Joking aside, take it easy with the grandmother stuff; mine just recently died.

We had her cremated.

We think that's what did it.

The last I had heard, the program had been in place for a year and Utah has saved more money than expected. Something about how fast people were transitioning from the provided housing to their own places, or their families taking them back because they got clean and found work and have their meds. Crazy times.

My appologies if I mixed up different things or didn't explain it well. I'll try to explain it better :)

I agree that smaller volume needs less energy to heat and I also agree on the insulation part, but again the surrounding climate here is the main factor, as you pointed out. Maybe in other coastal parts of the world it's a different story, but here all the houses are built the same way and for a reason - > high humidity all year long, 9 months of almost constant rain and strong winds. You won't see a native here with an umbrella, because it's pointless to have them, the wind tears everything down :)


Our houses have walls that are usually around 30cm thick (different layers) + styrofoam (like in this picture). I think this is a good insulation. I've been in many other houses and everybody has the same problem with the mold and the humidity no matter the insulation. I've also been to a house that had scrap pieces of paper in the insualtion and it's still the same problem.
Plus the human body also releases a lot of fumes just by breathing, not to mention the fart-festival after some good beans :) Cooking also produced a lot of fumes and humidity.
It needs to get aired often that's the only solution and afterwards you need to heat it often as well.

Maybe that's the key here. From Semptember until May it's raining almost every day here. During that time it's also quite cloudy, so not much sun here. We also have 2 very common kinds of wind, "jugo" which keeps everything warm and moist and [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bora_(wind)]"bura"[/url] which is cold and dry, but either one of them is very strong and usually comes paired with the rain so humidity assured.
Every house is build so that the most windwos are facing East, that's also where the house is facing, and the other sides of the house either don't have any windows or have only a couple of them.

Hopefully I explained it a little bit better this time. I do like these microhouses, it's just that they aren't perfect for every place. Especially with a climate like it is in Dalmatia :)

This entire post reminds me that building construction used to be an art form, but when electrical AC & Heating became available they got lazy and did whatever rather than optimizing for location and positioning to take advantage of the sun and whatnot.

Kinda sad, and one of the examples of progress actually meaning we take two steps back.

Reminds me of the pinnacle of decadence on Arkon in Perry Rhodan's books.
The Arkonides (well, not themselves of course) were building they're houses like pyramids but upside down, keeping them upright with anti gravitiy generators...

You might enjoy a stroll around this website: http://naturalhomes.org/

http://earthship.com/

Unrelated to that: http://www.cchrc.org/ to learn some nuts and bolts of current research in Alaska.

Definitely something I'd take for a vacation but nothing I could live in forever.

Back when i joined the military, i noticed something very interesting. After 3 days of a chance in life pace, you became accustomed to what was going on and it became the new norm for me. Maybe i'm just more susceptible or ready for change, but i bet you would adjust much easier than you think to living completely different once you got the basic pattern down.

This may be a little late, but i've heard second hand that in New York it is illegal for them to raise the prices of apartments. With that in mind, families will will their apartment to their children and grandchildren. This prevents the price from raising, keeping it cheap.

By law they can only raise the price if someone vacates a spot, and they can only raise it by a percentage and not to any price they want.

Yeah, if I remember rightly in the last episode of Friends, Chandler says something about 'thanks to rent control, it was a friggin' steal'

I actually find that space too cluttered. I'd prefer something like this:

http://www.businessinsider.com/tiny-86-square-foot-paris-apartment-2014-10

But then, I would have to be single and without children. I did live in a 300 sq.ft. apartment with my wife when we were first married, and we liked it quite a bit.

I love the concept and idea :) Actually there's several that do that. One that redid a pigeon loft to be his home.

I've actually heavily enjoyed most of Kirsten Dirksen's videos on tiny houses and people's ingenuity to living with so little.

That looks like some japanese hotel rooms.

Sometimes I watch a programme from Usa that´s about two brothers who remodel houses and another about a woman who tries to convince the people to remodel their homes while the man tries to convince them to buy a new one and I can´t believe how out of touch with the real world most of the people they show are. They live in HUGE and I mean HUUUUUGE houses and they whine because they don´t have space, there was even one time they went to this three story house where a usual family of four lived ( 2 adults and 2 kids) and they whined because they didn´t have sufficient space O_O! Seriously I think some people in this world need a reality check, they have delirious of grandeur and want nothing less than a Taj Mahal or a barroque palace with hanging gardens and maybe a skyscraper for the dog.

haha, i know what you mean...

There's so many people that don't live in one type of life style before moving to another. The system convinces you that you should have a big house and lots of items. A lot of people also don't understand the value of money, those born in rich families get everything pretty much handed to them and don't ever work or have a high paying job handed to them. Annoying.

I lived dirt poor. I lived in a tiny place. I know my place is probably too big, especially since i have trouble keeping it clean. Maybe i need more book shelves.

Regardless, i totally agree with you.

Recently in the last week i tied a very thin piece of Bankline to a small cheap eye hook (screwed in the bathroom wall). It sounded good, although being tightened by hand i couldn't play a tune, i could hear it VERY VERY clearly. Yes directly to a wall won't work, but something else immediately outside worked well... Using a keyring as well with the eye-hook i think extends the sound a little but sounds a little more metalic, or worse if the ring is angled wrong...

edit: After a hint of testing, the is keyring all around is better than nothing, but worse than the eye-hook for renascence. Interesting experiments for making a cheap harp as part of your domicile :)