Tiny House Blog

Denny Henke wrote me and told me about his cabin/eco village in Missouri. I have posted a few of his photographs but you can view the rest on flickr and visit his ongoing blog called Our Tomorrow. I’ll let Denny tell his story.

I’ve been living full time in my 12×16 cabin since May of 2008. The cabin was built by myself and my brother-in-law, Greg. He’s the carpenter and I the assistant though after building 4 structures I’ve accumulated a good bit of knowledge and skill. I’m on land left to our family by my grandfather.

The property had been a campground of sorts from the 1970’s to the early 90’s so has the somewhat functional remains of an electrical infrastructure and several wells. The area we are using had a well and an old but structurally sound pole-barn style shed. It’s a mix of woodland and meadow with an 18 acre lake on the west side. We’d often talked of building a couple cabins but we never seemed to get started which proved lucky as a tornado hit the far side of the property in 2006. Continue Reading »

Moonlight in Vermont? Sunlight might be better for this tiny solar powered home built by Alex Carver and Christopher North of Northern Timbers in Vermont. The Burlington Microhome is a 100 square-foot modular house that is off-grid and ready for additional modules to be added to it if needed.

Northern Timbers built the microhome with design help from landscape architect and metal artist H. Keith Wagner.

Much of Northern Timbers’ work reinterprets the traditional Vermont vernacular by introducing new applications of diverse materials into the residential setting, resulting in homes with a practical yet creative aesthetic. Continue Reading »

Craig one of our readers had the opportunity to go to the Solar Decathlon in Washington DC. and wanted to fill us in on this exciting event. Here is what Craig has to say about it.

Sorry to take so long to get back to you on the Solar Decathlon houses on the mall in DC.

I’d taken pictures, but they didn’t turn out so great what with all the crowds. As it happens, the solar decathlon webpage has some great videos for each house on the front page that do a far better job of showing off the houses than I could.

Team Germany was just announced the winner, though my favorite was Team Louisiana’s Beausoleil house. They plan on marketing the houses as modular homes in the next couple of years with a price around $120,000 including the solar panels.

The maximum size limit for the houses was 800 square feet and they all had to be off the grid/independent. Continue Reading »

The other day I showed you Mike’s Micro House which he has been building for under $3,000.

Mike is also quite an inventor and is interested in solar and wind energy. He has created a simple hot water heater that I think would be useful for a tiny house or a large home. I asked Mike to share the details on how he creates his solar hot water heater.

Solar water heater. Sun during the day preheats the water in a 30 gallon water tank, prior to it being sent into the on demand water heater inside the house. This solar heater has preheated the water up to over 100F more than once when the outdoor temp was in the 30F range.

This simple setup works great, and is pretty much maintenance free. Just keep the glass clean, and you are good to go. If it starts to warm the water to hot during the summer months, just cover a portion of the solar window, to lower the sunlight bombardment into the solar chamber.

The solar water heater is simply a standard water heater (preferably one that was electric not gas powered).

Here’s what you do:

1. Peel off the outer sheetmetal skin of the water heater, and cut off the foam insulation in order to get to the internal steel tank.
2. Remove the electric heating element if needed and replace with a simple pipe plug fitting if the original element was bad, causing a leak.. Otherwise do nothing but remove all the electrical wiring to the element and the thermostat controls.
3. Verify that the overtemp/pressure valve operates and looks to be in good condition, otherwise replace it, so you have a safety feature if the pressure were to build up to high from the heated water.
4. Paint the water tank, “Flat Black” in order to help it absorb more of the sun’s energy.
5. Build an insulated enclosure that the water tank can fit into, with a window on top at roughly a 45degree angle.
6. Place the tank in the enclosure so that the southern sun exposure will shine directly onto the water tank inside.
7. Plumb the cold water going to your existing home’s water heater to the input of the solar water heater, and the output of the solar water heater to the original cold water input of the original home water heater.

Now when the sun preheats the water in the solar water heater, it will be feed into your home’s existing water heater as hot water, therefore your now backup water heater should not work nearly as hard to provide hot water for your home.

To view more of Mikes inventions check out his flickr site here.

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I have been communicating with Tim Gage, vice president of Cavco’s Specialty Division about the company’s new off-grid solar park model home. Tim has shared with me the following information from his press release regarding this new home.

The solar home has a $47,000 starting price, and this home shown here has options that top it out around $70,000.

Options like Bamboo flooring, upgrade slate tile backsplashes, upgrade kitchen cabinets, 12’ sliding glass doors etc. If you are in the Pomona, California area, you can view this model at the California RV Show through October 19, 2008. Be sure and page down to view all the pictures and a floor plan of the solar powered park model.

Cavco becomes nation’s first company in the RV Business to produce factory delivered, Solar-Powered Park Models.

Cavco’s park models, which are used as vacation cottages at campgrounds and RV resorts across the country, are now being equipped with solar panels and batteries provided through an exclusive arrangement with Ready Solar Inc. of Redwood City, Calif.

The recreational park trailer or “park model” industry is gaining notoriety as growing numbers of consumers discover that the 400-square foot cottage-like units can be permanently placed in campgrounds and RV resorts and used as low cost vacation cabins.

But thanks to Phoenix-based Cavco Industries, consumers who purchase these units will not only obtaining a vacation cottage at a fraction of the price of a site built home or condo. They’re also doing something positive for the environment.

Cavco has become the first park model manufacturer in the country to produce solar powered park models.

“We believe we are the first company in the RV business to produce a trailer product that can produce its own electrical power,” said Tim Gage, vice president of Cavco’s Specialty Division, which produces park model cabins. He added that demand for the 400-square foot cabins has been “off the charts” since the company introduced the product in June.

Still relatively unknown to most consumers, recreational park trailers or “park models” are 400-square foot movable resort cottages that are designed exclusively for part-time recreational use. Typically upscale in appearance, they often include hardwood floors, bay windows and lofts as well as cherry, oak or maple cabinetry.

And because park models are technically classified as recreational vehicles, they can be set up on leased or purchased sites in campgrounds and RV parks and used as weekend retreats or seasonal vacation dwellings.

But unlike most trailer products, which have to be hooked up to electrical utilities, Cavco’s solar powered park models have enough panels to generate their own power. The units come equipped with energy efficient light bulbs and kitchen appliances, including tankless water heaters, as well as maintenance free batteries that are designed to store enough power to last for two days. Gasoline-powered generators are also provided as an emergency backup system. But Gage said he anticipates that most of Cavco’s solar powered park models will be sold to consumers in Southwestern, Rocky Mountain and Sunbelt states, where there is plenty of sunshine to keep the batteries charged.

Cavco is providing the solar technology through an exclusive arrangement with Redwood City, Calif.-based Ready Solar, Inc. He said the solar packages, which include panels and batteries, add about $5,000 to $7,000 to the price of a park model, depending on the park model’s solar energy requirements. The typical park model sells for about $40,000 without the solar power capability.

“Our adoption of solar energy systems is the first chapter of our efforts to develop green park models,” Gage said, adding, “There will likely be 10 more chapters as we get further into this.”

For more information on Cavco’s park models or its solar energy systems, please contact Tim Gage at (602) 763-5488 or Meredith McClintock at Ready Solar Inc. at (650) 255-1828 and visit their respective websites at www.cavcoparkhomes.com and www.readysolar.com.

Cavco Kitchen

Cavco Living Room

Cavco Bathroom

Cavco Bedroom

Ready Solar Instruments

Cavco Freedom-6 Floor Plan

Cavco Off Grid at RV Show in Pomona, CA

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