Learn to Build Your Own Tiny House, Hands-On
by Andrew Morrison
Have you caught the bug? Are you interested in building a tiny house? If so, I suggest you attend a hands-on workshop to learn how to do it right before you jump into your own project. In line with that, I have a great opportunity for you, but first, I want to talk a little bit about the insanity of living in a large home.
There is no question that we, especially here in America, have built our houses too big in†the†last 50 years. The last 20 years especially have been the worst in terms of super sizing our homes. We have gone over the deep end and for some reason, we continue to build houses that have enough space to shelter 30 people and yet only 2 or 3 actually live in them. The amount of resources necessary to build and maintain these homes is immense and the impacts, both environmentally and financially, are huge. You’ll likely be shocked to know just how much each hour you spend awake in your home actually costs!
Tiny House in a Landscape
This weeks Tiny House in a Landscape comes from a faithful reader Louise Homstead.
Louise says: “This is a tiny house in Western Massachusetts, USA on a very fine farm (the best milk products in the region!). I love the living roof and the woodsy setting. They also built the shed next to the house – not sure of its use (outhouse?). The house is straw bale and homemade by the farmers.”
Thank you for sharing your photographs with us.
Photo Credit: Louise Homstead
Framing for Straw Bale Construction DVD and Plans
by Kent Griswold
A couple of days ago I offered you a free report from Andrew Morrison from Strawbale.com. Today is the beginning of a week long sale and launch of a new DVD and plans. I wanted you to have a chance to grab this great information at sale prices. I’m going to let both Andrew and his wife Gabriella tell you a little more about their new DVD.
Hey everyone! This is Gabriella, Andrew’s wife writing. I wanted to share a preview of our brand new video, The How To Guide To Framing For Straw Bale Construction. The video is nearly 3 hours long and will be contained in a 2 DVD set.
We genuinely had fun filming this production and we were graced by nearly perfect weather as well as a backdrop of a gorgeous snow capped mountain peak. The footage looks excellent and I have just completed editing it. All that’s left to do is to encode it, burn the master DVDs and send them off for replication. So, I think we will have them in hand in about 4 weeks!
Here’s the 8 minute preview which contains snippets of the footage. Click Here for the Framing DVD Launch Sale
Hello Everyone, this is Andrew Morrison. The Framing DVD is a 2 DVD set, with 2hrs 53min worth of detailed instruction on how to frame your own straw bale structure. In it, you will find a step-by-step teaching style that will walk you through the entire framing process from start to finish. We have done everything in our power to provide this information in a manner that will be easy to understand to even those with no previous framing experience. We even have a bonus section dedicated to breaking down each framing term so that you don’t get lost by
the technical terms while watching the DVD.
The sale will run for 7 days and ends July 12th at 6am PST. Click Here for the Framing DVD Launch Sale. Sale Over click here to purchase the DVD.
Free Tiny House/Straw Bale Framing Report
by Gabriella Morrison
Straw bale construction is a wonderful building technique. It yields walls that are 3 times more fire resistant than standard construction, 3 times the energy efficiency of conventional construction, uses a waste material that otherwise gets burned in the field and creates huge levels of pollution, is very easy to learn even for people with no prior building experience (think stacking large Legos), and creates a beautiful home environment.
We have designed a brand new straw bale structure named the Mountain View Cabin. It is a 198sqft, no permit required structure that has been specifically designed for ease of construction, maximum use of space and for the lowest cost possible to build. The Mountain View Cabin is also the very structure that we show how to frame in our brand new “How To Frame For Straw Bale Construction”, nearly 3 hour long, DVD set. This DVD will launch for sale this Friday, July 6. With the inclusion of this DVD to our existing line of How-To instruction videos, one can learn the entire building process of how to create their own straw bale home. We now cover everything from Foundation, to Framing, To Baling (which includes electrical and plumbing installations), and finally to Plastering.
To celebrate the upcoming launch of our new Framing DVD, we are giving away our 12,442 word, 34 page FRAMING REPORT for free. Further, everyone that downloads our Report also has the opportunity to receive the FULL ARCHITECTURAL PLANS FOR THE MOUNTAIN VIEW CABIN for Free with every purchase of our new Framing DVD when it launches. The plans are a complete set and have all of the information you need in them in order to build your own Mountain View Cabin.
To gain access to the Free Report, please click here:
http://strawbale.com/store/
By the way, you are under no obligation to purchase our Framing DVD when it launches this Friday if you download the Report. It is absolutely free to you.
Straw Bale and Tiny Homes
Guest Post by Andrew Morrison
As you may know, my wife, 12 year old daughter, and I recently sold more than half of our worldly belongings to fund our adventure, let go of our large rental house, and spent the next 6 months in a quest to reconnect with each other and with what really matters in life. Most of that time was spent in a 150 sq ft pop up tent trailer in Baja, Mexico where we were able to live off grid and to essentially unplug ourselves from our “normal” day-to-day lives. What we learned was that in living with the least, we gained the most and that in finding the stillness that comes in not busying ourselves, we reclaimed our joy and inner calm (to read more about this journey, please visit www.SmallHouseRevolution.com).
One of our favorite topics of conversation since embarking on this adventure has become housing. What defines a home, what are the things that are essential in making a home a wonderful space, what do we want in our own dream house, etc… Being that the professional focus for most of our adult lives has been straw bale construction and green housing, we naturally have been exploring the merits of this mode of building as a solution for those of us that are wanting to build affordably, to tread lightly on the planet, and to be involved with our own home’s creation. We now see, more than ever, that straw bale construction is an amazing building technology fully able to fill those needs.
The idea of stacking straw bales to create a super insulated and natural shelter first appeared on the Nebraska plains over 100 years ago and some of these original homes are still in use. The technology has advanced significantly since those early builds and today, two major styles of straw bale construction have been developed: Load Bearing and Post and Beam. Load bearing construction uses no structural frame (such as framed 2×6 walls) to support the roof. Instead, the bales carry the load. Post and beam construction, on the other hand, uses a structural frame to support the roof while the bales act as insulation within that frame. Whichever system is implemented, the benefits of building with bales include: 3 times the insulation value of a conventional wall; 3 times more fire proof than a conventional home (yes, you read that right!); lessens pollution by using a waste material that normally contributes significantly to the pollution cycle; ideal building system for the owner builder; incredibly sound proof; able to withstand natural disasters (earthquakes, high wind/tornado) significantly better than a conventional home; aesthetically beautiful. Continue Reading »
Small Timber Frame House Plans and Workshop
Brian Liloia also known as Ziggy to his friends and well known for his cob house, which I have covered in the past here on the Tiny House Blog, is building a new home using a timber frame structure.
The house, code named Strawtron, is designed to be a passive solar, straw bale-insulated house using timber frame as the main structure.
The interior living area is 13 ft x 24ft which is about 300 square feet, it also has a loft and a green house area that is used to bring in passive solar heating.
Brian is making the small timber frame house plans available for free.
As a side note if you would like to help build this house Dancing Rabbit is offering a Natural Building Workshop in the summer of 2012. This includes two workshops one a Timber Frame Workshop and the second a Straw Bale Workshop. Only 12 spaces are available so click here to learn more and to apply.
P.S. Ziggy just sent me the full details so I am including them below.
