Hi friends!
Cole Turner here, with San Francisco Urban Permaculture Guild.
I am deigning an ultra low-cost tiny home for the Santa Cruz mountains. I was thinking to use one standard shipping container (20-foot, extra tall). We will likely put in redwood interior cladding (free wood and a sawmill exist on site). Must add some kind of insulation (on the outside?). Maybe aerogel insulation on the ceiling/roof. There will be several skylights and several large windows along one wall, facing to the southwest.
Then to add on, artistically, to the exterior walls with cobb (clay soil on site). Or maybe a hempcrete later covered with mounded fill-dirt. *Maybe* a thin layer of soil along the rooftop for growing grass. Soil in our area is very heavy adobe clay.
A deck -- much larger footprint than the home -- will extend over the downslope, also made of redwood sourced on site, could be multiple levels, with a sunning/view "tower" on the south side, and maybe some areas with clear corrugated fiberglass "roofing" and some areas of of slatted trelliswork. (It gets hot up there and I want a lot of ways to keep cool!)
The deck-side of the shipping-container home, facing south-west, with glass windows/doors. Will have awnings, perhaps, on both sides. Maybe another small deck area on the rooftop. Also perhaps a shelter above the entire shipping container home, with more of the corrugated fiberglass roofing, which would serve to add a little bit of shade, and perhaps protect the cobb from too much weathering/water load, and would also serve for rainwater collection.
Interior heating: radiant subfloor, tied in to large water tanks buried in down-slope below house/deck. And a mini-woodstove (some kind of rocket-stove design).
So my main concern is a water/vapor barrier exterior to the metal walls of the shipping container. Exactly what kind of material to use, how to seal/secure it to the metal exterior walls, then best way to attach for hempcrete and/or cobb. And where the insulation layer fits in with all of this.
Seems like we could do much of the labor for all of this ourselves, with help from our family.
Any ideas? Plans? Wall specs? Resources? Or people who have done this before?
BTW feel free to get directly in touch:
cmfturner@sonic.net; 415/432-0660 ...
