As some of you know I am speaking at the Tiny House Fair in June. My topic is “designing and building a tiny house”… I have one hour. Unless I want to pass on the information Clockwork Orange style, I need to narrow down the topic. So I’ve decided to answer the most frequently asked tiny house related questions that I receive.

So what do I want from you? I’d like to know what questions you have about tiny houses so that I can make sure I’m answering the best questions. In exchange, I’ll record my responses and share then here after the fair. And who knows, maybe I’ll make this a weekly thing

So what do you want to know?

Up until now our plans have always been sold as a download, which meant you needed to print them out yourself. Because of this I always formatted the plans to fit on an 8.5” x 11” piece of paper since I knew that size is easiest for most everyone to print at home. The problem was that there is a lot of information in the plans and so that translated to a lot of pages (47 for our Tiny Living house), and thus a lot of flipping around during construction.

While building our last house I finally decided that I wanted the plans to be on a bigger sheet of paper (over twice the size at 12” x 18”). This would allow us to fit more information per sheet and make the images bigger and to scale. However, I didn’t want there to be any surprise costs when you went to print the plans yourself (I had them printed in color locally and they were $50!) so I also decided to start sending out the plans instead of them just being a download.

Check out the newly formatted plans over on our tiny houses page.

I will be hosting an open house on April 28th in DeLand Fl (closer to DeLeon Springs if you are mapping it). I will have a completed ‘Tinier Living’ model and a Simple Living shell available.

My plan is to head down to Florida on April 25th and try to wrap up the small amount of remaining work on the interior. The open house will then be held on the following Sunday at 3pm. Send me an email if you would like to come and hang out and I will reply with directions (it may take me a while to get back to you as I am swamped on email right now). I want to do it this way so that I have an idea of how many people are going to show up.

I’ll be driving the house north to Atlanta on Monday. Along the way I plan to stop at a high school to talk to some kids who are building their own tiny house. I’m really looking forward to that.

Finally, I will be showing the house again just north of Atlanta up near where I live. I’ll let you know the exact date and location once it’s finalized.

If you can’t make it I will be taking lots of photos and videos so keep your eye on the blog a few days afterwards.

I don’t do too many product reviews on our blog (or any other blogs for that matter). Unless you want me to recommend a good hammer I just don’t have that many opportunities. But I recently got the chance to try out a Fagor induction cooker that is fairly popular among tiny house dwellers. In fact, we include one with each of our houses. We decided to include an induction cooktop (not this particular model) because it seemed like a great idea since you could cook with it and then easily store it away, thus freeing up counter space. My mom uses one in her tiny house and says she loves it.

Well I recently went camping and the campsite we went to (Jekyll Island, GA) didn’t have any tent spots remaining and so they gave us an RV spot. The downside to these spots is that you are a lot closer to your neighbors and with kids I felt like I had to be more quiet than usual (a 1 and 3 year old don’t mix well with a bunch of snowbirds), but I digress. On the plus side these camping spots have power. It was the first time I ever went camping with an electric heater in my tent which I admit isn’t exactly roughing it, but it was glorious. Anyway, someone else we where camping with brought their induction cooktop which I was drawn to since we give them away and yet I had never used one.

First impressions

I was surprised at how light it was. It’s less than 7 pounds, which for a cooktop that I am going to be resting potentially heavy pans on I expected it to have more heft. But since the idea is to put it away after each use the light weight was a pleasant surprise.

The Good

This cooker got the job done, and fast (which induction cookers are known for)! I was using a cast iron skillet that easily weighed twice as much as the cooktop itself and it heated up to bacon sizzling temperatures in less than a minute. It was noticeably faster than even my gas range at home.

Another great advantage, especially with kids around, is that the unit is cool to the touch even after it’s been used to cook your meal. The unit only heats up the pan itself, so before the pan is put on the top surface there is no heat. Even after the pan had been removed, the surface was only slightly warm from the pan transferring heat back to the surface, which dissipated really quickly.

The Bad

As far as the negatives, the biggest is that it only works with certain cookware. Basically the cookware has to have magnetic properties like those made with iron and some stainless steel (no aluminum). There is a way to bypass this limitation that involves using a ‘disk’ that heats up and then transfers that heat to your pot or pan, but I imagine that is a lot less efficient and also negates some of the pros of induction cooking.

Another issue I had with this particular unit was that the buttons (which aren’t physical buttons) didn’t seem to be quite sensitive enough for me, but I’m sure I would get used to it.

Finally, the glass surface, while easy to clean, wasn’t that easy to get it nice and shiny like new (see picture). As I mentioned earlier I have a gas range at home and so I am not used to cleaning a glass surface range, so I suspect someone who is could quickly tell me what is required to get them to shine. Either way, not that big of a deal.

Conclusion

I really enjoyed cooking on it all weekend (I do all the cooking in our house, which unfortunately also includes on vacations like camping). It worked great, it was quick, easy to move around, and I would highly recommend one (or one similar). If I didn’t already have a working range in my house one of these would be on my shopping list.

While this particular unit doesn’t have the best reviews on Amazon, there are others for around the same price that are more highly rated, including this one from DUXTOP.

Have you had an experience with an induction cooktop? If so, tell me about it below.

I’ve been working to finish up the latest batch of videos I recorded for our video library. Today I’m putting out 5 new videos including:

• - Installing the Exterior Siding – Part 5
• - Preparing to Install the Interior Siding
• - Installing the Interior Siding – Part 1
• - Installing the Interior Trim – Part 1
• - Installing the Flooring

This brings the total video count to 43 with over 6.5 hours of explanations and demonstrations on building a tiny house.

Early next week I will also be releasing:

• - Installing the Interior Siding – Part 2
• - Installing the Interior Trim – Part 2

Here are some pictures of the Tinier Living House I took while I was down in Florida

The front door (on the back of the trailer). The soffit still isn’t done under the overhang, but that is the last exterior item I have to do.

This is the front of the trailer. The loft window is opened up to let some air in.

This is the view as you come up the ladder. Lots of light. When we were working up there  I would open up the windows and a little breeze would come through.  It would just make me smile. If only I had a nice cold beer in my hand instead of a hammer.

There is a small storage loft above the front door.

The cabinets and closets aren’t in yet, so not much to see here.

Our little tiny house factory

Here is a pretty funny video I came across that someone made about tiny houses. Enjoy.

via Treehuger