Engineering Process: Tiny Home

Hello everyone! I'm Chase Brown, a current sophomore at Grafton High School in Yorktown, Virginia. I am extremely interested in the area of architecture, and I wanted to enter in this competition to challenge my abilities. My Architecture Drawing/Design/CAD teacher Mrs. Stein referred this instructable to me as I enjoy projects like these.

Here is the list of programs and overall materials used for this project. I also used various sites for some of the appliances seen in the house.

At the start of the engineering process, you must first define your problem. The problem in this case was creating a tiny house for a potential buyer that functioned like an average house. This is important because of the different benefits tiny homes give. They are very cost effective, don't take much space, and can fit one's minimal and modern aesthetic.

In this step, I started with researching basic information surrounding basic tiny home constraints and criteria. I then went on to research further into consumers and buyers of tiny houses, and preexisting solutions to the problem.

What is the definition and criteria for a tiny house?

I’ve found that a tiny house consists of a house under 400 sq ft. It also must be cost efficient, eco-friendly, and use a lot of natural light. The houses can also be portable, although they don’t always have to be.

What are the constraints for a tiny house?

How you use the square footage doesn’t matter, as long as the house is under 13’ 6”. Other constraints include limited space and storage. They may also be difficult to place one due to zoning. For this project exclusively, I decided for this house to be able to account for 2 people living in it.

After researching I went to the next step of brainstorming and developing a solution on paper. These inspiration photos were used throughout my project.

Here are the (mostly) finalized solutions I have came up with. I have created more floor plans for this project, since they were not very formal and had a bunch of mistakes. The first one created is the first story floor plan. I made sure to incorporate a full bath, a place to dine, and every essential kitchen appliance in the plan. There was enough space on the first floor to have a bonus room for extra storage, and can overall be customized to the potential buyer's needs. The house's footprint made it so that the house's 400 sq ft constraint was fulfilled.

The second plan linked is the second story plan. My idea was to create a loft and to add a queen bed to make it a bedroom. I have created just that, along with a sitting desk and drawer. I used a sitting desk to meet the 13' 6" house height constraint. If it was a regular desk, it would've broke through the roof/ceiling. This part of the house was thoroughly thought out, helping me visualize the final product.

The last image is of the first story plan in roughly 1/4=1'-0 scale. This elaborated the ideas on the final iteration of the first story.

There were many steps to created the model of the house. First, I created the exterior and interior walls. Then, I added the doors and windows. After that, I did the appliances and plumbing. For that, I found multiple Revit families and pre-installed families to use online. Once done with the second floor, I took the stairs to the second floor! I quickly added some already installed Revit elements with some edits to the type for the second floor. When both floors had appliances and were functioning correctly, I then added flooring. The last step for building the tiny home was adding a roof. I even decided to put a skylight on the roof to enhance natural light. Lastly, I changed a bunch of materials for the home to be aesthetically pleasing, but also be more sustainable and higher quality. For example, my roof is a tin roof, since they are durable and low maintenance. Above is the final and finished version of my tiny house.

I also created a rendering of a camera view! I did this by clicking the View tab, and selecting the carat drop down for 3D View. I then adjusted the camera angle and then applied settings for Autodesk's cloud rendering to utilize.

The second image contains another camera angle from entering the doorway. I am adding this to show the appliances more clearly, instead of the fridge covering up the dishwasher and part of the counter.

The last image is the second story, including the desk, the drawer, and the queen bed. This is important because my house can hold up to 2 people, and that was one of my constraints.

Lastly, I have created a physical model of the house! This took a decent chunk of time, because we had to setup the Glowforge to give us the best possible result. We exported the walls as a .pdf and uploaded it to the Glowforge app. After that, we printed the walls out at a scale for accurate modeling. I then used glue to stick the walls together. The first two photos show the slant of the roof, and the window orientation. The third photo is the first story floor plan, and it shows how it would look at scale. The fourth photo shows the second story floor plan at scale. Although I was in a bit of a time crunch, I'd say this worked out well.

Thank you for reading through my instructable!