17 Free Trade Secrets to Consider for Tiny House Plans
Small Houses are a Huge Deal.
Interest in Tiny Homes have increased almost 700% in just over two years.
What is catching the eyes of homeowners? Why is this a secret phenomenon? Check out the article below to find out more about what drives people toward this oldie but goody. It may just sway your decision about your next home size!
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Small house plans came into existence during the industrial revolution when people started migrating to cities and were in need of an economical yet comfortable home that was quick to construct.
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These small house plans focused on making the most of the interior space while still keeping a strong outdoor presence and a decent connection to the surroundings. As a result, a lot of traditional home plans experienced creative changes in order to accommodate the use of these small plans to fit families into a smaller space.
Apart from making as much use of space as possible, there were two more things that were taken care of – cost of manufacturing and cost of maintaining tiny house plans. A home that is not economical to build or maintain simply defies the core purpose of making use of small house plans.
A few years after the industrial revolution cooled down and economic growth was slow but steadily rising, people started moving away from the small house plans to larger more robust home plans. This movement led to the decline in the popularity of the tiny houses and as a result only a few percent of the population wanted to live in a small house. The decline continued for a while to the modern times until the great surge hit the economy in the first one-and-a-half decade of the 21st century.
The recession, as we popularly call it, forced the population to move to cheaper and more economical homes and one more time small house plans gained popularity. Although the economy is now stable and again on a rise, people have started loving their small homes because of several new reasons. In fact there are many television shows and Hollywood movies that now exemplify the lifestyle of smaller homes and have contributed to the popularity of these plans.
Let’s take a look at a few reasons that have helped the small house plans regain their lost charm.
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Why You Should Prefer a Small House?
Cost of Building
The plot size of a tiny house plan can be substantially smaller as compared to most traditionally sized designs. Also these homes are usually single or at-most two-stories and have minimum ornamentation on the outside. All these factors bring down the construction cost to minimum.
Also the materials used for construction in a good design will commonly be modular; meaning they design the house so it accommodates the off-the-shelf sizes of material during construction. This makes construction faster, and requires less waste which is more economical.
Cost of Maintenance
A tiny house plan designed for focus on simplicity, which will generally avoid too many fancy features.
Thus, the exterior features, as well as the interior features will be ideally straightforward, and built with good quality so that it will last. But even when the home needs to be repainted, caulking needs to be replaced, or roofing needs to be redone; the cost and time of the maintenance can be minimized.
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Cost of Air Conditioning
A bigger house requires a big HVAC system for maintaining the interiors of the house comfortable, but small house plans do not require a large energy milking systems to achieve this.
A small split-system or window cooling unit can be found in most big-box hardware stores, and are cheap and easy to install which is perfect for efficient small houses.
Also, since the number of major appliances in the home is kept to minimum, this further reduces the heat gain produced by the home, and the need of a big cooling or heating system.
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Less Cleaning
Small open floor house plans require a high level of organization; both in layout and in the content that is stored in the home. Therefore, while there is generally less floor space in smaller homes, they can become cluttered and obstructed quite quickly.
The solution to avoiding this is to get into a good habit of keeping up with the storage of the clothes, furniture, paperwork, etc.; and when that’s done, less cleaning is required. Fortunately, the filters of the air conditioner will do a great job at circulating the small volumes of air to cleanse it, so that dust, dirt, and other air pollutants are less likely to settle inside the home.
Builds Family Bonds
Since the space is limited, all the family members are usually in close vicinity of each other. Living in a tiny house ensures good communication and better understanding of each other.
A big house on the other hand fosters the separation of the occupants, and often times kids will spend all day in their own bedrooms learning to avoid other family members. But not in simple house plans, and thus a small house plan is a favorable design for any family.
Easy to Sell
The growing interest in the tiny house plans is one big reason to own a tiny house these days. Until you have the finances to move into a bigger house, the market is primed to invest in a small house.
By the time you have the money to buy a bigger home, the market value of your small house would have increased and you would have earned some good equity on your small house plan investment.
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Common Features of Small House Plans:
Small house plans have potential to meet the majority of your needs, for a much smaller portion of your wallet. Small houses are always advisable if you’re planning to keep a check on your utility bills.
Less square footage in these homes means lesser requirement of maintenance, which results in reduced resource consumption. When it comes to owning a small house, it all boils down to planning and management of space. Irrespective of your reason for seeking small house plans, the following are some of the common features of these plans which you need to consider:
Split Bedroom:
Because these plans are intentionally compact, an amateur house planner may decide to align all the bedrooms such that they are in a single row; but this could be an acoustical privacy issue.
For instance, if an occupant chooses to play loud music in their bedroom while another occupant in the adjacent room desires to sleep after a hard day at work; then the design is not responsive to the occupants needs. Bedrooms placed adjacent to each other make it difficult for their occupants, especially if they have different sleep cycles.
This is one of the many reasons why you should always consider a split bedroom design. A split bedroom design is such that bedrooms are not planned to be adjacent with one another. Instead, they are placed so that a bathroom, closet, or hall always separates the bedrooms.
The best aspect of this design is that the intermediate space can absorb and dissipate sound from the other bedroom and ensure that the privacy of occupants in the home is maintained.
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Detailed Outdoor Areas:
Although small house plans generally keep the exterior decor simplistic, if you prefer to have a well-designed outdoor area, you should be sure to add that to the criteria of your house plan.
Generally, homeowners are under an impression that adding a patio or porch at a later stage wouldn’t cost them much, but the truth is that the later you wait to add features to your design and construction plans, the more costly it can be. One saying in the industry is that it costs cents to add something early in the design, but thousands if you add during construction.
If you’re thinking about constructing a home as per small house plans, then make sure you and your designer vet out all the items and expectations before getting too far into the process, to save time, money, and headaches later on.
Tall Ceilings:
Have you ever entered in a room which appears to be larger than it actually is due to its tall ceilings?
This is also an important feature which you can add in your small house plan. Make it a point to list each room’s ceiling height. In order to give your room a spacious look, ensure that your ceilings have 8-foot ceilings.
Another key aspect which represents this in the construction documents is that top of plate height. This is a jargon used for the top of the wall or beams where your roof trusses will bear. This will help you in finding a new perspective on the height of rooms in your house plan.
Room height can be figured by the refinement of the exterior elevations to the layout of the interior; or can even be calculated per classical means of defining space. According to Architect Palladio, he expressed room volumes by calculating proportions of musical harmony. Proportions such as 1:1.414, 3:4, 2:3, 3:5, and 1:2 were seven methods that he found pleasing.
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Long & Narrow Garage:
Every homeowner wants to protect his or her vehicle and it’s undoubtedly one of their key priorities. If you value the safety of your vehicle, then you should go for small house plans with one of these features.
The first feature is to include in the plan space where two vehicles can be parked parallel to each other. The advantage to this is that is makes the house look wider, and improves curb value. A second option would be to include a long and narrow garage that would enable you to stack park multiple vehicles into the garage.
Finally, another option is use a porte cochere, and fancy term used for a covering of a vehicle from a structure that is not enclosure by the primary structure.
Distance Living Room & Bedrooms:
One of the most common challenges faced by small house owners is the lack of privacy. A majority of small house plans have centralized main area, which is connected to every other room in the house.
Your tiny house should be designed such that the living room of the house isn’t connected to the master bedroom. If you want to ensure privacy and sound cancellation between rooms, then you should choose a house plan that has adequate spacing between each room.
The above-mentioned small house plans features will help you in making an ideal decision. If you consider these features during construction of your house, then you can not only ensure a happy life of all the occupants in the house, but also offer them with the much-needed privacy.
Is Small House Plan Good for My Family?
In recent years, the concept of ‘bigger is better’ has changed. Call it the need of the hour or simply the unavailability of adequate space for bigger houses, more and more potential homeowners are considering smaller homes. But, what may be suitable to the requirements of a particular family might not meet your family’s expectations.
So, if you’re wondering whether small house plans are suited for your family or you should save for a few more years and try harder to find a bigger house, then continue reading further.
The primary consideration when deciding a new house plan is to ascertain your goals and priorities. You should have a clear picture of the type of house you and family will be living in.
When you consider the constraints and needs of a typical 21st century living, there are innumerable reasons which could justify why you should go for small house plans. Following are few reasons;
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Lesser impact:
In this case, resources mean both financial and natural resources. All the resources used by us from nature or the planet, fall under the category of natural resources. Small house plans require fewer materials for construction, thereby using fewer resources.
This results in utilizing a smaller carbon footprint, ad constructing an affordable house which requires not only less money but also natural resources.
Aesthetically Pleasant Design:
Most small house plans maintain a fine balance between structural design and overall aesthetic value of the property. If you get a small house the beauty is in the simplicity and cleverness of the design.
The primary objective of most of these houses is to integrate aesthetically pleasing aspects and curtailing unnecessary structural obstacles. In this manner, you can ensure an eye-pleasing experience for your family within small house plans.
Less Maintenance & Operating Cost:
Maintenance of smaller houses is cheaper than the larger houses. Of course, at some point in the future, you would have to replace the roof shingles of your house, but the less square footage means lesser amount spent on the replacement.
The same principle is applicable on the painting and siding. Operating cost of heating or cooling of your house would also be lesser than larger houses. The logic behind it is that you simply have less space for heating or cooling, which means minimized usage of power.
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Lesser Burden:
At the time when the global economy is not at its best, most financial advisors encourage people to go with small house plans because a bigger house means huge amount of loan, interest rates, and commitment.
Since a small house is cheap to build, cheaper to maintain, and is easier to liquidate; you don’t have to spend your entire life savings on the construction of your house.
Also, since the planning, designing and constructing small house plans is easy, you can negotiate with the designers and contractors and find creative ways to minimize your cost.
Scope for Customization:
Another reason to go with small house plans is the fact that most of these plans don’t rely on design conventions, the freedom and flexibility of smaller plans is innumerable. An ideal small house leaves plenty of room for future customization's or expansions.
If, in future, your family wants to make further changes like addition of a patio in the outdoor area, there is ease and comfort because small house plans are typically very easy to ‘bolt on’.
Wrapping Up
In conclusion, it’s always advisable to research your house plan in detail to weigh the pros and cons. List down your priorities and ascertain your budget before deciding on a house plan.
Of course, you can take into account the above-mentioned reasons for considering small house plans, but you should also consult your family members to understand their requirements. This will not only make the decision-making process easier, but you can always find alternate opinions.
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