Liz spent the day fitting and nailing up Cor-a-Vent siding vent while I fretted in the general direction of my computer over a variety of tiny-related issues I won’t bore you with.
On the siding vent side of things, we nailed Cor-a-Vent SV3 between the rain screen battens to preserve airflow but block insects from nesting in those otherwise perfect bug homes.
I have mixed feelings about the whole rain screen thing. On one hand I really appreciate the additional weather protection and venting of a properly flashed modern rain screen siding build-up. But on the other it just starts to feel like an awful lot of complexity for the thing that’s actually being accomplished. It makes me miss the days of banging up tarpaper with a hammer tacker and nailing on siding.
I also wonder about the recycleability and repairability of modern walls. Old houses can be disassembled and salvaged but I highly doubt that a modern wall built with 5 trillion ring shank nails and gobs of various sealants is going to be taken apart by anything other than an excavator. So really we need to be thinking about the whole wall longevity, and none of these details have really been around long enough to get a sense of the real life cycle.
On the other hand superior insulation and superior air sealing offsets a heck of a lot of environmental destruction by reducing energy usage. Our ancestors had much simpler wall structures but they deforested damn near every where they lived to heat them.
I’ve thought a lot about making Actually Tiny a SIP house, but after studying it extensively I came to the conclusion that a lot of tiny builders have: that there’s just as many trade-offs going that route. I’ve often thought that there could be incredible synergy between travel trailer manufacturers and tiny house designers, opening up a whole different market than the conventional travel trailer set and producing lighter but equally livable tiny houses. Building something like that in a factory would increase efficiency and minimizes waste, but then again you can’t really build your own house in a factory which takes away so much of the fun!
– Brian
June 12, 2019
knowing that all the new technology helps the final product, sometimes I feel that the new tools/techniques keep the complexity level high and keep DYI’ers from taking on projects. I like what Relaxshacks does, make living structures from any leftover material. Your tiny home is beautiful.