I was chatting with a friend about the perfect low footprint home. She wants to live in her Dream Home and she is planning it out as we speak. She wants to live in a nine foot by nine foot home. Cozy! I am sure that it is possible, I have seen a house that was smaller when I was a child and it had pretty crappy insolation too. If I were to design a house like that and I had all the technology to do it, what would it look like? And what would her house look like? I have very little experience in house building, but when I was five, my father had the house that we lived in for eight years built and I watched it go up and I remember many conversations that my father had with me about it, mostly when I got older. As I said not much experience.
My friend, who |I do not yet have a pseudonym for yet, wants to have a single room and a loft for sleeping. The single room would have a shower, kitchen, a table and two chairs plus a toilet. What else would you need? A wood stove-- something small because you would not need much. I imagine the stairs to the loft would be a ladder and there would be a hole to get through and that is it. She stated that she would want passive solar water heating on the roof and she would need electricity for lighting and cooking. she would have a hotplate and a toaster oven to do the majority of the cooking and in the winter, she could use the wood stove as well. the questions really come down to how much window space she has. I would bet lots of natural light. I would want a lot myself, but the more window space the more heat loss.
Some of the things to think about would be the thickness of the walls. 9’x9’ would mean that you might only have 8.5’x8.5’ on the inside, so I might go for 9.5’x9.5’ on the outside and 81 sq ft on the inside. Both examples have a six inch wall thickness. I am thinking either two by four frames of wood or the same with steel frames. The wood would be less expensive to build but heavier and flammable too. Steel would be more expensive, but a little stronger and I suggested this because moving the house is a design feature. Insolation could go for a few options: fiberglass, styrofoam or aerogel. Fiberglass is the most common and cheapest but it is also the least efficient. Styrofoam is more expensive but is easy to use and does not irritate the skin. Aerogel is the best, a thin panel the thickness of a sheet of styrofoam has the insolation value of ten or more sheets of styrofoam and you could make the walls thinner. With a thickness of four inches in the frame, you might as well fill it with insolation since the added insulation will keep the space warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. Fiberglass would fill it up with one sheet, styrofoam you could use two sheets. The other two inches of wall thickness would include the outside treatment and the inside covering. Plywood with siding or stucco and wood or drywall on the inside.
The roof is the problem here and it is dependant on the quality of the insulation. If the insulation is really good you can have a fully functional space, but if it is not you will need to have a space between the roof and the top of the living space so that ice does not form on the roof. If you are using the styrofoam then keep it thick and the entire loft can be living space. Thicker insulation is more expensive, but the reduction in the heating cost and would be well worth it. It is a small space, so spending more money to get it done properly would be well worth it in the long run. If the space is properly insulated, heating with a small wood stove might be too much heat-- for sure you would need a way of venting excess heat otherwise you might accidentally broil yourself in the winter. Remember, the Inuit used snow to build their igloos and heated them with seal blubber candles and had a constant room temperature of about 20 degrees centigrade. A candle in a lantern might be enough to heat a properly insulated space.
The reason why this little project interests me is because it coincided with a post that I was thinking of, How I see the Future. This is a small living space and I envision a different version of this for poor, homeless and people who have small needs.
The way I see things is that there are a number of buildings with a lot of wasted space on them. Large institutional buildings and box stores tend to have large walls with no windows and this is wasted space. Often these walls have large lawns or spaces before the wall, sometimes it is merely asphalt. I propose that these blank walls be filled with micro housing units. When I say small, I mean close to the size of the House my friend wants to live in; outside dimensions of 10’x10’ or smaller.
The outside walls could be made with aerogel pressed between plexiglass panes. This set up would allow a lot of light to pass through them and into the unit but would not be as clear as glass so privacy would be maintained, alternately the lower half of the wall could be covered in solar panels of some type to add to units power supply. Aerogel is often called frozen smoke for its resemblance to smoke and its weight, but it is known also for its extremely high insulation value. In addition to its insulation value it is also a very strong building material, but in this case only that it is translucent and a good insulation is needed.
Another feature of this construction is the heating method. EcoCute heating system would be integrated to several units as both a water heater and the heating system with radiant floors. The Ecocute system is powered by electricity but is four times as efficient as normal electric heaters. It accomplishes this by using the same principals as your refrigerator but in reverse. Using Supercritical carbon dioxide the system allows the fluid to decompress out in the ambient air and draw the energy in that air into the fluid and then the fluid is circulated back into the unit where it is recompressed. Compression of the gas into fluid releases three times the energy that is put into the compression process, that is the energy that was taken from outside the unit. Additionally the mechanical energy of compressing the gas produces heat which is added to the energy that the unit then passes into a tank of water. the water can be heated to ninety degrees centigrade easily. This is obviously too hot for anyone to shower in, but it can be combined with cooler water to create more comfortable temperatures, and the same for radiant floors. If the water tank is wrapped in aerogel insulation, it will remain hot for far longer than traditional water tanks, so the hot water can be created when the power is available and can thus be powered by solar energy.
The units can be of any size realistically, but the base model would be based on a stacked hundred square foot footprint. One could imagine a tiny living space including a folding table attached to a fold down Murphy Bed, shower, toilet, sink, small bar style fridge with cabinets and clothing space and living quite comfortably, especially if you had very little in the way of possessions. More spacious units would have floors devoted to room functions as in a more normal house. Possibly a utility room with washing machine and dryer as well as the entryway and a means to get to the next level. Next an enclosed, from the stairs/ladder/lift area, bathroom with shower and bathtub, sink and toilet. Alternate arrangements could remove the bathtub and include the laundry facilities. Another floor could have a living room and kitchen area, if this is in a multi layer building it may even have a small balcony too. Sleeping arrangements could include the proposed Murphy Bed or perhaps a different bed solution that is functional during the day. There might be a private bedroom at the extreme top of the unit with a private balcony too and a permanent bed.
This type of housing would be ideal as mentioned as a first home for young people and as a last home for independent elderly, but also for those people with few needs or little means. I would like to live in one of these units, perhaps even one of the smallest units.
No matter what unit style is used it would contain the very best technology and it would be integrated into the structure. Batteries in the walls, with the philosophy behind the iPad, if there is space, fill it with something or a battery. The unit would have any surface that was not window space covered with solar collectors and the roof would have collective vertical axis wind power generators with concentrators to maximize the power generated. LED lighting, while expensive, uses very little energy. The key to this house is high efficiency, low power usage and collective power generation --maybe even to the point where footsteps generate energy and rain is diverted into tiny power generation applications. If the building is insulated really well, the occupant might even produce enough heat to warm the building.
There would necessarily be a benefit to the building that these hose rest up against, first they could generate income and the building would require less heating as the exterior walls would be covered with houses and thus well insulated. This would not be an ideal situation for industrial sites, but high insulation works well for sound as well as heat, so very little sound would pass through the walls as well as heat. Box stores would also be increasing the population of people in the area that would be customers. Walmart style stores in particular, grocery stores and discount stores too.
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