

Micro-documentary on "A cool tiny home tour: living in 96 square feet" - sleepingbot
http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/a-tiny-home-tour-living-in-96-square-feet/
Homes are shrinking in America. After doubling in size since 1960, the national average dropped for the first time in nearly 15 years (by 9%, the size of an average room). But far from this new average of 2,000 plus square feet are the so-called tiny houses. Also called wee homes, mini dwellings, or microhomes, their definition is not exact, but they run as small as 65 square feet.<p>The video is worth watching.
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KevinMS
Ok if you like toy houses, but the points made are moot. This is just feel-
good hippy shit that distracts from real progress.

Already been done- called mobile home, trailer parks, etc. Next time you dry
past a mobile home park in a relatively affluent region of the country, the
cars parked there are not rusting and up on blocks, they can be pretty nice,
the people there are not poor. People are often living there because its cheap
and efficient, or a second home for work reasons.

Cost - its the land that costs. As they say, a house is a wooden box that sits
out in the rain and rots.

If you want efficient housing a medium sized earth sheltered house is simply
the best you can get. But you'll never get a loan for it. You can actually
heat one of those in the winter with a few people and a few candles. Its
because the 'outside' is always a constant temperature, about 50 degrees F.

Theres no reason to think that one of those toy homes would be much less
efficient than, say, if you scaled it 2x. The the shape and construction that
would really matter.

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tome
Why would you never get a loan for it?

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jws
If your construction cost is significantly greater than your resale value, and
you intend to borrow a large portion of this cost, then there is not enough
collateral for the lender to recover their investment.

A house which you will treasure, but is considered undesirable by the masses
will be a problem.

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dabent
I mentioned him in a comment before, but I think the way that the Tumbleweed
Tiny House Company has handled PR is a model for any startup. The guy built a
fancy trailer and landed on Oprah. I don't say that to put him or his company
down. I think his houses are really neat. He found (or made) a niche and put
together a campaign that makes him the iPhone of small houses.

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andrewf
My nearest IKEA has a number of "tiny houses" all set up that you can walk
through. (I'm in Australia)

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dstorrs
A complementary movement is co-housing (<http://www.cohousing.org/>). Co-
housing is about intentional community--a group of people get together and
deliberately choose to live in smaller houses with a shared common space. This
space might include a library, playroom, media center, kitchen / dining room
(although each house has its own, and you aren't obligated to cook or eat with
the community), or whatever else the community decides. Every co-housing group
does something a bit different. One specific example is <http://www.mosaic-
commons.org/> (Full disclosure: I was involved in Mosaic for a couple of years
until my divorce.)

It's a pretty cool concept and tends to attract the kind of people that
hackers like (smart, interesting, iconoclastic).

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ars
I have to say I really like all the wood.

But did I hear him right that he just dumps the water from the shower? That's
not good. If you put the water in the sewer it gets recycled.

It's basically impossible to waste water from a shower if you are on a public
sewer, since the next city downriver uses it. Also, never use a septic system,
those are bad for the environment since they waste water.

Very cool house though.

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patrickgzill
Where does the water go if it doesn't go in the sewer? Is it somehow
destroyed, never to enter the environment again?

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ars
It seemed that he just dumps it on the ground.

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nitrogen
How is that significantly different from any other method of disposing mostly-
clean water? Either it goes through another use cycle downstream (if the sewer
system drains into a river), evaporates, and is recovered as precipitation, or
it just evaporates and is recovered as precipitation. The water is still part
of the water cycle.

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ars
The water cycle sure. But that's of no help to places with water shortages. If
you return it to the sewer then other cities down the line can reuse the
water.

If you remember a while back when atlanta had severe water shortages. Part of
the problem is that something like 40% of houses had septic systems, so cities
downriver from atlanta did not get enough water.

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amohr
One of the books on his shelf is Suburban Nation
([http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-
America...](http://www.amazon.com/Suburban-Nation-Sprawl-Decline-
American/dp/0865476063)) - worth a read. It's interesting because that book is
to Urban Planning what tiny houses are to Architecture.

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Luc
I loved it when they zoomed in on the book case (watch it on Youtube in HD).
Instant ideas for further reading!

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lacerus
In this video there is an even better close up of his books at 1:09

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaE4EvM-
UF4&feature=playe...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaE4EvM-
UF4&feature=player_embedded)

~~~
sleepingbot
More close shots of his books in the photogallery of the visit:
[http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/sets/721576226806...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/sets/72157622680688384/)

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davidw
Even people in Venice have larger apartments than that...

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JoeAltmaier
Sometimes I think it would be really, really nice to live small - maybe whenI
retire and the kids are gone.

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dstorrs
Depending on the age of the kids, you can try it out pretty simply--while the
kids are off at college / summer camp / whatever, rent an apartment for a few
months.

On the "paying for it" side, it's a balance between your financial situation /
tolerance for risk; you can either pay the extra fee, or you can rent out the
house (check out AirBnB, Craigslist, etc).

On the "logistics" side, you will have a bunch of furniture, clothes, etc
which don't fit in the apartment. You can either leave those in the house or
put them in storage, whichever works better for you.

Try to not go back to the house while you're living in the apartment, though--
have your mail forwarded, etc. And if you find there is a box of clothes /
books / kitchen gadgets / whatever that you haven't unpacked at the end of
your apartment time, consider getting rid of it.

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gcheong
A tiny house, a few books, and a big bottle of Smirnoff. Could be paradise.

