About Turn - Going the UK Way

We are in England now where Rani and I are visiting with her parents and other relatives. Rani's parents are in their mid-80's and not in good health. Up until now Rani has been helping her sister and brother to care for them by visiting once a year for up to three months at a time. It is clear that if they are to receive adequate care, Rani will need to be closer and spend a portion of each week with them, so we have decided to base ourselves in Walsall (near Birmingham) for a while.

The gypsy wagon project is on hold, but the months of research on construction should be helpful in projects over here. We may help convert a room in Rani's parent's house into a downstairs bedroom and to build a full bathroom downstairs as well as fix up the garden shed.

The scoop on poop

Loveable Loo Eco-Potty

The "Humanure Handbook" refers to people who have severe problems talking about or dealing with poop as 'fecaphobes'. I think most of us who have grown up only using flush toilets are a bit that way. It is considered rude to discuss such bodily functions and, at enormous expense, we flush our poop away using gallons of expensively treated drinking water. The fact that we refer to our output as 'waste' is telling. Joseph Jenkins, author of the Handbook, sees this as a huge problem - a break in the cycle of life - where nutrients that should be returned to the soil are regarded as waste and flushed away into the rivers and oceans, lost to the land forever. Instead, he advocates collection and safe composting to produce human manure - 'humanure'.

Living on a sailboat forces you to confront how you deal with your own 'outputs'. While a few boaters use composting toilets, most long term cruisers use sea water to flush either directly into the ocean or store in a holding tank, which is later flushed into the sea when the boat is away from the land. We are no different here than we are at home...

Dealing safely and effectively with humanure is a real issue when designing a tiny home such as a gypsy wagon. In the rural setting the choices include installing:

1. A full septic field, fresh water system, and flush toilet (cost between 10 and 30 thousand dollars)
2. A caravan style holding tank, disposing of the outputs periodically in someone else's field or sewer (cost - under a thousand dollars)
3. An incinerating toilet that uses propane or electricity to burn the 'waste'. (cost about two to three thousand dollars)
4. A composting toilet - either home built or commercial, dry or with a minimal flush added (cost one to ten thousand dollars)
5. A dry toilet - aka sawdust bucket with or without urine diverter (cost typically under a hundred dollars) 

The first 2 options waste the output, the second probably requiring fossil fuels as well, to transport the stored material to another location for disposal. The third option uses a lot of energy and also wastes the output. The last two options both treat the output as useful and compost it locally. 

I have read the "Humanure Handbook" from cover to cover and am convinced that in most situations the use of a simple bucket dry toilet with plenty of suitable cover material (mill sawdust in our area) makes sense from so many angles. Pathogens and bad smells are the main concerns in treating human waste. Jenkins shows that by composting correctly, in a central bin where temperatures allowing thermophilic composting are naturally maintained, the majority of pathogens can be eliminated in a surprisingly short time (as little as 6 weeks). Bad smells are also eliminated by ensuring you completely cover your output, using cover material. Jenkins recommends a year to two years before using the resulting compost. The system is very simple, requiring only that you are not squeamish about dealing with your natural bodily outputs and that you follow a few simple instructions when using the toilet and moving the results between bucket and the larger composting area.

Design Constraints and Goals

Some design constraints and goals to be satisfied in building a gypsy wagon tiny home:

• A chance to create a genuine 'home' from scratch
• Experience the complete life cycle of a real building project. 
• Be beautiful, at least to its builder and the immediate neighbors
• Be low cost - so I can justify it's construction
• Be easily moved so that it could be sold or moved to another lot should plans change.
• Contain an indoor toilet and shower, adequate storage for a month long stay, seating for at least two, preferably four people, a functional kitchen, and a separate bed that does not need to be re-made each night. 
• Have something of the spirit of a real gypsy wagon. These wagons were simple but lovely creations that expressed their owner's personalities

I would be very proud to achieve something close to the tasteful warm interior of this house truck

The Many Hats of a Modern Vardo Builder

I have learned that to design and build something as apparently simple as a small gypsy wagon requires you to wear several hats including researcher, artist, designer, engineer, draftsman, estimator, general contractor, and builder. And each of these can compete and conflict with the other. For example, the artist searches for an aesthetic result that may be difficult to engineer. High wagon wheels look great but may not carry the large loads that result from building a wagon that includes a full kitchen and bathroom.  Hence you need to bounce back and forth between roles, the engineer bringing the artist down to earth and the artist scolding the engineer for a design that is pragmatic but ugly. Similarly, the estimator discovers that lumber of the specified size is difficult or impossible to obtain and goes back to the engineer and draftsmen to negotiate a change.

Even the role of builder is really made of a dozen sub-specializations. If you make your own frame from metal you are a welder. When you install a rubber membrane roof, you become a roofing specialist (some membrane makers will not allow an uncertified person to install their products!). You are at the very least a framer and finish carpenter, window and door installer, flooring installer, and painter.

I come from a software development background so I am quite comfortable running projects and doing estimates. I also have some construction experience - mainly through renovating houses. Not being formally trained in any of these areas, I have had to read an enormous amount of material. Fortunately the internet is a great source of advice including How-To e-books, blogs, and videos. However if you are planning to take on a project this size, do not underestimate how much time all this learning will take. And you need to do much of it up front before you finalize your design and begin construction if you care about what the result will look like and how long it will last.

I spent at least a full day understanding how to install a window properly in a wall that was sided with only plywood siding (i.e., the plywood is both part of the structure as well as the exposed siding). Most houses are now built with a wood frame over which a sheet product such as OSB is installed. This is then house-wrapped and windows installed before siding is applied, often over furring strips. The problem with not having two outer layers is that flashing and sealing a window to avoid water getting into the structure becomes much more problematic. I consulted several How-To videos and a half dozen articles and discussion groups finding at least half a dozen proposed solutions from various professionals. I did narrow this down to what I think is the best solution, but this was very difficult to do. First I had to learn current best practices for standard window installation in new construction (and even here opinions and techniques vary). Then I had to understand how these can be adapted for the special case of a single layer of structure/siding. Finally I had to choose between conflicting opinions and distill the most appropriate solution.

All in all, though, the learning process to design and prepare to build a tiny home has been fascinating. It really does require you to learn most aspects of constructing a full size home and adds to these the challenges of size and weight constraints inherent in building an extremely small home that must sit on its own two (or four) wheels. I will visit design goals and constraints in the next post.

Gypsy Wagons - Old and New

Here are some photos of authentic gypsy wagons (vardoes) dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are several well defined types of vardo:

I am most interested in the Burton type of wagon since this looks most adaptable to a small home where you need a good width at the floor in order to accommodate a bathroom and galley. I like the wall taper of the Reading wagons but this makes the floor width a bit small for a full width shower to one side of a central passageway. The Bowtop is a popular wagon for modern builders because it is lightweight and quicker to build (using ribs covered in canvas for the sides and roof). However it is perhaps not as easily insulated as the hard-sided wagons being more of a covered wagon.

Following are a few pics of older wagons (apologies for the low resolution of some of these)

The typical interior was also quite ornate and followed a predictable layout by the end of the 19th century. A fireplace/wood stove would be found on the left side of the wagon (when looking at it from the end where the horse was hitched). This placed the chimney stack on the road side to avoid overhanging trees. There were cabinets for storage on either side of a central walkway as well as individual seats. At the far end of the wagon from the door, a bed was raised on a platform, under which were cabinets for storage. Many wagons had little clerestories letting in light and providing ventilation. There was no bathroom or toilet inside, nor was there much in the way of cooking facilities except for the wood stove since cooking was usually done outside.

Ornate interior - note wood stove to left and raised, curtained bed

Modern wagons often vaguely follow the form of the old ones, with much less ornate detailing. To my eye, many of these imitations are not exactly works of beauty. The old wagons are usually pleasingly proportioned and graceful. Perhaps the high suspensions and wagon wheels helped with this, since the new wagons are usually built on heavy steel frames and standard wheels with rubber tires. Also, modern builders often use design approaches and materials more suitable for shed construction - plywood, metal roofing, and modern plastic windows. There are some exceptions, mostly coming from the hands of accomplished wood-workers. Following are a few of designs that I picked because I like them:

Simple but colourful and nicely proportioned

Raised bed in a modern wagon

This amazing creation is one of the few modern wagons I have seen that has a high suspension with two separated axles.

Extremely well built example with only one axle (most larger modern wagons have two).

Built by a talented fine woodworker in Washington state

And here are a few simpler designs:

Plans for these are available from Portland Alternative Dwellings. It is called the 'Don Vardo' and offered in 8 foot and  12 foot versions, the latter being somewhat similar to what I plan to build.

Creativity

Gypsy wagon or 'vardo'.

Creativity is one of the fundamental human needs. It is something that I have found largely missing from our cruising lives, with the exception of our blog writing and photography. The need to do more creative things will probably drive me to return to shore-based life after spending the last 6 years (off and on) cruising on our sailboat.

Building your own shelter is surely one of the most basic ways to satisfy the need to create. I have wanted to build my own home since I was in my early 20's. I think that building a tiny house in the form of a 'gypsy caravan' would satisfy that desire.

The tiny house movement in its current form is quite recent, although I remember reading books written in the 70's that described similar structures coming out of the 'back to the land' movement of the 60's and 70's. Tiny homes typically reflect the beliefs and personalities of their builders and are often home built. They are usually less than 400 square feet on the main level, being referred to as 'small homes' if much larger than this. Many of these homes are built like miniature gabled houses but are placed on heavy trailers. Mobility avoids issues with building codes such as minimum building size requirements. Others homes are built as cubes (perhaps using recycled containers), gypsy or shepherd wagons, and even railway cabooses.