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  • HPH312 : Building a tiny house with natural materials – with Jeffrey Hart

    HPH312 : Building a tiny house with natural materials – with Jeffrey Hart

    Jeffrey Hart, natural builder and host of the Building Sustainability Podcast, explains what he’s learnt designing and crafting his own tiny house.

    Interview with Jeffrey Hart

    From an early age Jeffrey Hart had a love for making things. He recalls visiting a friend’s house and using a few tools and some scraps of wood to make toy boats. His teachers also encouraged him and would even open up the school on Saturdays so he could continue his project work. After studying industrial design at university he worked as a graphic designer for a while before taking a break and going abroad.

    On his travels he came to a small town in Canada where the inhabitants had built themselves homes from straw bales and incorporated re-used materials. It wasn’t long before they got him involved plastering and just like that he was building again.

    After 5 years on the road, Jeffrey returned to the UK with his mind set on natural building. A first step was enrolling on The Prince’s Foundation Building Craft Apprenticeship which offered practical training and served to introduce him to like-minded people.

    Finding affordable land is a challenge for any house build

    Jeffrey had been searching for land for a house build for some time but ran into the same old problems.

    • Buying a piece of land without planning permission was a massive gamble.
    • Buying a piece of land with planning permission was costly and meant he would have little money left for the build.

    So for many years he lived on a canal boat. This kept his costs down and meant he could stay in London because the cost of rent was pushing him further and further out. It wasn’t without hardships though.

    “The hard reality of winters when you’d get home and I had a diesel heater as a heat source, you turn that on. And all you could really do was get straight into bed wearing all your clothes, because it will take that long to heat up. And that was just my normal life for a long time.”

    Building a tiny house keeps costs down

    Having travelled for a number of years and also lived on a boat where you could only stand upright in certain places, the prospect of a bespoke tiny home was attractive.

    Jeffrey had all the skills to build it and relished the opportunity to make this a showcase project.

    Land was still an issue, but instead of buying a plot he was now looking to park his tiny home somewhere.

    A movable home doesn’t need planning permission

    Tiny homes are built on trailers for one important reason: it sidesteps planning regulations. In other words you don’t need to own land because you have a movable house… you just need to find somewhere to park it temporarily.

    Jeffrey sent emails to every landowner he knew

    Although a lot of Jeffrey’s emails were ignored his persistence paid off. By probing his existing network Jeffrey was able to source a great opportunity, a win win situation in fact.

    The owner of a 700 year old estate in West Somerset proposed a work exchange for his rent, and this is when Jeffrey knew his tiny house project was all systems go.

    Think how you want to live in the house

    Jeffrey wanted to be fully immersed in the design and build of his home.

    After years on the boat he also had certain pain-points to avoid.

    Top of that list was a warm house with better cooking facilities, and the ability to stretch out on the floor for exercise, etc.

    Not having designed anything since university he went to basics to figure out his layout.

    “I drew out on squared paper the very small footprint of my house. And then I got a little piece of paper that I made the size of a bed, and I got a little piece of paper that I made the size of a desk, and a little piece that looked like a wood stove, and I moved them around.”

    So Jeffrey had the frame and structure all designed out, including the size and placement of the mezzanine.

    “What I realised quite early on is that I don’t have that architect ability to know what is a comfortable space just by seeing it on a floor plan. I knew that I needed to get the design 80% there. And then I needed to get inside and actually feel the space.”

    A tiny house starts with the trailer

    Most tiny builders start with a trailer that is 2.5m x 6.5m.

    The trailer is rated for 3.5 tonnes. You can buy a bigger, bulkier trailer but then you need a bigger, bulkier vehicle to move it.

    So the key constraints of a tiny house build come from the trailer – a width constraint, a height constraint and a weight constraint.

    The ‘weight budget’ impacted on every decision

    Using a spreadsheet Jeffrey was able to tally the overall weight of the building.

    This in turn added another layer to the decision making.

    For example, when it came to insulation it was not just about looking at the different materials and their properties.

    “Choosing woodfibre over wool adds 100 kilograms to my weight. And I’ve tried to explain this when I was talking to people. I’d phone up people for advice and they’d just laugh and go, it’s insulation, it’s light. Well it’s not when you add it all together. And then you’ve got a maximum limit of 2.9 tonnes. So 100 kilograms is a 29th of my weight budget.”

    Jeffrey hit his weight budget simply by making a well insulated, well detailed building.

    Therefore his design means key components, such as the kitchen, come apart and can be removed.

    Not all tiny homes are healthy or well built

    During Jeffrey’s research he discovered that a lot of tiny house projects had issues. For example they might use a stud frame infilled with spray foam (that contains all sorts of nasty chemicals) or there might be considerable thermal bridging around the steel base.

    This provided extra motivation to make this build a showcase for natural materials and good design.

    Tiny house living should be as green as it gets

    Reducing the scale of any project is the biggest step you can take towards eco living.

    However, Jeffrey points out that a 600kg steel trailer is a big carbon emitter.

    There’s also the question of how often these houses get moved… but Jeffrey is hoping to stay put for a while at least.

    Highly efficient homes embrace building science

    Jeffrey was keen to apply everything he had learnt in his career, making this a highly efficient building. Thus he focused on creating a high performance building envelope and including triple glazed windows and a mechanical ventilation system with heat recovery (MVHR). This is certainly not common in the tiny house world.

    “I do think it is quite rare to do a full wind tightness, fully taped exterior, a proper, breathable airtightness membrane interior.”

    Plant-based materials are used as much as possible

    It’s a standard timber frame (a box frame that starts above the trailer to avoid cold bridging) with wood fibre bats between the framing. Cork clads the entire exterior.

    The flooring is local ash from a saw mill 20 minutes away.

    The work surfaces use London Plane timber that had been planked and left unused on the Somerset estate.

    Building alone requires a different mindset

    Being both client and builder has been one of the biggest challenges of this project. Through choice Jeffrey has done 99% of the work himself. However, he’s not used to this and has had to reset his expectations of what can get done in a day, week, month or even year.

    Therefore while he’s solving problems there’s nobody else progressing the build.

    “I’m so used to different parts of a build happening at the same time, they all come together and fit into each other. But for me just building, I have to just work on one little thing, move on to the next, and keep going like that.”

    The wood stove is a necessary evil… for now

    Jeffrey is fully aware that getting heat from combustion is not a great idea both for internal and external air quality. However, an electric heating system that runs off solar was out of his price range.

    So he’s installed underfloor heating to future-proof his home so that as the cost of solar comes down he can switch across (and it’s also available if he ever ends up parking somewhere with an electrical hookup).

    Biophilic design led to the cruck frame

    In the centre of the house is a round wood timber frame.

    Through the Building Sustainability Podcast he’s got on to the idea of biophilic design, using natural elements in your building for the health benefits.

    “It’s excessive and it doesn’t particularly hold any real function. It adds some stability to the build. But it’s overall just there because I think it’s a beautiful thing to live in a space with trees in their most natural form.”

    Keep learning and experimenting

    Jeffrey set up the podcast for two reasons. Firstly he felt that there weren’t many good podcasts about natural building. He also realised that now that he was running sites he was the one teaching others what to do rather than learning himself. Having a podcast allows him to have thought-provoking conversations.

    I think some of the best episodes are when I go on a slight tangent and I’m talking to… a great example, I was talking to some people from an organisation called Full Grown, and they grow chairs. They use coppice and grafting techniques to grow chairs, still on the tree. And then after so many years they cut it down, turn it upside down, and it’s a chair.

    After making this episode he then discovered there was someone in Germany attempting to grow houses!

    Find out more

    Visit the website of the Building Sustainability Podcast

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  • HPH262 : Where do you put a low energy Cube micro home? – with Mike Page

    HPH262 : Where do you put a low energy Cube micro home? – with Mike Page

    Dr Mike Page explains how The Cube micro home project developed and why land availability turned out to be a major issue for those that liked the idea of tiny house living.

    University of Hertfordshire Innovation Exhibition

    Interview with Mike Page

    Mike Page has had what could be considered an unconventional background into low energy building. With a degree in engineering he moved into artificial intelligence and a career in cognitive psychology. He sees the engineering and psychology as being compatible for tackling climate change, which he says will need to be as much about changing behaviour as it will about technology.

    The Cube Project demonstrated low energy design

    Mike works at the University of Hertfordshire where he became interested in green building techniques and looking at the psychology of pro-environmental behaviour change. Back in 2008 he proposed a cross-department project looking to build a compact home that had low or zero carbon emissions, but still had modern comforts.

    The idea was to ascertain what the best things to have in a building of any size would be, and then put them into a building of a small size. Using the philosophy that some things have to be shown, and not just explained, they could then take the building around for people to experience for themselves.

    Introducing the low energy elements by design takes away the reliance on people to think about making those changes themselves.

    “So, what you’ve got to do is make it the default so they can almost do nothing else in a house. But you’ve got to make it so that they have their comforts and the sort of quality of life that they want.”

    QB1 attracted lots of interest

    Although not setting out to be a “we want people to live in small spaces” project, they decided on QB1 being a 3 x 3 x 3 metre space in which one or possibly two people could live a comfortable, modern existence but with a minimal environmental impact. Taking it to Edinburgh Science Festival in 2011 brought about lots of interest from people saying they would like a space like that.

    QB2 offered more usable space

    Mike felt QB1 was slightly restricted in that it didn’t have a full sized double bed, or space for more than two people to sit down to eat, so he designed QB2. This was 3 x 4 metres with a 3 metre internal height. It offered a better set of spaces, with a 4 metre long bathroom, a galley kitchen, a full sized double bed, 4-seater table, storage areas and space for a washing machine. There was a full size shower, a 4-burner induction hob, an air source heat pump, fan coil heating and a 32 inch LED TV.

    One of the constraints that Mike gave himself was that he didn’t want anything inside that folded up as that would always be an inconvenience, or have any ladders. So the design rule was that everything always had to be usable.

    Another design rule was that they wouldn’t use technology that was only appropriate to small spaces, because of their wider view of wanting to demonstrate what could be done in a building of any size. It did bring about challenges though of using extractor fans and heat recovery ventilation in such close proximity to the composting toilet!

    QB3 had moving internal walls

    The use of alternate tread stairs to reach the bed in QB2 meant it wasn’t accessible for people with restricted mobility, which led to the design of QB3. This was the same internal volume (6 x 3 x 2.5m) but built all on one level.

    Designer of The Cube Project’s QB3 compact home, Dr Mike Page, University of Hertfordshire, operates the building’s hand-operated rolliing kitchen unit. QB3 at Edinburgh International Science Festival, 2016. For more information, see www.cubeproject.co.uk Photograph: Allan MacDonald

    A key design feature of QB3 was that it had moving internal walls, so you could step out of the kitchen, wind the wall past you and step back onto the same floor which was now in the bathroom. Therefore the light and insulation for one space is also the same that is used for another space.

    “All the people who wanted one were exactly the same set of people who didn’t have land to put it on”

    A company was given the licence to build and sell the Cubes, but despite lots of interest at design shows, the problem of having the land to put it on was an issue.

    Although they were careful to keep the design within the definition of the Caravan Act, because it was a self-contained dwelling it would need planning permission. And if people had land with planning permission then they might just build a normal house and not need a microhouse. Even to be in someone’s back garden, it would need to be as an annex to the house, not as a separate dwelling where someone could live.

    The Cubes differ from the Tiny House movement in the US, which are largely designed to be towed and moved from place to place. While the Cubes meet the Caravan Act and are mobile by definition, in practice they would need to be towed by a lorry. While physically they are tiny spaces, they were meant to be fairly static and not moved around.

    It was also never the intention for people to be living in them in isolation. They had always thought it could be groups of young people living in a community of Cubes around a common space such as an allotment. What has been difficult to make happen is a planning arrangement that would allow groups to come together and create a network of smaller houses.

    Something like a site that has been designated for static caravans would be ideal, where they could create a low energy community.

    “I think it’s more the planning regulations that are conspiring against what we wanted to do with the Cube Project which is to let people live in their own private spaces with groups of other people nearby, in pleasant and low carbon surroundings.”

    Land reform is needed

    Mike doesn’t believe that planning really serves all members of the community, and that land reform is a big issue that needs to be addressed. There are lots of people and companies that own lots of land, with developers holding onto land until the need for housing becomes so desperate they will get planning permission and benefit from the massive increase in land value.

    Issue of zero carbon building

    Mike’s says what we really need are full-sized houses, and that is something he is now concentrating on.

    He is amazed that houses generally being built now are not zero carbon all the time, or at least on average.

    “So, what amazes me is that given that we’re going to have every house that’s got to be zero carbon basically by 2040 – Extinction Rebellion say earlier, the government says slightly later, but let’s say 2040 – why would you build any house in 2019, 2020 that would need retrofitting to meet that standard if you knew that that house was going to stand for sixty, seventy, eighty years? Why would you do that? That seems absurd. And yet just about every house I see being built is not of this type. It’s nowhere near being zero carbon. I simply don’t understand it. That’s a psychological problem.”

    Find out more

    Visit The Cube Project website

    Follow Mike Page on Twitter

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    Download a transcript of the interview with Mike Page.

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  • HPH088 : Successful Tiny House Living – with Jay Shafer from Four Lights Tiny House Company

    HPH088 : Successful Tiny House Living – with Jay Shafer from Four Lights Tiny House Company

    Jay Shafer gives us the lowdown of tiny house living. He explains why he initially made the choice, how different life has been since and why he has never looked back.

    Jay also shares practical advice of what you need to know and do in order to transition to a smaller house.

    Jay-Shafer

    Copyright The Edge Magazine

    Interview with Jay Shafer

    Jay Shafer was the founder of Four Lights Tiny House Company. He has been living in tiny houses for nearly 20 years and it all started because he didn’t want to burden himself with a hefty mortgage. Instead he set about building a small house to fit his needs.

     

    There’s No Set Definition of ‘Tiny House’

    While others might define a ‘tiny house’ as any house which appears to be very small, Jay likes to think of it as any house within which all of the space is being used well.

    Jay-Shafer-at-home

     

    You Can Still Live Tiny, Even With Children!

    The first house Jay lived in was 100 ft², increasing to a new dwelling of 500 ft² when he married and had two children. Now living with his two boys he is back in a 100 ft² house and always looking at ways to maximise every inch of space.

    Beavan tiny house

    One of Jay’s designs – The Beavan

    The Efficiency of Design of a Tiny House Has Wide Appeal

    Jay notes that passion for tiny houses can stem from never growing out of the love of small structures, such as forts and treehouses, in childhood. He describes a tiny house as “something that kind of hugs you, is not confining but still containing.”

     

    The-Bevan-floor-plan

    Living in a Tiny House Can Even Help Your Waistline!

    Many people living in tiny houses consider the outdoors as an extension of their home and in ways are outsourcing parts of their lives. One person that Jay designed a tiny house for didn’t have a shower so lost weight from going to the gym and using the showers there!

     

    The Pros and Cons of Living in a Tiny House:

    Pros:

    • There’s no space to accumulate unnecessary possessions
    • It’s affordable
    • Freedom – more time and money to spend doing the things you love

    Cons:

    • Flatulence! (Particularly if cohabiting!)

    insulation-going-into-a-tiny-house

    Copyright Tiny House Design

    Energy Savings are Directly Proportional to the Amount of Square Footage You Have to Heat

    Jay estimates that his energy bills are around 1/12th of the average for the location in which he lives.

    He notes recent US legislation, which has abolished minimum size restrictions for housing, now means tiny houses have to comply with the entire code. In some cases this can be counterproductive – for example, when high levels of insulation are required but are not strictly necessary for a tiny house.

     

    Spend Time in Small Spaces First to See How it Feels!

    Jay himself spent lots of time in small spaces to find out what felt like a good space for a kitchen for example. He compares designing a tiny house to tailoring a suit, in that it should exactly suit you and your needs.

     

    Tiny Houses Are Often of Higher Quality

    While tiny houses can be built very cheaply, if you’re designing and building small there could be more money available for quality construction materials or for more indulgent fixtures and appliances.

    ‘Cost per Square Foot’ Can Be a Misleading Metric

    Despite their small size, on a cost per square foot basis a tiny house can work out more expensive than a standard house. This is because all the expensive items (appliances, furniture etc.) are so close together. Jay says that his first house was not only the cheapest in Iowa City, but also the most expensive per square foot!

    Gifford-tiny-house

     

    A Tiny House on Wheels Might Be Worth Less

    Jay isn’t sure of the re-sale values of tiny houses, but suggests there could be a unique scenario whereby if it’s on wheels it might depreciate in value as a motor vehicle would. However if it was moved to a foundation its value could potentially increase!

     

    The Tiny House Movement is Growing in Popularity Around the Globe

    Much of Jay’s design inspiration came from the UK and also small houses in Japan. Now he says these places are amongst those where the tiny house movement is taking off.

    In previous decades the craze in the US and other countries has been to have ever larger homes to try and impress. He hopes that small houses are now the normal thing.

    The popularity of tiny houses means that a Google search will result in a huge amount of inspiration if you’re planning your own build. Jay notes that technology has also developed in line with the movement’s popularity with far lighter and more efficient materials now being available.

     

    The Places with the Biggest Houses are Most Into Tiny Houses!

    Jay cites Australia as currently having the biggest houses in the world, and yet a growing tiny house movement. He considers it almost a backlash by those who are fed up of big houses being built.

    Sink-in-tiny-house

     

    Tiny Living is Liberating

    Jay emphasises that living in a space that suits your needs without having to take care of a lot of extra space is liberating.

    He can find so few drawbacks about living in a tiny house that this is the message he likes to promote.

    Small-House-Book

     

    Transcript

    Download a transcript of the interview with Jay Shafer.

     

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