By Richard Bell
Tiny houses are included in almost every list of proposals for solving the province’s lack of affordable housing. At the Natural Building East conference at the Deanery Project on May 10, Matt Holzer highlighted some of the lessons he and his wife learned while building their 192 square foot tiny house in rural HRM.
Holzer’s grandfather had a construction company, so he grew up around construction. Along the way, he had worked as a site superintendent for a Habitat for Humanity home. For people thinking of building a tiny house, Holzer strongly recommended volunteering with the organization.
“Habitat for Humanity is one of the best groups out there because when they do a build, they look for volunteers,” Holzer said. “And you're working with qualified tradespeople on that site. We had retired tradespeople actually working hands-on with people that didn't have any construction experience. So you’re not being put into a dangerous situation.”
Holzer looked around for a contractor for the tiny house build. “It was really very tough finding a lot of contractors who actually built tiny homes,” Holzer said. “So I ended up taking this on—general contractor, architect, engineer…But I did have people I could contact to find out.”
And then there’s knowing the National Building Code, a 1,500-page document that the province of Nova Scotia adopted. “You need to know that you’re about to do is actually meeting minimum standards,” Holzer said. “But never settle for minimum standards.”
Holzer’s design is 12 feet by 16 feet “Under 215 square feet in HRM, I didn’t need to apply for certain permits,” Holzer said. “But I did have to apply for a development permit.” (Definitions of what qualifies as a tiny house range up to 1,000 square feet.)
Meeting standards and going through the permitting process was also a form of insurance against the kinds of disagreements that sometimes arise between rural neighbors. “If you don’t tick your neighbors off, they won’t call on you,” Holzer said. “Tick your neighbors off, they will call on you. You’ll have someone walk in and then the questions start getting asked. If an inspector comes and checks in on you, and you don’t have the permit, there are consequences.”
But Holzer said that going through the permitting process could actually be helpful. “When I submit my drawings, the planning department actually looks at them,” Holzer said. “They may point something out that I missed. What about this? How are you securing this? What are the fasteners? So there's a lot of things that they will do that way.”
One of the first lessons he learned was how much more labour-intensive building a tiny house could be compared to regular house construction. “It was quite a learning experience,” Holzer said. “A tiny home takes about four or five times longer to do something than larger builds.”
Adaptation became a key virtue. Their original design called for climbing a ladder to reach the loft bed space. “Then we realized with our dogs, we'd be climbing up and down a ladder with the dogs,” Holzer said. “I ended up building a full staircase. So we lost floor space, but now we can go up and down without worrying about safety. And also our animals are able to get up and down without any problems.”
One of the most significant changes they’ve made since moving in is adding a front deck and a back deck. “The decks are each 10 feet by 12 feet,” Holzer said. “The decks are actually bigger put together than what the house is. So we’ve added a three-season home with outdoor living space.”
