Meeting folks

The local two-year college here (what we used to politely call a vo-tech back in the day) has a class on building ‘sustainable’ housing and other greenie nonsense. One of their projects was building tool shed tiny house as a project and then auctioning it off. Here’s the link to the failed auction. And heres a link the school’s attempt to pimp it. So the thing is sitting on a trailer in the parking lot of the school, and since I have never really gotten a close look at on of these things, I hopped up on the trailer and started looking through the glass in the door. After a few minutes a guy came by and and started looking as well.

He said he was curious too, and we got to chatting. He was saying how it would be a nice place to drop out in the hills somewhere because it would ‘not be easily noticed’. Hmmmm. Okay, the survivalist version of gaydar starts tracking….We start talking about the the relative size of the place and I comment that by staying below a certain square footage, it falls below the threshold at which the local zoning nazis start throwing their weight around. And he says, “Yeah, its kinda like the 80% lower of houses.”

Radar lock.

And then the conversation turns a few degrees in the preparedness direction and the next thing you know we’re chatting about all the fun ways to put this thing on top of a buried cargo container and blah, bah, blah.

And that’s how it happens. No secret handshakes, no hanky code, no mumbled sacred phrases, no subtle hand signals…. just shooting the breeze, tossing out a casual comment, and seeing what the response is.

Or maybe he just noticed the pop can thermos in my hand that said “Cmdr. 0” on it. (In my defense, someone gave me that…it’s not the sorta thing I’d have done on my own.)

By the way, the school seems to think that someone would have bid $30 grand for that gussied up tool shed. You could stuff it with hookers and cocaine and it still wouldn’t be worth thirty large. I’d give you five grand and you can keep the trailer. For thirty grand you couuld probably build a real cabin where you’re not crapping in composting toilet like some sort of overgrown tabby squatting in a litter box.

19 thoughts on “Meeting folks

  1. I see you’re not a big fan of composting toilets ( I got the humor in the statement-so I didn’t take it seriously nor am I replying as such ). An underground vault of floating turds is better?

  2. $30,000 “as is”… Nope. No bids in 19 days must be a clue.
    Methinks an Airstream would make more sense.

    My first house (in a bad part of town, ‘natch) was 3 bedroom, 2 bath, partial basement. $15,000. No extra charge for the multiple bullet dents in the steel siding. Yay, steel!

  3. For 30 grand I could buy and retrofit a much, much larger 2 story mancave shed from Home depot ,some undeveloped land a septic system for a real toilet, water tank/ catchment system, wood stove and a 12 volt solar system/ generator. The most expensive things would be the appliances and I could probably squeek that in under budget as well.

  4. Most of those “tiny houses” are built on trailers because that makes them an RV, and not a permanent residence. This allows them to get around zoning laws, and square footage requirements of a lot of places.

      • Speaking of Airstreams….Ben Affleck’s character in The Accountant keeps one in a storage unit as a “portable prepper supply depot” and temporary living quarters (no mention of how water and sewer stuff are handled while it’s parked in the storage unit, but Hollywood always handles all that with some sort of magic…)

        RE: Tiny house as SHTF and post-SHTF quarters. Make it from modular bolt-together insulated panels and you’re onto something. IIRC, max road width is 108 inches ( 9 ft) so a trailer with 8 ft high wall panels works. External and internal wall paneling is T-111, Electric is surface-mounted, the kit includes X feet of roof panels for every Y feet of walls, the walls bolt to foundation structure of your choice (concrete slab, bolt-together frame of 4X4 .250″ wall square steel tubing, site-cut logs, etc.), “Kit B” is a 8 ft section of similarly manufactured gerbil tube with a door for connecting pairs of “Kit A” together to double space. Everything comes on an appropriately-sized trailer, ready to go, and can be assembled with two fully charged 20 volt tool batteries (all assembly bolts are the same size, so one socket does it. For extra points, include the 20 volt impact driver and batteries – the complete bug-out kit, just add a vehicle with a receiver hitch and a destination.

  5. I seen that thing floating around the big city. did not know the back story. the stupid liberals did not find a buyer before competition. explains a lot, when socialist try to do capitalist things….. surprised they did not sell it to Mayor MC Cheese for 60k, a new home for a family of refugees from out state or out of country. as for out in the country. better angle that overhang to a 45 unlike the valleys the hills get 6-8 feet of snow, no wood stove, I bet the walls and roof are sub R13….i will stop there and build my own.

  6. Kinda cute! But I don’t think it has a composting toilet as it says it’s meant to hook up to “septic/sewer & fresh water.” Which is good. After dealing with a “composting” toilet for years, I found I preferred the outhouse. The small ones don’t actually compost, they dehydrate the poop – which rehydrates as soon as you dump it outside. Ours couldn’t even handle tp, so that had to be burned. We’ve had a modern flush toilet for 1 1/2 years now – I LOVE it!

    I could see living in a tiny house, as long as I had a truck to move it. And I’d modify it for off-grid. Since we can lose our power at any time in the winter, we got a battery-ignition propane stove for cooking. Pricey, but I I love it.

    • You need to dump it in a enclosed solar composter and leave it a year ( two in cold climates ) once full. It amazes how scared people are of dry turds and prefer wet ones. Isn’t a shriveled dehydrated dog turd on the sidewalk easier to handle than throwing them in a bucket of water, letting them stew, then feeding the lawn with them?

  7. How was the construction quality? I admit I’m suspicious that it was not up to your standards.

    • The construction quality isn’t what I take issue with, I take issue with the ‘eco-friendly’ compromises and the outrageous asking price for what is essentially a garden shed with some insulation and wiring.

  8. Wern’t those two year colleges called remedial high schools several years ago. I went to one about a semester and was unable to hear cause I’m so old and the kids were too loud.

  9. Just sent you a email about the Worst Gun News on the Browning Hi Power that you may want to do a story on.

  10. I’m with you on this; I had a friend a few years ago that spent $15k on one that was unfinished because the finished ones were $60k where she lived … In my area the unfinished one would be $5k and most of that would be a nice trailer…
    The whole idea of a tiny house is a Liberal’s work around to expensive real estate CAUSED by Liberal rules on planning, permitting, and zoning that were INTENDED to drive up property prices. Tiny houses aren’t the solution; fixing the rules intended to create the problem is.

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