This is not my style, as realistically I always need a lot of space to store my "just in case" stuff and crafts supplies.

But it might be interesting for some people who are less chaotic than me... And it seems like tiny houses and islands kinda go together, no?

Cute, be a nice playhouse for kids, lol.

lol, would not fit some aspies network gear into one of those let alone the hardware and the person.

which is why i privately suggested to amy the use of static caravans for a gated aspie community, much cheaper than bricks and mortar whilst still being reliatively expensive

is a "static caravan" like a mobile home?

That's what my husband and I are trying to get.  :roll:  the american dream, downgraded.  

but it suddenly doesn't look so bad, as we are in a part of the southeast where there are relatively few hurricanes.

I live in a high rise building.  I do not mind it.  I do not enjoy gardening.  We have a pool and exercise room which I can use when no one else is around.  

The problem with small houses is real estate costs.  Urban living is better because there is access to services and often public transportation.  Living in a caravan/trailer park or on a boat is a problem because of sewage and noise.  Also neighbours complaining about the state of the yard or property around the building and even the fence, vegetation planted and use of the yard for entertaining.  Too many people complaining about junk in the yard or the lawn not being cut or garden weeded.  

My building is very very quiet.  We can keep the inside of our unit as messy or tidy as we please.

This post was last modified: 07-20-2006 04:14 PM by M.

yeah mobile home, they're not all trailer trash nowerdays..some modern british models look quite good




yeah i know it looks a bit crap, but its a good, reliatively cheap stop gap solution

Ian

Yeah, this is the kind we are looking at:
(large photo)

http://www.livingpictures.org/imagesprop...home2W.jpg

see thats the perfect solution i reckon, reasonably large whilst remaining cheaper than a normal house, and of course theres planning permission...

Ian

I have another idea, huge basements. Two stories of basement would give a good amount of living space (with a small house above), and you wouldn't have to use cooling or heating; as the temperature would be stable year round.

prefabs and static homes would still be cheaper

troglodytes! yay!!!!!

My room is in the basement  :wink: .

That is a good point about the underground idea as earth is an incredably good insulator it does make energy costs extremely low, especially if you add a heat exchanger to the ventilation system which would be required to ensure an adequite supply of fresh oxygenated air and removal of stale air, as heat exchangers use very small ammounts of energy but work in such a way to transfer the heat from the stale air going out to the fresh air going in so it cools the old air and warms the fresh air.

The concept works in a similar way actually to the blood flow into and back from our limbs like arms and legs, run the hot blood from the body in the opposite direction in parrallel and close contact with the blood flowing out, thus keeping more of the heat in our core than the extremeties which loose far too much heat otherwise, same concept with the house but with air instead, what is even better is because they simply work on heat gradients in a very hot summer the exchanger works the other way, cooling the air comming in and expelling the excess heat from it in order to maintain relativly comfortable internal temperatures.

This way the need for artifical heating would be extremely low, maybe combine the system with a series of pipes to heat water somewhere above the house and an ability to circulate that around the house just like a central heating system may work, after all even winter sunlight does produce a reasonable amount of energy if you can capture this quite efficiantly and then keep that same energy where you want it.

The only problem about underground, especially on an island, could be that you would have a lot of ... seepage? leakage? ... problems, which might interfere with our fairly common tendency to collect (hoard) books and/or technology.

But maybe there is some way to deal with that, such as channeling the water in some way back out, or actually using it to do something else... not sure on the specifics here...

Edit:  other than that, i like the troglodyte idea.