Tiny House Blog

Announcement

by Sean Verdecia

Our passion project from school, “Able-Nook,” has just gone live on Kickstarter!

Kickstarter link: http://kck.st/WvUe4n and our website : www.AbleNook.com

I live in a small bungalow and love it, so I based my idea for a new form of disaster relief housing around a Lego version of a bungalow. The goal was to create a shelter that can be assembled in hours, without tools, on uneven terrain. These shelters can be indefinitely expanded and are shipped flat-packed. Flat-packing consolidates shipment sizes and allows more families to be helped per delivery.

As you connect the structural walls when building the integrated electrical system is also connected, along with the integrated lighting.

We are hoping that these units can take the place of FEMA trailers so that history doesn’t repeat itself, and so families can have some measure of dignity after losing their homes. Continue Reading »

This last summer, my husband and I took a three day whitewater rafting trip on the South Fork of the American River in central California. This area of the state has a culture of its own. While the mountains and the coast have the ski and surf bum, the American River is home to the seasonal river guide. Many of these river guides come from all over the country to raft and kayak one of the most popular rivers in the West and they live from May to October in a hodgepodge of dwellings.

The river guides we rafted, ate and played in the water with lived in tents at nearby campgrounds, in temporary buildings on land leased by various rafting companies or in VW buses in the parking lot. One of the guides even lived the entire summer in a hammock strung up between two live oak trees. The guides used the campground bathrooms and showers and cooked in outdoor kitchens. Around the river, and in the massive, thorny blackberry bushes these free spirits squat in what might seem like terrible living conditions, but what they see as the best way to experience the river. Continue Reading »

The popularity of Stieg Larsson’s books, and subsequent movies, about a certain tattooed girl has given rise to a new-found love of Swedish design. Sweden’s Technical Week website recently had a story on a 94 square foot tiny home that celebrates that clean design, but is also making a statement at the same time.

This experimental, free-standing tiny home for students has a kitchen, a bath with a shower, a corner office and an eating area with two chairs. A sleeping loft is accessed by a ladder. This home will rent for 30,000 Swedish crowns ($4,400) a year, when most student housing in Sweden rents for about 50,000 ($7,700) crowns a year. The country has a lack of affordable student housing and most seekers have to stand in line for an available place to live. This home will be rented out for three years to one person who can give the best reason why they should have the house. Continue Reading »

WILLISTON, N.D. — When Joey Scott arrived here recently from Montana, he had no trouble finding work — he signed almost immediately with a company working to drill in the oil fields. But finding housing was another matter.

Mobile homes and so-called skid shacks line up in a mobile home park in Williston, N.D. The park’s new owner has said he plans to update and expand the park.

Every motel in town was booked, some for months in advance. Every apartment complex, even every mobile home park, had a waiting list. Mr. Scott found himself sleeping in his pickup truck in the Wal-Mart parking lot, shaving and washing his hair in a puddle of melted snow.

This would seem like a perfect situation for tiny/small house builders to move in and show what could be done. What do you think?

Click here to read the full article and see more pictures.

*Update I think you will enjoy Ian’s input who has experienced his own disaster. Please read below first picture. Also a note from the Colorado Yurt Company.

Peter Sing of Sing Tiny House contacted me with a suggestion of getting the Tiny House Community to generate ideas and designs for housing for those who have lost their homes in the horrible earthquake in Haiti.

We should brainstorm ideas for basic emergency shelter and also more permanent shelter when Haiti starts to rebuild.

I have been trying to think of the best way to do this and think that by using the comments section of this post we can start generating ideas. If you have a design you would like to share email it to me at tinyhouseblog at gmail dot com (be sure and put the email address in the correct format) and I will then put together a post to show your potential designs. I will work on who to contact to submit our ideas too. Any suggestions are welcome. Let’s pitch together and see what we can do to help!

Below are a couple of pictures of some of the standard housing in Haiti.

I’m addressing your call for ideas to help out the Haiti Earthquake victims.  Following Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the biggest short term challenge will be getting people clean water or ways to purify water through solar or other means.  Then comes waste treatment.  Solve these problems first and you’ve got the disease factor at least limited.   Food gathering and storage naturally would follow after that. Continue Reading »