Recap of Designs

I've looked at six different designs so far. My criteria for finding the best design are the following:

1. fits on 8' x 20' flat trailer
2. has an interesting and practical roof line
3. has plenty of windows
4. bed on lower level, or accessed by stairs instead of ladder
5. plenty of storage for clothing and other items
6. has an entry on the side
7. some separation between bathroom and kitchen
8. room for a TV, desk, chairs, table, wood  stove, water tank, etc.

I've ruled out designs that don't meet the first three. These are all excellent choices, but none are perfect. All fall short in some area and require changes to meet my criteria.

1) Tiny Living - This one falls short on several criteria, but flexibility and a provided Sketchup file, along with the nice outside appearance keep it in the running. I would have to add a stairway, storage, and move the entry way. I also believe these plans to be very thorough.

2) McG - This one has been ruled out as a whole because it's seven foot width is too narrow. But it provides a stairway that runs along side the loft to a landing about 20" below the loft surface. This feature might be useful to other designs.

3) Moschata - The Moschata provides  a Sketchup file only for the framing, but otherwise these free plans are very complete and would aid in making modification. I would probably do something to separate the kitchen a little, perhaps putting cabinets outside the bathroom, shifting the kitchen down a bit, and putting in storage under a new stairway. The outside appearance isn't as nice as the Tiny Living, and without a complete Sketchup file, I can't document the needed changes.

4) Cider Box - This one probably comes the closest to addressing all the criteria, but perhaps not the best at meeting them. It has a side entry, stairway, and good kitchen bath separation, but still needs some tweaks. Lack of a Sketchup file is a shortcoming, but may be okay. I can't find a complete floor layout for this one, and a no return policy makes this plan purchase a bit risky.

5) Talmage 20 - On the outside, the Talmage 20 looks similar to Tiny Living with the large central dormers. The central bath and kitchen leave room at one end for a stairway and storage to be added. Some sort of fold down table would replace the dining room table in the bay window, and perhaps seating could be added there. The kitchen is small, but could be enhanced. Heating would be difficult since it could not be central. But the plans are cheap and come with a Sketchup file and materials list.

6) Cypress with Arise floor plan - This is another really nice looking house, especially with the dormers. The Arise layout provides good separation between the kitchen and bathroom, although I'm not sure how easy adding a bathroom sink will be. The kitchen takes up a lot of room, and there doesn't seem to be room to add a stairway.

At this point, I want to take a closer look at the Talmage 20 and the Tiny Living.

Cider Box Design

The Cider Box is a design built by PAD Tiny Homes. It has a good outside appearance, with plenty of windows, and a double shed roof. PAD sells the plans which are are originated by their partner, Shelter Wise.

The side entry doors, which are double french doors to boot, are a plus in this design. There are plenty of windows with the upper level clerestory windows. The overall appearance is fine, but not my preference. The design is described as flexible, and doesn't include plumbing or electrical, which is fine with me. A couple of suggested interiors are provided. I will probably want to change any plan I use, so options are good. A complete floor layout for the 20' is not shown, so it's hard to compare the various room sizes. A portion of one interior design is shown:

The flexibility of this design is a plus, but the plans don't come with a Sketchup file. This plan does not appear to include a bill of materials. Overall though, the plan seems to meet all the criteria, by including the stairs, storage loft, and side entry, and taking into account the flexibility. 

Cypress Arise Design

Another Colorado company, Tumbleweed Houses, has a home design that caught my eye. Actually, they have several nice designs with lots of floor plan options. None of the designs have a side entrance though, so I've discounted most of them. The Cypress model has a corner porch entry, similar to others I've seen. And although most Cypress photos show a gable roof with small dormer over the porch, this picture, from the cover of their study plans, shows a large dormer on the side, which I like.

The plans are for various length options, including the 20' that I am interested in. But there are four floor plan layouts! The one that caught my eye is the Arise. To the left you can see how the bathroom is in the middle. A wall separates it from the kitchen. The entry door is in the kitchen. I don't see a convenient place to put a bathroom sink, though. And I suspect the access to the loft is through a ladder as there really isn't a good place in this floor plan to work a stairway in.

Plans from Tumbleweed are very complete, but I don't see any mention of  Sketchup file.

There are three other layouts available, similar to other plans.

Talmage 20 Design

The Talmage 20 is a nice design by Tiny House Design. It has elements of other house plans I've looked at, including large central dormers and a corner porch entry.

The inside has some unique features, such as a central bathroom and kitchen, a loft open to the front and back. A living area and dining areas are at opposite ends of the house, with the entry in the living area. The loft is above the kitchen and bath, and as shown is open to both the living and dining area. The dining area has a bay window.

This design as shown is very open and light is plentiful. I prefer stairs to the ladder. One option would be to add a stairway where the storage room lies, and replace that storage with cabinets below the stairs.

With a stairway added, the other missing criteria are plenty of storage, and the proximity of bathroom to kitchen. The kitchen area is small in relation to the area devoted to the kitchen and dining rooms. This isn't a perfect design for me, but it has interesting features. The plan is inexpensive at $29, and includes a framing plan, materials list, and a Sketchup file. 

McG Design

The McG Tiny House is offered by Humble Homes.

It has a smaller loft, suitable for a full size bed, with a stairway along side. I really like this idea. The outside appearance of the house is fairly basic, with a porch across the end, and a gable roof with an off-center ridge line. The one thing that is a bit of a problem is that the design specifies a 7' x 20' trailer. A Sketchup model is available, but if I were to change the width of the design via Sketchup, it may be a lot of work, and prone to a lot of mistakes. I'm afraid I have to reject this house for now, but still, I really like the idea of stairs along the side of the loft.

This isn't the only place I've seen this idea. A local company, Mitchcraft Tiny Homes, shows a layout where they use a stairway along side of the loft. But they are a builder, and don't offer the plans for sale on their website.

The idea of a stairs to a landing below the loft isn't unique either. The Hope Island Cottage is built with a stairway to a landing twenty inches below the loft. It makes for a nice place to sit while you put the socks and shoes on, and I would think would make it easier to access the stairway from the loft.

Tiny Living Design

In an earlier post I listed what I thought were my priorities in choosing a design for my tiny house.

1. fits on 8' x 20' flat trailer
2. has an interesting and practical roof line
3. has plenty of windows
4. bed on lower level, or accessed by stairs instead of ladder
5. plenty of storage for clothing and other items
6. has an entry on the side
7. some separation between bathroom and kitchen
8. room for a TV, desk, chairs, table, wood  stove, water tank, etc.

My approach to choosing a house design is to search for houses that fit the first three criteria, and have available plans. So it needs to fit on an 8' x 20' trailer, and have an interesting roof line (not a basic shed) with plenty of windows.

I really liked the looks of the house on the cover of Dan Louche's book.

It is called Tiny Living, and meets the first three criteria being 8' x 20' and having various roof lines and plenty of windows. Below is the floor plan:

This diagram doesn't give a lot of detail, but is pretty basic. The bathroom design doesn't include a sink, but presumably a small hand sink would fit. The living room looks pretty spacious. No stairs though, it uses a ladder. Entry is from the end, not the side. And the kitchen is right next to the bathroom. Has plenty of room, but the plan would have to be modified to fit a stairway, a storage loft,  side entry door, A lot of changes, but the plans can be modified with Sketchup.

 It should also be mentioned that the plans sound very complete, are very detailed, and include a comprehensive materials list.

Moschata Design

Moschata is a free plan from The Small House Catalog.

It has a basic gable roof, with a small porch in one of the corners for entry. Since the plans are free, I have a downloadable PDF copy that I have viewed, which is especially helpful for deciding if it meets the criteria. Also downloadable is a Sketchup file with the framing for the Morschata with dormers. Adding the dormers really helps with the interesting roof line criteria.

The floor plan is as follows:

You can see the loft is accessed by a ladder rather than a stairway. And the bathroom / kitchen layout is the side-by-side version that puts the bathroom so close to the kitchen. The bathroom has no sink of its own, but perhaps a hand sink could be added under the bathroom window. A storage loft is included in the plan, The plan does include a bill of materials.

Tiny House Design Ideas

There really aren't a lot of ways to squeeze a bathroom, kitchen, living room and bedroom onto 160 square feet. But it is a tiny house after all. And then, the trailer that serves as the foundation limits some choices. For example, generally a door can't be placed at the hitch end. And the location of the wheels affect the placement of doors as well, and possibly other interior features. 

The kitchen and bath present the greatest challenges. In general, it makes sense to put the bathroom and kitchen near each other. Even though people prefer the bathroom not be close to the kitchen, the plumbing is just easier that way, and the rooms just fit together pretty well in the limited width. A lot of designs place the bathroom across an end, and the kitchen next room in. 

Sometimes you see the bathroom and kitchen across from each other, perhaps with the bigger kitchen area being an ell shape. Sometime this gives the area a galley look, with a solid wall along the bathroom, and cabinets to the ceiling on the other side. It seems dark and closed in to me. 

Putting the bathroom and kitchen at opposite ends is a possibility as well. This opens the house up, squares the living area up some, but its not common, probably because it presents some plumbing challenges. It's more efficient to have the water heater near both the kitchen and bathroom which isn't possible when the rooms are at opposite ends.

Putting the bathroom along a wall in the middle with the kitchen on the opposite wall is another idea I've seen. This leaves an open area on each end. This is probably the ideal arrangement to keep pipes from freezing, having everything in the middle. But, it might be better to have the heat somewhat centralized. This layout allows for a separate dining area or lower bedroom, and a loft above the kitchen and bath.

The challenge of the bedroom design in a tiny house is its size. An 80" long queen mattress barely fits lengthwise across the width of most tiny houses so typically people want it to run lengthwise. It's nice to have room on the sides to set your feet down and to make the bed. In a home twenty feet long, there's only four feet of living room space after taking out three feet for a bathroom, six feet for a kitchen, and seven feet for a bed. So the bed needs some special handling. Usually this involves putting the bed in a loft. But a Murphy bed, pull out couch, or custom bed/couch combination are possibilities. I've even seen plans where the bed pulls out from below a low loft holding the bathroom and kitchen.Some designs gain floor space by extending the floor out at the ends.

Ideally this house will allow a real bed, or at least a real mattress. So I don't particularly like the idea of sleeping on the living room furniture. The Murphy bed idea is worthy of consideration, but like the pull out bed idea, you still have to free up space in the living room area. That might require other furniture to be moved aside or stowed away every night. The pull out bed deals with this by using the partially extended mattress as a couch, reducing the need for furniture in the living area. But I'm not convinced that a mattress makes a good couch, or that a couch makes a good bed.

The loft is the obvious solution, and is pretty common. Access is usually by a ladder or stairs. The stairs are typically narrower and steeper than residential code would allow. Even then, the stairs take up a lot of floor space. Fortunately, the space under the stairs can be used for much needed storage.

A loft with a landing running along side the mattress has a lot of advantages. The landing would be 2 or 3 steps down from the mattress, so getting in and out of the bed would easier than from the loft floor. The stairs would take up less space, since they don't go as high, have fewer steps, and could even extend into the loft area with a shortened landing.  Also, you could put a tall closet on the landing, providing a better place to hang clothes. A major downside is that its more difficult to frame since the location of the stairs / landing prevent joists from being run across the width of the house to support the loft. And there isn't much room for a queen size mattress with no easy access to the other side.

I'd venture to say that every design I've seen would work better with a full size mattress, but perhaps a queen size should be the goal.

I'll start looking at specific plans next.

Foundation for a Tiny House

The internet is amazing. So much information out there. More than one can take in. It's no different for the tiny house movement. There are a lot of different tiny house ideas, but the one thing these houses have in common is that they are not permanent structures - at least not in the sense that they are fastened to the ground. Typically they are on wheels so that they can be treated by local authorities as an RV, and not as a house. This also gives them mobility, so that they can be built in one spot, and moved to another, or even treated like an RV and taken across country.

But that is the starting point for a tiny house - wheels - or more specifically, a trailer. There are a few different types of trailers. Gooseneck trailers can be used and the area above the hitch can be a loft as with the MiniMotives design by Macy Miller. But more commonly a flat trailer is used. Some trailers have the bed raised over the tires, which makes for a nice wide area to build on, but the downside is losing some house height. The raised floor takes away from the 13'6" or so that is the typical limit for vehicle height on roads. The most common trailer to use is a utility trailer, with the house attached to the bed, and working around the fenders. You lose a little bit of space inside the house over the fenders, but you gain several inches in house height.

Most commercial trailers need some modification to provide a good foundation. Side rails, gates, front bars, and sloped rear ends give the builder some extra challenges.  The trailer has to be able to support 10,000 pounds or more, so axle capacity is a major issue. A custom trailer is another possibility.

Yesterday, I confirmed my order for a trailer from Tiny Home Builders, Dan Louche's company.

I chose one of these trailers because it is designed for a tiny house. The sides are built out with angle iron, and instead of wood decking, it has two steel beams running the length of the deck. I like the idea of drilling through the floor framing into these beams and side angle irons to bolt the floor down to the trailer. I chose an 8' x 20' trailer. Unfortunately, it won't be ready for a couple months. But then again, I probably won't be ready until then either. I don't even know the floor plan yet. But I do know that it will have to fit on an 8' x 20' trailer.

I had hoped to discuss my options a bit more in this post. But for now, let just say that my criteria for a tiny house are:

1. fits on 8' x 20' flat trailer
2. has an interesting and practical roof line
3. has plenty of windows
4. bed on lower level, or accessed by stairs instead of ladder
5. plenty of storage for clothing and other items
6. has an entry on the side
7. some separation between bathroom and kitchen
8. room for a TV, desk, chairs, table, wood  stove, water tank, etc.

Those are my priorities, somewhat in that order, for now. Certainly, there won't be a perfect design. These aren't all black and white choices. And I have to keep in mind that aesthetics is important, but this house must be practical to be viable for off-grid use.

Floor plan ideas next time.

Deciding to Build a Tiny House

I needed something to do. Last winter I built a teardrop camper, a Wyoming Woody. It was a challenging project, and I enjoyed it - and the end product.

I thought about building another camper, but can only use one and would lose money if I sold it, especially considering my labor.

Before I decided to build the teardrop, I had bought a book called "Tiny House Design & Construction Guide" by Dan Louche. I glanced at it at the time, but didn't have a good reason to build one. The camper, we could use. But that's done now. And, again, I need something to do. Can I build a tiny house, sell it, and make some money?

Are there markets for this type of home? Tiny homes are hot right now. They certainly aren't for everybody, myself and wife included, at least not as a replacement for our house. But there are several companies making tiny homes. They are for people wanting to get into a starter home without being tied down to a hefty mortgage, people who want freedom and mobility but yet live in more conventional construction than an RV, people who are downsizing, people who want to go off-grid, and people who want to own a vacation retreat.

For various reasons, I have decided to focus on the off-grid tiny house. I like the challenge of providing the services that an off-grid house needs. My degree is in electrical engineering, and I wrote software for several years. I love technology, and to go off-grid requires some significant technology. People need hot and cold water, and sewer, for kitchen and bathroom, a way to heat, cool and ventilate their house, a way to power a refrigerator and stove. And besides those necessities, its nice to have a washer/dryer, computer, internet, television and other things. Being off-grid means having no water or sewer pipe connections from the city, no gas or electrical connections from the utility company. A tiny home owner will have to spend more time to get those services. They'll probably have to store water and propane, make electricity, properly handle the grey water from the sink and shower, and waste from the toilet. Planning for all that is very interesting to me. Similar to the planning for the teardrop, but on a bigger scale.

But that is all a bit down the road. First things first. What is this house going to look like? How big is it? What is the floorplan? What materials should it use? Next post will discuss the trailer I plan to use as a foundation, and considerations in picking out a floor plan.