Category Archives: eco-friendly

Tiny Home Sweet Home

The Nesthouse from Tiny House Scotland a revolutionary small eco-house.

The UN predicts that by 2060 66% of the world’s population will live in urban environments. One of the biggest challenges ahead of us is meeting housing requirements for this tribe of city dwellers. Space is limited and expensive so some home developers are thinking small. How does this help as we also consider the needs of those currently without a home?

Last night saw an audience of over 80 people at an Edinburgh International Science Festival discussion hosted by architecture author Jane Field-Lewis, to discuss the hot topic of Tiny Home Living.

Tiny House Scotland’s Nesthouse prototype was featured in a presentation by Susan Carleton, a proponent of affordable small housing solutions, as the only moveable modular small eco-house currently being developed in Scotland!

Dr Mike Page from the University of Hertfordshire discussed the Cube Project - now on its second outing to the Science Festival, while Dr Caroline Brown of Heriot Watt University discussed the planning and social implications of small space living. The benefits of a small form factor for disaster relief housing was outlined by Julia Glenn of Extremis Technology. It was great to see the potential of serious small housing getting some attention in the UK!

Edinburgh International Science Festival

Edinburgh International Science Festival

Legend Lloyd Kahn to talk in Fife

First UK presentation by Lloyd Kahn, Editor in Chief of Shelter Publications, California.
Championing the self-build approach since 1970, Kahn has inspired and empowered first-time housebuilders around the world.
Presented by Fife Contemporary Art & Craft with The Bothy Project & with participation of Reforesting Scotland’s A Thousand Huts Campaign.

The event will take place on Tuesday 10 May 2016 at 7.15pm in the Beveridge Suite, Adam Smith Theatre (Bennochy Road, Kirkcaldy, KY1 1ET). The venue is fully accessible with ramped access to the building and a lift to the Beveridge Suite itself. Tickets cost £10 (full price) and a limited number will be offered free for students & school pupils.

Further details here.

Lloyd Kahn talk

Lloyd Kahn talk

Scottish Parliament Thousand Huts Meeting

A seminal moment in the Thousand Huts Campaign at the Scottish Parliament.

A seminal moment in the Thousand Huts Campaign at the Scottish Parliament.

Last night I attended the launch of the new huts planning guide at the Scottish Parliament with 80 planning professionals, architects and hut builders at an event hosted by Angus Macdonald MSP. Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs, Richard Lochhead has welcomed the guide, saying:

“Huts and hutting are a great way for people to enjoy Scotland’s outstanding natural environment, with all the benefits to health and wellbeing this can bring. I very much welcome the publication of this guidance, which I hope will provide an important opportunity for many more people in Scotland to enjoy the recreational benefits associated with huts and hutting.”

The Thousand Huts campaign team and Planning Advisory Group have spent 2 years working with planning and building professionals to produce this guide to help planners, architects and hut builders alike achieve good practice in new hut developments. This work was supported by The Planning Exchange Foundation, and has been reviewed by planning, legal and tenancy professionals in the public and private sectors and at a local and national level. It is designed to help support the rolling out of Scottish Planning Policy (SPP) on huts.

It was a very inspiring evening which is set to change the future of planning laws for small buildings in Scotland.

The Nesthouse from Tiny House Scotland

The Nesthouse from Tiny House Scotland

#hutting #thousandhuts

 

Living small - living simply - living better

Nesthouse 4.8 with Enter module.

Nesthouse 4.8 with Enter module.

Whether in a tiny house or a small house - Living Small also implies a degree of self sufficiency, but is this realistic - must we become Hippies from the 60’s to have a better lifestyle?!

You can simplify your life wherever you live - urban or rural; Lloyd Kahn the original small living guru wrote, rather comfortingly, in Shelter that

- self sufficiency is a direction, not an attainable goal. The idea is to do as much for yourself as possible - not ploughing your own fields with horses or growing your own wheat or making your own shoes but doing something within the context of your life: remodelling a house, creating a studio, building a table or bed, fitting in things like a productive garden or chickens or homemade bread, or lettuce and chives in pots on the window sill.

It’s a tightrope act, finding the right balance these days, between work for others and work for yourself, between creating things with your own hands and buying things from others. Just like finding a balance between sitting at a computer and physical activity.

Small is a path on a journey - houses evolve naturally - adapting to the needs of their occupants - this is ‘proper architecture’ in my opinion - see Stuart Brand’s fascinating book How Buildings Learn - if small facilitates young people achieving their first home then being able to add to it as needs and funds allow - means they means will have a healthy regard for their own property and not be pressurised by having to aspire to some unachievable mansion lifestyle which is not only un-affordable but unsustainable.

Windowcill herbs - an element of achievable self sufficiency

Window cill herbs - an element of achievable self sufficiency

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

New turned beech handle for old shovel - reuse, recycle, woodturning.

Repair and reuse! My favourite shovel was inherited from my Dad and finally snapped the other day after a bit of an accident with the tractor (oops) ! So I got the lathe going and turned a new beech shaft ♻♻ for it. Oiled and fitted with a Jonathan Avery badge - its as good as new and ready to do another 50 years service.

It does take quite an effort to drill out the rivets and extract the shaft sockets from the metalwork…but how much better than just throwing out and spending £30 or whatever on another one? Reduce, reuse, recycle!

I am getting quite practised at this after similarly replacing two garden fork handles recently due to an over-zealous eldest son ( OK, the forks had been left out in the weather all winter!)…but at least this way - an hours’ effort to restore something means there is a greater incentive to look after it properly!

forkHandles

Four Candles

Sustainable fuel.

JMA_1832

 

Before the sap rises too much it’s time for me to take one of our big poplars (18m 60′) down for next winter’s firewood. This coppicing means that the stool does regenerate and produce plenty of new poles. Also we do have over 200 of them - so at the current rate of one a year…well you get the picture!

Now I know poplar is not the best wood to burn…according to folklore it will rot before it dries and even if it is dry, it burns too quickly! However, this has not been entirely my experience and but we do have a great drying shed and a very efficient Danish stove with precise control. As this is the fifth year I’ve done this at Shangri La…then I am allowed to say, well “it just works!”

In you case you are interested (!) in the felling method - that was a 70 degree face cut followed by a central plunge cut, wedged, then back cut!