16 Oct Tiny Houses: Cute and Practical
Tiny houses are a hot topic! All the cool kids with Design-Build-Live came together last night at Treehouse green home improvement store to discuss the latest in tiny houses around Austin. Tiny houses aren't just cute, they can also be practical. With soaring property values and median income not keeping pace with rising cost of living in Austin, going small can help keep more people in the city. Even if you don't choose to live in a tiny house yourself adding one to your property gives you the ability to generate income from short-term rentals, or house an aging parent. Also, if you add a tiny house on a trailer unlike an accessory dwelling unit (ADU), you are not required to create an additional parking space on your property
A handful of speakers shared their personal and business experience in the tiny house arena. Two of them particularly stood out to me.
The first speaker, Thea Bryant (pictured above), does small, natural building in the heart of Austin. Her earth-dome house of about 600 square feet near downtown is home to herself, her four children and a dog. (See earthbaghouse.com.) In her work with tiny houses, she's noticed two really important factors in the design of small living spaces: sound barriers that allow for some privacy beyond simply visual barriers and accessible, well-planned storage that's shallow with doors. To save on indoor space she also recommends placing your washer outside. This also makes it easy to use the graywater effluent on a garden. She's also a fan of modular, natural plaster panels for tiny houses. Such panels can be created by sandwiching clay-lime plaster with chopped straw between burlap on wood from reclaimed pallets.
The second noteworthy speaker represented Ecowise which, among other things, serves as a general contractor for tiny houses on trailers. They sell a trailer plus the shell and customers can either work with Ecowise, or independently to fit out the interior. The shell is made of cedar outer walls with velvet oil (a food-grade, soy-based coating) interior walls of carbonized bamboo a floating cork floor on top of whisper wool and pine planks. They place a door both on the end of trailer and on the side for ease of moving stuff in and out of the tiny house. They also include composting toilets with their tiny houses.
Additional tiny/small house resources:
Denise Eissler has a tiny house for short-term rental.
No Comments