Tiny Free House

My own tiny free house is taking a lot longer to build than I ever expected but I just checked in on the scrap house gang and they are really making great headway on their free house.

They’ve been distracted too and have had some short delays as well. I think time may be the most common challenge with free house construction, scavenging takes a lot of it and you can’t just go down to the store and buy stuff. Take a look at their latest progress, visit The Scrap House blog.

I was almost dead certain I was going to go to the farm this past weekend for two days of building bliss but my plans fell through last minute and instead I spent it working on my big house. The irony is that the free house project was born from my frustration with how trapped I feel in my big house, and now it’s the big house keeping me from the tiny house.

At first it was the resale value plummeting which is now down about 40%; yep I’ve  lost almost half the value from the peak market price. But the other trapping quality is the time my house takes to maintain. This one, being about 35 years old, has had some deferred maintenance and it seems like every time I turn around I have to fix, prune, mow, or clean something else.

I’m still planning on taking time off from work but June is looking really packed with previous obligations. I think I may take advantage of the good weather and run some garage sales so I can sell the odds and ends I’ve collected. I may also try to tackle some woodworking projects around here like build the tiny house’s front door. Maybe that will help me eliviate some of the frustration I’m feeling and make some real progress too.

Today is my daughter’s 3rd birthday! It should be a fun day. In the past several weeks I’ve been swamped with work at my day-job and spring cleaning around my ‘big’ house (like patching my stupid flat roof… grrrrr).

After this weekend it looks like I’ll be back on track with the tiny free house! This week I’ll redouble my scavenging efforts and get all my ducks in a row for my next trip to the farm. Next step is to get the roof on and then I can start covering the exterior with pallet boards. I can’t wait for the tiny free house to really look like a tiny house.

I ran across this on Kent Griswold’s blog this morning and jumped for joy. It’s another tiny free house project being built by three students in Salvo, NC. They are scavenging free materials and building a very nice 96 square foot tiny house. It has a little kitchen, bathroom, and living area. They plan to be done within a month.

I’d love to see a million free houses pop-up around the country. I can’t be the only one this simple idea has occured to… and the more people that do it, the more people will try it and discover that a little ingenuity can replace spending money any day. Read the complete story on Tiny House Blog. You can also visit the students’ project blog at thescraphouse.wordpress.com.

Initially I was thinking I’d make the tiny free house more like a ‘park model’ house with a flush toilet and RV hookups. But the more I learn about sawdust toilets and soil box gray water systems the more I think that these two solutions are really a better way of dealing with the waste water and sewage.

In addition to being free, these methods are far more sustainable, provide usable compost, and don’t require massive quantities of water. The sawdust toilet does require a special compost pile for the turds to cook. I’m also pretty sure few government agencies officially condone these little methods or handling human waste so before trying this yourself be sure to check your local laws.

To learn more about sawdust toilets and gray water soil boxes get the Humanure Handbook. You can also read The Humanure Handbook online free but this is one book you might want a hard copy of in your library. It makes great toilet reading too… (pun intended). Photo credit to Jenkins Publishing.