This week I wanted to focus on some builders who are doing cool things with green housing, even if that housing isn’t necessarily tiny. The first thing that comes to mind is shipping containers which I have written about before. The more I think about it, the more I am enamored by what is being done these days with shipping containers.

A lot of very bright people have really jumped on board with the concept and realized that thousands of unused shipping containers already exist.  Currently there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 million shipping containers worldwide.  They are highly durable, easily transported and make great elements and building blocks for modular designed homes.  Since the shipping containers already exist, shipping container homes are a great way to build inexpensively while going green.  A shipping container home is by its very nature, partially green and sustainable, due to the fact that the single largest component in a shipping container home is already built.  There are also cost savings with building.  Separate components don’t have to be trucked in from points all across the world or country.  Instead a shipping container can be sent out to the construction site in one piece.

While shipper containers may only be slightly less expensive than building from wood and other traditional materials, the cost savings really comes into play is during the construction process itself.  Homes built using shipping containers can literally be built in half the time.

One of the companies involved in building shipping container homes is SG Blocks. The company name stands for “Safe, Green Blocks.” This company provides code-engineered cargo shipping containers with an eye toward green construction that is highly sturdy and built to be used for decades to come.  SG Blocks realized that modular construction was a major cost savings for construction of all sorts, and they have built their entire company around this notion.  The SG Blocks are designed to be impressively strong.  For example, each corner post is constructed in such a fashion that they are able to withstand 153,000 pounds of vertical load-each.  This makes the design so strong that it is actually highly hurricane resistant.

If you are considering building a shipping container home, SG Blocks might be a good place to begin the process.  They have taken a lot of the guesswork out of the process.  They are in the business of taking shipping containers and modifying them so that they are very safe and durable.  This durability is definitely part of the appeal of building with shipping containers.

Solargon Structures is a rather innovative Fort Collins, Colorado company that is really trying to make some waves in the tiny home universe.  They have three sizes of homes: a 20′ diameter that is 309 square feet, a 30′ diameter that is 695 square feet with 8′ walls and a third model that is 695 square feet with 10′ walls.  The reason that their concepts and designs are so interesting isn’t the size of their tiny homes, but how they approach building and design.

The Solargon Structures concept is designed to be quickly assembled using a yurt design and SIPs, which stands for Structural Insulated Panels.  These SIPs are essentially designed to be prebuilt wall and roof panels that can quickly be laid in place once homeowners receive their building kit.  This design gives homeowners a variety of benefits including being able to quickly erect the structure, work on the structure on their own, transport the structure into remote locations and have a small environmental footprint.  These panels are made from all natural materials as well meaning that no VOC’s are used in the construction of the panels.  No VOC’s means no formaldehyde for example. which,  This principle of course, translates into results when it comes to your indoor air quality.

These panels, the heart and sole of this building concept, have high R-values. As a result, homeowners will have reduced heating and cooling costs.  The wall panels are a very respectable R28 and the ceiling panels are R42.  But saving energy is only one the ways that these Solargon Structures tiny houses are green and environmentally friendly.  They are designed with an eye toward passive solar heating and all the materials used in their construction are from natural materials that are also renewable.

There are some other benefits to a design like Solargon Structures, which might not be instantly obvious.  Being able to build a home quickly means less overall expense, as families do not have to carry the cost of two homes simultaneously.  This is one of the tiny extra benefits that can make building a tiny home really worthwhile in a variety of significant ways.

PowerHouse is a builder that is looking to make a real difference by building tiny homes that pull off a pretty neat little trick.  A PowerHouse home arrives on the back of a single flatbed truck, and is set up in a single day.

That’s right at the end of the day the home is in place and running off solar energy to top it all off.  PowerHouse wants to be a green builder, and to this end they have made they designs sustainable and very energy aware.  The PowerHouse concept for the PowerPod is likely to capture the imagination of many, as this unique design has the added additional benefit of instant gratification. Homeowners can start living in their home the same day it arrives.

A big trend in tiny and green homes is for the homes to be off the grid.  There is a definite move towards creating homes that are freed from the wide array of problems that are associated with being tethered to the power grid.  The first thing that will strike many about the design of PowerHouse’s PowerPod is that the entire concept seems to be built around staying off the grid.  There is a passive solar design that incorporates a solar butterfly roof and solar array. A high level of insulation has also been put into the PowerPod to make the most out of it’s solar roof panels. There are other energy sipping features built into the design as well.  The PowerPod uses SIP design and R-28 walls, insulated water tanks, radiant floor heating and high efficiency lighting.  PowerHouse believes that their mixture of technologies may enable homeowners to cut cost by up to 80%.  The notion of reducing energy consumption by 80% is a very attractive one, especially when one considers the unpredictable nature of home heating and cooling prices.

Water usage has also been taken into consideration.  There is also a rainwater collector built right into the roof as well.  Composting commodes and grey water technology are additional possibilities which all contribute to making the PowerPod a tiny home that could be completely off the grid.

PowerHouse’s PowerPod is yet another good example of a homebuilder that is attempting to provide customers an easier and energy independent option.  They are incorporating technologies and approaches that were overlooked just a few years ago, and in the process helping usher in a new era in homebuilding.  Check out the details at http://www.powerhouse-enterprises.com.

Also, a great way to increase the energy efficiency in your home immediately is to upgrade those old windows to Vinyl Replacement Windows.

German pre-fabricated homes company, Hanse Haus, is now distributing a Rotor House.  The Rotor House incorporates a bit of a carousel theme- and is certainly doing its part to make tiny houses fun.

This is an innovative tiny house that fits into a space of just approximately 18×18 feet. The house is called the “rotor” house, because it actually has a turning rotor.  You can use a remote and turn the house from your bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen.  So when you decide you want to see or visit one room or another, simply pick up the remote control.  There is also a toilet and a small hallway that is separately designated from the spinable rooms. The colors of this house make it look quite space age, as it is circular and white, with calming muted colors in the interior rooms.

Luigi Colani, a designer who was born in Berlin, was the mastermind behind this tiny house. Colani is quite the Renaissance man as he is a sculptor, painter, flight engineer, and philosopher. Colani’s car designs, and furniture designs have garnered awards and prizes over the years.  His website is www. Colani.de.  Currently, Luigi Colani is a professor in Shanghai.

Hanse Haus has been building pre-fab homes for 80 years.  According to their website, the are “leaders in the field of energy-efficient house-building using the highest quality craftsmanship.” The Rotor House is energy-efficient and definitely quite the ingenious way to maximize inner space potential within a tiny house framework.

If you are seriously considering building a tiny home, there is a book that you must pick up.  New Small Spaces: Good Ideas, edited by Francesc Zamora Mola and published by Collins Design, is simply a gem.  This book features forty-one great homes that are all less than 900 square feet.  The homes in New Small Spaces are always elegant and are often mind-blowing.  You will definitely be inspired to create your own tiny home after you see what some of the world’s best and brightest architects have done with their tiny space concepts.

Some of the spaces featured in the book are homes, while others are apartments.  New Small Spaces starts out with the tiniest of small homes and works its way up.  One of the outstanding smaller homes is the Shouldham Street Extension from Henning Stummel Architects in London.  This tiny home may only be 161 feet, but it packs a lot of “wow” into that 161 number.  The exterior of this tiny home is a lap wood ship siding that has been panted in various shades of gray with random Plexiglas strips placed throughout.  The interior is just as creative, as the Shouldham Street Extension has walls that are gloss white.  Perhaps most impressive of all is the way the interior and exterior interact to produce some very well framed shots that any photographer would love.

Ever so slightly bigger at 205 square feet, comes the Boxhome from Norway.  The Boxhome was designed by architect Sami Rintala in 2007 and can be found (looking like some transplant from the future), in Oslo.  This four room tiny home was designed with an eye towards energy efficiency, as well as creating a relaxing space.  The outside of the Boxhome more closely resembles a work of modern art than it does a home.  The polished metal exterior is broken up a highly asymmetrical plus sign shaped window pattern.  The end result is just breathtaking.

Anyone seriously contemplating building their own tiny home, should really take a look at New Small Spaces.  The Boxhome and Shouldham Street Extension are just two of the forty-one homes featured in the book. Most homes in the book are larger, and some homes are as large as 900 square feet.

New Small Spaces, quietly and elegantly, makes the point that brilliant design and innovative material usage can produce some truly amazing homes that can feel much more spacious and luxurious than their number of square feet would dictate. You can read more about this book at the Amazon link.

How serious is the building industry about tiny homes and going green?  Well… a giant corporation like Clayton homes is now involved in both building tiny homes and building green homes.

Tiny and green seem like they are both here to stay.  You might not be familiar with Clayton Homes but they are gigantic, one of the Wal-Mart’s of housing construction.  This massive company has built over 1.5 million homes since 1934 many of them mobile homes and modular homes.  They have 12,000 employees, which they call “team members,” and have 35 different home building facilities.  They also have a big hand in the financing of homes as well.  So who owns Clayton Homes?  A guy by the name of Warren Buffet.  Maybe you’ve heard of him.

The i-House is the concept by Clayton Homes which mirrors much of what we have seen with tiny home and green home pioneers in recent years.  The i-House uses solar panels, energy efficient windows compact fluorescent lighting and energy star appliances to cut down on energy cost.  On the health front, the i-House uses bamboo floors and no V.O.C. paint, both a common fixture in the tiny house and green home movement.  They have even incorporated water saving features such as a tankless water heater, low flow faucets and dual flush toilets.  Additional water is saved via a rainwater catching system.  Interesting.

They have several layouts of i-homes to choose from with catching names like “Layout A,” which is 723 square feet, “Layout B,” which is 991 square feet, and yes “Layout C,” also at 991 square feet.  The homes have a very slick and modern look that will no doubt remind many small home fans of other tiny homes and green homes they have seen.

Having a giant corporation like Clayton get in the tiny home game could be a great thing for the planet.  Clayton produces a lot of homes on an annual basis, and if they were to go green it would have a profound impact on the environment and the housing industry.  Let’s hope the ideas of the i-house are for real and not just pr, as this would be great for all involved.

Loq-kit is one of those grand home concepts that instantly indicates that the home building industry is definitely changing.  What does Loq-kit do that is so different and unique?  The Loq-kit approach wants to literally mass-produce house parts.  And why not?  Isn’t mass production how we build so much of what modern society uses?  Using the Log-kit approach homes can easily be assembled out of a collection of different mass produced parts.  The Loq-kit approach does not mean that all the homes will look alike; to the contrary, the Loq-kit homes have variability built into the concept.

One of the great parts of the design concept is that the parts and component use a “snap-lock” system.  This is part of what makes the concept so exciting, as the home can literally be snapped together.  Even more exciting these snapped together pieces can be separated, allowing for the house to be disassembled and moved.  A house that can be moved, what else can you ask for out of a house?

The fact that Loq-kit homes can be snapped together has several important implications.  This means no wood, no nails in the Loq-kit design.  This also means that the housing parts are reusable and could be used to build a larger structure or change the configuration at a later time.  Or maybe you just want to move your doors and windows as it turns out this too is be possible.  It is even possible to literally raise the roof.  Homeowners could change their roofs, adding more solar panels if their energy needs grow to site but one example.

So what parts are in a Loq-kit house?  There are three main types of components: the modular metal frame, modular infill and modular snap-cladding.  A key aspect of the design is the 6-way connector which enables the components to be locked together by applying pressure in one of six directions: upward, right, left, downward, exterior toward the interior and interior toward the exterior.  Even the wall panels snap into place.

You’re not likely to see too many housing concepts more innovative than the modular and interchangeable designs of the Loq-kit.  The Loq-kit concept underscores what big changes are in store for the entire housing market.

Additional information can be found on the Loq-kit website.

James Howard Kunstler is not a fan of suburbia.  In fact, he pretty much considers it the tragedy of modern society.

He wrote his book, The Geography of Nowhere, “Because I believe a lot of people share my feelings about the tragic landscape of highway strips, parking lots, housing tracts, mega-malls, junked cities, and ravaged countryside that makes up the everyday environment where most Americans live and work.”  He continues the discussion in Home from Nowhere: Remaking Our Everyday World for the 21st Century.

Below is an entertaining video presentation by Kunstler covering some of what he finds distasteful in modern civic design.

Additional information on Kunstler and his books can be found on his website.

Ecopods are modular tiny homes that aim to be eco-friendly.   They are “off the grid” and are made from recycled materials, giving them a very small environmental footprint and impact.  A modular home that is made out of recycled materials?  This should get the attention of all tiny home fans.

Ecopods are taking the concept of turning a shipping container into a home and really running with it.  What they have done is take the already super-tough shipping container, and made it tougher.  They’ve accomplished this by making it weather resistant.  Usage of a shipping container is part of how the ecopod is recycled and eco-friendly, but there is more to come from the ecopod in terms of being eco-friendly.  For example, the floors are recycled rubber from car tires.

The Ecopods are designed to be highly energy efficient meaning that they can be taken off the grid.  The ecopod has a bunch of solar powered options, including a solar-powered refrigerator and roof-mounted solar panels.  They are designed to use a 80 watt solar panel, which should eliminate the need to run power lines.  This, of course, means saving some money as well.

So what does the ecopod look like?  A standard ecopod, they do custom work as well, is a 8′x20′ steel shipping container that has been heavily modified.  Ecopod’s team is particularly found of using steel as a building material. Steel not only has a sturdy nature, but it is “infinitely recyclable.” Steel has always been valuable scrap that makes its way back into the recycling system.

Many people may not get excited when thinking about interior walls, but ecopod is incorporating some really interesting technology for their interior walls.  Magnesiacore technology uses magnesium oxide compounds and natural silicates to create a non-conbustible and versatile building material.  In fact, the ecopod team believes that Magneisacore is superior to “gypsum, cement, clay, wood and paper particles.”  Magnesium oxide is  very commonly found in nature, and Magnesiacore has been given a thumbs up by LEED for all uses.  No wonder ecopod is excited about it.

Note: This post is an excerpt from an article by Heather on The Greenest Dollar.

It is with the utmost excitement that I share this idea with you. And, the idea is constructing a home using old steel shipping containers.

Now, before you throw your mouse at the screen in disgust because those steel crates are just too ugly to even think about being used as a house, just take a look for a moment at what’s possible and then we’ll talk…

Pretty amazing, right? All of those images are from ContainerCity.com, which is the website for Urban Space Management, a group of builders in London who are building entire communities, schools, and farmer’s markets using old freight containers.

They’re funky, green, amazingly affordable, and comfortable. If you want to see more images (all of which will knock your socks off) they have a really amazing portfolio of past projects on their website. Again, which you can find here.

There’s also this really amazing clip from Modern Marvels that you can watch. It’s all about Container City, how the builders did it, and how much it costs to live there (you’ll be amazed at how cheap it is.)

Can You Really Live In A Shipping Container?

Well, I’m new to this myself. When I originally discovered micro home living, I stumbled across a few people who had transformed shipping containers into homes, but I was so enthralled with the modernist designs of the pre-fab mini homes that I gave the freight homes a blind eye.  My mistake.

I stumbled across them again over the weekend, and this time it was a Eureka! moment. I mean, the idea of living in an recycled freight container is just brilliant. It’s still a mini home because they’re not that big, and they’re way, WAY cheaper than the weeHouse or miniHome designs I was looking at (which were going to set me back at least $150,000, not including the land. Ouch!)

How much are shipping containers?

Well, after digging around online this weekend, it seems as if the average is $1,500 to $3,000 each. And, that’s for shipping crates that are 40 ft long x 8 ft wide x 8 ft tall.

Another amazing thing about these shipping crates is that they’re made to stack on top of each other. If you watched the YouTube video about Container City, then you know that every container is made exactly the same, which means they can easily be stacked. This leads to some funky, Lego-like structures that are fun and very interesting to look at.

So How Green Are Shipping Containers?
Shipping containers can be made as green as you want them to be.

Andrew and I are so enthralled with this idea that I think we’re going to go this route instead of buying a micro home. Our idea is to buy three containers, two of which we’ll combine and renovate into a living space, and one which we’ll leave separate for a home office/exercise space.

My goal is to incorporate solar into our design so that we can be off-grid wherever we end up plopping our crates down. We’ve already come up with a really cool design (opening up the roof to allow tons of natural light in, as well as cutting plenty of oval windows like they did with the Container City project, and building a wrap-around deck).

Time for research mode.

Aren’t Shipping Containers Cold and Uncomfortable?
Well, obviously I’ve never been in one. But all the images I’ve seen thus far say the exact opposite. These freight containers are not dark, cold hovels to keep the rain off your head, and you won’t feel like a hobo if you live in one. Once you do some renovations, they can be incredibly inviting, warm spaces that let in far more light than my current home does.

People have cut away entire walls, opened up the roof, and stacked two or three or four willy-nilly to create living spaces that are amazingly inspiring.

You can also buy shipping containers that are already insulated, although I don’t know at this point how well they’re insulated.

And like all mini-homes, they’re also very cost-effective to live in. How much money do you think it takes to heat a 300 square foot living space? What about to cool one in the summer?

Answer: not a lot. Especially if you incorporate a small wood-burning stove.

This young couple (pic on right) in New Zealand transformed a small shipping container into a paradise house. Think they pay a lot of utilities?

No way.

More Shipping Container Resources
So, is your heart pumping with excitement like mine was this weekend? If so, awesome. Here’s a list of more resources you can check out to get you moving…

• RenaissanceRonin: Ronin’s blog is a must read if you want to learn how he’s doing it. This post, here, would make a great start on his blog. And, he’s completely hilarious, so don’t miss it.

• DwellBox: Want to see what it’s really like to build a shipping container home? Then check out DwellBox. These builders are some of the only ones I’ve found that work with shipping containers. Their blog is very informative, and they have tons of photos detailing every step of the work. Highly recommended.

• Treehugger.com: 12 Shipping Container House Ideas: Lots of nice design ideas and pictures for this article.

• Container City: I know I’ve posted this link three times by now, but just in case you haven’t clicked on it yet…

• FabPreFab.com’s Container Bay: This site has an almost inexhaustable list of shipping container projects all around the globe. The rest of their site is also highly useful if you’re interested in seeing more modern, pre-fab mini homes. Highly recommend it!

• TruckertoTrucker.com: If you’re wanting to buy your own shipping crates, this trucking site has a really comprehensive list.

• ContainersNow.com: Another site selling shipping containers. This one’s great because they list prices, which is helpful.

• AccessContainer.com: This site has a ton of different types of shipping containers, and even a model that’s specially cut out to become a home (which would save money from hiring someone to do that). If you click on “Container”, the precut containers are the last link down the page, where it says “45′ Container Home”.

• ZeroCabin.com: This site is amazing. Seriously. Go here now, and just scroll down. These shipping container homes will blow you away.

• Hive Modular: This architect was recommended by Ronin, and his shipping crate designs are completely fabulous. Check out it.