Why we Decided to go Tiny Vol. 3: Sustainable Living

If you follow my photography, then you probably know how important the outdoors are to me.  Not only do protected wild spaces allow me to have the job I have, but they also have been the root of so many things that I deeply love in my life.  The outdoors has taught me more about myself than just about any other single element in my life, bar family.  For that reason, I am an impassioned conservationist and environmentalist.  If you dare call me a tree-hugger, I would smile with pride. 

Lauren is definitely on the same team as I am, but I am definitely the crusader on environmental issues between us.  Together, we try to recycle as much as possible, pick up trash whenever we are out hiking, reduce our water usage, and buy sustainable products from companies with sustainable practices.  Overall, we just try to do our small part in helping create a world that we would be happy to pass along to future generations.  If along the way we can inspire some people to think a little bit more about how their lives impacts the world around them, then we would be completely stoked.

The USA has set the global example with protecting beautiful public lands.  As citizens we need to do our part by not only enjoying these spaces, but doing our part in keeping them clean and beautiful. 

For many of us, it seems that when the issues currently plaguing our society are compounded with the issues in the forecast, the obstacle seems insurmountable. Although I am optimistic about the capacity of mankind to solve the world’s greatest problems, I do understand the mountain of doubt possessed by the staunchest pessimists.  However, there is only one way to climb a mountain, and that is one step at a time. 

Every single decision you make in your life has an impact on the world around you, so when you break down the issue of sustainability to millions of tiny decisions that happen in your everyday life, the problem becomes much more approachable.  How far away does your produce come from?  Do you turn off the water while you brush your teeth?  Do you walk short distances in town instead of drive?  Those are a couple of stereotypical dilemmas, but my point is that you don’t necessarily have to buy a hybrid car to make sustainable decisions and do your part in this world. 

It is impossible to spend so much time outdoors and not feel some affection
towards the surrounding nature

Being the heavily opinionated environmental crusader that I am, I had to subject you to a slight rant about how we can all do little bit better to protect our planet. Simply telling you why we made certain decisions with our Tiny House for sustainable reasons does not hit home nearly as much if you are not thinking about your own footprint on this planet.  I do not say that to ask you to compare yourself to us, but rather to help you understand where we are coming from and hopefully you will realize that our ideas might not seem so crazy and our background might not be so distant from your own.  With that said, we are no saints on the topic.  Both of us live with excess waste, our produce decisions are more frequently determined by price as opposed to proximity of source, and there is plenty of room for us to improve in this space.

When it comes to Tiny Homes, having a smaller footprint is inherently a more sustainable option than a traditional home.  With only 320+ square feet of space to work with, the amount of material required to complete the home is relatively miniscule.  The overall concept of small space, fewer materials is at the heart of making any Tiny Home a sustainable living option. 

Even though a Tiny Home gives you an opportunity to build a livable space with fewer materials, you still have a choice in the materials you do choose.  It is so easy to get lost in the sauce with a plethora of options at every level of the building spectrum, each with a varying level of environmental impact.

For example, one of the areas of great importance to me was flooring.  With flooring, we knew we wanted wood floors for their weight, warmth, feel, and look.  Within wood flooring, the choices we had were laminate, hardwood, or bamboo. 

Laminates are long lasting, durable, and affordable when compared to hardwood, but they don’t feel like real wood and they use a ton of cork in their backing to give them a softer feel.  Although cork harvesting can be a sustainable practice, cork trees actually grow very slow and when not harvested sustainably, the trees can die in the process of the harvest.

Hardwood has a fantastic timeless look to it, however it is quite expensive and is terrible for the environment.  Although trees do grow eventually back, most logging companies do not do their part in replanting the forests that they are removing and once the hardwoods are removed, the chances of that plot of land ever becoming forest again are very slim.  Hardwood flooring is just one of the small factors in the growing issues of deforestation and desertification, but it definitely is a factor. 

That leaves us with Bamboo flooring.  Bamboo is known for its hardness, making it a durable option that looks and feels like real wood, because it is.  Bamboo is also the most sustainable hardwood there is because it can grow up to 3 feet in a single day, making re-growing the forests for the next harvest a breeze.

All these nights of sleeping in a tent have prepared us to make the tiny transition

Beyond flooring and materials, there is energy/electricity usage.  As a general rule, the less energy you use, the better it is for the planet. We will be using LED lights, which last far longer than traditional halogen lights, and use a fraction of the electricity than their outdated counterparts.  The same goes with modern high efficiency appliances.  Our refrigerator will be about half the size of a large household refrigerator, meaning it will require far less energy to keep it cold.  With our HVAC unit, we are going with a very efficient mini-split system that is powerful enough for the whole house.  Since we have a bedroom on the far end of the house from where the AC unit is mounted, we faced the challenge of possibly needing a second unit, just to power that side of the house.  With some innovative low-tech design changes in our loft, we were able to improve the room-to-room circulation and eliminate the need for a second unit.  Overall, with efficient appliances we hope that a little more money spent on the initial investment will pay of in the form of smaller energy bills down the road. 

Another significant component to making our house energy efficient is the insulation.  Choosing robust insulation will keep us cooler on boiling summer days and warmer on frigid winter days.  This was tough because I originally wanted to go with all natural materials like wool fiber, but I found most of these options to be quite expensive and with lower R-ratings than traditional insulation materials.  We compromised a bit and decided to go with Rock Wool insulation in the walls, which is fire-resistant and a great sound and thermal insulator, then closed-cell foam insulation in the floor and ceiling.  I know some people hate foam insulation because it is truthfully not great for the environment, but it is a ridiculously good thermal insulator, and that will allow us to rely a lot less on our HVAC system and use less energy that way.

Eventually, we hope to gradually build up a solar panel system that can sustain our home completely off the grid.  As solar technology progresses and keeps getting cheaper, hopefully we can take in the glory of the Central Oregon sunshine and proudly power our own home.

If going Tiny means we can spend more time in places like this, we are all for it

The last component of sustainable building for us was reducing our water usage.  Although Tiny Home parking options really dictated this decision, having a composting toilet will really help us cut down our water consumption.  In all honestly, we are not super thrilled about taking care of business in a glorified bucket, but I am looking forward to saving all that water while producing some nutrient-rich soil that we can use around a garden in the future.  I am sure you will see some blog posts in the future about our composting toilet experience. 

Ultimately, we had a budget to stay under, so although we had a million sustainable building ideas, we were forced to prioritize and choose the things most important to us.  As we said before, you can only climb a mountain one step at a time, so that is the same approach we are taking with making our tiny home the most sustainable living space possible.  Above all, we hope that when people read our blog or see our Tiny Home, that they will get creative and think about ways they can reduce waste and carbon footprint of their own lives.  We are not here to tell anyone how to live their lives, but we do strongly believe that we all live on one singularly beautiful planet that is worth protecting and caring about.