News

Mar 26 2018

A low-cost printed home from housing nonprofit New Story

Housing nonprofit New Story has partnered with 3D printing outfit ICON to build a prototype of a livable low-cost printed house. Located in ICON’s hometown of Austin, it’s said to be the first printed house in the country to comply with residential building codes. However, it’s not actually intended for the US market; New Story is planning to begin work on a community of 100 of these for low-income families in El Salvador later this year. First, though, ICON needs to refine their Vulcan printer in order to bring down the cost and construction time. They’re targeting $4,000 and six to twelve hours for the printing, and the custom concrete they use hardens quickly enough that finish work can be completed the same day.

The 800-square-foot house is made of roughly 100 one-inch layers of concrete.

ICON’s current 3D printing technology can’t create roofs, so they’re using wood for now.

They’re planning to develop robots to install the windows and flying drones to spray-paint the walls.

Wiring and plumbing is done after printing by drilling into the walls.

ICON’s Vulcan printer uses a fixed amount of concrete to reduce construction waste.

The Austin prototype was built under shelter, but for use in El Salvador the Vulcan will have solar panels to take advantage of the country’s intense tropical sunlight.

h/t Quartz

Sep 15 2017

iKozie: Well-designed modular housing for the homeless

UK charity The Homeless Foundation has come up with its own modular tiny house to assist people transitioning out of homelessness. A prototype of the 186-square-foot iKozie was recently installed in the back garden of a full-size house the group owns in Worcester. Set on a shallow foundation, it’s currently being fitted out for single occupancy and has a waiting list to move in. Unsurprisingly – the iKozie is quite well-designed and, for a house of this size, full-featured. It has separate spaces for the living room and bedroom, a tiny but full kitchen (which even contains a washing machine), a bathroom module, and a surprising amount of storage (much of it in the most logical place for it, the bedroom). The house cost about £40,000 ($54,000), comparable to the higher-end tiny houses for the homeless we’ve seen in Duluth and Detroit. Given the UK’s insane property market, it’s probably even more of a bargain over there – and given the iKozie’s functionality, The Homeless Foundation could probably ship a few of these to the States and sell them at a profit. (If you want to send a few bucks their way in the meantime, you can make donations here.)

The iKozie is easily delivered by truck…

…and, for tight spaces, crane.

The steel-framed house features larch siding, a corrugated iron roof, and enough insulation to give it an ‘A’ energy efficiency rating – and the occupant a quiet night’s sleep.

The bathroom module is behind the couch; in front of it, a divider holds the TV and separates the area from the kitchen.

The designers admit that the bed’s a bit short, but say it was a compromise they had to make to get adequate storage space.

h/t Guardian

Sep 09 2017

Tiny House Warriors take on the Trans Mountain pipeline

Tiny house activism has usually meant non-confrontational efforts to reform building codes and zoning regulations, but now a group called the Tiny House Warriors is using tiny houses to take a direct-action approach to a much more controversial issue.

They’re members of the indigenous Secwepemc Nation, and they’re aiming to place ten tiny houses in the path of a pipeline proposed to pass through their land in the Canadian province of British Columbia. Their leader, Kanahus Manuel, says the Secwepemc haven’t consented to Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain pipeline and don’t want it due to the potential for environmental damage. She’s hoping that having people living along the proposed route will provide additional leverage for stopping the project. (Secwepemc Nation territory, like much of British Columbia, is rather sparsely populated.)

Kanahus, along with her four children, stayed in a tiny house for several months while participating in the Standing Rock protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. She realized that tiny houses would be a relatively easy way of occupying threatened land, and that small structures would also make good sites for cultural activities like language camps and traditional tattooing.

With financial support from Greenpeace Canada, which also opposes the Trans Mountain pipeline, the Tiny House Warriors started building the first of their tiny houses on September 7, 2017. They’re planning to finish the other nine within the month to coincide with the beginning of work on the pipeline. Will they make it? Well, as the photos below show, tiny house builds go pretty fast when you have enough people helping!

h/t Huffington Post

Aug 17 2017

Tesla Tiny House

Tesla, Inc., formerly Tesla Motors and still best known for its electric cars, is also big into R&D for batteries and solar panels. That was bound to have tiny house implications eventually, and now the company has made the link a little more obvious with a THOW of its own. The 20-foot Tesla Tiny House will be touring Australia (behind a Tesla Model X, naturally), showcasing six of Tesla’s solar panels and one of their 14 kWh slimline Powerwall batteries. It’s even fitted with a charger for the Model X, although it’s unclear if the house will be able to supply all of the car’s power needs. Visitors will also be able to use a design facility to learn how Tesla products can power their own homes. That focus – on using renewable energy for standard-sized houses – is hardly unreasonable given that Australia already has the highest percentage of residential solar power users in the world. However, it means that Tesla hasn’t bothered to make this into anything resembling a livable tiny house; there’s nothing inside but a showroom. Now, we’re totally onboard with anything that promotes clean, renewable energy – but wouldn’t it have been great to see a fully functional THOW tricked out with the latest in photovoltaic and Li-ion tech?

It looks like the Model X is getting a little more attention than the house just now!

The Powerwall (center) and the car charger (lower right) are mounted on the front end.

The steel-framed THOW has locally-sourced sustainable wood siding and a fold-out balcony.

h/t New Atlas

Aug 14 2017

Jay Shafer seeks crowdfunding for Bay Area tiny house villages

Famed tiny house movement pioneer Jay Shafer, who’s been heading up the Four Lights Tiny House Company since 2012, has a new project underway. It’s called Tiny Houses for Humanity, and its goal is to establish a series of small, affordable, child-friendly tiny house villages in the Bay Area. Jay’s working with River King, a local resident he met two years ago after she was reduced to sleeping in her car with her two-year-old son due to the lack of affordable housing nearby. Aside from his name recognition, Jay is providing the house designs, which are modified, more efficient versions of some of the smaller Four Lights models. They’ll cost about $20,000 to build and will allow some degree of customization for individual preferences. River is coordinating the effort, looking for a site and for people who can help with the construction. Habitat for Humanity, Sonoma State University’s JUMP community service program, and even a few high school shop classes have expressed interest. Sonoma County officials seem inclined to give everything a green light, too. Jay and River are planning an initial 5–6 house village with a common area and garden, and they estimate they’ll need about $100,000 for materials and landscaping. They’ve already raised over $22,500 on the crowdfunding site Hatchfund; you can show your support (and get an autographed copy of Jay’s Small House Book) by helping them reach the target by September 26.