family lives in 320 sq ft house ( video)

The issue is I think they are including the porch... It just doesn't seem big enough in side or they waisted a lot of space.

320 sq ft... should be 10x32 right or 26x12. which should give you enough room for three rooms with a small bathroom. If you lay it out like a boat or travel trailer. You could have even more room. I think the issue is they just wanted to be "different" and not practicle.

Amen Sister.
I love my kitchen, that I can 'work in'.
I love my basement to store my canned goods in.

I love being able to go to a different room in the house in the dead of winter, to have some "space" for myself.

Hats off to them.....I could never do it, and not be on the 11pm news!!

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The movie Rudy

http://www.survival-spot.com/surviva...utility-bills/

Yeah I can't even begin to imagine trying to make soap or can up a harvest load of peaches or tomatoes or anything. I'd be bald in 10 minutes. The "pantry" she showed had maybe a day or two's worth of food, that's it. I had to live like that for a few months - very little food storage space - and our food bill doubled because I had to shop every other day and could only buy very small containers and amounts of things. I just couldn't do it! I agree with your consensus on being on the 11pm news!

Having said that, it's probably a good step for your average suburban family that doesn't care about food production or being more independent. It's definitely worlds better than having a McMansion!

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Our house is 252 sq-ft for the five of us plus dogs. We love it. We spend much of our time outdoors farming. The indoors is for cooking (we do canning and the whole bit in our nano-kitchen since we raise most of our own food), reading, computers, sleeping, eating, etc. We don't have a lot of stuff. In fact, we have virtually no furniture since almost everything is built-in.

Construction cost was about $7,000 with us doing all the labor ourselves - we closed in in two months. Because it is masonry, brick and stone (even the roof) there is little maintenance and it has a huge thermal mass so the heating is minimal too - Under 3/4 cord of wood a year and even without heat it floats in the 40°F range in the winter in our harsh northern Vermont climate. In the summers it is cool and comfortable.

See photos here:

http://SugarMtnFarm.com/home/cottage

We've been in it for about three and a half years. It is soooo much better than our old, drafty farmhouse. For 25 years or so I had been renovating old wooden houses. It was wonderful to design and build our own from scratch.

Cheers,

-Walter
in Vermont

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Hey Walter, how's the butcher shop coming?

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Thanks for sharing!

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Blessings,
Jean

To each, his own, but with just a few more sqft (say, about 600 total, not counting porches) and not much more money, one could have a much more "liveable" house, IMO.

I don't think my piano would fit into the 320 sq ft house. Music is a big part of my life.

It is a wonderful idea, but I don`t think I could do it either, I like my stuff. And as far as the price of this little baby, I have bought a over 2000 sq ft home on an acre of land for just a little more money than they paid for this wi one. > Thanks Marc

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Upnorthlady, I bet you could get your piano into a tiny house like that, if it was planned for it from the start! I went to college in Sitka, Alaska, and one of my teachers was a commercial fisherman during the summers. He wanted his wife to go out fishing with him, but she said, "Not unless I can take my piano!" -- thinking that would end it! Well, he had a boat custom-built with a space for her piano. Got some of the boys from the college to help him move the piano down to the boat (one of my friends nearly got crushed -- he was standing between the piano and the cab of the pickup, and going down a hill, the piano shifted). Then he took his wife down to the marina, and took her on board this new boat, which she didn't even know he'd ordered. We could hear her scream clear up the hill at the college, LOL! Last I heard, though, they had a crib in the spot that was made for the piano.

So, never say never!

I have to agree, though, that it seems like it would be very difficult to do a lot of homesteading-type activities in such a small house. Walter, where does your family store the food you put up?

Kathleen

My wife and I live in a 24x24 log cabin we built ourselves, windows, doors moulding, cabinets everything.Bought dead standing timber from Colorado and had shipped up here. We moved out of a 4400 sq.ft. home 1500 miles south of here. We do have a full basement with bedrooms accessed by a spiral staircase.
Years ago I took a hard look at the house we lived in and realized we used 600 sq. feet of a 4400 sq.foot home.
We don't need a large home to live in but I need 1000's of sq footage to store junk I have accumulated over the years.

Junk is the problem. Whatever makes us think we need junk is the root of the problem.

The price is ok for the house. The builder needs to pay workers and himself and buy the materials. But I live in New York City where apartments, rent, and houses are very high cost. For some people $17,000 is the rent for one year. They did say the house cost 17, right?

if you wanted to can or make soap, you would need to ether use the whole kitchen and living room for the effort or build an out building for that.

The people did it to live within their means and they succeeded in their goal. The kid looks happy. Some people just want to be free and they do what they have to do to be free of banks and the grinding rat race.

We're making progress. We just poured more concrete last week and we're prepping for the next pour which will be the floor inside the reefer. The reefer is the cold two thirds of the building where the carcass chiller, meat cutting, cooler, freezer and brine are located. I need to get the in-floor plumbing set for that - set in concrete... We hope to pour that next week.

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"Junk" can be the difference between surviving and not surviving, in a TEOTW scenario...

I can put everything I need to live for a week, in the size of a backpack. But, after a week, it'd be hard scrabble living off my body fat time.

Living in a micro home, is great for grasshoppers. I'm an ant, and as such, blessed (or cursed, if one has the less is more philosophy) with a world of junk. If the 'end' comes, my 'junk' will keep me and mine in relative comfort, for years.

My book collection would consume 320sq'. 100' in the house is dedicate to canned foods. 250' of one of my barns is dedicated to food storage. Add in storage for clothes, supplies, cooking utensils, and it gets larger and larger...

The new kitchen will be close to 400'. When you have a couple of full sized canners going, processing bushels of corns, beans, whatnot, space becomes important. Almost impossible to properly process a carcass in my 'micro' kitchen... dream of the day when I put the whole animal carcass on a full size table and do it right!

Not knowing whether the average micro home owners prep 'status', I'd have to put their survivability very very low.

I'd put Walter's family survivability as very high...(even with his small home) but he's got acreage, barns, livestock, and his own slaughterhouse. Daresay most micro homers aren't anywhere remotely close to Walter's family (prepped wise).

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Yep, and that right there is one of the keys of living in a small space. Have other larger spaces that one can use to do what they need to do on a daily basis.