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Tiny Houses: The Perfect Tiny House, With Tiny House Example Plans PDF

50 Pages·2014·1.74 MB·English
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T H L INY OUSE IVING B T P T H UILD HE ERFECT INY OUSE With Example Plans Christopher Dillashaw Copyright 2014 - All Rights Reserved – Christopher Dillashaw ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any informational storage or retrieval system without express written, dated and signed permission from the author. Table of Contents Introduction: what is a tiny house? 1. Why would anyone want to live in a tiny house? 2. Thing to consider before going tiny 3. Building your tiny house 4. Designing a tiny house for tiny living 5. Common tiny house problems Tiny House Plans House Plan A - A Nest in the Loft Tiny house plan B – The All-in-One Tiny house plan C – Zig Zag Tiny House Plane D – The Golf Club Tiny House Plan E – The Cross Tiny House Plan E – The Cross Conclusion Free Chapter Shipping Container Homes for Beginners Introduction: Chapter 1: The History I : ? NTRODUCTION WHAT IS A TINY HOUSE Small house, tiny house, minuscule house; whatever size adjective you want to use there is a growing fascination in the world with fun size housing. Gone are the days where economic living space was the source of shame and embarrassment, instead it is the height of conscientious living, style, and character. The fascination with monster living space, space far surpassing the needs of shrinking families, is waning, paying to heat and maintain several spare rooms that are used for nothing but storage is losing favor. Spending money on too-much space is as close as you can come to spending your money on nothing and the environment isn’t thanking us, and neither are those facing the brunt of a housing crisis in big Western cities. So what is a tiny house? A tiny house is simply a building between 100 – 400 square feet that was purpose-built to be lived in like a home. There is not a steadfast rule for the size and they can come in any form: shipping container, shed-like wooden structure, demountable building, or small tin shack. Some people call it a movement, and there is certainly a move and a trend towards these smaller living spaces, however this movement is primarily a disconnected cultural one. Nevertheless, there is a growing online community that is interested in tiny housing and they are more than happy to provide support and advice to newcomers. People are drawn to the ability to live minimally, to save lots of money, and to have complete control over their living space and how it is run. There is a feeling though, that a tiny house might be more effort than it is worth, perhaps a false economy, and that it might not be practical or a long term living space. There’s no guarantee that you won’t face these issues, but there are many reasonably wealthy and sane people living comfortably in them, and even if you do not opt to go for a more extreme off-the-grid style house there is still a lot to learn from the philosophy of the tiny house. You can save a lot of money on a smaller home, not a tiny one, and use the ideas here to make that practical. In this book you will be taken through this exciting world of tiny houses; firstly the advantages will be discussed in depth, and then we will turn to getting a tiny house of your own and solutions for living with restricted space without any restrictions on living. 1. W HY WOULD ANYONE WANT TO LIVE IN ? A TINY HOUSE Living in a smaller space isn’t new. There have always been people that lived in small homes, whether that was in small apartment space in cities, those that preferred to live in trailers, or retirees looking to downsize. Often those choices came out of a financial necessity; with tiny houses there is an intentional decision to live in a small space that will suit all of your needs for a long time to come. With only 300 or so foot to play with often a tiny home will have everything you need in just one room. Traditionally smaller houses that put nearly everything in one room, the infamous studio apartment, have been made cynically. It is a small space an investor saw could be turned into a living space for a reasonably high rent. The conversion is done cheaply and what was a lounge room and hallway is now a bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and lounge. Rather than having storage space that is built cleverly into walls, a bed that works well as a couch during the day, and a dining table that folds out; instead the creators would throw typical, and cheap, furniture into a small space and tell tenants to grin and bear it because they were getting slightly better rent than average for the area. The problem with these smaller spaces is not that they are small, but they are poorly designed: both structurally and in terms of decoration. The space is used only in a horizontal way when there are many ways to give yourself more breathing space if you simply used the walls to store and hold things. No thought is given to using furniture to create mini-compartments in the space, and lighting is limited to a dingy light bulb. Compromises must be made in a tiny house, for example a huge wardrobe full of coats is going to be difficult to accommodate especially when some under bed storage and a simple coat hook could accommodate nearly all of your clothing with almost no space used. So this comes to one of the biggest reasons that tiny houses are becoming popular with average people and not just Spartan hermits. Advances in technology and innovations in design mean that using a smaller space is now much easier. Just consider something such as the humble television, where it used to require an entire room of its own to reasonably fit in an area; it can now be tastefully fitted directly on to the wall. There has also been a lot of work in making smaller spaces, especially in densely populated cities like Tokyo, so that now you can easily find plans for entire kitchen units that can be folded away when you’re not using them. We have also gotten much better at making kitchens and bathrooms that can work in small spaces without needing an outhouse. Lastly, fashions and tastes have changed over the last 20 years, influenced heavily by Scandinavian countries, to start having a minimalist look. People are actively choosing to have a cleaner and less cluttered look around them. Bulky wooden cabinets and four-posters are seen as gauche and the naturally smaller furniture is taking its place. Once you reduce clutter and excess furniture you naturally require less space. Just because there is the option for a small house doesn’t mean people are necessarily going to want smaller space, or compromise when they don’t need it. Why have fold-out corners of office space when you can just have an office in its own room? Lower cost might seem like an obvious reason, but the cheap cost should not be overstated initially. Compared to building a two-bedroom house yourself building a tiny house is going to be much cheaper, but you do still have to pay to build the tiny house and unless you are going to do every element yourself it is certainly not going to be cheap. In fact certain elements of the designs of a tiny house are going to be slightly more than your standard big empty rooms that you fill up with furniture. It is difficult to later rebuild a small space to fit your new needs, so a tiny house needs to have space for a sofa bed built into it, and you need to consider how shelving will fit in. In addition, you might struggle to build a tiny house in some locations because it’s not fitting in with the image the area is cultivating. Yet there is still ample money to be saved. As much as you may lose flexibility in terms of re-shaping your home later, it does not cost that much to build such a small building and the more hands on you are, the more you can save. Estimates say that if you build the home yourself it can cost as little as $23,000. It might not be entirely realistic to do it all yourself and that cost is not taking into account everything you might want to do to the property and the huge variation in the cost of land, but any way you look at it, that is far less than the $200,000 plus you might pay for another home and it will come with much less interest. The big savings you can count on though are in the maintenance of your home. When you heat, or cool, a tiny house you are effectively heating or cooling just one room. You also only need to insulate one room and you don’t need to clean twenty sets of windows, curtains, carpets, or whatever upholstery you decide to have. It’s also far simpler to heat up that space by just using an appliance like an oven for a while. Certain land taxes may also be reduced because of the relatively low-value of the house. One of the most exciting things about the house is the new options you have for giving energy and heat to your home. For some people less space actually equals more freedom. A tiny house can be built and shipped elsewhere with relative ease and for some people the biggest draw is the ability to live off-the-grid. Living off-the-grid means you are not supplied electricity, water or gas from a main source and so you are in complete control of how your lifestyle is catered. Since the house is so small and you are designing it, you can improve the energy efficiency enough that solar power and a small generator could be enough power to see you through the year. Pick the correct location and use the power of the sun in other ways and you may find you are only rarely turning to the heater. You can also equip your home with water storage devices that will again use the sun to power them. Getting water is often more expensive than getting a small amount of power, as it getting rid of your waste. It is entirely doable and you won’t have to wander out twice daily with a pail to wind-up well, but you may end up spending as much as $15,000 to have a workable water storage system. In many part of the world getting a yearly supply of water would work out much cheaper than this for many years. There are, however, many trailer parks or even tiny house settlements that will help you with this problem. You can build relatively cheaply on this land, you’ll have the support of your neighbors and you can use their water supplies relatively cheaply. Whether you have concerns about the environment or you wish to be less reliant on big society, there is a lot of appeal to being entirely self-sufficient. You will be in a position to do as please without any repercussions and you can live ethically and encourage others to do the same. There are some more practical gains as well, if you’ve ever had to deal with an energy company and things weren’t 100% smooth then you know why being in control yourself would be a relief for many people. You might also find with your own land and being off- the-grid that you would choose to become even more self-sufficient, growing your own food and turning to greener transport. Of course, you can also have a tiny house that runs and works cheaply while being very much on-the-grid. It is not a movement purely for environmental radicals and you can move away from an over-the-top consumerist lifestyle while still relying on the grid for many of your daily needs.

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