the off the grid people piss me off because it's just yuppies paying a premium to live in the conditions large portions of disenfranchized and impoverished people are forced to live in.
Why? You have people essentially acknowledging that they own and consume too much, so they take steps to correct (some of) that. And if it they can afford a high upfront cost to make it sustainable long-term, isn't that a good thing?
Even if you (general you) think they're doing it for all the wrong reasons, at the end of the day a well-designed tiny house still takes fewer resources and has a smaller carbon footprint than a big one.
the off the grid people piss me off because it's just yuppies paying a premium to live in the conditions large portions of disenfranchized and impoverished people are forced to live in.
This was an interesting opinion to run into when I discovered this thread specifically looking for what info and experience people here might have about tiny houses. <_<
Like Calica says, I'm more interested in an affordable home with a reduced consumption than a particular fad. We own and use too much shit, houses are expensive, and I try to be practical and handy when possible ...
As a forever alone person a tiny home is my dream. Grids wise I can probably handle being off electricity and internet but having a flush toliet is a very high priority for me
I haven't looked particularly deep into it but most of these tiny homes seem really energy inefficient. Tiny volume with comparatively large exterior surface, thin walls and wood burning stoves. And without infrastructure around you probably need a car for food and stuff, unless you haul all your groceries in a backpack.
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ArcticLancerBest served chilled.Registered Userregular
edited November 2019
My understanding is that it really depends on what you put into it for most of those things, as well as where exactly you live. Tiny homes aren't off-the-grid exclusive, and can be built on a foundation and connected to utilities. There are certainly obstacles to overcome, predominantly with whatever your local by-laws and housing code is, as well as making insurance a more easily accessible thing for them. But they can certainly be efficient if built towards that goal (arguably you're right that most are currently built as a minimizing of lifestyle rather than towards reducing wastefulness) for much less than the scale of a traditional home would cost.
Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
I just couldn't do a "tiny home" because I need space. I've lived in a tiny apartment (for over 11 years!) and by the end I hated it so much. Sometimes I want to close a door and sit in a room by myself and read, or think, or build a model kit or play video games or whatever, and that's not really possible if there are two people sharing 20 sq/m of floorspace.
I haven't looked particularly deep into it but most of these tiny homes seem really energy inefficient. Tiny volume with comparatively large exterior surface, thin walls and wood burning stoves. And without infrastructure around you probably need a car for food and stuff, unless you haul all your groceries in a backpack.
It's the opposite*!
much less space to heat, cool, and upkeep means you can scale back just about everything that uses energy for fuel.
I haven't looked particularly deep into it but most of these tiny homes seem really energy inefficient. Tiny volume with comparatively large exterior surface, thin walls and wood burning stoves. And without infrastructure around you probably need a car for food and stuff, unless you haul all your groceries in a backpack.
It's the opposite*!
much less space to heat, cool, and upkeep means you can scale back just about everything that uses energy for fuel.
*assuming it's built correctly
While that comes with making it smaller, it's not necessarily more efficient.
I haven't looked particularly deep into it but most of these tiny homes seem really energy inefficient. Tiny volume with comparatively large exterior surface, thin walls and wood burning stoves. And without infrastructure around you probably need a car for food and stuff, unless you haul all your groceries in a backpack.
It's the opposite*!
much less space to heat, cool, and upkeep means you can scale back just about everything that uses energy for fuel.
*assuming it's built correctly
While that comes with making it smaller, it's not necessarily more efficient.
efficient in what way? Generally speaking, a smaller living space will save you money on fuel and equipment. Plus, the money you're saving from not putting up a couple hundred linear feet of 2x6 walls can mean you could put up 80 feet of 2x8 walls and be that much more insulated.
I've lived in a couple of pretty small houses, but the "tiny house" thing often comes off as either a) performative minimalism by people who are rich enough to afford a commissioned house, or b) gentrification of the trailer park as median-wage earners lose the purchasing power to buy full-size homes
Incidentally this is about the same as how I feel about glorifying stuff like #vanlife or #cabinporn
(hi yes I am firmly in category b of being a median-wage earner who can't afford a house, and I really want a cabin in Appalachia somewhere)
And I know that's kinda cynical in a thread that's supposed to be positive, but it's important to tie this stuff to the crisis of late capitalism
I've lived in a couple of pretty small houses, but the "tiny house" thing often comes off as either a) performative minimalism by people who are rich enough to afford a commissioned house, or b) gentrification of the trailer park as median-wage earners lose the purchasing power to buy full-size homes
Incidentally this is about the same as how I feel about glorifying stuff like #vanlife or #cabinporn
(hi yes I am firmly in category b of being a median-wage earner who can't afford a house, and I really want a cabin in Appalachia somewhere)
And I know that's kinda cynical in a thread that's supposed to be positive, but it's important to tie this stuff to the crisis of late capitalism
It's just as easy to do as any other house unless you want to get super fancy with your storage.
I think it's a case of always hearing about the super nice ones, because no one wants to see pictures of the average home (tiny or not).
Oh yeah I definitely think there is a way to get a small, efficient home built at reasonable cost
But I think it may be a semiotics thing for me, as the phrase "tiny house" conjures a very specific mental image, of what is basically a bespoke ultra-luxury RV with the trappings of a house about it
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
edited November 2019
I want a dirigible house that floats above you petty mortals as your scrabble around in the mud
just looking down at you fools and laughing and literally shitting on you from above
BEHOLD MY FLOATING FORTRESS AND DESPAIR, UP HERE IN THE AIR YOUR TAUNTS AND PUNCHES CANNOT EVEN REACH ME, FOR I AM THE INVINCIBLE AIR BARON AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT BOW AND ARROW WAIT NO-
KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
Tis a booty
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Metzger MeisterIt Gets Worsebefore it gets any better.Registered Userregular
edited November 2019
I think I have an unfair bias cuz I lived in an RV, and it was kind of a crappy one, so it's not representative of the tiny house at all, but I dunno.
I have a lot of half-assed Opinions about, basically, the sort of commercialization of poverty aesthetics and stuff? Like, when poor Okies and other travelling type folk lived or live in sort of DIY structures built into trucks and that, we call em trashy and pass laws against em and stuff, but nowadays it's real hip and kooky or whatever. I can't even really explain why it gets my hackles up.
If I could I'd for sure convert an old Bluebird school bus into a little motorhome or something, switch it to diesel-hybrid and stuff, but that's not something that poor folks can really do. I think that's my issue. Tiny homes are billed as a sort of super thrifty solution to housing but I don't know nobody who's got an extra few grand lying around to just up and build themselves a little mobile cabin and dip on their job and stuff. It feels like a fantasy, it's like little kids putting a peanut butter sandwich in a bindle and running away from home or whatever.
Edit: I've always wanted there to be, in general, more blimps and airships and stuff around. Popular Science and Popular Mechanics told me there would be!
The problem with tiny houses (though really I guess this applies to ALL houses and major purchases) is that you need a place to stay for cheap while you save up for constructing it.
If you're lucky, you can get a piece of land in the less urban states (thinking like Maine, WV, or Wyoming or something) on the cheap and build there.
I think tiny homes as a bourgeois aesthetic are pretty performative, but they're also a reaction against the McMansion fad, which is truly wasteful consumption (and usually a visual dumpster fire). So I guess I'm inclined to be more tolerant of those that go in that direction.
basically I'm unwilling to get on people's cases for using less resources and improving urban density, regardless of the motivation. But there's definitely a conversation to be had around how we react to 'choosing' to live in a tiny house vs an RV, for example, or the trend of celebrating people living in 60sqft of space in the inner city when the reality is it's a nightmare but they can't afford anything else.
I think tiny homes as a bourgeois aesthetic are pretty performative, but they're also a reaction against the McMansion fad, which is truly wasteful consumption (and usually a visual dumpster fire). So I guess I'm inclined to be more tolerant of those that go in that direction.
Those numbers are weird. 1000 (and 6!) light fixtures? How many lights are there per room? That seems like a low number for a building with 25 bathrooms. I presume that 287 roughly matches the number of rooms. So you'd get 3.5 lights per room. Which still seems a little low imo. But I guess some rooms could have less.
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JedocIn the scupperswith the staggers and jagsRegistered Userregular
5 of the bathrooms have no light fixtures.
If you don't know why, you clearly didn't grow up wealthy.
I think I have an unfair bias cuz I lived in an RV, and it was kind of a crappy one, so it's not representative of the tiny house at all, but I dunno.
I have a lot of half-assed Opinions about, basically, the sort of commercialization of poverty aesthetics and stuff? Like, when poor Okies and other travelling type folk lived or live in sort of DIY structures built into trucks and that, we call em trashy and pass laws against em and stuff, but nowadays it's real hip and kooky or whatever. I can't even really explain why it gets my hackles up.
If I could I'd for sure convert an old Bluebird school bus into a little motorhome or something, switch it to diesel-hybrid and stuff, but that's not something that poor folks can really do. I think that's my issue. Tiny homes are billed as a sort of super thrifty solution to housing but I don't know nobody who's got an extra few grand lying around to just up and build themselves a little mobile cabin and dip on their job and stuff. It feels like a fantasy, it's like little kids putting a peanut butter sandwich in a bindle and running away from home or whatever.
Edit: I've always wanted there to be, in general, more blimps and airships and stuff around. Popular Science and Popular Mechanics told me there would be!
This is also my issue with the tiny house movement, especially here in the UK. It's often heralded in architecture magazines as "check out how these architecture students save X amount of money a year on rent by designing and building their own tiny home on wheels! Will this change the face of home ownership during our housing crisis???"
When there are several problems with this:
- you're an architecture student, so you have skills that most people don't and connections with people who will give you materials at a discount rate.
- as a student there's a much lower standard of living and you can go back home to family in the cold months.
- whether a student or not to be able to place the tiny house on land requires a lot of cash or a connection with someone who is happy to let you use their land.
- it requires a lot of initial cash to pay up front and time to set up.
So my issue is also that it's suggested as an amazing solution to the UK's housing crisis when actually the only people who could do it feasibly are those with connections often in an expensive industry with cash in hand.
i completely forgot i made an angry post in this thread
but i think others have already phrased it better than me
the off-grid stuff is performative, and is low to negative impact in the big picture
and living in an area where folks are just trying to get electricity to their ancestral homes so they can have a fridge, that performance is incredibly insulting and infuriating to me.
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Donovan PuppyfuckerA dagger in the dark isworth a thousand swords in the morningRegistered Userregular
Oh there's my irrational hatred for the rich I thought I'd dropped it somewhere.
Excuse me, but that hatred for the extremely wealthy is NOT irrational in any way.
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
My Dad is building a technically tiny house for his retirement. He snagged a 50' mobile home chassis, cut it down to 36' and is building a 28' cabin on top, with a little porch on front. It has a bedroom, bath, loft and kitchen/living space. He's a contractor so it's going to be pretty nice once it's done, as he is a perfectionist. Very functional over fancy though.
Once he's done we're going to set up a water turbine to tap into a creek that runs down a hill, along with some solar to power it. During the winter when the stream is flowing its fullest the water will be primary, and during summer the solar will take over. We're going to install LED everything, and the stove and dryer are going to run on gas.
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Interesting read!
Why? You have people essentially acknowledging that they own and consume too much, so they take steps to correct (some of) that. And if it they can afford a high upfront cost to make it sustainable long-term, isn't that a good thing?
Even if you (general you) think they're doing it for all the wrong reasons, at the end of the day a well-designed tiny house still takes fewer resources and has a smaller carbon footprint than a big one.
aside from electric and plumbing stubs, I could do the entire thing by myself really.
Edit: without the rodents
Like Calica says, I'm more interested in an affordable home with a reduced consumption than a particular fad. We own and use too much shit, houses are expensive, and I try to be practical and handy when possible ...
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Perhaps I can interest you in my meager selection of pins?
It's the opposite*!
much less space to heat, cool, and upkeep means you can scale back just about everything that uses energy for fuel.
*assuming it's built correctly
Standing up for the backpack-enabled lifestyle here.
While that comes with making it smaller, it's not necessarily more efficient.
efficient in what way? Generally speaking, a smaller living space will save you money on fuel and equipment. Plus, the money you're saving from not putting up a couple hundred linear feet of 2x6 walls can mean you could put up 80 feet of 2x8 walls and be that much more insulated.
I would love to have one
I think I could probably live in one too, the biggest room in my apartment is probably the hallway
The biggest challenge for me would be reducing my already small wardrobe even further
Incidentally this is about the same as how I feel about glorifying stuff like #vanlife or #cabinporn
(hi yes I am firmly in category b of being a median-wage earner who can't afford a house, and I really want a cabin in Appalachia somewhere)
And I know that's kinda cynical in a thread that's supposed to be positive, but it's important to tie this stuff to the crisis of late capitalism
It's just as easy to do as any other house unless you want to get super fancy with your storage.
I think it's a case of always hearing about the super nice ones, because no one wants to see pictures of the average home (tiny or not).
But I think it may be a semiotics thing for me, as the phrase "tiny house" conjures a very specific mental image, of what is basically a bespoke ultra-luxury RV with the trappings of a house about it
just looking down at you fools and laughing and literally shitting on you from above
BEHOLD MY FLOATING FORTRESS AND DESPAIR, UP HERE IN THE AIR YOUR TAUNTS AND PUNCHES CANNOT EVEN REACH ME, FOR I AM THE INVINCIBLE AIR BARON AND WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT BOW AND ARROW WAIT NO-
If I could I'd for sure convert an old Bluebird school bus into a little motorhome or something, switch it to diesel-hybrid and stuff, but that's not something that poor folks can really do. I think that's my issue. Tiny homes are billed as a sort of super thrifty solution to housing but I don't know nobody who's got an extra few grand lying around to just up and build themselves a little mobile cabin and dip on their job and stuff. It feels like a fantasy, it's like little kids putting a peanut butter sandwich in a bindle and running away from home or whatever.
Edit: I've always wanted there to be, in general, more blimps and airships and stuff around. Popular Science and Popular Mechanics told me there would be!
I could maybe, maybe own half of a townhome, if I ate rice and dried beans for several years
However, I am moving into my girlfriend's townhouse this month
She's been keeping her head above water for several years with some help from her family
If you're lucky, you can get a piece of land in the less urban states (thinking like Maine, WV, or Wyoming or something) on the cheap and build there.
basically I'm unwilling to get on people's cases for using less resources and improving urban density, regardless of the motivation. But there's definitely a conversation to be had around how we react to 'choosing' to live in a tiny house vs an RV, for example, or the trend of celebrating people living in 60sqft of space in the inner city when the reality is it's a nightmare but they can't afford anything else.
yeah like it can't really get worse than this
he doesn't even have hair.
If you don't know why, you clearly didn't grow up wealthy.
"irrational"
This is also my issue with the tiny house movement, especially here in the UK. It's often heralded in architecture magazines as "check out how these architecture students save X amount of money a year on rent by designing and building their own tiny home on wheels! Will this change the face of home ownership during our housing crisis???"
When there are several problems with this:
- you're an architecture student, so you have skills that most people don't and connections with people who will give you materials at a discount rate.
- as a student there's a much lower standard of living and you can go back home to family in the cold months.
- whether a student or not to be able to place the tiny house on land requires a lot of cash or a connection with someone who is happy to let you use their land.
- it requires a lot of initial cash to pay up front and time to set up.
So my issue is also that it's suggested as an amazing solution to the UK's housing crisis when actually the only people who could do it feasibly are those with connections often in an expensive industry with cash in hand.
but i think others have already phrased it better than me
the off-grid stuff is performative, and is low to negative impact in the big picture
and living in an area where folks are just trying to get electricity to their ancestral homes so they can have a fridge, that performance is incredibly insulting and infuriating to me.
Excuse me, but that hatred for the extremely wealthy is NOT irrational in any way.
Once he's done we're going to set up a water turbine to tap into a creek that runs down a hill, along with some solar to power it. During the winter when the stream is flowing its fullest the water will be primary, and during summer the solar will take over. We're going to install LED everything, and the stove and dryer are going to run on gas.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
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