Micro-documentary on "A cool tiny home tour: living in 96 square feet" | Hacker News Reader

Micro-documentary on "A cool tiny home tour: living in 96 square feet"

faircompanies.com

51 pointssleepingbot35 comments

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.

The video is worth watching.

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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.

Why would you never get a loan for it?

normally you couldn't get a loan because banks would be worried about the resale value of a "underground" house. But maybe recently you could have because they were just giving loans to anybody. But now you probably wouldn't have a chance. You'd have to build it with cash, and they cost about 20% more than a conventional house, last I checked.

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.

Let's not forget tiny apartments. Not only space efficient but land efficient too (they stack up).

and very energy efficient too with all the common walls rather than outside air.

I'd agree that Jay does a good job of presentation, but I also think the points of living smaller and with less stuff are important. Just read a report that personal spending is 70% of GDP in the US. So given that smaller homes make it tough to buy more it should help cut consumption.

We've done a story on living in an RV where the owner talks about how living small cuts down on energy consumption: http://faircompanies.com/videos/view/living-small-when-home-...

And what, exactly, is wrong with buying more? Why shouldn't people consume?

I've never been much of a consumer, to be honest. Far too cheap for that! But I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me just why consumption is such a problem.

Just start here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overconsumption.

I didn't understand kirstendirksen was actually blaming consumption as is. Overconsumption, owning "stuff", more is better, bigger is better, double is better, etc., is a relatively new social push. Difficult to be really concise and short here. We all are here in a conversation that needs "information", "facts", "decisions", etc.

My advice is don't be opinionated before the fact, avoid being defensive when possible, don't stay with asumptions. Asumptions are not facts. "Consumption" is not good or bad. Then, if you relate owning or buying or collecting stuff with things such as happiness, well.

You're right. I wasn't condemning all consumption, but overconsumption (what has made is so that if everyone in the world lived like Americans we'd need 5 planets to support us). In the past couple of years, I've started to think more about how most consumption means some sort of depletion of resources and most often they're resources we don't have enough of. I also learned the term "embodied energy" and started taking about what it takes just to make/transport stuff. Add to that thinking about CO2 emissions (also a relatively new concept for me.. past few years) and it all makes me want to try to do what I can to preserve the planet (and its resources) for kids/grandkids.

double is better, etc., is a relatively new social push

Here's the thing, though. While it may be relatively new at the "everyday person" level, I think it's normal human behavior to consume more at least until a certain level of happiness is reached. In the past that level of consumption was only affordable to the wealthy, but it's now trickling down to everyone. There's a reason that WalMart is as popular as it is, and that's related to the reasons that most cloth is made in mills and not woven by hand anymore, and why I'm paid to write software and not to shape red hot iron on an anvil.

What that means is that it's pretty much going to be a force that you can't train or educate people out of. They simply want to live better, for their self-defined values of "better."

IOW: the solution won't be found in consuming less, it will be found in making it easier & cheaper to extract resources from the environment. I suspect a lot of the "anti-overconsumption" people realize this, but don't want to admit it.

As far as being defensive: I'm not. I enjoy having a large house, more vehicles than I really need and luxuries that would make a 19th century king envious. I wouldn't have all that if I wasn't producing more value than I was consuming, and in the end that's what matters.

Thank you for making your point clearer in your last response.

First of all, I want to make clear I use more space than the proposals of Tumbleweed Tiny House, but I respect the concept and I think it makes us all think about our behaviors and the consequences of them.

I live in an old apartment in a pedestrian street, at the center of Barcelona. I'm occupying an apartment that has had people on it for centuries, and use resources in a pretty frugal way, just because my "pursuit of happiness" happened to evolve in a dense Mediterranean city, where public transportation are a matter of convenience, not class. The apartment is fairly big, yes, and it does have a terrasse. I also have 2 kids. The rest of the apartments of the building are being used by young students and similar. Several people in every apartment.

I wanted to make clear that I think dense cities are the response to some of the main issues of the world that affect all of us. Your attittude affects me, and mine has an impact in you.

I also believe, like Sterwart Brand, that slums are not necessarily bad for humanity (http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_proclaims_4_environme...). And we are late for a bucolic return to nature the Thoreau way.

Owning more stuff and being able to acquire it are both a consequence related to the industrial revolution (via the Illustration, blah blah) and we all agree "progress" permitted human societies to increase all conditions, including living expectancy.

I don't want to theorize about how the idea of "public opinion" (via Adam Smith and the like) was created, or how the School of Frankfurt related mass media and modern press to "opinion leaders" and how these models "influenced" in all of us.

I would disagree with your last point, when you relate owning stuff with success. It's the same point of view an emerging new world is having, by relating happiness with their will to imitate America and Europe after World War 2.

Sadly, there's not enough "stuff" (in terms of "World", and there's nothing else yet to live in as mortal human beings) for 2 more billion of "new rich" people, if they happen to follow the western way. These people are buying their cars and increasing their footprint (and "foodprint") just right now.

The thing is that relating "happiness" and "success", "American dream" and "Pursuit of Happiness" to modern consumption was greatly influenced by certain campaigns. There's no signs in anthropology that relate owning more "stuff" to being "better" or being "happier".

I recommend to dig in:

- GDP: on how the concept of GDP and GDP per person are flawed and do not equal to "wealth". A recent post in HN was saying that Mississipi is richer than Europe (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=811365). Relating wealth and happiness to GDP (gross consumption, in general terms) is a big mistake, explained by a lot of people. I just don't have the time to look for the referrals just now (I'd do it upon request).

- Documentaries "The century of the self" (You'll find them in the Internet). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Century_of_the_Self

- The paragraphs on the relationship about the vision of America as a car country with houses and no public transportation, in the book "Fast Food Nation".

- I could go on and on, but It's not a matter of creating an opinion, but making my point.

And I also think frugality and small are the new "coolness" (which is also created-influenced artificially). You'll (we all) be soon influenced by that, and you won't know why, but it will happen, because the consumption push will bring other ways of more responsible consumption.

And there's no necessity to make bad products for the earth.

See, for instance:

- Cradle to Cradle concept.

- Embodied energy concept.

That should tell us something. I wish I had more time to elaborate. Having a big house, a personal trainer, 5 sports cars, etc., is becoming a sign of cheesiness.

Hear the drums?

Having a big house, a personal trainer, 5 sports cars, etc., is becoming a sign of cheesiness.

Hear the drums?

Yes, but I simply don't care. I don't live my life the way I do because it's "cool" or trendy. I do it because it makes me happy. I live on a small farm miles away from the nearest urban center and if anything, my lifestyle is going in the opposite direction from most people with options. They're moving away from small towns and rural areas, I'm moving deeper into it. Telling a city dweller you live in the country is more likely to invite derision than envy.

My opinion is that a person's take on all this is significantly influenced by their current living conditions. If I were living in the middle of a dense city (and I spent my teenage years living in NYC) I would worry about overcrowding, lack of resources, how expensive life was, etc. But living out in the country, I see vast amounts of resources (I mentioned in a recent HN thread that I could farm all my own food in a fraction of the land we own if I felt like it), the ability to have as tiny or as large a house as you want and a general feeling of independence and self-sufficiency that city dwellers don't have. The problems you allude to I see as a resource distribution problem, not a resource availability problem.

It's an interesting subject to be sure, but probably OT for Hacker News :-(

"It's an interesting subject to be sure, but probably OT for Hacker News :-("

Thanks for sharing that anyway.

http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2005/12/18/1387/0641#more

IMHO, the problem with consumption is that it compromises your independence - that is, buying and maintaining stuff you don't need requires a steady stream of income, which makes it harder to leave a job you don't like or pursue goals like starting your own company or working on something you enjoy but doesn't pay much.

The whole environmental angle is relatively minor to this, in my view. In fact, much of the "Green" stuff like Prius and Whole Foods are just this generation's status symbols, like the caviar and BMWs of the 80s.

I wouldn't call it "feel-good hippy shit", exactly because of the trailer park example. Trailer parks have a bad reputation for low quality. His houses demonstrate a well designed, nice looking home in a small space. That's a novel idea to many, especially in the US.

You, my friend, are a scientist, and not an artist.

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.

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

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).

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.

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

I think he was talking about how he has to carry water up to the loft in order to use his shower. It's a gravity system with just a jug of water above the shower which falls when he opens the tap (or it looks like just a PVC tube in his case). Though since he's in a trailer I'd guess he's not hooked up to the sewage system.. would guess it's similar to an RV in that sense. But he never discussed that in the interview.

It seemed that he just dumps it on the ground.

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.

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.

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

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

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...

More close shots of his books in the photogallery of the visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/faircompanies/sets/721576226806...

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

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

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.

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

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