Tiny House Blower Door Test: #TinyLab Test Series #1

Watch as Corbett and Grace test their airsealing work on the Tiny Lab with a Retrotec blower door! They fire up the new Model 5000 fan and find that the house has approximately 160 CFM@50 of air leakage, which is 4.7 ACH50 and 0.14 CFM per sq. ft. of enclosure surface area- and that's with stupid tarps over the window holes! We're going to test again when the windows are in.

Thanks to Julie Tolliver of Energy Fitness for Homes for the idea, to Retrotec for making awesome equipment, to 475 High Performance Building Supply for supplying America with awesome airsealing kits, and to Hewlett-Packard for creating awesome video editing stations that we work on every day.

How to Frame a Tiny House to Withstand Earthquakes + Hurricanes Simultaneously

Corbett explains advanced framing techniques and components for making as strong and as efficient a tiny home (or any home) as possible! Get a quick tour of anchor bolts, hurricane straps and ties, jack and king studs, headers, top and bottom plates.

And come see the Tiny Lab when it's done on its 20 city Proof Is Possible Tour in 2016: http://ProofIsPossible.com

How to Frame Up a House in Two Days (like a Boss)

Corbett and Grace (assisted by lots of family and neighbors) assembled and erected all four walls of the Tiny Lab in two days over Thanksgiving weekend- watch the process accelerated 100x!
Find out more about the Proof Is Possible Tour and where you can see the finished Tiny Lab at: http://ProofIsPossible.com

Wondering where that snazzy song came from?  You can Shazam it or check it out here: http://cdbaby.com/artist/mysteriam
"Velvet Giver" from the album UNMISTAKABLE

If you really want to dig deep check out the music video starring Lennie Johnson, one of the most amazing performing artist we have ever worked with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=174LvV_qOeE

How to Perfectly Balance a Tiny House Trailer

Today we ordered the fabrication of our custom tiny house trailer- big step, and it took a lot of sweat and time to get here. The process is like anything- the more you know, the more you realize you don't know, and it just gets more sweaty and time-intensive as you go. Here's what we learned about how to place the axles for your custom tiny house trailer:

1. Know how the balance should work on a tiny house. Because you're not building it to sit still, the balance should not be in perfect equilibrium. You don't want to let go of the front of the trailer and have it remain upright and balanced; generally you'll want 10% of the total weight to be resting on the tongue. This means if our tiny house is 10,000 lbs, the tongue will weigh 1,000 lbs. You will not be picking that up.
   You don't want the trailer pulling up on the back of your tow vehicle, and when you get it moving, the momentum will do weird things to the trailer's behavior if it has a shed roof front-to-back like ours. The wind is going to want to push down on the back of the trailer to flatten out the plane (we have not hired an aerodynamics engineer to find out how much, but we believe it's not substantial).
   There's a great article on managing tiny house towing weights here.
   
   
2. Know where your trailer fabricator likes to put the axles as a default. It's interesting- the two main trailer fabricators, Tumbleweed and Tiny Home Builders, put their axles at slightly different points along the length of the tiny house trailer as a default. Tumbleweed puts the center of axles 55% of the way back, and Tiny Home Builders puts theirs 58% back (both of these are measured from the front of the trailer bed, not the tip of the tongue). Either of these are approximately correct enough for most tiny house people, but if you want to use a more accurate engineering approach, then read on...
   
   
3. Know how much your tiny house will weigh. This is very challenging. You need to account for every stud, joist, insulation unit, fixture, piece of heating/cooling equipment, furniture, etc, etc. We did this by building a 3D computer model of our Tiny Lab and creating an inventory from there in a spreadsheet. Our engineer buddy John Bergman then figured out where the center of gravity was in the X, Y, and Z axes (vertically, front to back, and left to right). The Tiny Lab is estimated to be 9,300 lbs, with the center of gravity right down the middle, and 45% of the way back.
   
   
4. Split your axles over the point 10% of the way further back. Our axles are located 55% of the way back, which Dan Louche at Tiny Home Builders was easily able to include in our trailer design. Stay tuned for all the videos of the construction process, which starts in under a month!

Engineering a TOURING Tiny House: See the Full Series

Grace and Corbett are building a performance-proven tiny house on wheels called the Tiny Lab! It's going to be built from November to February, and it starts a 16-city US Tour in March of 2016. The Crowd Sourcing Campaign is happening NOW on RocketHub- CLICK HERE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE TOUR! Here's the full series of four webinars from August 2015 detailing the engineering of a super cool tiny house on wheels!

In #1: SHAPE AND LAYOUT, Corbett and Grace show the 3D sketchup model of the Tiny Lab, and bring engineer John Bergman in for some heavy lifting to do with pinpointing the center of gravity on this 24 ft trailer tiny house.

In #2: AIRSEALING, INSULATION, & WEATHER BARRIERS, tour the process of energy modeling the tiny house to determine the optimal R-values and level of airtightness, and hear about vapor barriers, moisture control, and drainage.

In #3: HEATING, COOLING, AND VENTILATION, you get a taste for how wrong a lot of the discussion goes about homes in general, and tiny homes especially. The HVAC design, including Manual J heat load calculations and hourly solar gain curves are analyzed and used for things as straightforward as deciding which direction to park the tiny house.

In #4: BELLS & WHISTLES, see behind the design of the solar PV kit, formaldehyde-free plywood built-ins, composting toilet, off-grid plumbing challenges, and luxury items that just add that quality of life that tiny house occupants are seeking.

We really hope you'll tune in for the videos of construction- you can subscribe to our YouTube channel right now with one click!

Engineering a TOURING Tiny House: HVAC

Tiny home performance is made even more perfect in our third presentation in this tiny house engineering series! Watch as I walk you through the design and engineering of the heating, cooling, dehumidification, bath and kitchen exhaust, fresh air ventilation, and water heating systems in the Tiny Lab.
If you stay tuned to the end, you get to hear me realize I'm a total idiot! Fun stuff!

Engineering a TOURING Tiny House: Airsealing, Insulation, Weather Barriers

Grace and Corbett Lunsford walk through the process of engineering their Tiny Lab, a tiny house taking them on the Proof Is Possible US Tour! Tonight's episode is on designing the barriers to heat bleed, air leakage, and water leakage.
WORKING TINY LAB SPECS: Floor 2x6 with R-21 EcoBatt insulation. Walls 2x4 with R-15 EcoBatt insulation. Ceiling 2x6 with R-21 EcoBatt insulation. Air leakage down to 2 ACH50 or less.

I struggle with frustration, and you might be able to hear it in this presentation.  I'm frustrated that as a relative newbie in the homebuilding industry, I'm constantly seeing work done thoughtlessly, or at least with not as much thought as work deserves. Sorry if I come across as an a-hole, I promise I'm not- I just care a whole heck of a lot, and I spend all day in buildings where my caring comes back to haunt me.

Engineering a TOURING Tiny House: SHAPE & LAYOUT

In our first reveal of the Tiny Lab, Grace and I show off the structural and stress engineering basics of a tiny house, assisted by actual engineer John Bergman.

SIGN UP FOR THE REST OF THIS FREE TINY HOUSE SERIES HERE 

We believe showing home performance dynamics through the lens of a tiny house tour will make it click for a lot of American homeowners. That's why we've created the Proof Is Possible Tour, and we'll visit 16 US cities in 2016! 

PODCAST #72 STUFF TO BUILD WITH: Ken Levenson of 475 Building Supply

Today Corbett talks with Ken Levenson of 475 High Performance Building Supply about Passive House gaining a foothold around the world, what it takes to build for performance, and why the materials and components have to be shipped across the ocean to get to us. Sponsored by Fall Fast Track- the 6 week distance mastermind course for profiting from performance in the private market.

To download this episode or hear others, check the show out on iTunes or at BuildingPerformancePodcast.com

PODCAST #67 ARCHITECT AS BUILDER: Chris Laumer-Giddens

Today Corbett talks with architect Chris Laumer-Giddens, half of LG Squared, about why he decided to tackle the whole pizza, what's wrong with the current models of architect, builder, and contractor, and what certifications like ENERGY STAR or LEED can and can not do for the industry. Sponsored by the Building Performance Workshop Online Training Portal.

PODCAST #57 PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS: Entertain What's Wrong in Green Building with the Green Curmudgeon

Today Corbett talks with Carl Seville, aka The Green Curmudgeon, about the unsolved problems of green product lobbies, utility energy efficiency programs, value engineering, and people's screwed up notions about what's important in buildings. Hosted by Corbett Lunsford of Green Dream Group, and sponsored by the bible for testing homes.

To download this episode or hear more, subscribe in iTunes or visit BuildingPerformancePodcast.com

PODCAST #56 UNDERWATER BUILDINGS: Italian Building Scientists on Venezia's Age-Old Challenges

Today we talk with Piercarlo Romagnoni and Francesca Cappelletti of the Architectural Institute of Venice (IUAV) about seawater vs. brick, mold vs. air quality, and beauty vs. function in a city that's been dealing with it elegantly for 500 years. Hosted by Corbett Lunsford and sponsored by the bible for home performance testing.

To download this episode or hear more, subscribe in iTunes or visit BuildingPerformancePodcast.com