Kit houses

Another category of houses in the “tiny house” genre seems to be owner-built “kit houses” (search “kit homes washington state”). One example of is : Shelter Kit, who will sell you a kit that you assemble yourself. Supposedly takes two people a few weeks with no crane required. Sounds like it might be an interesting possibility. Runs about $30-$35/sqft, putting a 25′ x 25′ house in the $20K range.

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Some regional maps

Teresa was kind enough to pass along some state/county mapping links for reference:

Rural loan calculator

Just as a fast back-o-th-envelope sort of thing. This.

YouTube video playlist

So as I delve into YouTube, I’m creating a list of reference videos. Thought I’d share the link here in case anyone else is interested.

Tiny House Videos

Some books relating to tiny houses

An article that Snow pinned called “My Top 7 Tiny House Books for 2013” had a link to a set of interesting books, including wiring and zoning issues: http://thetinylife.com/store/ – might be something to investigate later.

Septic tank alternatives

Composting toilets

A pair of composting buckets and one of the bins.

So, if you don’t have a septic tank or sewage connection, WTF? Turns out there two obvious alternatives to dealing with that: 1) Incinerating toilets, 2) Composting toilets. Here’s some quick notes on each:

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It begins…

So. We seem to be getting more serious about the Tiny House Project. Recent inputs from our friends Teresa and Jim have made it clear that the cost of the land for something like this is actually quite reasonable – even parcels that include water and power hookups (which we are treating as necessity).

If we take the requirement for sewage off the table (moving to composting or incinerating toilet options), land gets cheaper. There are lots of parcels that fail the “perk test” for septic that people have a hard time selling, making them interesting to us if we are willing to explore alternatives to a traditional septic or sewer waste system. More on that to come.