Andrew Odom - Part 4

Small Home. Big Life. Second Term

There are only a couple of weeks left to register for the highly anticipated, second term of ‘Small home. Big life. ’ An e-Cours(E) being offered by Andrew Odom in conjunction with Tiny r(E)volution, the month long, self-paced, online environment/course teaches planning and building a tiny house trailer. Designed to … Read more

Tiny r(E)volution Brings Tiny House Chatter to the Air Waves

by Kent Griswold

by Andrew Odom For a number of months now I have been listening to several podcasts including my very favorite, Backyard Poultry with the Chicken Whisperer. Hosted on BlogTalkRadio.com the Chicken Whisperer is a daily program that mixes a live chat room with co-hosting banter, informative guests, and well researched … Read more

Tiny r(E)volution Tiny House Build

by Kent Griswold

Andrew Odom of Tiny r(E)volution who has guest posted here several times in the past has started building his own tiny home. Andrew, his wife Crystal, and new baby plan to live in their tiny home when it is completed.

Andrew has brought on five sponsor companies – EcoFoil, LP Building Materials, Ethel Gloves, Mechanix, and Gulf Coast Supply & Manufacturing.

They are also making videos, at the pace of about two a week. Andrew is a good communicator and I think you will learn a lot by following his tiny house build.

You can follow their progress several ways. Via his blog at
http://tinyrevolution.us/ via Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/tinyrev and on Youtube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/tinyrevolution2010

Thanks Andrew for sharing your learning process with us.

How-To install a Window in Your Tiny House

by Kent Griswold

The wonderful thing about building your own tiny house is that by-in-large the basic construct is the same as any other building. There are a series of tried and true steps that hold fast for your tiny house trailer, your small home, and the McMansion down the road. You want … Read more

How-To get electricity for your Tiny House

by Kent Griswold

A common question on tiny house forums is in regards to electricity. Can we use standard size appliances? How do you wire a tiny house trailer? Are there plugs inside a tiny house? Where do you plug in? All perfectly valid questions save one factor. I have not yet seen a post on how you actually get electricity on a lot you intend to park your tiny house on. Yes, you can run an extension cord if you are parked in someone’s driveway. You can use an RV connection if you are at a mobile home park. You can even install solar as we have talked about several times. You first have to determine the electric load of your house though in order to determine your solar need. I digress though as I am getting ahead of myself.

The question for us was HOW DO WE GET ELECTRICITY TO OUR TINY HOUSE? It sounds simple enough but with our lot being wooded, our closest neighbor an acre away, no budget for solar until 2012 (or even 2013), and a fear of running hundreds of feet of extension cord illegally, how would we get electricity to our tiny house?

Let’s first talk legalese. At the current time our lot is not approved for full-time domestic use. It hasn’t been perked, it has no septic, and it has no real address. We are solving those issues (as we don’t see them as problems, to be honest) by drilling a well, installing a compost toilet in our house, and renting our current PO Box. Here is where we had to get creative.

We 3 sizable chicken coops – one of which came from Georgia with us – as well as a hog pen, and the beginning of a goat shed. We also have our garden needs and shed coming up within the month. All of those can benefit from electricity in the form of electric de-icers, incubators, security light, and a shed light. Armed with those needs we contacted our county Planning & Inspection Department to talk about agriculture power poles. If you don’t know what an ag power pole looks like take notice next time you pass a mobile or modular home. They are standalone poles that are attached by cable to a power pole with transformer. What we soon found out was that 42 feet away from where we thought our pole should go, there was a transformer; dormant, but present.

How-To sandblast a trailer

by Kent Griswold

Because we bought our trailer used and it was formerly a 1981 (camping) travel trailer it had some signs of wear and tear; namely rust. Structurally it is as sound as the day it rolled off the assembly line. But because it spent some time on the east coast the salinity of the air made it prematurely age and the paint/primer at some point gave way to rust spots and “age spots.” Luckily we own both an air compressor and a sandblaster – the very tools needed to prepare the trailer for primer.

Sandblasting is a general term used to describe the act of propelling very fine bits of material (play sand in this case) at high-velocity to clean a surface. A sandblasting setup usually consists of three different parts: the abrasive itself, an air compressor (seen below), and a blaster nozzle. By launching small bits of abrasive at the surface at a high speed, all imperfections are knocked loose and can then be easily washed off, creating an incredibly smooth surface upon which to lay the new layer of paint. Before we can do that though (which will come much later, I imagine) we need to prime. Why? Primer spray (in this case we used Krylon grey primer) stops rust and prevents corrosion.