The Cubit's Trailer

I picked up the trailer, the foundation of my tiny house, on Wednesday.

The trailer was fabricated by Brian Nilsen, who has a metal fabrication shop in his 2-bay garage on a bend in the road between Cambridge and Greenwich, NY. I designed the trailer with Brian, and he & I figured out a lot of the details together: spacing of members, placement of wheels, required suspension clearance underneath the deck, etc... Brian was great to work with, very reasonably priced, a stand-up businessman & all-around good guy. He did a great job building this trailer. He was extremely helpful right up until I drove the trailer off his yard, and I'm sure that he will be a big help in the future, too, with any metal fabrication needs that come up for me.

The specs of the trailer are as follows:
Length: 19'-6"
Width: 8'-1"
Ball height: 16"
Deck Height: 22"
Axles: (2) @ 71" long
Unladen weight: 875 lb
Weight capacity (GVW): 4400 lb (1100 lb per tire x 4)


This is the drawing that I provided for Brian.

The finished road height of the overall structure will be around 13'-0", under the 13'-5" road height maximum.

It is a deck-over trailer; that is, the wheels are entirely underneath the deck, so there is no need for fenders to be built into the house. In fact, the whole double-axle undercarriage is easily removable: remove 6 bolts and it's free. I will salvage 4 jacks from the junkyard, one for each corner, so the whole structure may be lifted, the undercarriage removed, and the house dropped on 4 sono-tube footings, so the house is temporarily permanent (or is that permanently temporary?)

It was exciting to see the first full-size manifestation of my house. I stood on the empty trailer, and got an idea of what it will be like to stand in my tiny house.

I picked the trailer and hauled it to Bennington VT, where I dropped it off in the yard of my former employer, Vermont Timber Frames and Timberline Panel Company.

The manufacturing process of Timberline SIPs is a hydraulic press which creates 8'x24' Structural Insulated Panel. The large size of the SIPs helps speed installation of large surfaces such as industrial roofs. For smaller applications, however, such as SIP or timber frame homes, the 8'x24' panel can be difficult to use efficiently. Sometimes large pieces are cut off and left unused. They often re-sell these to consumers who are building smaller buildings at a discount rate. As a former employee of Timberline, I have been given the benefit of being able to use them to build my house, and thus save them from sitting in the yard as waste. So I will be hauling away enough to build my house with! Thank you Timberline!

SIP Shop Drawings

These are the shop drawings that I will use for cutting and framing the SIP walls. I will be building from waste SIPs, so I will be adding seams where I join smaller panels together.

A Progress Report on my Studies

Energy Efficient Windows & Doors: Design and Build
I began the semester by researching radiant and infrared heat and
insulated glass units. Based upon my research, I have built a mockup
of an energy-efficient window. I have secured a source of reclaimed
wood to build the 9 window units from. I have found a supplier of
insulated glass units, and have obtained a quote from them. I will
execute the order once I have begun to mill the sashes. The cutting
will commence next week.

Strategies for an Effective Building Envelope
For this project, I will be building a SIP building envelope. I have
however researched many building envelope systems such as stick-frame
construction with cellulose (dry-blown and wet-blown), fiberglass,
open- & closed-cell urethane foam, as well as urethane and EPS foam
SIPs. I have drafted to-scale drawings of the 4 walls, as well as
detailed sections of the wall-floor and wall-roof connections.

I designed a steel trailer and had it fabricated. Fabrication was
completed on April 1.

I have secured a source of waste SIPs for the building envelope, in
Bennington VT.. I will register & drop the trailer to begin loading
materials on April 3. I expect to begin raising the structure in 2
weeks.

China & I are meeting once every couple weeks for Building Envelope
and Windows & Doors as necessary to keep up the momentum. We have
great meetings, and I always come away creatively inspired and
motivated.

Sustainable International Development
Fred & I have been bringing to life the One World Leadership Institute
(OWLI), an international leadership training organization. We have
been creating a structure for the organization and a model of
operations, networking with other leadership educators, and collating
and editing content for OWLI's website, which will be published in the
coming weeks. We are planning also for Fred's return to Africa to
pilot OWLI's flagship entrepeneurial training program, the Youth
Leadership Program.

Vernacular Architecture
I have researched the history of early architecture, from its
prehistoric genesis up to the agricultural revolution. I identified
the archetypes of home: the central hearth, the entry, shelter,
functional use of space and adaptation of space to accomodate
specialized tasks.

I have analyzed the geometric structure of one of the most perfect
forms in nature: the nautilus shell. I have created a base for the
construction of a model of a museum in the form of a nautilus, and
obtained willow for construction of the armature of the structure.

Besides building the model of the museum, I will be creating exhibits
to populate the museum:
- A model of a structure from Terre Amata, the oldest known
architectural site
- a comparison of round and rectangular architecture, and the basis of
those shapes in architecture
- a look at the use of the arch in vernacular architecture
- an exhibit on Musgum mud houses and their energy-efficient design.


This is a summary of my progress thus far in these four studies.

I just looked up the date and found out that the end of the semester
is on April 30! I have a lot of work to get done before then.

The Architecture of the "Oh"s

We will look back on the Architecture of the "Oh"s and shake our heads. McMansions are over (we hope).

First thing, let me explain what I mean by the "Oh"s:

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has yet conclusively named our past decade. Everybody comes up blank when I ask: "What will we call the past ten years?" There have been ideas floated: a revival of the archaic "Aught"s of the earliest decade of the 1900s, or the "Naught"s, a feeble attempt at the modernization of that term. But what is a "Naught"?

I propose that the past decade be known as the "Oh"s. Why not call it what we called it? Remember the year that the housing bubble peaked? Was that Oh-seven or Oh-eight? It was fast on the slide in Oh-nine.

The name of the "Oh"s, to me, carries so much of the past decade: one that started with a war and ended with a depression (and still a war). It is like a fantastic groan: oooohhhhhghh...The groan of a whole culture crushed under its own weight.

Looking back at Architecture of the Ohs, we will certainly groan, for sure...

I house-sat recently in a relic of the Ohs, circa 2005. All the hallmarks: gables galore, proportion run amok, 18-foot foyer into a 14-foot cavern of a "living" room attached to an equally cavernous kitchen. Thankfully they skimped short of the traditional, senseless granite countertops (drop a glass and its dead, buddy). But the construction of the house was showing its shoddiness: drywall joints popped, hastily-installed wood flooring that shrank to leave large gaps, and carpenters' sloppy pencil marks left on the balusters. And so much space to fill up with purchased items out of a catalog, and to fill with heat in our northern winters. Such a sacrifice of quality, traded for quantity: more square feet!

The Age of the McMansions is over. The illusion of opulence crumbled, along with the disintegrating housing market. One already sees the cheaply built houses falling down as well. I have seen many a house unfinished, never lived in, already moldering into a heap: transient memorial to a transient buck, a fast buck that was made and lost, leaving us with a lasting impression of the Ohs.

By building small, I don't propose to claim that everybody should live in a house under 100 square feet, but rather that it is quite possible and plausible. Look around the world, and you would see it all over. Our 6000 square foot caves built for 4 could house a village. I don't propose that everybody should live tiny, but I DO know that many of us could afford to live with a lot less. In my travels around the world, I have seen many different living situations, most of them involving LESS: less space, less money, less stuff…

I believe that when we look back upon the Architecture of the Ohs, we will see it clearly for what it is: a false opulence, created by imaginary financing schemes: palaces built out of air. The senseless false gables & towering foyers that made us say "Ooooo...." with our eyes widened, will in retrospect make us say "Ohhhhh...." with our eyes cast downward, shaking our heads.

Specifications for CUBIT construction

The specs for the construction of my Cubit house are as follows:

• Outside dimensions: 8'-1" x 13'-1"
• Interior dimensions: 7'-0" x 12'-0"
• Square footage: 84 SF + 24 SF Loft = 108 SF
  
• Wall construction: 6 1/2" EPS SIPs (Structural Insulated Panels), R-24
• Roof construction: 8 1/4" EPS SIPs, R-31
• Window construction: 9 custom window units and 2 doors with 3/4" Low-e Argon filled Insulated Glass Units, R-4; Door units are tempered glass.
  
• Metal Roof

Window Mockup

Here is a mockup of the windows I will be building. I milled the mockup from spruce 2x4s from the basement.

Window exterior


Window interior


3 trial runs of corner joint. Top was the first draft, bottom is final.

Joint dissassembled. In this finger joint, there are three gluing surfaces. The exterior face is facing down.

Joint assembled. I will drill & insert a peg at each corner joint. Note the channel on the edge of 1/4" thick exterior flange to accept a bead of silicone to seal the glazing in place. There is a saw kerf in the rabbet to accept the glass stop, shown assembled in the next photo.


Glass stop in place. The thickness of the gap for the insulated glass unit is 5/8". Both the exterior flange and the glass stop have a silicone caulking channel.

On each window assembly, there will be a v-seal weather strip to seal out air infiltration and a tube gasket to create a thermal seal.

A Tiny Model of my Tiny House

These are photos of the model I made of my house. The model is 1"=1'-0" scale, built from reclaimed materials.

Exterior, looking from Southeast

Southern Exposure


Full Size model (Scale = none)

Looking in the front door towards sitting area.

Top view into interior. Entry is to the left; sitting area is at the top of the photo, with loft above; storage cabinet is on the right side; lower right is the bathing area; lower left is the kitchen.

Looking down into kitchen. The range will be on the low cabinet.
Bathing area is on the left side photo.


Convertible space: lounge, dining and sleeping area.
Here the table & bench are folded away...


...and here they are folded out.


The table & benches can also form a lounge/sleeping area. I love how this shot really gives a feel of the interior!