My Adventure In a Tiny House

Last January I covered Zack Griffin and the beginning of his tiny house adventure visiting the great ski areas with several friends across North America. Here is the link. Zack recently contacted me and here is what he had to say: Last year I built a Tiny House in order … Read more

Tiny House in a Landscape

Colorado Tiny House

This weeks Tiny House in a Landscape was photographed by Kasey March who is the copy editor for the Tiny House Blog. Kasey says: Shane and I spotted this tiny house in Leadville, Colorado on our way to a yurt (a story for another time). This little house was about … Read more

GreenOx Sheds for Tiny Houses

GreenOx shed

by Jim I was driving past my Lowes in Littleton Colorado and saw the attached GreenOx shed. Do you know much about them? Seems pretty new but they are introducing a 12 x 16 model soon. The price for that 8×8 model is $2,800. A bit pricy maybe but a … Read more

Powering our Tiny House, The SolMan Portable Solar Generator

TinyHouse with SolMan

Guest Post by Merete Mueller reposted from Tiny

Perhaps one my favorite things about our tiny house (other than falling asleep to the sound of rain on a steel roof) is that it is entirely off grid.

Christopher and I are both environmentalists of sorts, having spent chunks of our lives studying, researching, and telling stories about humans’ interactions with our natural resources and waste. Part of this tiny house experiment has always been about learning to lessen our own impact.

Tiny House with SolMan

And there’s also the practical side of things: 40 miles from a major town, our tiny house doesn’t have access to a “grid” of any kind. No gas lines. No power lines. No water lines or sewage system. We’ve had to figure out our own solutions for each of these utilities.

Park County, Colorado gets an average of 246 sunny days each year, so solar power was an obvious choice for our electric needs. Throughout the building stage, Christopher looked into rigging up a system of his own design, but when we heard about the SolMan portable solar generator, we decided it was worth it to purchase a professional, pre-made solar unit than to build our own.

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TINY Documentary House on Fox 31 Denver

Christopher Smith and his girlfriend Merete Mueller of the TINY movie project were recently profiled by Fox 31 Denver. Christopher and Merete have towed their 127 square foot house to their remote property in Park County, Colorado. Their tiny house is nearly finished, but according to the video, the build … Read more

Tiny House in a Landscape

miner's cabin in Colorado

This week’s Tiny House in a landscape is of a remote mining cabin in central Colorado. I discovered it on one of my favorite websites Cabin Porn. I’ve had the privilege of exploring a fair amount of Colorado in my younger days and it is one of my favorite states … Read more

Green Home/Studio Space

So, I live and work in a ‘green’, semi sustainable workshop space that was a shell of a buliding in which I built water systems, heat, and toliet/shower…..

The place is a ‘workshop’ basically, a commercial space that I use for my art/music studio and to live in. The place is in rural Colorado, no address (not on the city’s map), it was a shell building, a large garage basically…the house/studio is heated with a west bay door that opens to a homeade acrylic glass window that in the morning let’s the east sun in for heat, there is also 3 large south facing windows for all day passive solar heat, the ‘running water’ is all carried in (usage is around 5 gallons per day or less) and the sink is made from a water container with a spigot attached (properly) with hose clamps and gasket.

I fill the sink with water as needed but it runs on gravity, the toilet is a composting toilet inspired by the humanure compost toilet system, so I use either peat moss or good pine sawdust for cover material, I also have another toilet just for urine (number 1), the shower is a little less luxurious and is a large plastic basin that I use either a hung solar shower or water jugs with holes drilled in them. I have a small copper quartz heater for at night mostly and a wood stove for heat, the studio is about 1000 sq ft (so not exactly tiny), (but not a large ‘house’ either).

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A Very Tiny Home in Boulder Colorado

I covered the ProtoHaus a couple of times in the past here on the Tiny House Blog. Ann Holley and Darren Macca have recently been featured in a neat video at 9News.com and I wanted to make sure you saw it. “It’s like a sailboat on wheels,” Holley said. A … Read more

In the “Glen” in Palmer Lake, Colorado

Guest Post by Ken James Palmer Lake, Colorado is unique. A spring fed lake, it sits on low spot of Palmer Divide between Metro Denver and bustling Colorado Springs. Its waters uniquely drain both North and South. To the North, into the Platte River, route of the Oregon Trail, to … Read more

Tiny House in a Landscape

This weeks Tiny House in a Landscape is of a yurt set in a valley somewhere in Colorado. I am a big fan of yurts as I love there simplicity and ease of setting up. They seem perfect for a wilderness hideaway such as this one. Yurts are also used … Read more

The circHouse Yurt

Sarah one of my readers brought this new yurt to my attention. It is very unique and I think has some real possibilities. A company based in Colorado called circHouse has designed this visionary shelter that could be used for many activities, but I see the potential of a tiny house and a very modern take on the old fashioned yurt.

One of the issues with yurts that sends many people away is the fact that they are made of canvas or wood and usually have a lattice skeleton which blocks your view. A serious concern if you are in a beautiful area. circHouse has taken the age old shape of the yurt and put technology to work creating an innovative new structure. By utilizing polycabonate and acrylic wall structures, a recycled steel frame and natural wood paneling they have created a modern looking structure that is compact for shipping and that can be assembled in a few short hours.

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Santa Fe Cabin

Lyle Congdon of Jalopy Cabins sent me an update of their most recent cabin and I thought you would enjoy seeing some pictures of it. I’ll let Lyle tell you more.

A few months ago we were contacted by a gentleman, Pierr, who wanted to view the Ski Hut. After driving up to visit he decided he wanted something a little smaller and the plans for The Santa Fe cabin were put into action. Pierr wanted a tiny house to put on his property south of Santa Fe, NM as he spends a lot of weekends there exploring and hiking. The small cabin would be a place to relax in after a long day of being outside or to escape from less than ideal weather.

Working with Pierr, we built a custom door and cabinet that is about 40 inches tall due to his height (he’s about 6’6?!) – standard vanity height is 32 inches. More importantly we worked with him to ensure that window placement was just right, so he would have great views from the site he had already prepared.

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