Posts Tagged With: tiny houses

Naj Haus: a case study in wiring a tiny house

Posted on November 5, 2015 by Naj Haus (Kate)
power

Trick or treat: a cobra masquerading as a cable, waiting to strike the unwary.

I never had any intention of wiring my tiny house myself. I knew I could learn it if I had to but when you’re building a house on your own there are some tasks you need to let go of to save your sanity. Since electricity scares the bejeezus out of me, it was a no-brainer to hire that one out. Then two things happened: I got an estimate for what it would cost (yikes!) and I met Todd Clay, the owner of Gorge Electric, who took an interest in my project and agreed to mentor me if I wanted to take it on myself. So that is how I came to be a reluctant electrician.

I am way behind on progress updates, but I realized that the primary purpose of this blog is to share the lessons I’ve learned while building Naj Haus and since the wiring experience was a pretty big deal, it’s worth backing up and going over it in more detail. Jumping into the world of electrical wiring as a complete novice required learning entire new vocabulary, tool, and skill sets, and a mind-boggling array of materials and safety precautions. Fortunately I had Todd to guide me with all of his expert advice, but he’s a busy guy and we could only arrange periodic check-ins and inspections; the rest of the time I was on my own. While the internet is a wealth of information, it’s all so piecemeal it can be hard to see the forest for the trees. As I gradually wove my way through the morass, it began to make more sense. I thought I would present my experience as a case study so that others might not have to go through the same torturous process of figuring out how all the pieces fit together.

There are several caveats. This is not a step-by-step instruction manual but more of a framework to help you understand where you should focus your own research. I’ll point out tips and resources I used, but you may find better ones. Keep in mind I am not licensed and you shouldn’t take anything I say as correct. Code varies from location to location and from year to year so you really need to work with someone qualified. While tiny houses on wheels do not require permits and inspections, you definitely want to make sure your house is wired properly, both for your safety and that of others, and to help get insurance if you want it.

What I want to do is describe the process I went through, tailored to my situation, and point out how you can adapt it to your own. I also want to highlight some of ways that wiring a tiny house is slightly different than wiring a traditional house, and what safety precautions you need to be aware of besides the obvious ones talked about in the internet links. Even if you’re not doing the wiring yourself, knowing about some of these issues will help you work with your electrician. Finally, I’ve added lots of photos since there are never enough visuals when you’re trying to stumble your way through something you haven’t done before! They may or may not be pertinent to your situation but if I can help save you some headbanging and muffled swearing, then it’s all worth it.

Here are the topics I touch on in the rest of this post (my posts are getting so long they need a table of contents!):

  1. Lighting design: why this is important in a tiny house & the list of principles that guided me
  2. Developing a wiring plan: questions to research & some resources for finding answers
  3. Circuit diagramming: an iterative process best done with all fixtures in hand
  4. Installing a circuit breaker box: creating an insulated thermal break & hiring out subtasks
  5. Getting acquainted with the world of electrical device boxes & some installation approaches:
    • What is a device box?
    • Different types: Old work vs new work, plastic vs metal, attachment alternatives, special purpose
    • Size matters: box fill capacity & why it’s particularly important in a tiny house
    • Adjustable boxes
    • Junction boxes
    • Exterior device box installation
    • Hanging light box installation
    • Fan or saddle boxes
    • Pancake box installation
    • Exterior light box installation
  6. Tips for rough-in wiring: drilling through studs, running & anchoring cable, nail plates
  7. Tips for making up boxes prior to finishing walls and installing devices: stripping wires, crimping ground wires, wire nut capacity, tucking them in
  8. Next phase: wiring devices into boxes & attaching fixtures…a couple initial tips
Some sconces I got, hanging in a temporary spot.

Some sconces I got, hanging in a temporary spot.

Continue reading →

Categories: construction | Tags: , , | 12 Comments

Summer of transitions: JUNE

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Naj Haus (Kate)
wheelwell transition

One of the many transitions I dealt with this summer: the space between the sheathing and the wheel well.

This summer has been intense. Many significant life changes and lots of activity on the tiny house front as I tried to hit some self-imposed deadlines. Way too much stress, and the blog has suffered as a result. But now I’m catching my breath again and realizing a major update is in order. As I pulled photos to include, I realized that the update was going to be excessive even by my epic post standards, so I’m breaking it down into three separate entries. This one covers the month of June. July and August to follow shortly.

For those of you not familiar with my story, the quick background is that I started building a tiny house in Oregon while still living in California. I’ve spent the last year traveling back and forth doing discrete building stints. I originally thought I would move my house down to the Bay Area while I continued at my job as a grant and project manager for the Coastal Conservancy, a state agency where I’ve been for the last 25 years. However, as I got deeper into the process of building, it jumpstarted a whole re-evaluation of where I was in my life and where I wanted to be. I was about to turn 50, I wanted out of the city and the constraints of my desk job, and I really wanted to get back to my native Oregon, closer to nature and family. While normally I wouldn’t be able to live off the tiny pension I would get with early retirement, the low expenses of the tiny house should make it possible for me to piece together an alternative lifestyle I hadn’t thought possible. I’ll still need to work some (I’m retiring from state service, not retiring altogether), but by having my basic needs covered, I have much more flexibility in what I choose to do and how I incorporate my work life with the rest of my life.

All of those life changes and transitions happened this summer. It’s been a crazy time: I was simultaneously making several 12-hour trips up to either build or move belongings, transferring major work projects to new staff, cleaning out and organizing work files, saying my goodbyes to the places I’ve lived and the dear friends I’ve worked and played with for the last 25 years, coming to grips with leaving and starting over in a familiar but new place and a much different lifestyle, learning the ropes of life on a blueberry farm, getting my head around the idea of “retiring” (and all the endless bureaucratic forms that entailed!), building new friendships and connections in my home-to-be, packing up and cleaning my apartment, and actually moving and getting settled in with all that requires. On top of this, I set myself a goal of finishing the exterior of my house so that by the end of August I could move it out to it’s initial parking spot behind the barn and spend my 50th birthday night in it.

These next three posts chronicle some of that experience, as seen primarily from a tiny house perspective. Looking over the photos, I realize that in some cases I was too busy living to get pics of key moments and friends so there are some missing events. I also noticed how much we tend to only photograph the good times (of which there were many in the midst of all the chaos). What you don’t see in these posts are the agonies of indecision about how to proceed with the next step, the many months of elevated cortisol levels from too much stress, the pouring sweat from climbing up and down ladders in 100 degree weather, the few times I broke down in tears of frustration when things broke or didn’t go together as planned or deadlines passed unmet, the sore muscles, late nights, and utter exhaustion. But then, really, who wants to look at those photos? Just know that those untaken pics really should be part of this to balance what appears to be a perfectly graceful handling of major life changes. Lesson: social media never really tells the full story.  Continue reading →

Categories: construction, PAD | Tags: , , , , , | Leave a comment

Tassajara, twigs & ten tiny thoughts

Posted on May 14, 2014 by Naj Haus (Kate)
tassajara gate 2014

Entrance gate to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Zenshinji means “Zen Heart-Mind Temple”.

This is another epic post that interweaves several themes lately on my mind: visceral and spiritual design, pursuing passion, connectedness, wabi sabi, reflection, simplicity and, as always, art, nature and transformations. If you are designing or about to start construction on a tiny house, and are a hurried and pragmatic sort, skip down to the 10 tiny thoughts section; otherwise, come take a meditative stroll with me and see why Tassajara has been such a formative part of my tiny house journey…

Continue reading →

Categories: design, thoughts on tiny | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Meet Dee Williams: The Big Tiny book tour & upcoming PAD workshops in the Bay Area and beyond

Posted on April 17, 2014 by Naj Haus (Kate)
Big-Tiny-Intro-Block

Dee Williams’ book, The Big Tiny, is available April 22nd – Earth Day!

To my Bay Area friends interested in tiny houses – Dee Williams will be in town twice in May! On May 4th, she will be reading from her new book, The Big Tiny, at the Book Passage in Corte Madera, and on May 17th she will be teaching a one-day tiny house workshop. This is a great opportunity to meet one of the big pioneers in the Tiny House Movement. Who knows, you might just get so inspired your life could radically change (not that I know anything about that – ha!)

The Big Tiny book launch and tour

Take a Dee Tour and shake up what you thought a life should be: Dee Williams kicks off her national book tour on Earth Day next week in Washington D.C. To read about her book, see her tour schedule, or order a copy, visit The Big Tiny page on the PAD website.

PAD Tiny House Workshops

PAD One Day Tiny House Workshop

Dee teaching a tiny house workshop

Dee will be teaching a one-day Intro to Tiny Houses workshop in the Bay Area on May 17th. If you are starting to think seriously about building a tiny house, this is a great opportunity to learn about technical and design issues that will help you be better prepared. Visit PAD’s workshop page for more information about this class, as well as the two-day workshop in Portland at the end of May.

NOTE: The early registration discount for the Bay Area class ends April 21!

Dee in the New York Times

The New York Times just did a great feature on Dee today with wonderful photos of her tiny house. Check it out here.

 

I’ll also be at the two Bay Area events along with other tiny house enthusiasts. Hope to see you there!

 

UPDATE:  I just learned that the Bay Area workshop will be at The Crucible in Oakland – very cool. There will be a mixer after the workshop for the general public (5-7pm), so come join us! I’ll share more information on this as it becomes available.

 

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Telling our stories: radical acts of inspiration

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Naj Haus (Kate)
journals

Naj Haus journals

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

~ Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living

I’ve never kept a journal. There was that little red one with silver gilt lettering I got when I was seven or eight. I kept it around for awhile because I was fascinated that it had an actual lock with a key I could hide away. I scribbled a couple deep, earth-shattering secrets in it but couldn’t be bothered after that, leaving pages and pages accusingly blank. The key got lost. I made several attempts later in high school and college but just felt way too self-conscious writing about myself. I also lack discipline. I decided I was not born to write. Continue reading →

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Why tiny housers should see the movie Tracks

Posted on March 18, 2014 by Naj Haus (Kate)
tracks_banner-2

Tracks opens in the US late October/early November, 2014 (release date delayed).

I just got back from a whirlwind weekend in Atlanta for a friend’s cd release party (check out the band Roxie Watson: “When you have a group of women who are natural story-tellers, who soothe their aggressive musical chops with beautiful harmonies, temper their rock-n-roll sensibilities with an understanding of Appalachian tradition, and come off as a little bit Keith Richards, a little bit Bill Monroe, you get Roxie Watson.” – Lisa Love, Georgia Music Magazine.)

While I was there, I was telling them about how my journey to tiny houses was influenced by Robyn Davidson’s camel trek across Australia (On camels and tiny houses) and the funny coincidences that have arisen from that (On camels, cameras, courage and kindness). This morning, up early due to jetlag, I got to wondering when the movie based on her memoir, Tracks, was due to open. I found the trailer and was very happy to see that, for the most part, the scenes and images look very true to what I pictured in my mind’s eye upon reading the National Geographic article back in 1978 when I was thirteen, and my many times reading Robyn’s book:

Continue reading →

Categories: thoughts on tiny | Tags: , , , , , | 2 Comments

On poetry and tiny houses

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Naj Haus (Kate)
dian sousa

Cover for Dian Sousa’s latest book of poetry.

It’s my day off and I should be out Christmas shopping or replacing my one pair of jeans that just blew out (the downside of downsizing), but instead I feel the need to write about poetry.

Yesterday I was trapped thirteen floors above downtown Oakland, breathing recycled air and banging my head on my desk, but when I got home my spirits soared. Dian Sousa’s new book of poetry, The Marvels Recorded In My Private Closet, was sitting on my doorstep, waiting to be let in.

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Designing a tiny house in SketchUp: tutorials & resources

Posted on August 11, 2013 by Naj Haus (Kate)
Naj Haus

Naj Haus in SketchUp (since revised slightly, including adding a full-length covered porch on the front)

Now that I’ve survived the last few months of design crunch and the first building stint, I’m catching up on some technical posts. You may remember I was determined to design my house the old school way with graph paper, pencil and a triangular engineering ruler. Part of this was because I loved the tactile feeling of drawing and it seemed in keeping with the tiny house simplicity mindset, and part of it was that my earlier experience with SketchUp had been a little frustrating. I’m usually comfortable diving into a new software application and figuring it out as I go, but I quickly learned that SketchUp, while an amazing free 3D modeling tool, is not exactly intuitive. I was able to make some rudimentary conceptual designs but lines stuck together, moved in strange ways, and basically made me want to kick it.

Just as I was getting serious about my final designs, I stumbled across some online SketchUp tutorials and the lightbulb went on. Once you get a few key concepts, it starts to make a lot of sense. I invested a weekend learning it and then spent the next few weeks painstakingly building my virtual house stick by stick, pretty much like I would do during actual construction (it takes less time if you aren’t making a zillion design decisions and research tangents along the way).

So to share the SketchUp love, here are the tutorials and resources I found most helpful:

Continue reading →

Categories: design | Tags: , , , | 5 Comments

Doing justice to complexity: a love affair with a tiny house

Posted on July 27, 2013 by Naj Haus (Kate)
IMG_2682

ribcage

I Cannot Find My Tiny
for Dean Young

In the age of horses, everyone was
born with their own tiny pony to protect.
It was a large responsibility and they
felt themselves crumpling under the weight of it.
To keep their ponies safe, the people
carried them deep inside of their chest cavities.
They called them Tiny.
Everywhere, people ran wild across the prairies and
then they would remember their Tiny and crumple.
And then gallop once more and then again
they would crumple. The sound of the crumpling
was very pleasing, but the rest of it was not.
The landscape looked like a western,
all of the people either galloping free like the cowboys
or else crumpled in little mounds like dead Indians.
In their Tinies, they knew what was missing.
They were very insecure.
If I were there now, I’d say, “I feel funny.”
I’d say, “Please, let’s go for a trot.” I’d say, 
“Just let me into your ribcage.”
And you’d whinny at me.
That is, if I even knew where to find you.

~ Rebecca Bridge

I came across this poem a couple years ago, long before I had ever heard of tiny houses. I was looking for something meaningful in my life and was taken with it’s longing and evocativeness, it’s raw, tender passion.

During the twelve hour drive back to California, I had a lot of time to reflect back on my first month of construction. While tiny houses and simplicity are often uttered in the same breath, I learned there isn’t much that’s simple about the building of a tiny house.

complexity

hmmmm… 

Recalling the poem, I realized that building a house is a lot like growing a relationship…

Continue reading →

Categories: construction, thoughts on tiny | Tags: , , , , , | 21 Comments

Blood, sweat, tears, blueberries & the most awesome three walls ever…

Posted on July 9, 2013 by Naj Haus (Kate)
IMG_2649

Naj Haus taking shape!

This is an epic post to try to catch up on what I’ve been doing the last couple weeks, since I have woefully neglected the blog. I have two more weeks of building before I return to California, at which point I will do some more technical posts on the floor and wall framing. This will hopefully tide you over until then.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

June 18-19: Limping to Hood River, Oregon

Here’s some advice: even if they say you’ll bounce back in a couple days, don’t have surgery three days before you leave to start building your tiny house. For the week following, I was feverish, in pain, and bleeding and, for a good two weeks, limp as an amoeba. I ended up delaying my departure by a day and even so, it took me seven hours to pack and load since I wasn’t supposed to lift anything heavier than a milk jug. I would move two things and have to rest. Thankfully my friend Lisa stopped by and helped me with the heavier items. I made it as far as Weed, CA, staying awake all night in a creepy hotel room listening to the roar of the truck generators outside my window, hoping no one would break into my car since I didn’t even have the strength to bring my backpack in.

The next day was better. I realized that packing for four weeks, plus all my camping gear that lives in my car, I pretty much had everything I needed to live. I felt light and mobile; there wasn’t much more I would be adding to my tiny house. As if to underscore this, Dad sent me a photo a neighbor had taken of a tiny house that was passing through Hood River as it crisscrossed the country. I immediately recognized it as the Quest for Powder tiny house I had seen in a video Dee showed the first PAD workshop I attended last November. That seemed like a good sign.  Continue reading →

Categories: construction, PAD | Tags: , , , , | 7 Comments

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