Tag Archives: electric

Art-Studio in the (tiny) HOUSE!

July 10, 2015more stories and reflections, wider community and interviewsart, art built mobile studios, artbuild, artbuilt, arthome, arthur ashe, asset, aztec dance, build, collaborate, community, corona park, DIY, elcentro, electric, esther robinson, event, financial sset, flushing meadows, freedom, group build, guy buckles, july 11, mobile print powe, mobileprintpower, museum, New York, non profit, nyc, organization, park, patrick rowe, peoples design laboratory, pictures, public spacec, queens, queens museum, rainbow, responsiveness, sign, signs, sketch, social service, space, sunny, tennis, tiny house, tiny house build, tiny studio, unishpere, us open, world, young jeohnseedswithwings

“Artists have the skills to make something out of nothing. Use that skill!”

Five years ago I took a workshop in Brooklyn about financial literacy for artists. It changed the way I think about money as an artist in an expensive city like NYC. The workshop, given by Art Home stated that banks and credit cards work for YOU…NOT the other way around. This was very formative for me and a provided a fresh take on the ‘starving artist’ paradigm and I have kept the notes I took from that day.

A year ago, a friend introduced Sarah and I to Esther Robinson, the presenter of those workshops and she’s still at it. Teamed up with Guy Buckles of ArtBuilding, (who is responsible for the designing and building of the Elizabeth Foundation– which is the largest subsidized workspace for artists in ny) they were looking to talk to artists who were building their own spaces, with a particular interest in tiny houses as artist-studio urban infill. One thing lead to another and Sarah and I ended up writing a white paper on tiny-spaces, which covered topics from design, technology and site specific implementation for NYC. Some of these chapters we’ve re-purposed here and here on SeedsWithWings .

After working full-time designing and building under the expert eye-of-Guy for the better part of a year, they did it! Last week my friend Young and I and went out to Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens to see the new Tiny Art Studio (which in NYC might just be redundant).

When did selfies become obligatory? Here’s Young and I

Arthur Ashe Stadium behind the 7 trains.

Even though I neither built nor conceived it, I felt very proud when I saw this little beauty sitting on the lawn in front of the Queens Museum. These are “small mobile workspaces that let artists, social-service providers and micro-businesses work in new ways and in new places.” Art Built Mobile Studios has partnered with the Queens Museum, Corona Park and Patrick Rowe of Mobile Print Power to support the community around them. They are finding out what the park needs by asking passersby to draw their ideas into various large sketchbooks with questions on the covers like, “What is the most difficult thing to find in the park?” or “What is your favorite part of the park?” then implement them through the designing and making of signs for the public. The suggestions ranged from better signage to the bathrooms (we had a hard time finding them too), to putting the rainbow (which shows up every sunny day at the Unisphere from 4-6) on a daily events calendar.

QueensMuseum-12_1280 — Check out that Rainbow at the Unisphere!

This Saturday, July 11th from 1-5 pm, they will be unveiling the new concepts for signs for the park that have been created at the People’s Design Laboratory. Also, bring your own t-shirts, tote bags, and other things that you want to print on! Here’s a link to the event which will also feature music and performances by Aztec dance group Danza Azteca Chichimeka and Ecuadorian dance group Ñukanchik Llakta Wawa Kunas-Wawas Sumags

Here are some more pictures:

A little more background on the key players here. There are two non-profits at work. ArtHome.org (Esther Robinson) and ArtBuilding.org (Guy Buckles).

“ArtHome’s mission is to help artists build assets and equity through financial literacy, homeownership, self-sufficiency and the responsible use of credit.” They are “committed to building a vital new support system for artists: one that fosters both cultural vitality and economic stability.”

“ArtBuilding is a dynamic non-profit business that harnesses the power of built spaces to create economic security, professional stability and financial assets for artists and creative professionals.”

The mobile art studios are a combination of the two and a unique solution for the rising cost of living and working as an artist in NY (and beyond) and they are being used to support dialogue within communities. I think it’s a perfect use of the tiny house movement, embodying some key factors like community, responsiveness (mobility) and sustainability. These can be utilized as urban-infill mobile community centers that can go anywhere and provide services that are most needed to places that most need them. Like creating signs for a park, social service centers, arts-education and beyond.

Do you have any ideas for these? How can you see these working in the world?

Parting Shots:

You are not Illegal. Neither are 11 million.

Of course I HAD to know the power source!

Always The Hard Way?

June 8, 2015Electric, learning curve, tiny house build, work and lifebeginner, circuit, complicated, DIY, electric, encumberance, expert, extension cord, gfci, group build, New Orleans, progress, romex, romex 2, romex 3, socket, tiny house build, trail, window trimseedswithwings

Ask my parents, ask my friends, ask Sarah… I always do things the hard way. I’m not sure why, I’ve been told it’s because I’m a Capricorn(?), but I’ve recently been recognizing it when it happens. Por ejemplo, I can’t just make coffee in the morning, I have to preheat everything (Bialetti, Mug, 1/2 & 1/2), find the perfect blend of coffee/chicory/cardamom (5:1:dash), then watch everything fastidiously while Sarah’s ginger tea (finely chopped) comes to a boil. The tiny house, too, has proved to be an excellent mirror to this particularly pervasive character trait. I couldn’t just slap up exterior window trim and caulk the heck out of it. Too easy. I had to devise a clever interlocking system that would guarantee (so far) water-proofness. While I DO think it’s a good system, It doesn’t work any better than the easy way, looks about the same, and complicated things greatly when I realized it’s hard to tuck the same piece of siding under two sides of a window. Oh, and btw, I caulked the heck out of it. Here are some pictures.

Knowing my aforementioned proclivity toward encumbrance, it was time to run electric. We walked through the house and discussed if we really need a three-way-switch to the loft, or even a porch light. We nixed both because we prefer localized, movable lighting (aka lamps) that we could plug in and click on at the source. With only electrical outlets needed in the house, the wiring was easy. Just hook the whole house up like one big extension cord. Plug one end in and everything works! The first few were a bit tedious (tiny wires/connection + big clumsy hands) but once I got the hang of it, my sway towards complication began.

It started innocently enough. I realized that I was using 12-3 Romex when I only needed 12-2 for our simplistic system (Meaning I had one extra ‘hot’ wire: see below). Then I thought, “Hey! I have two hot wires in the same casing, why not make the house on two circuits (red and black) and they can share a neutral!” This made sense and I later found out that this used to be a common practice. So I wired the outside socket and the kitchen socket on the same circuit (red) and the rest of the house on black. Good in theory, more complicated than I thought partly due to my lackluster wiring skills, and partly due to not fully understanding what it means to share a neutral. SO, after wrestling with it over the course of a rainy afternoon, and getting some sage advice from an electrician friend, I scrapped the idea and wired it all on black. One circuit, no problem.

Do you see the progression, though? Can you see how it moved from a straight forward system to a more complicated/better way? I started by recognizing my proclivities, then as I put my head down and started doing it, old habits kicked in and I wanted more/better/different. I think this is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because the need to improve has lead me to some pretty awesome experiences and taught me a great number of valuable skills. It’s helped me learn things quickly and understand them fully. It’s a curse because I tend to get stuck in the process and have a hard time extracting myself…taking a step back…and realizing that somebody has already figured out how to do this work, and I can probably trust that they knew what they were doing.

So my take away: always find out for yourself….but also trust that other people have already found out, and it’s on their firm shoulders that I wobble around on trying for something ‘new’. After all, it seems that the ‘new’ thing these days, is actually an old thing rediscovered. Why not walk the well established path for a bit. Find out where it leads. Take some easy steps and get to know the trail before banking left into the brambles and steep inclines of improvised electronics and sketchy wiring. The end.

Next up, Insulation!

Technology Part I: Electricity (a)

April 8, 2015Electric, tiny house build100% green, DIY, electric, electricity, green, organization, plug, solar, tiny house buildseedswithwings

Tiny House Technology

In the next series of posts, we will explore some nuts and bolts of tiny house technology and share resources that have pointed us in the right direction. We will also share information on electrical loads and a nuanced discussion of the embodied energy inherent in many ‘green’ technologies. The research we’ve done has included an understanding of the embodied energy required to manufacture the product, as well as the latest research about their sustainability. Embodied energy is “…the energy consumed by all of the processes associated with the production of a building, from the mining and processing of natural resources to manufacturing, transport and product delivery.” (www.yourhome.gov.au).

We would also like to acknowledge the ever-changing nature in the building field, as new research constantly comes to light. It’s not possible to be “100% green,” a phrase too often left unsubstantiated in the building industry, and which has been co-opted to mean the same as “sustainable” without taking into account long-term social, environmental and economic impact.

We’re trying to do our best to be aware of our choices, avoid “soap-boxes,” vote with our dollars, and know that “purity” in building can’t really exist. No one is perfect, most builds are not without those sheets of plywood trucked in from afar, and the rabbit hole of “100% green” is very deep.

Electricity

The first step we took was to gather information on electrical loads of common appliances and calculate a tiny space’s electrical needs. From this we discovered just how much power we’ll need to generate, collect or plug into. Here’s a resource on solar load calculation/determination with an empty chart to work from.

Here’s an interactive resource to calculate how many kilowatt-hours (kWh) one might need to generate for construction, which for us is significantly more than for day-to-day usage: Here’s one for day-to-day post-construction usage.

We are trying to use Energy Star-rated appliances when possible (www.energystar.gov) and LED light-bulbs that require a significantly lower wattage than incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs, with the same amount of lumens. Here are some recommended LED light-bulbs.

Solar

Sarah and I have decided to go solar for the whole house. Now that we’re living in a cabin with Solar we really get to experiment with our electricity usage and are finding that we don’t use much. LED’s cut down on our usage in a major way and aren’t as harsh/blue as we thought they would be. The biggest appliance we have is a juicer, which tends to be used only in summer with plenty of sun in the sky (winter feels cold to be juicing and veggies are in shorter supply).

In terms of good solar options for tiny houses, the “Classic” unit from Sol-Man costs $4995 and can power one tiny house without an electric heater. The Sol-Man has all the components one needs with 2.4 kWh, inverter, charge controller and batteries. It is an easy plug-and-play system that can roll around to adjust to the sun’s location. Sol-Mans units seem almost too big for our usage unless we decide to heat our home or hot water with electricity.

Though the initial investment is large a solar electricity system requires less maintenance and pays for itself in saved electric bills over the years AND in some states you can sell the excess electricity back to the grid. Solar technology is also improving rapidly and as the market widens costs come down significantly.

Here’s a good online solar calculator.

Some portable solar solutions: We are leaning towards the Goal Zero Yeti 400

An all-around great resource for anything solar: www.solarliving.org

More good resources:

www.treehugger.com/slideshows/energy-efficiency/all-solar-efficiency-breakthroughs-single-chart

otherpower.com

Next up: Some specifics about our electric usage and other fun ways to meet your electricity needs.