Kevin EarthSoul (real, legal name)
Omaha, NE
Kevin EarthSoul (real, legal name)
Omaha, NE
Just me and my kids, off griddin' it - follow along our shenanigans at our YouTube Uncle Dutch Farms.
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'Theoretically this level of creeping Orwellian dynamics should ramp up our awareness, but what happens instead is that each alert becomes less and less effective because we're incredibly stupid.' - Jerry Holkins
Burra Maluca wrote:My partner and I live in a 17ft x 17ft house. We love it. Might add a bathroom one day to make it easier on wet winter day, but basically it's just one big room, using a table to separate off the kitchen area, and a some cupboards to separate off the bedroom area. Wherever we are at time, we can still see the whole room, so it always looks spacious. Neither of us are remotely near thirty!
Kevin EarthSoul (real, legal name)
Omaha, NE
Dillon Nichols wrote:Well, for one: 100SF is smallish even for a tinyhome; I would venture a WAG most are 20'ish, so 170sf plus loft. I think 24' is a nice size, myself.
To me, much of the appeal of a tinyhome is precisely the lack of an aspect of your communal housing: no shared walls.
Dillon Nichols wrote: I lived for 4+ years with a former partner in a small apartment, along with our 2 cats. ~380sf. Things I hated: The incredibly terrible kitchen design. The neighbours above us who would RUN up/down the outside stairs every time they arrived/left, shaking the entire building... even at 3AM. The neighbour below us who would fill our apartment with smoke through the shared ventilation system. A long list, but almost entirely about the people and design, rather than square footage.
Dillon Nichols wrote:
The amount of space was pretty workable. Enough room for a couple beds, a couch, 2 desks, and extra counterspace to make the kitchen bearable. Room to work out on the floor.
Dillon Nichols wrote:
With full control of the floorplan, I could see a 24ft tinyhome working better for 2 than that apartment. This would be more like 200sf plus loft. For long term use, the addition of shed/workshop structures would be key. Sure not gonna be a lot of room to store the shovels and tablesaw in a house that size.
Dillon Nichols wrote:
One advantage of the tinyhome is that it can move around with you while you sort out where you want to root.
Another one would be the flexibility once you have your own land, or are settled in a community.
Dillon Nichols wrote:
Find it's just WAY TOO SMALL? Prioritize building your new house, via earthbag/timberframed strawbale/wofati/geodesic dome/WHY, then use the tinyhome as a B&B suite, or WOOFer lair, or sell it, or...
Find it's just a bit too small? Build another one, park them side by side. Or build some other sort of structure.
Dillon Nichols wrote:
Have other things you'd rather focus on first, like building up farm infrastructure, planting a food forest, chasing girls? Good thing you brought a house with you, and don't need to build one while you live in cold, moldy camper!
Dillon Nichols wrote:
Of course, the usual gotcha may apply to any/all of the above: IF you can avoid the bylaws/busybodies. In the meantime you also have to find somewhere to park it...
'The midwest winter'. I live in BC; it's often wet and cold in the winter, but it's still pretty easy to be outdoors very frequently throughout the year. That's a pretty big difference.
Dillon Nichols wrote:
There's absolutely no doubt that a common building is more efficient at a given size. Massive savings from many different sources. However, it's just not a compromise everyone is willing to make. Some folks have tinyhomes with no bathroom; some also lack cooking facilities. A communal grouping of these dependent-tinyhomes around a communal kitchen and bathroom facilities maintains some of the efficiencies of communal living while giving everyone a bit more elbow room... by giving up some elbow room.
Kevin EarthSoul (real, legal name)
Omaha, NE
Bethany Dutch wrote:I think it depends a lot on your life, if you have kids, etc. I have three kids and I can't imagine living in a smaller place. We have a 2 bedroom 720 sq foot cabin. I have their bedroom divided into three distinct areas via curtains and freestanding closets but it is still a frustration, especially for the oldest, because she doesn't even have room for a desk in her area and because her "room" is so close to the 3 yr old's "room" there is a lack of privacy for them.
And yes, I realize that privacy is a more modern thing, along with personal space, but it's a big deal to us. As my girls get older, they want private space that belongs to them, even a little bit. I need space away from them. I don't want to try to cook, can and preserve in a teeny weeny kitchen. We lived in a 30ft camper while building this place and it was a huge relief to move out of there.
The other thing that isn't addressed by the tiny home movement is that a lot of space, for people who live a homesteading lifestyle, is necessary for the tools and implements to live this life.
It always seemed to me that people living in a tiny house needed to grocery shop frequently due to lack of space (or eat out frequently), were most often single or just a married couple (in other words, no kids), and in a lot of ways, were moreso minimalistic rather than trying to be sustainable. Obviously there's exceptions to that (like the Jeffries family at Sugar Mountain)... I realize there's some overlap, but to really be self sustainable you NEED tools and someplace to put them.
If I lived in a tiny 200sq ft house, where would I put my giant pressure canner, my stockpile of canned food, all my bakeware, 2 weeks worth of food at a time, food preservation supplies, dehydrator, wheat grinder, big buckets of dry foods (like beans, etc.), and extra canning jars? And yes I suppose some of it could be stored in an outbuilding, but doesn't that defy the purpose of building tiny? And would certainly make my life less efficient for some of those things - and that's just talking about my kitchen stuff.
Kevin EarthSoul (real, legal name)
Omaha, NE
Whoah... shared walls are NOT a problem when they are 20 inch thick earthen walls (cob or earthbag). These serve also as thermal mass inside the insulation envelope, but are also great for privacy.
I'm not so keen on loft-designs I've seen. Most of them put the bed in the loft space. Looks nifty, until you think about engaging in-- um-- intimate activities with your partner. My wife and I aren't skinny yoga-practitioners. We don't do it in the back seats of cars, and those loft beds don't look that much more roomy.
I totally agree about a shed/workshop, but the building requirements are MUCH lower for that kind of space, and can easily be added on as a lean-to on the side of the main structure, saving some construction by using an existing wall.
While many tiny homes are built on wheeled trailers, not all are. If we're going to live in a small "home on wheels", I may as well find a decent, used 4-season, travel-trailer.
I'm not sure what you mean by that last statement. A bunch of tiny homes, up on their wheeled trailer undercarriages (if indeed that's the type imagined), with much more square-footage of external walls exposed to the outside environment (than an equivalent amount of space in a single building with shared walls), is terribly inefficient. And what kind of compromises are you imagining? If everyone gets 250 sq.ft of private living space, close proximity to a shared bath, which they don't even have to put on shoes to visit, a communal kitchen with a rotation on cooking duties. I don't see where compromise comes in.
'Theoretically this level of creeping Orwellian dynamics should ramp up our awareness, but what happens instead is that each alert becomes less and less effective because we're incredibly stupid.' - Jerry Holkins
Kevin EarthSoul (real, legal name)
Omaha, NE
Burra Maluca wrote:My partner and I live in a 17ft x 17ft house. We love it. Might add a bathroom one day to make it easier on wet winter day, but basically it's just one big room, using a table to separate off the kitchen area, and a some cupboards to separate off the bedroom area. Wherever we are at time, we can still see the whole room, so it always looks spacious. Neither of us are remotely near thirty!
Dale Hodgins wrote:Is this the house that received the new roof ? Wasn't your son living there as well ?
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Living in Anjou , France,
For the many not for the few
http://www.permies.com/t/80/31583/projects/Permie-Pennies-France#330873
Living in Anjou , France,
For the many not for the few
http://www.permies.com/t/80/31583/projects/Permie-Pennies-France#330873
"Also, just as you want men to do to you, do the same way to them" (Luke 6:31)
Dan Louche
tinyhomebuilders.com
Korie Veidel wrote: I do need space. I just don't need to own it.
"You must be the change you want to see in the world." "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win." --Mahatma Gandhi
"Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary, use words." --Francis of Assisi.
"Family farms work when the whole family works the farm." -- Adam Klaus
Kevin EarthSoul wrote:I did a search of this forum, and found that no one has raised the issue of the psychological need for space. Granted, this is variable somewhat by culture. I grew up in American suburbia, having my own room-- just a bedroom-- of around 120 sq.ft.
To cram into that same kind of space: bedroom, living room, kitchen, and bath... it seems inconceivable to me.
I did some Googling on this, and found that tiny houses seem to be popular among the under 30 crowd, but that those over 40ish tend to not appreciate having to reconfigure their space several times per day.
I just simply could not imagine it would be psychologically healthy to live in a 100 sq.ft. tiny house through the Midwest winter.
How much space is really enough? How much is too much?
My wife and I are planning an ecovillage. We utterly reject the need for single-family housing, where a housing unit is designed around a kitchen. Private space only needs to include sleeping and study space, and need not be larger than a typical room at a hotel. It need not even include a private bathroom.
We're looking at 230-300 sq.ft. per 2 person occupancy units.
Public areas include toileting areas shared by 2-3 occupancy units, and kitchen, laundry, showers, and living areas shared by 4-6 occupancy units. These 4-6 occupancy units would be built efficiently, sharing common walls, rather than individual free-standing units, also allowing for comfortable movement between private and public areas without having to dress for outside weather.
Having an extremely large workshop is incredibly cheap to build in comparison to a house. Putting a couch in it is also cheap. The only thing a tiny house provides is a place to easily heat and cool.
Hans Albert Quistorff, LMT projects on permies Hans Massage Qberry Farm magnet therapy gmail hquistorff
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I am the founder of Great Lakes Permadynamics, Follow along to see what we are up to this week!Our Website! Discover Permadynamics My Episode with Diego Footer From The Permaculture Voices Podcast. If you want to help us out, follow us and like us on social media, THANK YOU! Facebook Twitter Instagram Check out some of my threads! Horrors of Sheet Mulch My Tiny Home Quitting the Rat Race With No Savings Our Homestead Compost Tea Made Easy
"There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible." - Samuel Johnson
"There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible." - Samuel Johnson
Projects, plans, resources - now on the Permies.com digital marketplace.
Try the Everything Combo as a reference guide.
“Better to die fighting for freedom than be a prisoner all the days of your life.” - Bob Marley
www.firmlyrooted.info
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turnkey permaculture paradise for zero monies
https://permies.com/t/267198/turnkey-permaculture-paradise-monies
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