The passive solar tiny house began as a nexus in my mind when I visited 'Farmer K' who at the time was an urban farmer running a CSA. During the winter of '2009/2010' his living space was 75o on days when the outside temperature was 25o. As an architect, I've long known about the specifics of passive solar design. However unfortunately in our modern society, we've reached a point where the people or companies who design and build the houses are not the ones who live in those houses and pay the utility bills. Therefore they have no vested interest in creating buildings which take advantage of intelligent design. For my entire life, I've lived in buildings which range from a mobile home with the bare modicum of insulation, to a 1940s house that had 5ft by 5ft single pane windows on the north wall. If you look at some of the sites on passive solar house orientation, you see how ridiculous this is. As a less-then-afluent person, I knew there would not be a way for me to build my own properly designed house in the normal mannor.
However during my research, I started reading about Tumbleweed Tiny Homes. These homes are not all as small as Dee Williams' wonderful place. Some are downright spacious depending on your definition. As I thought about the amount of space I tended to use in the houses I've lived in, there was little difference between my rented bedroom and a full tiny home.
More importantly, I understood that I could continue putting my savings into rent for another year, or I could invest that money into a custom home which would need almost no heat. This became the most logical solution, because I would be able to live rent-free and have a space which is properly set up for energy efficiency.
I started off with a very inexpensive trailer which I bought from a boat repair company. This trailer would have been destined for the scrap yard in another few months given the state of rust. It was here that the jumping off point began on the adventure of the passive solar tiny house.
Overview
Throughout this project the driving force for me was to leave the smallest footprint possible. This applied not only to the obvious size of the house, but also to the energy used, the materials, and the long term utilities needed. Before I put a single nail into a 2x4, I was hauling pallets from all over east Portland to the site and peeking into construction dumpsters for materials. I found not only a plethora of lumber ranging from new 2x4s to historic 2x6 tongue and groove flooring. By the time construction started, I had brought enough material to build the floor, the walls, and some of the roof. At that point Luke helped me fetch 600lbs of palletes from EcoHaus. Not only did we save money, but more importantly we did not support deforestation, shipping, and natural resource extraction. (see The Story of Stuff below)
During the actual construction my entire focus was to build this structure to be as energy efficient as possible. The windows are entirely on the south side where they soak up radiant energy from the sun (see concepts). The cracks are carefully caulked and sealed throughout the floor and walls. Finally a great deal of time was spent designing the wall to allow as little heat as possible to escape through to the outside. Even as I write this, the house is partially finished and 1/3 of the east wall is protected by nothing but plastic. Yet the structure requires only a small electric heater for 1/2 hour (scaled up it's comparable to a standard house).
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