My tiny house project is still running

Finally, some updates on my tiny house (container) project. It was a little quiet on that front, because first nothing much actually happened, and then a lot happened, but I just didn’t take the time to write down everything, because I wanted to DO. Since I’m now almost finished with the first step, this is going to change.

I decided a while back that I didn’t like to keep the walls of my container the way they were, because they look (and are) cheap and also don’t create a good interiour climate. Since the whole thing is a big experiment on tiny living, tiny experiments are always welcome. That is why I decided to try out putting up a clay wall inside my container. Just one wall for now, but if I like it – and also want to invest the money – a second wall might follow.

I got the idea from Wohnwagon, who had heard of a company building modular houses out of multiple shipping containers and then insulating them and using clay as finishing touch on the inside, and decided to use the same concept. It is basically soft-fibre boards out of wood with a jute mesh (or whaterver mesh for plastering you want to use) and the clay.

I was however not sure about the practical details of that construction, so I tried to research, especially on what to keep in mind in terms of possible side-effects. I was told that I need to be careful about mold, because the humidity in the air will react differently – especially with the container walls not “breathing” (allowing humidity exchange). I was told to calculate the whole insulation to find out where the dew point would be at u-wert.net (important for the humidity problem). I was told all kinds of things that were meant as help but just lead to a vicious circle in my head and ultimately in a complete standstill, because I was afraid to make a mistake. – This was the period where nothing really happened…

Luckily I got out of that limiting mind-game and realized that I just wanted to put up that f***-wall, and was ready to make mistakes along the way, as long as I would learn from them. My next post will be the story of how my clay wall came to be. So stay tuned…