often seems to be getting a permit for an alternate building style for a living space. however, I think permits for a barn to store farm supplies can be much easier to obtain and size is less of an issue. A pole barn (poles with a roof) could be used to store straw around the outside and have boxes (like containers) inside to act as storage. True, it does mean going outside to get things, but fresh air is good, even when cold. I lived for a few years in a couple of campers, one for a house and the other as storage and a play area for my son. It worked fine for us. The point is, a pole barn or structure is generally valid as far as permitting goes for lots of uses. The sides (if added) are not structural and can be added after it is built. It is not at all unusual for a barn to be bigger than a house and so should not raise questions for a permit so long as you are at least gardening on the land. In other words the permitting office should not get the idea you are building a pole barn you will latter convert to a house after they are no longer watching.... though I think it would be ok to park an rv inside... though maybe not to live in.

Man lived for thousands of years in cold climates without fire, our body is designed to handle a much wider range of temperature than we think. Having more than one small building is also good for redundancy ... A fire in one building (this is why people used to have a separate cookhouse) would not be nearly as devastating if it is not the only building you have (it would still hurt though). Something to think about if you wish to build a "covered walkway" between buildings.

It would help if one was organized so that at the nicest time of day (warmest in winter, cooler in summer) they would get everything they needed from storage (thinking food here) to last for 24 hours or so... sort of like going to the cornerstore but not having to pay. Think ahead. Living in a tiny house means a change of lifestyle. If you are not prepared to do that maybe you are not ready to live in a tiny house yet.

Len

ronie wrote:
Is this backwards?

No. A metallic mirror works by turning light into electrical current, then turning that electrical current back into light. The physics is exactly like having a little antenna that powers a little transmitter. There are some resistive losses in the meantime, so it can never be perfectly efficient.

There are dielectric mirrors that approach 100% efficiency, but they only work on a narrow spectrum of light, or at a narrow range of angles, and are difficult (and expensive!) to design & make.

White paint, on the other hand, is made from all non-conductive (i.e., dielectric) substances. It has lots of little surfaces pointing every which way, and while it scatters light into all directions, it doesn't end up absorbing much. Usually, the binder is slightly yellowish; it absorbs some blue in a way that breaks down the polymer, but the scattering is so strong that very little of the binder ever sees the light of day.

Bicycle/auto prisms use the same sorts of physics as white paint, in a controlled way, and so they are extremely efficient.

Black paint, by contrast, is made with conductive substances. As the light reflects back and forth between particles, a little more is absorbed each time, until almost all of it is lost. Colloidal silver is one of the best black pigments, which is part of why it is useful for photograph emulsions.

I love tiny houses!!  One problem, though, is that many zoning codes require a minimum square footage for habitable structures, usually in the range of 700 sq ft or so.  Doesn't apply to "temporary" structures on wheels, but if it has a foundation and you are going to live in it, it does.

Just something to be aware of, if you want to build one. Check with your county building office.

dragonjaze wrote:
I love tiny houses!!  One problem, though, is that many zoning codes require a minimum square footage for habitable structures, usually in the range of 700 sq ft or so.  Doesn't apply to "temporary" structures on wheels, but if it has a foundation and you are going to live in it, it does.

Just something to be aware of, if you want to build one. Check with your county building office.

I just checked some of this stuff for BC Canada. In BC (and I think the rest of Canada too) There is a BC building code. All the municipalities/districts in their own bylaws refer to it and add to it. You can build something with no permit if it is less than 103 sqft. (10sq meters?) but, you are still responsible to make sure it conforms to "the building code". The bylaws all seem to be based on template because of the three I checked here, the language is the same word for word. They all say that even if you can get someone to sign off on whatever you have built, you are still responsible to make sure it comes to code... as a later inspection can reverse something already signed off if it doesn't meet code. even after a sale you could get sued by the new owner for not to code stuff. The b-code book is available on line, as a printed book, on a CD or while you are at most libraries. The first three options are quite expensive.... but on the other hand less than the cost of a building permit... or construction.

So, in Canada, (unless you are hiding you hut well or are willing to call it the work of a squatter) Read the building code first and see if you can work within that. If not you will need to find a P eng. who can sign off a variance and get it accepted as a legal variance (you will probably have to have an engineer sign off even something that is to code). Then you have one year to complete the building and get it accepted for occupancy. Occupancy does not mean "live in" as the same word is used for a garage. It means fit for a human to be inside of for its intended purpose.

The whole thing is "butt covering" from one end to the other. The other thing you will probably find anywhere is that eng.s will probably change anything you submit to them just to prove they were needed... that change will be the most expensive way possible of doing that change unless they are a friend. (a good knowledge of the b-code may help you to change their mind)

I did some more checking for this area.

It appears that at least in Canada a pit privy is ok if built to code and there are lots of plans to do just that, some of them government pubs.

It is ok to get your water by truck or to collect rain. You do not have to have plumbing. you do have to take care of your waste and your needs some how though. So using 5gallon water bottles that you drag out to your cabin is ok. If you are in a remote place you may have to truck your garbage out to a facility of some sort.

A small house is ok and if it is less than 10sq Meters you do not need a permit to build or "occupy" it. However, you still have to make it to code.

So a tiny house is ok here. I know some one who is building them and selling them. (8ft by 12) He has a tiny WC and standard fridge and stove. There is a loft, but it is very low. You can sit under it but not stand. He builds them on a trailer frame, but delivers them to sit on the ground and they look like a small house not an RV.

So, if I am able to buy some raw land, I think I would build a small house at least at first. I could live in an RV, but as far as I know there is a time limit as to how long you can do that (10 mo per year?)... though in this area that may not matter so long as you are not just dumping your black wastes onto the ground. They expect you to take the RV to an approved emptying site when needed I guess.

Joel, I read this yesterday, and while I was fixing wiring on a motorhome, this came to me: Focus a parabolic array on a purely diffuse reflector. Won't this give you a brighter point source than the original source?

But, in practical terms, that's a useful distinction.

Joel Hollingsworth wrote:
A good mirror reflects maybe 80% of light, but a good white paint can do mid-to-high 90s.

Mirrors make sense for solar panels, but the math is complicated. The short version is that passive optics can never make light any brighter, they can only make it seem as though a similarly-bright light is coming from a wider area. Because of that fact, it's important to position the solar panel so that it sees a large area of mirror, as directly as possible. You then need to get as much of that mirror area angled correctly as is practical. I dreamed up a lot of designs in high school, and my first semester of optics made me appreciate existing designs.

Some nano houses
  http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/nine-tiny-feet-cabin

Robert Ray wrote:
Some nano houses
  http://www.trendhunter.com/trends/nine-tiny-feet-cabin

What? There's more porch than house!

Only if you count the steps.

Willow NyteEyes wrote:


What? There's more porch than house!

Depends on your definition of living space.

Don't know if this has been mentioned earlier:

[url=http://shelter.inthekoots.com/10-square-entries/]"Shelter": 10-square entries

This was a project to encourage designers to come up with housing for one or two people that took up no more than 10 square meters of floor space, with a maximum height of 4 meters.  The contest came up with some really interesting designs.  Unfortunately, the popular winner (#12) wasn't one of them.  I mean, really?  What happens when you've just come home from a party at 2AM, all you want to do is sleep, and one of the gears on your house breaks so you're stuck halfway between your hard day surface and your soft bed surface?

The juried selections showed much more taste.  The winner (#4) is something I'd like to see if it's not only build-able, but livable.  I live in a college town and I can see something like this design really taking off.

My favorite, though, is #25 (Andy Sheldon, "Cottage 10m2"), mostly because I like his designs in general: simple and functional.  Go to http://www.cabindesignandbuilding.com/ to read his blog and go to http://sheldondesigns.com/ to see some of his designs and download his catalog.

As a bit of an expert in zoning I'll throw some thoughts out-
1. As another post brought up, often accessory structures are predicated upon the presence of a primary structure.
2. Most zoning looks at non-permanent structures as those which do not sit on permanent foundations, Sonotube footings are a great solution for this... gaining the integrity of a foundation with what technically passes as not permanent.
3. The danger in any of this is that while a zoning official might approve something, a zoning inspector/officer works more subjectively.
4. The best "legal" route for small structures is to file for a variance, which will give you an opportunity to be granted the exception you are looking for, and perhaps in the process make it easier for like-minded people in the future.

I ran across this site while looking up information on "Teardrop Trailers":

http://www.parkmodelhomesales.com/index.html

Don't know if this counts as a "tiny house", but still interesting.

http://mekaworld.com

I like these

Robert Ray wrote:
http://mekaworld.com

I like these

Have they actually built any of them? All of the "pictures" are drawings (look close). So how can they say with any certainty "7 days"? More glass than I like, but that is just me. I actually like the one in the "My shipping container cabin/shelter" thread better. In my case... if I was to buy raw land (someday we would like to.... but not right now, we are right now where we are "supposed to be") It would be a "housing, now and cheap" kind of deal. If I happened to find an old cheap single wide mobile/work office that might be choice one. There are lots of old RVs and the plus with those is they are ready to go, grid or no..... all 12v ready. A shorter one could be a good kitchen module to a container place. However, it would be temp. Something with passive annualized solar heating is the long term... not sure about earthship though, but I have some ideas.... the land would, in the end, determine the outcome. Temp has lots of benefits though.... like permit not required. Mobile is "permit reasonably easy". The long term would be store and buy the needed materials so that when I got the permit, I wouldn't need too much cash/debt to get it finished and signed off. That might be a good excuse to have some containers sitting around too.

Len wrote:
Have they actually built any of them? All of the "pictures" are drawings (look close). So how can they say with any certainty "7 days"?

I stand corrected.... they have built one. It is temporary though, more as advertising, look in their "news" section. It would be interesting to see one after a few years. From the look of the finish panels the insulation is either very thin or on the inside... taking space. I wouldn't order one without talking with a third party who lived in one for at least year.... Actually, I would probably build my own anyway.