Tiny homes are sustainable to begin with, but when they are also made mostly using recycled materials they are pretty much perfect when it comes to eco-living. The home pictured above is exactly that. It was built in New Zealand by American expats Patrick and Cori and about 80% of the materials they used were recycled. It’s a mobile tiny house currently located near Christchurch.
The couple spent most of their time together traveling, so once they decided to settle down it made sense for them to do so in a very minimalist fashion, not unlike how one lives on the road. Patrick works in construction so he was able to salvage a lot of the building materials required to build their home from the sites he worked on.
Among such recycled and repurposed items are a repainted locker they use for storage, crates that they turned into an entertainment center, a cable spool that is now a shelf, a discarded suitcase they fashioned into a bathroom cabinet, and a foldaway dining table stored underneath the kitchen counter.
The home has metal siding, which is reminiscent of a shipping container home, though this is not what they used. A cleverly placed, large roof window lets in plenty of daylight. Heat is provided via a small wood-burning stove. Instead of a bedroom, they decided to place the main storage area into a lofted space. The bed, on the other hand, is hidden away under a raised platform in the main area of the house.
Their home is currently located on a friend’s plot of land and hooked up to his water line. But the couple are planning on making the home completely off-the-grid in the near future. They have already installed solar panels, and creating their own, DIY greywater filtration system, which is not quite enough to take care of all their water needs.
All told, they only spent $10,000 on building this home, which is quite a feat, and goes to show just how little it costs to build your own home when you repurpose, recycle and think outside the box.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.