The Tiny House Movement and Merits of Downsizing

People are talking about the tiny house movement. What is it? Is it small houses that are being moved down the street to tiny lots? Is it a political movement? This movement is all about a segment of society that states that people are downsizing the space or spaces that they live in.

If you haven't heard of it, the tiny house movement is a growing trend and not just a fad. It's been featured on network television all over the world. What makes the tiny movement so big, and what determines what a small home is? The average house in America is just less than 3,000 square feet in size. Tiny houses are built with the focus on smaller simplified living so they average around 400 to 500 square feet at the most. Some small houses are very tiny, at around 65 square feet.

But Why the Movement toward Downsizing Houses?

This movement is all about efficiency, saving natural resources, and saving the environment. People who have been concerned about these factors in society have been very concerned at the amount of natural resources (and accompanying waste) that's generated every time a standard size home is built.

And if you include all the resources that go into maintaining older standard size houses, a good argument can be made that the old adage of "Bigger is better" is not better anymore. For example: If a tiny home of about 200 square feet is built in remote areas away from sprawling cities, the house leaves virtually no impact or carbon footprint on the natural environment around it. And in many areas small houses are using solar panels for their energy source.

Smaller Homes Are Economically Friendly Too

When you consider many automobiles today cost over $50,000, it's easy to see the economic value in getting involved in the tiny house movement. Small homes or houses can cost as little as $37,000 if you buy a pre-fabricated or pre-built one. If you build it yourself you'll save a lot more.

A lot of people think that buying a tiny home means living in a cardboard box or something like that. Not so. Because the cost of a tiny house is so low, builders can focus on higher quality building materials that are more energy-efficient and last longer than materials used in traditional home building.

The small house movement is also providing an affordable means of home ownership to people whose homes were destroyed during hurricanes in the southeastern U.S. in the past ten years. Some people whose houses were completely demolished could not afford to rebuild, or they did not have sufficient insurance coverage to rebuild the home they had before. So tiny homes provide a comfortable and safe life for them.

Downsizing to Simple Housing Is the Answer for Some

There are some people who have not been affected by natural disasters or financial meltdowns. They simply want to join the movement because for a lot of people in today's hectic society, simplicity is king. Many people in society during the last few decades have found themselves working long work weeks and getting little time off, only to spend that time constantly maintaining a large house that they hardly ever spent any time in. Although small homes will always be just that, the tiny house movement is growing into something big.

Tom Howser writes about small houses as well as reducing one's carbon footprint and living a sustainable lifestyle.

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Prince Charles's Natural House

Prince Charles has spoken for years about the importance of both sustainability and tradition. He hopes that the two can work side by side in towns, cities and villages to reflect a fundamental harmony between nature and human beings. Through developments such as Poundbury and Newquay he hopes to have put some of his ideas into practice.

The Prince has The Foundation for the Built Environment which is the architecture, design and educational charity wing of the Duchy of Cornwall. Through these he hopes to build places which are versatile and have enduring appeal, he wants villages where people can walk from their house to the shops or to the school where design is rooted in local identity. Prince Charles thinks that these sorts of principles should be the basics of design but they are often not by professionals, but he hopes that times are changing.

Prince Charles's main concerns are that the planet is becoming more and more urban therefore its resources are becoming scarcer. Even though we are adding solar panels to our homes to try and save energy, this is not enough. He feels that we should rethink the way we plan our homes, shops and schools and their relationship with one another. Eco-engineering can learn from Nature and we need to put emphasis on the design of our homes within our communities and use natural resources. Wind turbines and solar panels do not solve the fundamental problems, we need to be building homes designed to demand little or no energy from the beginning.

Prince Charles has worked with his foundation and the Building Research Establishment and Kingerlee Homes to produce the Natural House. It is designed to demonstrate the most effective route to low-energy and low carbon homes built with longevity in mind but with a traditional appeal. Prince Charles admits to being very proud of the Natural House.

The emphasis of the Natural House is on natural low impact materials that not only work well together but can be produced in this country. Although it is based on a traditional approach it has the best new technologies and it built on site by local workforces. The Natural House uses clay blocks and lime based plasters. These reduce the risk of poor air quality and the House also has a breathable wall system which stops mould and damp accumulating. This is blamed on many asthma and respiratory problems so the design in the Natural House helps both the environment and the health of those in it.

The Natural House is being shown at The Ideal Home Show and will be centrepiece there. Prince Charles hopes to show those who visit the House that not all eco homes are strange looking and out of the ordinary and that eco homes are a nice place to live in.

So what are the benefits of his Natural House:

· The House has natural clay tiles which will make the roof last longer and the tiles will not fade in the sun.
· The roof and also the floor will be insulated with sheep's wool.
· Honey-comb like clay blocks will make up the walls which will keep the Natural House warm in the winter but also cool in the summer.
· Heat is retained through the chimney flue which is made of insulated volcanic pumice rock from Iceland.
· The Natural House has triple glazed windows and high ceilings to flood the house with daylight.
· No fans are needed in the house in the summer due to the natural "stack" ventilation which promotes air flow.

Miss Fiona Davies is Sales Director for http://www.uklandforsale.org/
She has worked in the property and land sector for the last ten years. All articles on the website are written uniquely by her.

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What Is a Passive House?

Passive houses are very well insulated, virtually airtight, buildings which minimize energy loss and improve occupant comfort. Passive house design considers the entire life-cycle of the building and uses a variety of 'passive' building solutions to eliminate conventional 'active' technologies that consume wasteful fossil fuels.

Passive Solar Design

Passive solar design is specifically used to exploit free energy from the sun, to provide warmth. A passive house is orientated so that large south facing windows absorb energy from the sun. The rooms are laid out so that the solar heat is distributed from these windows through the interior of the home. The process of capturing the solar energy is considered to be 'passive', since the building does not generate the energy itself. The heat energy comes from a natural source and is not generated exclusively by artificial means.

Provide Thermal Mass

Passive house buildings can be constructed from either dense or lightweight materials. In the case of lightweight construction, like timber frame, some internal thermal mass is incorporated. Thermal mass allows dense construction materials, typically concrete, stone, brick or tile, to store the free heat. During the day, when external temperatures are highest, a large thermal mass inside the insulated envelope will absorb the sun's heat. When the external temperature cools down in the evening, the thermal mass will naturally radiate that absorbed heat throughout the rooms.

Install Super Insulation

Insulating the building envelope is one of the most important passive house measures as it has the greatest impact on energy expenditure. In the average house, well considered and expertly installed insulation can reduce the amount of heat lost through the building envelope, by at least half. In addition, a high standard of thermal insulation will considerably improve thermal comfort for the building occupants.

Make the Building Airtight

Effective airtightness is another important contributor to passive house design. Warm air leaking from the building is a major cause of heat loss, which results in wasted energy. Improving the building's airtightness reduces the uncontrolled air flow through gaps and cracks in the building fabric and must be addressed by the designer early in the planning process.

Fit Triple Glazed Windows

High performance windows are a key contributor to the overall efficiency of the building envelope, as they are manufactured to deliver high thermal values. In passive house buildings, it is usual to combine triple-pane insulated glazing, low emissivity (low-E) glass and argon or krypton filled air gaps. Expertly designed and installed triple glazed windows will significantly reduce energy usage and improve occupant comfort.

Make Use of Waste Heat

In addition to using passive solar heating, passive houses make use of the waste heat from lighting, domestic appliances like refrigerators and washing machines, and the body-heat from the occupants of the building.

Install Heat Recovery Ventilation

Heat recovery ventilation is the process of exchanging heat energy contained in the air which is extracted from a house and transferring it to the incoming replacement air. This system can comprise either a central extract system or individual room fans. Although this ventilation method is an 'active' technology, using a small amount of electricity, it is considered to be a worthwhile contributor to energy saving. It provides the building with essential fresh air, improves occupant comfort and conserves the building's heat.

Fit Renewable Energy Heating

An underlying objective of solar passive design is the desire to dispense with conventional heating systems altogether. It is usually necessary to provide some supplementary space heating to maintain comfortable conditions on particularly cold winter days. Often this can be achieved via the low volume heat recovery ventilation system that is provided to maintain air quality. As an alternative to this, a renewable energy technology like a wood burning stove, solar heating, air source heat pumps or ground source heat pumps, may be preferred.

For more information on passive house design visit www.EcoFriendlyBuilding.com

David Stoppard is the Editor of http://www.lowenergyhouse.com/ and a group of associated websites that deal with the issues surrounding eco-friendly building. The LowEnergyHouse.com websites have evolved from an architectural practice with a keen interest in energy conscious design. Its members have set out to promote energy saving measures, sustainability and renewable energy technology in building, in order to help, protect the environment, secure future energy supplies and reduce fuel poverty.

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Is Your Future Smart House at Risk to Hackers?

For those of us who now have SmartGrid electrical meters on our homes, we realize that in the future we will have more tools to help us monitor our electricity usage. When General Motors, Honda, Toyota, and Ford started putting in real-time gas gauges which showed drivers their miles per gallon based on whatever they were doing at the time, drivers immediately noticed that they were attempting to keep that number as highest possible, almost as if they were playing a videogame, therefore increasing their miles per gallon. Obviously when gasoline in the United States is four dollars per gallon it makes sense to do this.

Now then, in the future with a SmartGrid electricity meter on your home, with a control panel, you will be able to see the difference in your electricity usage when you have a TV on in the other room that you're not using, or an extra set of lights on. Indeed, I imagine, as do analysts who study consumer conservation for energy, that this will make it impact on the amount of electricity we use in the United States. It could actually drive the electricity usage from the consumer markets down 10%. That might indeed stave off the need to build more energy generation plants in the future.

This also means that we will need to build fewer coal-fired plants, and therefore we will also put less CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Now then, this article isn't about global warming alarmism, because I don't believe in that. Rather I'd like to talk about these new features in your future smart house. And I'd like to discuss the risks from our electrical grid being hacked, and poisonous software being introduced from the point of consumption through the SmartGrid, or someone entering through your smart house's Wi-Fi system, perhaps a hacker putting in a virus, malware, or monitoring software without you knowing it.

There was an interesting article in the USA Today by Byron Acohido titled "Hackers Ooze into Printers, Copiers - Digital Thieves Fine Entry through Office Equipment," published on August 5, 2011. Who is to say in the future that hackers won't come in through your refrigerator, your washing machine, your dishwasher, your microwave oven, or your garbage disposal and hack into your smart house? Now then, on August 16, 2011 there was an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal this one by Ian Sheer which was titled "H-P Looks to Kitchens, Cars" and the article stated;

"H-P hopes that webOS on appliances and in cars will create an ecosystem of devices around it."

Now then, this sounds all well and good, however it better be safe, and if someone hacks into your house, the same way they hack into your computer peripherals, then no one is safe from a hack attack, and the hackers are coming to a home near you. Please consider all this and think on it.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes writing 24,500 articles by August 24th or 25th will be difficult because all the letters on his keyboard are now worn off now..

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