Tiny House in a Landscape

This weeks Tiny House in a Landscape photograph was taken by Ryan Feargal on the beautiful shores of Lake Bled in Slovenia. It’s on the north shore of the beautiful lake. It was located in the garden of a much bigger traditional Austrian style stone and timber house. Lake Bled … Read more

Teardrops for MINIs

For those of us who want summer to go on for just a little bit longer, here are some tiny teardrop trailers that exemplify the ease of summer camping. MiniTears are beautifully designed and built by Kurt Bowden in Northern California for MINI Cooper enthusiasts and other small car owners. … Read more

The Tiny Houses of Black Rock City: Rites of Passage

This year’s Burning Man was a rite of passage for two of our good friends who decided to come along with my husband and me to this popular event. It was their first time attending, and many of our discussions revolved around how impressed they were with the organization and creativity of the event…especially the building of Black Rock City. I agreed that the ingenuity of the camps and shelters that make up the city grows each year.

The art, the shows, the dancing, the fires and fireworks are all wonderful, but personally, my favorite part of Burning Man is visiting the camps and admiring the multitude of styles and designs of shelters. These shelters (most of them specific to Burning Man) are built to create shade from the blistering sun, as blocks against the wind that sweeps across the desert, and to protect Burners from the ubiquitous dust that gets over everything. Each year I’m in awe with how the artists transport these structures across the country and erect them in this stark desert, only to take them down again a week later.

This year the weather couldn’t have been better. The dust was minimal, the winds were mellow and the temperatures were fairly low. In fact, you needed a shelter warm enough for the very cold nights that affected most Burners this year. Here are a few of my favorite tiny houses of Black Rock City 2011.

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Micro-Mini Hawaiian Style House

Guest Post by Douglas Burch

Attached are pics of my micro-mini Hawaiian style house. I built it and incurred only $6,600 debt on top of the $3,600 income I received over a ten week period. That included my cutting paths through the jungle for survey, getting a D9 bulldozer to do the site preparation ($2,100) materials and $400 outside labor by the invaluable Robbie Villanueva who basically tore up my plans and became the architectural consultant that defined the house.

The post and pier construction keeps the house up off the ground (300 inches of rain per year) and doubles the floor space by making a utility space underneath (5 feet 2 inches but we should have made it 6 feed or more!) and allows the house to “walk” during the frequent quakes. In Hawaii posts for awnings and porches are never attached to the slab so the whole thing doesn’t tear itself to pieces when the wave passes through the ground. The overhand is 2 feet to keep rain off the walls and provides 288 square foot of rain collection for a catchment water system.

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The Stable Company

The Stable Company designs, manufactures and installs high quality, timber frame buildings and serves customers throughout the UK and Ireland. They specialize in small garden rooms, equestrian buildings and other outbuildings. The Stable Company’s insulated Garden Rooms would be the best option for a tiny house. The Company offers three: the Mono, the Duo and the Eco. The Mono has a single pitched roof and a choice of three different depths and unlimited widths. The Duo has a traditional pitched roof and a choice of 12 sizes. The Eco has a single pitched roof that features sedum plants and rocks.

The company also offers a pad foundation, Thermowood® siding, cedar roof shingles or insulated metal roofs, French doors, skylights, exterior lighting and decking. Interior options include laminate flooring, electrical and lighting, heating units and blinds.

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Popomo on Fox Business News

Fox Business News recently ran a video featuring Tumbleweed’s Jay Shafer and his tiny Popomo house which was parked in the middle of Manhattan. The 172 square foot Popomo was on its way to the East Coast of the U.S. and Jay was interviewed about it and his other tiny … Read more