eric haller

small houses

“Small rooms or dwellings discipline the mind, large ones weaken it.” – Leonardo Da Vinci

i have started thinking about building a house. one month from today i leave for costa rica, and if all goes according to plan i will be helping my friend marc build a house on his property. in the back of my mind, this may be a warmup project for building a place of my own. we’ll see how that plan develops, but i surfed onto a post with lots of links to people living in smaller houses, and it definitely set my mind racing with romantic notions of a wee place in the big outdoors. i know, one man’s walden is another’s unabomber shack, so if i do end up with something like this i won’t wear hoodies with mirrored shades and a bad porn ‘stache.

i might grow back the ‘stache. in any case, something to mull over on a sunday night.

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4 responses to “small houses”

  1. Jackson West Avatar
    Jackson West

    In my own family’s forays into the countryside, we’ve learned that it’s not about the size of your house, it’s about the number of outbuildings. Our ‘compound’ now has five, six if you include the wood shed.

  2. eric Avatar
    eric

    i stayed at a friend’s compound in new zealand that was a collection of eight or ten street trolleys, campers and trailers, all parked and converted into little rooms dispersed around the property. (there is something about the law there that if you leave the tires on the vehicles you don’t have to get permits to build).

    the wood shed is included in any building census, without question.

  3. Don Park Avatar
    Don Park

    Why not just get one of those travel trailers? They are like small houses that you can take with you when you get tired of the scenery plus the advantage of not having to pack when you move.

    BTW, how do they handle sanitation at remote locations? A pig under the house?

  4. Marc Regan Avatar
    Marc Regan

    There are 2 possible solutions for sanitation: Either install a sepic tank, or a composting toilet.

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