The conventional “Tiny House” movement shrinks conventional buildings to their minimum size and cost. This article is about a breakaway prototype tiny room that......

Hi Dan,

Here is a draft article l have prepared that you might be interested in.

It explores how one day we might be able to live in our gardens.

It still needs some work and l am not sure where to publish it. I guess it comes under a new genre called CLI-Fi except this is real liveable science fiction!

Regards

Callum Morrison in AUSTRALIA

(Picture:Dynamic Passive Solar Health Tram)

The Tiny RoomMovement

By Callum Morrison

 

The conventional “Tiny House” movement shrinks conventional buildings to their minimum size and cost.

This article is about a breakaway prototype tiny room that literally moves out of a garden shed through a specially constructed garden and pushes into new open design frontiers and warping of conventional permaculture zones.

Zone 0,1,2,3 becomes 0..1, 0.2, 0.3 and threaded through 1,2,3!

This warp creates an escape into a habitat of your own making to help rejuvenate you for going back out to tackle the problems of the outside world.

 

For years I dreamed about constructing one of these and have explored lots of design options and potential in recurring and very realistic dreams. While laying in bed it is easy to close your eyes and imagine the fresh air, with distinct aromas from tomato and carrot plants, buzzing insects, lushes gleaming green leaves of loaded fruiting plants and amplified warmth of whatever winter sunlight is available. I close my eyes and go there often to work on design questions and plan my work/fun schedule. As it has started to materialize it is even more amazing than I imagined and I would like to share with you the overview.

 

I have called my moving room a “Health Tram” given that it is a renovated trampoline on tiny wheels and moves on wooden tracks. It can either be thought of as a shrunken building, a new type of garden furniture or an extension to your clothes to trap or avoid heat to a desired comfort. Just make sure the suitable panels are in place for the next few hours of weather and then climb aboard into what is a sort of future eco nest. Before you go diving into this new frontier, please read the disclaimer at the end of this article.

 

Time appears to slow down and the infra-red warmth of the sun is amplified, trapped and UV filtered for you to safely bask, smile and drift off to sleep. The idea came from watching dogs and cats find optimal comfort locations to rest and sleep in the back yard. I saw how they moved through the day so I decided to construct my own adjustable microclimate creating apparatus. In effect I have taken apart the weather, window and other parts and layers of a conventional building and garden and constructed them along a track so they can be better accessed and separately and customized to the needs of the occupant/s...

 

The health tram rolls on tracks only a few times its own length through the garden but don’t be deceived by the short length of track. This is a vehicle for more comfortably and ethically travelling around the sun each year. The objective is better health and less environmental and financial impact than all other built environments by innovatively reducing compromises. It is the closest you are going to have to a spacecraft in your back yard.

 

Why would you take a 15 year old trampoline, turn it upside down, place it on wooden legs with castors in rails and place an old tent on top of it with roll bars? For all the positive reasons you go camping and even more aspects that make sense and support life.  The ‘roll’ bars are actually ‘role’ bars that support an assortment of different panels that are customized every few hours according to where the sun is and what the weather is doing. This is just like you do with your clothing but this case it is climate changing your personal space, not just your body.

 

It frees you up to wear what you like and relax without having to worry about the static charge, off gassing and the fragmenting contaminants of synthetic clothing. Sometimes the weather changes, so like the sails on a yacht, you need to make appropriate adjustments. You soon work out whether you have made the right adjustments.

 

It is the close up arms reach food garden outlook, fresh air, lively plants and animals, comfortable passive energy systems, bird calls and clouds in a wide open sky that improve health. The floor is a virtual sleeping hammock on the old trampoline or it can also accommodate a seat or bean bag. Note the trampoline base has two ropes under it to reduce the sag, provide support along your back when sleeping and as a safety precaution if the rotting thread on the trampoline canvas tabs holding the springs give way. One spring noisily shot off the other day and woke me up but the other springs held!

 

I am proposing to use various panels to keep out dangerous UV radiation, biting insects and threats to indoor air quality while letting in and even focusing or directing fresh air, sound, tastes, aroma’s, sensations and warmth to benefit the health of the occupant and the planet.

 

All of these have powerful healing and health promoting attributes and together with minimal costs and environmental impact, it can make the most practical use of any time out and quality self time.

 

The health tram is not much larger than personal space however it opens up amplification of the senses to far beyond that of a normal building. The fresh air, sounds of nature, panoramic view out all sides and the big sky make you realize all the health, environmental and economic compromises of occupying conventional buildings. Imagine a reach out and touch room where you get to choose the whole wall and ceiling composition any time you like. It does not have to be weather or security proof because this whole room can retreat into a shed when unattended or the weather starts to turn. 

 

Almost all buildings have a fixed view and garden. This tiny room has the choice of what vegetation types and density to look out on and a choice of fruit and vegetables within reach. The garden can easily be watched for pest activity and cared for in comfort. Imagine being able to seemingly hover over a garden bed in comfort and examine and plan its maintenance intricacies. Unlike any other human shelter, it can straddle garden beds to generate an aroma from underneath and when the conditions are right, allow you to head out into a dry balmy night in comfort, mosquito free to watch the stars and clouds. Gardens are full of alien looking creatures attacking the plants and attacking each other day and night so providing the right habitat for the good guys helping to defend your ecosystem is really important. Working out what is eating your seedlings or fruit can be done in comfort. 

 

If extended stints or self contained versions are proposed then heavy kitchen or wet bathroom plumbing fixtures of this accommodation are proposed to stay in a shed. Some fixtures on board could be supported by roll out of an umbilical water hose and extension lead for power if desired. Trapped rain and reused water and nutrients are proposed to be processed by earthworms and then distributed to help sustain the vines for food and cooling.

 

The tiny room, at its minimum, is just a wooden and metal frame on casters with no walls or ceiling and just like a large hammock. Most of the summertime there is usually a shell of insect proof screens but additional reflective mirror panels, UV light filters and assorted thermal mass heat traps are utilized at other times to minimize energy consumption for heating and cooling and maximize natural comfort.. The tent is in place temporarily but by winter the flexible base of the tent and the zip door end will be retained while the rest of the tent is replaced by close fitting interchangeable walls and ceiling panels.

 

(picture: IMG_1075)

 

When out of the shade tunnel, reflecting panels open out to boost the amount of sunlight heat entering the wall. The fly screen walls and ceilings are there to protect against biting, stinging and creeping insects as well as poisonous snakes that might be following frogs up through the shade tunnel vegetation.

 

(frog photo IMG_1042)

 

It is great to be using a computer in a such a healthy space with natural light.. Sounds distract you and rest your eyes and mind. Birds are intrigued, call to let you know they are there and I find I don’t need to use my glasses as much on the computer. I guess there would be room for a pet or another person if you wanted company.

 

The health tram is a very creative space. When you wake up and go to unzip the door of the tent or health tram you could be anywhere you have just dreamed about…..

 

1.   You could be in your own back yard realizing its full accommodation potential and considering renting out your house to get ahead financially.

2.   You could be helping refugees grow and assemble their own emergency accommodation to escape terror of the past by focusing on a new and unfolding positive healthy future. 

3.   You could be with a group of nomadic or indigenous peoples wanting to return to their lands in comfort to blend science and permaculture with their ancient traditions.

4.   You could be in a new type of caravan park site – not just an unserviced tent site but a health tram site with an established shade tunnel, garden and storage shed with amenities. You might be towing your standard sized flat pack health tram with you our just stay in one assembled ready on site. A fraction of the cost and impact of a conventional caravan.  How much would it take to convert my prototype into an up market version for “glamping” – glamorous camping!

5.   You could be on a theatre stage about to entertain, educate and inspire hundreds of people with several onboard and hand held cameras broadcasting to big screens to provide a glimpse into an environmentally healthy future. (See computer generated set mock up set with sun and moon simulation arching light boom for educational purposes.)

I thought about trying to write a play but maybe making this set design available and pointing out all its attributes to theatre writers and actors would result in more theatre of varying composition. Things like showing time passing with the lighting that designates the position of the sun and the moon could be really effectively used.. It could even be used to show time going backwards and become the standard set for a competition or series of small or short plays written around the same set.

(Ecliptic Boom.jpg and Set for Climate Change.jpg)

6..   You might be building one of these at your school so children can compete in competitions racing to reach certain internal air temperatures and advance garden design and productivity. Each student might be broadcasting from their own microclimate cockpit. If we got all the science and design right then one day whole school class rooms might be built into one of these rooms straddling multiple tracks through giant shade tunnels.

7.   You might be in a new type of hospital or aged care facility where bed bound people are wheeled down the sterile corridor and through some well sealed doors where the bed slots into the protective shell of panels on a powered health tram. Then the patient or automatic systems move the whole bed slowly out through the shade tunnel and fresh air to stop wherever the patient feels comfortable. Instead of the patient being scanned, it is the patient who does the scanning.. This activates all their senses and they reap the benefits. If chickens had access to the elevated garden in amongst the vines, the chickens could eye off the patient through the fly wire waiting for the occasional feed pellet to be dispensed. There is something intriguing about spending time with a dinosaur with feathers. Being booked in for a “chicken scan” could one day be part of many standard medical treatments.

8.   You might be in the “good permaculture human” exhibit at the zoo that is demonstrating the importance of diet, range, exercise and the importance of habitat – just like every other enclosure at the zoo. Humans have to start reducing their impact on other species or a visit to the zoo will be an awful experience of what species and habitats have been lost around the world.

9.   You might be opening the tent door on top of a multi-storey vine and scaffold covered structure in a future city thriving with food and wild life.

10.                 What would you like to do and achieve in this new personal space…… it is up to you?

 

Vines hide the hanger/shed from view and it is probably so small and totally screened so that a permit may not be required for construction if of limited height and floor area. You may still need a permit for camping in some municipalities. There are lots of new underpinning permaculture techniques needed to build and grow such a building.  My previous articles on octopus irrigation in “self watering bucket” and “Drip Allocation with Octopus IV”, was the first of several future articles on each component of this new thread of permaculture systems. The disclaimers on both these articles also apply to this one so read these before acting on any of this information.

 

The portable hinged wooden rails are stored in the shed/hanger out of the weather when not in use. This puts them out of reach of ravenous termites and rot conditions so no paint, toxic chemical pesticides or preservatives are required.. Fruit tree pruning off cuts have been used to construct the tunnel for the vines to climb over. Small pieces of old poly pipe were used to join these in several ways like flexing tent poles are assembled. 

  

This prototype is really about micro climate change for humans in a positive and relaxing sense for a change. It shows what you can change and do at arms length and within a few paces to reduce your impact. All the benefits of eco-camping to start with but if a new more viable accommodation unit of civilization eventuates then I guess some people might take over multi-storey cities with these one day.. Our history of nesting in trees, caves, huts, single room buildings and homes suggests we could revisit and make the best of aspects of all of these if we try... It is positive science fiction without the fiction and great to dream about.. Most of this article was written on board the health tram.

 

My background and career to date in environmental health has been spent taking action to prevented illness and environmental contamination by ensuring universal precautions are taken. It has been really disappointing to see potentially all the gains made over hundreds of years be potentially reversed by the threat of climate change and declining scientific awareness.. Food safety and food security, clean, air, water, land and absence of disease do not just happen of their own accord.. Although our conditions now might appear to be good to the untrained eye, they can change quickly and many people are currently living out of sight in really terrible situations.

 

There had to be a better way of humans accommodating ourselves in the future and hopefully this idea takes us much further down the track in greater health and comfort.

 

Disclaimer: If you are going to build and grow one of these it is your responsibility to check with local authorities whether there are any planning or building requirements or other approvals necessary.  Take care in the garden as there are many risks.  You don’t have to go out into outer space to encounter some pretty toxic microscopic aliens, chemicals and radiation. Study up on the local biting life forms – we have some really tough creepy centipedes longer than your finger and with ominous pincers under their head.  If there are local issues like bushfires or tornadoes then you might have to beef up the vines over the shed or very carefully consider a bunker in your design.

Lightning is something that might also need some consideration.

Obviously I and the Permaculture Research Institute take no responsibility for any loss or injury from this space age re-entry into your garden but we do claim all credit for the good that flows! 

 

Thank you to the Benalla Woodworkers Association who custom router cut my groovy portable rails. 

Sent from my iPhone