Thursday, January 31, 2019

Heating

How do you heat a small Tiny Home? It doesn't require a wood stove. That would be overkill. We have one electrical plug in from the barn nearby, and we use it for heat and cooking in the winter. We have this 1500W electric heater, and it increases the temperature of the room from 0 degrees C. to 20 in 1 hour. This tiny electric heater is all we use. It's a bit noisy, but it doesn't take long to heat the room and then we turn it off. When I spend the night, I change the setting to the lowest and let it come on when it's cold. The heater doesn't tell me what this temperature is, but I've found it to be around 16 degrees. So during the night, even when it's -20 C. it only goes on once or twice during the night. Apparently it costs around 21 cents per hour to run a 1500W heater.

I recently spent 24 hours in the Tiny Home for 24 hours during a cold -20 cold snap. During this time, I ran the heater for approximately 5 hours during the 24 hr period. During the day, the passive solar heat brought the temperature up to 30 degrees C. and I actually had to crack the door open just to cool it down. So for 24 hrs it cost around $1 to heat the home to keep it between 18-28 degrees. That's warmer than I keep my house in the city!

I wish I could tell you that I used the solar panels to run this stove, but that wasn't possible. And that's another post...

Thursday, January 24, 2019

Cooking Dinner

I spent my first night in the Tiny Home this week. In fact I spent 2 nights in a row in the Tiny Home. That means not only sleeping there, but also figuring out how to feed myself. I set up a corner of the room to be "the kitchen". It feels a lot like camping, only indoors. It helps to feel like camping when I'm using all my camping gear. Like my stacking pot/plates/cups/bowl set for 4 people. Everything packs into a tiny space the size of one large pot. Very useful for Tiny Homes too! It works for now. I'll see if I miss the

This is my first dinner - hamburger mash. Not a real recipe, of course, but a one-pot meal (that also happens to meet all the Game On Diet rules, with a large side of green vegetables for appetizer). There's no refrigerator, but with temperatures -20 outside, I just brought a cooler, and set a few things outside overnight. This is pretty easy in the winter time.

I created a simple routine of making dinner, then heating a little water in the dinner pot, and washing everything immediately afterwards.

You can see I have a 2 burner electric hot plate for cooking. I plug it in to the one electric outlet we have access to (from our friends' barn). It sure beats cooking outside in the winter time, but it limits the kind of cooking I can do. Even fewer options than camp cooking when you have a fire or a fast propane stove.

I purchased a camp table from MEC that holds the stove steady, and also has 1 zippered compartment that holds the pot set, tea items, cutlery, condiments, and some snacks. I have faith that the Tiny Home is critter-proof by virtue of it's tight construction, and we won't have to worry about mice nibbling any snacks we leave here. I'll let you know if I find out otherwise!

Saturday, January 19, 2019

Brighten it Up!


Everything's going white and bright! The inside of our Tiny Home is all strandboard, with black lettering on parts of it. So the space felt pretty dark. We don't intend to leave the walls bare forever (famous last words), but until we decide how to cover them, we decided to paint them.

So I enlisted the help of my painter step-son Josh, who managed to put a coat of primer and then paint (Benjamin Moore Cotton Balls - the brightest white they make) on the entire inside in an easy afternoon. It is incredible the difference this makes. It is bright, the walls seem taller, and it appears so spacious now, even though we haven't changed the dimensions at all.

And did I mention that we heated the home with a tiny electric heater that we turned on when we arrived, and although it was below freezing outside, it took only 2 hours to get the temperature up to 20 degrees. Yes, this is one well-sealed little home. 

Friday, January 11, 2019

Windows are the Eyes of the Home

So we've got both doors installed now. It's incredible how warm the place is now. We used an electric heater for a couple of hours and the room was toasty! My husband had talk himself into choosing a sliding patio door, because it's not as well insulated as the rest of the house. However, you can't beat the views! So we have a 5 ft patio door on one side to help with summer air flow, and a regular door in the opposite side. It's incredible how "finished" it feels inside now with these additions.

The setting is such a big part of Tiny Home living, and the windows really remind us of this. The above photo is taken looking in, and the photo to the right is the beautiful view looking out. The setting is gorgeous - horses fields, sheep, and chickens. So pastoral! I love how the Tiny Home gives me an excuse to sit and be with this scene. I slow down just being here.

Tuesday, January 1, 2019

ZenShed is the Model


From a truckload of panels to a house in only 6 hours! We had researched the topic of Tiny Homes, and there is a huge difference in building time depending on what you start with. We considered building from scratch, but it was a little daunting. Many Tiny Homes drip with moisture some days. Others are impossible to heat well and are constantly cold. People who like Tiny Homes are often trying to get around the many bi-laws and municipal rules, but there are still a lot of things to know. Like height limits to drive on a highway or benefits of putting a house on wheels rather than skids. So in the end, we went with a pre-fab from ZenSheds located in Kingston. It comes delivered with labeled panels and is easily put together with a crew of 4, some more spray insulation, and a few screws. The idea is to have the walls up quickly and then personalize the space with appropriate furniture as we go.

It's cheap to just throw some wood together, but that really only works for 1 season cabins. We want our home to be comfortable 4 seasons. That's one of the big difference between Tiny Homes and RV's. The SIPs in the floor, wall, and ceiling make this home airtight, making it warm in winter and cool in summer. Once we get the doors in, we'll start measuring how easy this is and report back. Looks like it's going to be a fun and experimental 2019!