Small Wonder: Could You Live in l44 Square Feet?
For Yale student Elizabeth Turnbull this custom house is just big enough.
Just how much space does one person really need?
According to Elizabeth Turnbull, the answer is "about 144 square feet."
Last spring, after being accepted to the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, Turnbull did some math. She figured that over the course of her two-year master's program in Urban Ecology and Environmental Design, her rent and utilities would add up to around $14,000. A little more calculating led the energetic 26-year-old to conclude she could design, build, and live in her own tiny green house — it's portable and currently parked on the property of "another Forestry School friend" she says — for roughly the same cost. The design of her home was based on her 6-foot-tall frame.
"It was really fun to tailor the house based on my own ergonomics and my needs," she says. The 8.5-foot-by-18.5-foot house includes a sleeping-loft, kitchenette, and combined living area and study. (She uses a basement bathroom in the main house, and a shower there as well, though Turnbull might one day be able to add a composting toilet and sunshower.)
Turnbull has a background in environmental studies and in building. She worked for O'Neil Fine Builders in Beverly, Massachusetts before returning to school, so this project made sense to her. "I wanted to see how green I could be, how lightly I could tread on the earth," she says. After consulting with others who'd built houses similar to hers — there's a whole movement of tiny-house aficionados across the country — Turnbull began construction last summer. Once word got out about the project, help flooded in. Her high school alma mater, the Governor's Academy in Byfield, allowed her to use its grounds as the building site.
The house has soy-based insulation, donated by the Green Cocoon in Salisbury that emits no chlorofluorocarbons or carcinogens. Low-VOC-emiting paint was used throughout the house, and the floors, a gift frorn Wood Flooring Design in Salisbury are made from sustainably harvested wood. The ceiling was donated by SecondWind Sails in Gloucester, a company that repairs, resells, or finds creative reuses for old sails (shower curtains and bags are more tvpical reuses than ceilings). The windows and door were castoffs from other building projects. "The world is full of things that people want to get rid of or already have," says Turnbull. "Before you buy materials, look around."
After graduation, Turnbull wants to help inspire others to explore low-budget, low impact structures. "People can feel paralyzed by all of their 'stuff' — myself included, before this project," she says. "It's fun and gratifying to design around not what you think you should have, but what you actually need."
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