Tumbleweed Workshop Review

This weekend Sam and I attended a Tumbleweed Workshop in Boston. These workshops are pretty pricey (we paid about $250 for a ticket, and that was the Black Friday sale price. Normally those things sell at $400 a pop). Given the sizeable chunk of change that it takes to attend one, I thought I would write up a Tumbleweed Workshop Review. This is intended to help people in the planning stages of their Tiny House Builds decide if a workshop would be worth the investment for them.

First, the nuts and bolts: The workshop itself was essentially a two day long power point presentation, with Tumbleweed architect Meg Stevens as the presenter. It was apparently one of the larger workshop groups (with maybe 75-100 people in attendance). As we walked into the hotel event room, we were asked to check in, fill out a name tag, and were given a very nice booklet with color printouts of the power point slides with a space for notes along side each slide. We all sat at small tables in the ball room while Meg stood on a slightly elevated dais at the front. The power point was projected onto a large screen behind Meg while she spoke. The event was well organized: the room was comfortable, hot drinks were provided, the microphones all worked, it was easy to hear and understand the presenter, there were no technical difficulties with the slides. The room was well lit but the projection screen was easy to see. The booklet for notes was also of a much higher quality than I would have expected.

Apart from the small tables and the tea, coffee, and water that were available at the back of the room, the whole thing reminded me very much of some of my introductory science classes in college. The lecturer (Meg) stood at the front of the room, spoke for a few minutes about each slide, and then took questions before moving onto the next slide and repeating the process again. Every hour or two we got a 10 minute break.

Perhaps it was due to the size of the group, but there were much fewer discussion/interactive elements to the workshop than I had been led to expect (I might go so far as to call it a lecture rather than a workshop). I found this lack of hands-on activities frustrating. As for the presentation's content, while the breadth of information was impressive, the depth was not so much. Had I not spent the last two months obsessively researching Tiny House construction, I think I would have found this presentation very, very helpful in organizing my thoughts. As it was, I didn't learn anything new from the workshop. I was also disappointed when two subjects I was most interested in learning about (electrical and plumbing systems) were brushed over with a simple "hire a professional for these portions of your build". That said, I did come out of the weekend feeling very confident in my research and our level of preparedness for this project. As we sat through slide after slide, I was able to go through my own mental checklist and say to myself "I've researched that, I've thought of that...".

In retrospect, I probably could have saved $300 and been a little less confident, but without knowing that beforehand, I feel good about going to the workshop. I would definitely recommend it to people who want help kick-starting their research, or who don't have the time or ability to do a copious study themselves. For these people, being able to go through the process of building a Tiny House start to finish, and having a booklet to go back to that will help structure their planning process, will be very helpful. Had this workshop been scheduled back in December, it would have saved me a month's worth of work. But for those of you who feel confident in the overall process of tiny house building, who don't need the process described in broad brush strokes to help organize and focus their research, you can probably save your money.

And although this may not apply to anyone else out there, there is one thing which resulted from this weekend that was 100% helpful for Sam and I. I think that Sam feels a lot more included in the Tiny House Planning now than before the workshop. I had been trying to fill him in as I went along over the past two months, but quick chatty conversations after we got home from work or before we left for work in the morning weren't really enough for Sam to get the whole picture. I think that sitting down and watching the power point for two days really helped tie together the bits of information he was getting piecemeal from me since December. It's going to be a lot easier to include him in future decision making processes now that he's had a chance to hear all that foundation knowledge- and that's totally worth the ticket price.

How-To Videos Review

I've been doing quite a bit of Tiny House Research over the past month and a half. In addition to reading absolutely everything I can find for free on the internet and watching countless you-tube videos on the subject matter, I also purchased three How To Build A Tiny House video collections which are currently on the market. Having watched them all, I thought I'd share what I found helpful (and not so helpful) about each, so that others out there might be able to just get the video collection which will best serve their needs. 

The three video sets I purchased were from Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, Tiny Home Builders, and from TinyHouseBuild. I purchased all three videos while they were on sale after Thanksgiving, but otherwise paid market value for them. None of them was gifted to me from the companies which produced it, and I am in no way paid for or compensated for this review in any fashion. If for some reason that's not enough to convince you that this is an unbiased review, then let me know what will be.

The first video set I purchased was from Tumbleweed, and unfortunately I was fairly disappointed. These videos reminded me of an informational segment on Mr. Roger's Neighborhood than a step-by-step how to video. Sure, some specific points were covered and some key vocabulary was introduced, but at the end of this video, I felt no more prepared to build my Tiny House than at the beginning. I feel that the information contained in this video is available for free from other sources on the internet if you don't already know it. Furthermore, if you do not already know the content that is provided in this video, you'll need far more information than is provided to successfully build a Tiny House. If, on the other hand, you're already fairly comfortable with the building process, then the information contained in this video probably isn't crucial for you to hear. Either way, you can probably save your money on this one. 

The second video set I purchased was from Tiny Home Builders. Dan Louche gets credit for being the only one of these guys to skip the hassle of making actual DVDs and just put the videos online available via a year long subscription, Right off the bat, these videos gets points for being immediately available (what can I say? I'm a digital native and I want my content now, not in 4 to 6 business days after processing), and for not requiring an optical drive. They also have the most content of any of the three video sets. Unfortunately, that's where they start to loose me. These videos feature a lot of Dan standing in front of his Tiny House in Progress going into detailed descriptions of how to build the thing, with monologues like "you hold this small piece against the big piece, and you scribe a line from one to the other, then you take that angle and transfer it onto the flashing and cut that....." and by that time I've fallen asleep. No, literally, I think I've made it through only one of his videos start to finish without falling asleep half way through. The long, technical descriptions with relatively little visual reference makes it very hard to watch these. On the other hand, there is a lot of information, and I'm really hoping that when I'm actually building my Tiny House, and I have the big piece, the small piece and the flashing in front of me, his long descriptions will be a lot easier to listen to and find interesting/useful.

The final video set I purchased (and my favorite so far) is from TinyHouseBuild.Com by Andrew Morrison. I was the least eager to purchase these as a) I had already bought tow video sets and wasn't sure that I really wanted to spend money on a third and b) the hOMe Tiny House that is built in the video set is the least similar in both design and aesthetic to the Tiny House that I want to build. But it turns out these videos were incredibly useful, and I'm really glad I bought them. Much more detailed than the Tumbleweed videos (although perhaps not quite as thorough in some aspects as Dan Louche's videos) this videos gave me a really good understanding of how to accomplish most (if not all) the steps involved in building a Tiny House. The video itself was also dynamic enough in it's content to keep me interested, and each technique was shown as it was done, rather than just described verbally as in Dan Louche's videos. I felt that this video set was really key in developing my comfort level with the process of building a Tiny House. 

So in summary: Having watched the Tumbleweed videos, I don't think I'll be referring back to them again, and wish that I had saved my money for other things in my tiny house build. Conversely, I do expect to refer back to both Dan Louche's and Andrew Morrison's videos frequently throughout my build, and I'm very happy that I bought both of these video sets. I'm hoping that some of the more detail oriented (read: harder to follow) monologues in Dan Louche's sets become more clear/easier to follow when I have my actual building materials in front of me. If I had to choose just one of these videos to buy, it would probably be Andrew Morrison's, but I'm glad that's not a choice that I have to make.

Floorplan

We've pretty much settled on a floor plan. There maybe some minor adjustments made, but for the most part we'll have a rear-wall bathroom with a central door, against that we'll have a split kitchen with central aisle that opens into the great room. On one side of the great room will be the couch, on the other will be the wood stove and what we're calling an "armchair" (really just a built in storage compartment for the battery bank with sofa cushions on top), There will be two closets: one positions next to the door for outerwear (coats, shoes etc), the other positioned next to the bathroom to store our clothes.   We'll have an 8' sleeping loft and a 2' storage loft opposite. I've also blocked out space for the fridge, stove, sink, on-board water tank, water heater and water pump, but their exact locations might change as I get a better idea of their installation requirements.

Tiny House Systems

In addition to learning the nuts and bolts (no, really, literal nuts and bolts) of putting a Tiny House together, I'm also having to make a lot of decisions about what systems we will have in our Tiny House. It's a little intimidating to make these choices because each one will have a big impact on our Tiny House lifestyle. The three biggest systems I've had to figure out so far are electric, heating and plumbing. Each one of these is complex enough to merit multiple posts of it's own (I'll write those later) but for right now I want to go over, in big brush strokes, what I'm thinking of for our Tiny House.

The first big choice we had to make was whether our Tiny House was going to be on-grid or off-grid as this would end up affecting lots of other decisions. Fortunately, our answer was relatively straight forward (even if it will cause challenges down the road): the North Stonington property has no improvements (no electricity, no well, no septic), and we don't know when we'll have the funds available to have them (and a proper driveway) installed. Thus, our Tiny House will have to be able to function without these things. Once we knew that, the rest fell into place.

For electricity, we will be living off solar panels and a battery bank. In order to minimize the cost (and space used by) these elements,we'll be choosing appliances which minimize electrical consumption- this rules out using electricity to produce heat.

To heat our home, we've decided to get a wood stove. A lot of people feel that this is a very dangerous decision, but I just can't get behind that thinking. Maybe I'm just desensitized to it because I grew up in a home that was heated exclusively by a wood stove, but I feel really comfortable with this choice. An added benefit to heating with a wood stove is that the model we're looking at also has an accessory thermoelectric generator that we'll be able to use in the winter to augment our solar panels.

For our other heating needs, we'll be using propane. Many natural gas ovens easily convert to LP use, and we'll be getting one of those. We'll also be using an on demand tankless water heater which runs on propane. I think that we'll probably be able to get by using a propane cylinder small enough to fit into the back seat of the car so that we can take it to the fill station ourselves rather than have to have a gas truck come up the (as of yet not-extant) driveway and fill it for us.

How will we get water to heat in our tankless propane powered water heater without a well you ask? We'll be using a rainwater catchment system for our shower and dishes with an on board 60 gallon water tank, and a series of 50 gallon drums outside the Tine House. We'll purchase drinking water and keep it in the fridge to avoid having to super-duper filter our rain water and to avoid having to drink room temp/warm water all the time. As far as dealing with our dirty water: we're going to implement a french drain system to deal with our grey water and we'll be using a composting toilet to avoid black water all together.

I hope to write more detailed posts about each of these choices later on in the process, but, for now, that's the rough outline of the systems we'll be using in our Tiny House.

Timeline breakthrough: SIPs

Once people understand that Sam and I are serious bout this and are actually going to build and live in a Tiny House, the next question is usually about our timeline, and the fact that it's remarkably short. We want to go all the way from planning to move-in day in about 5 months. Most people think that's crazy, and I have to admit that up until this week I was a little bit in agreement with them- especially when you consider the fact that we want to get most of our actual build done in just about one month, and included in our 5 month timeline is a 2 week international vacation. Realistically, I had no idea how we were going to make this happen, and so I was hoping to just get the exterior watertight before potentially heading off to Cambodia for two years- any thing after that would be icing on the cake. But this week I stumbled across two blogs written by individuals who built their tiny houses using a building method called SIP paneling, and suddenly our timeline became a lot more reasonable.

SIPs, or Structural Insulated Panels are best described as large plywood-insulation sandwiches (technically SIPs use oriented strand board- OSB- rather than plywood, but the idea is the same) which take the place of traditional dimensional lumber framing in a build. You order the SIP panels in exactly the dimensions you want from the SIP manufacturer, and they come to you ready to assemble like some giant ginger-bread house kit. Building the tiny house with these panels will take framing, sheathing and insulating the walls and roof from a weeks-long job (at best) and turn it into something that can be done in a weekend!

The best part of this is that using SIPs will not only save us time, but will also result in a better finished product than we could produce on our own. When amateurs like Sam and I build using SIPs, it's practically guaranteed that the final house will be more square, tight and structurally sound than it would have been if we built using traditional stick framing methods, and on top of that it will be better insulated because the SIPs are a class II vapor barrier, and thermal bridging is minimized by avoiding the use of studs and rafters. 

Sam and I are over the moon in love with this building method, and are looking into ways that we can get our very own Tiny SIP House. Stay tuned for more updates on that process. In the mean time, if you're interested in hearing from other people who have built Tiny Houses using SIPs, check out these two blogs: Tiny SIP House by Art Cormier and Long Story Short House by Joe Coover.

My Top 5 Tiny House General Research Resources

The first step in our Tiny House Build was for me to do copious amounts of research. Like, research that has taken over my life for the past several weeks. I dream about Tiny House construction techniques. And while my research quickly delved into the specifics of choosing materials and designing systems, the initial research phase was probably very similar to that of other Tiny House self-builders. So I thought I'd compile a list of the information sources I found helpful during this portion of my own research. The criteria I used to select these sources were very simple: first, I had to have found them helpful in determining the size, scope, and general components of a Tiny House Build, and second they had to be free. Without further ado, here are my Top 5 General Research Resources.

Tiny House Giant Journey: The Time lapse videos of this build gave me my first solid understanding of what it takes to build a tiny house- it gave me good insight into how much time it takes and how much effort is involved. Most importantly, it made me think, "yeah- we could do that!"

Tiny Home Builders: A very helpful technically oriented blog. Reading through his blog from the beginning gave me a good sense of each step along the way of a tiny house build. I found this blog so helpful, I later purchased the author's, Dan Louche's, e-book on tiny home construction and subscribed to the how-to videos offered on the website.

Tiny Refuge: Not the most helpful in terms of construction details, but one of the only Tiny House blogs that specifically addresses the questions of cold-climate adaptations to house systems. (Unlike many Tiny House Stories which take place in California, the Pacific Northwest or Southeastern states like Georgia or the Carolinas, this build is happening in Canada, so you can bet that when the author says cold, she means *cold*)

Gone With The Wynns: Not actually a Tiny House blog, but this couple live and work full time from their RV, and they have some fantastic videos about RV plumbing and electrical systems that can be easily applied to Tiny Houses. It also has the most reassuring videos about composting toilets available on the internet. Seriously. These videos are why I'm okay with the idea of pooping into a bucket.

And finally,

Tiny House Chat: In my opinion, this is the best Tiny House Podcast out there. Or at least, the best one I found. I challenge any one to come up with a more informative program. Seriously, if you find one, I want to know about it.

Why a Tiny House?

The second of two main questions that Sam and I are asked when people hear about our plans is "Why a Tiny House?" (For a discussion of the first question, see my previous post Homesteads and Tiny Houses: Why Now?) With people who haven't already heard of the Tiny House Movement, the questions mostly center around why on Earth we would choose to lie in a space so small. With people who have hears of Tiny Housers, the questions become more personal. Sam and I are hardly the Earthy-crunchy granola filled minimalists that are perceived to be the stereotypical Tiny House people. So, when people who know both us and the Tiny House movement hear about our plans to build a Tiny House, the question is less about the physical space restriction and more a question of whether or not the Tiny House community is a good fit for us.

It's true, Sam and I come to the Tiny House movement with a slightly different motivation and plan than most Tiny House People. Most Tiny House People are attracted to the idea of Tiny Houses because it allows them to embrace minimalism, lead a more authentic lifestyle (although what that means varies depending on who you ask), have increased flexibility, and live debt-free: or some combination thereof. For these people, their Tiny Houses are an end-goal: they are permanent homes which support a very specific lifestyle. For us, a Tiny House is more of a stepping stone to get us into a larger space faster than otherwise possible.

The thing is, we've lived in a city for the past 5 years, and we're done with that now. We want to live on a our own homestead and we want to live there as soon as possible. We also really want to build our own home. Sam has an incredible vision of the aesthetics that I absolutely love, and I'm entirely taken with the notion of having a ecologically sustainable Passivhaus, which is cool in summer and warm in winter without need any energy input for heating or cooling the structure. Achieving this house will take planning, time, and money: three things that we won't have enough of for quite a while. But we still want to live on our homestead as soon as possible, and a Tiny House is a way for us to accomplish that. For us, it's not really so much about getting rid of all of our stuff and committing to a life in 120 square feet. In fact, one of our first priorities after building the Tiny House will be to construct a large barn that we can use to store our things and expand our living space to accommodate our hobbies.

Does this somehow make our Tiny House endeavor less authentic (There's that word again. I think some real thought needs to be put into what we mean when we use "authentic" to describe an experience or a lifestyle. It's generally thrown about to mean that some ways of living or doing things are inherently more worthy or valuable than others, but I don't think that most of the people bandying it about have really stopped to examine what they mean when they say they quest for authenticity in their actions... but that's a whole different post right there- let's get back on topic) than a true Tiny House Person's? I imagine that there are some people who would say "yes", but I'm inclined to disagree. Early on in my Tiny House research I watched a YouTube video which really stuck with me. In it, Jay Shafer, the founder of the Modern American Tiny House Movement, was asked: What makes a Tiny House? Rather than giving a maximum size or any other specific building element, Jay replied that a Tiny House was a home which minimized wasted space. This really stuck with me.

For Jay, minimizing wasted space meant living in 120 square feet. For us, it means living in closer to 60 acres. Just because a home, or a homestead, has lots of space doesn't make it wasted. It's my hope that our homestead will be space that is used well, used sustainably, and used responsibly, and a Tiny House is a step in that process. If that's not in keeping with the Tiny House Movement, I'm not sure what is.