Tiny House Electrical System Video

So I went through and explained our electrical system and how it works in a video.  Not well enough that you could build one for yourself, but enough to get the gist. Check it out!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXqFMvmZ3tE

Glimpses of our tiny house

Foam insulation–the final wall layer! After this is all on, we’ll start stuccoing!

So, here’s a question: What should we name this expensive monstrosity that I’ve been building over the last six months?  Here’s a list of not very good potential names:

–Mountain Yacht

–Tiny Tim

–Tiny Timothea

–Tyrannasaurus Rex’s Chew Toy

–MiniMollie

–Post your suggestion in comments! And now for a photo tour of the house as it is six months in:

Foam insulation going up on the south side

 

Maps and trim and windows in our tiny house living room!

 

Here’s our furnace, half way installed

 

This room is just a shower/tub with a vent and a windown

Here is the ugly pain in the arse that makes a house function

Costs and Time for Tiny’s

Recently we were asked whether we would be willing to sell the tiny or build someone a tiny.  We realized that the answer took a lot of detailed explaining, and rather than write it again and again in response to each inquiry, instead we would post our answer here.

Q. Are you looking to sell the mountain schooner?

A.  We are not particularly interested in selling our Tiny house, but we would.  For $38,000, or more.

Q. How much would it cost to build one like ours?

A.  Two major elements are included in construction.  To use a metaphor from the restaurant industry, the first costs are materials, or “ingredients” costs, and the other costs are labor, or “chef” costs.

The project has taken quite a bit of work time so far.  Labor budgets for tiny houses are much greater than the square footage would suggest, because you want them to be completely functional houses, including all the elements of a standard American dwelling.  The only major element of a regular house that is cut out in a  ”tiny” is extra rooms and volume, and all else being equal, big bedrooms are far faster and cheaper to construct than small complex rooms like bathrooms and kitchens.  What this means is to minimize costs, you need to assess the elements you want included in your “tiny” based on your projected uses.  Are you just looking to provide a bedroom out of the house for your teenager or mother in law, or do you want a fully-functional modern living system as a second, vacation, or primary home?  If the latter, the cost includes all the systems of an ordinary house.  Your answer to this question greatly affects costs.  Materials for a full function system, (including trailer, electrical, solar panels, plumbing, composting toilet system, etc) run anywhere from a bare minimum of maybe $10,000, average around $18,000, but  could cost up into the $30,000 range for high-end materials.  In contrast, a mobile bedroom could probably be built for around $8,000 in material, and would take substantially less labor.

Labor is a whole other ball game.  A decision needs to be made before hand on who is going to build your tiny.  If you want to build it yourself, you can put in a year or so working with a conventional construction team, and try to diversify the types of jobs you do.  You could read books and figure the stuff out by trial and error.  You could pay experts to come give you advice, and then check up on your work to ensure adequate quality.  Or you could export the work to a company like ours to do the work for you.  We could be convinced to produce a complete kit for someone for around $18,000, build one for someone for somewhere around $30,000, or sell the one just built for $38,000.

Q. Do we have plans for it?

A. We have plans for our tiny, although they are not comprehensive–we weren’t working with a set number of 2x4s or anything before we got going–we calculated on the fly, which led to some “under ordering,” but was this approach had benefits in the iterative nature of the process as elements were going in.  We tend to like “vernacular” architecture based on feeling, much more than “numeric” architecture based on prescriptive formulas.  I could order some plans made up if you were willing to pay an architect do draw them off our realized product.  Another route would be to search online for more comprehensive plans.

Building Tiny in the Swan Valley

the big rig gets lousy mileage, so I built a rack for our Nissan Sentra and hauled a lot of lumber.

Progress on the tiny house has stalled over the past nine days, because I’ve been on vacation.  First it was the weekend, then we looked for lynx tracks in the North Fork of the Blackfoot. Then it was the weekend again and we went skiing in Glacier.  This break doesn’t mean neat construction has not been happening.  Far from it–the house has doors, windows, and the walls are nearing completion–complete with interior wall paneling!

Here’s the pine door I made with a pine tree inlay and an octagon window

Skiing across Lindbergh Lake is a nice break from work

Windows and Doors!

Laura and the Door

Sky is serious about his doormaking and sheetrock hanging

Laura hangs from the “livingroom loft”

The walls and ceiling are mostly paneled with local white fir paneling from RBM lumber

Land Yacht Making Headway

Cross country skiing to work through a mile of lovely Swan Valley snow is hard to complain about.  Especially when “work” means designing and building the cutest little mobile home you’ve ever seen.  Sky Orndoff and Laura Arvidson embarked on their Land Yacht in November.  The roof is on, the electrical and sound system’s wires are in, and the walls are nearly insulated.  Windows are going in, and the custom-made door is taking shape.  Despite cold January temps, it’s an exciting process that pulls me out of my nice warm bed in my lovely (finished, borrowed) cabin a mile away.  These pictures aren’t the loveliest–but all that ugly insulation will make it toasty, and the wiring will enable us to enjoy modern conveniences while living in a lovely little boat of a cottage.  Lift a glass to progress!

My Commuter Car

Insulation going up!

Our “living room” is stacked above our “bed room.” Both have two windows and enough space to at least sit up.

It’s time for a bath.

Here’s the House in it’s current home. The ladder is up there so I can drill through the roof to provide a wire for the solar panels.

Working long hours, it’s a big thing to have light at night

Every house needs a utilities closet. Ours is just about two feet tall. The door is sealed with a recycled road bike tire.

Land Yacht’s Maiden Voyage

December 29, 2012, will go down in history as the day we moved the land yacht.  A shell of a building, 13 foot 6 inches tall, pulled by a 1987 Dodge truck, went from the residential neighborhoods of Helena, 127 miles, to Falls Creek Road, Swan Valley Montana.  First, the radiator broke, and we had to fix it with silver tape.  A herd of cows was frightened during their highway cattle drive outside of Helmville, MT.  We fueled up at Rovero’s gas station in Seeley Lake, MT, and broke the house-speed record of 55 mph coming down from the Seeley-Swan Summit.  It took a bit of finagling, but we nestled the house in next to the shed at Paula Clarke’s house in the Swan Valley.  What an epic day!

Laura and Sky putting the roof together

The house makes it’s first foray onto the highway

Goodbye to the backyard, hello 127 scary miles!

Queen Husquavarna, the Beast of Burden who hauled the House, needs extra love to get started.

Outside Avon, MT, we got stopped by a herd of cattle. Nice time to chat.

Rovero has an extra-tall clearance bay. We fit our house inside the gas station to fill up!

The Mountain Yacht–Floors and Walls!

The past couple of weeks have been a lovely journey for Laura and I in our tiny house production.  We renamed it, for now, the Mountain Yacht.  A little pretentious, but cozier than “mobile home,” and more original than “tiny house.”  But that’s not the news.  The news is that Matt, our buddy who already built his own micro house with wheels underneath, came on Friday and helped us tip up our walls.  We have structure!  A floor, insulated already, the skeleton for a wall.  Lots of purchases too: bathtub, bathroom sink, water pump, furnace, all the windows–it’s smooth sailing in the mountains.

Looks like we got started later in the season than we should have!

Had to insulate the floor before sealing it up forever

Laura cutting rafters. This project is so small we’re continually moving on to the next task.

The view from the rear of the trailer: the bedroom nook window.

All the exterior walls are framed up, and it’s roofing time!