Hey everyone., Rob Greenfield here, and
over the next few days I am going to build a tiny house.
From tree to tiny house.
Yes, that's right, from cutting down the trees,
to milling the lumber, to finishing
a tiny house from scratch.
I'm going to walk you through the entire process
and then I am going to move in.
(Music)
This isn't just any tiny house though.
This tiny house is going to be fully
off the grid and built completely out of
wood harvested on this property
as well as second hand materials
right here from the farm.
So this is a tiny house that's designed
to work within the land that it is being
built on and not be a pain to the land.
So where is all of this happening?
It is at Le Reve de Gaia which means the
dream of mother earth, here in Southern France.
Now it's time to build the tiny house.
(Music)
Okay, so here we are at the wood saw now
and this is where the tree that we cut
down on the property actually turns into the lumber.
He bought this land about 7 years ago and
this has pine forests on it that have
been used for forestry for decades now... probably centuries.
And a lot of it was done in a very unsustainable way.
Now he is transitioning this into
sustainable forestry and just moving it
back into, hopefully, a native forest that
is a place for humans, other species, and
the environment to thrive.
So, he is working on managing it
sustainably using this wood to build and
then also it's his source of income.
And behind me is his wood saw and this thing is incredible.
This is the first time I have ever worked with a wood saw.
He bought this for about $8000 prior
because of his work as a forester and it's
amazing what this could do in a community.
Imagine if a community had this they
could come together and build their houses
out of wood, locally harvested, and it
would pay for itself in no time, creating
jobs and opportunity and working with the
land rather than having things shipped and
depending upon huge corporations.
We are going to turn the tree into the lumber.
(Music)
We are working with the trees right now.
Right here is a larger one and this will make
the bigger planks. Behind me, he is
working with about...closer to the size of
the tree that we cut down today. And then
that is going to be used to make the posts for the floor.
So, the larger tree for the planks.
Smaller trees are going to be used for
basically like 4 by 4's. All of these are
trees that were harvested from the land.
These have been curing for about 6 months
to a year so that they have the right
level of moisture to be easier to work with.
(Music)
Alright, so we have finished cutting.
Again, a lot of stuff was cut prior to today,
but almost everything here is stuff
that we cut today and I want to show you
the different things. So, these wide,
almost like 4 by 4's, these are for the foundation.
And then these are for the foundation as well.
And then these, what we are
calling planks, are for the roof, slash, sides.
And then, these are the floorboards,
which you can see are thicker.
All of these came from the different sizes of the trees.
And we started with the trees,
now we've got the lumber and
then it will go from tree to tiny house.
(Music)
Okay, so now we've got the wood milled
and it is time to treat some of it.
We are sanding and we are treating...
staining just the flooring. The reason is
that we want nice smooth floors for
walking on barefoot, you know, preventing slivers.
But the rest of the house we are not
going to sand and we are not going to stain,
and the reason why is we are
actually experimenting with a as natural
as possible build here, and over time
it's not going to last as long as if it was stained.
After the house is no longer
something you could live in it's just
returned back to the land. Whether it's
wood breaking down in the forest
or turning it into firewood. So the idea is
that we are designing it extremely
naturally with the wood right on the land
and the wood can go back to the land.
Alright, our last step before finally
building the tiny house is to take some
of these planks and cut them into the
right sizes for the flooring, for the
walls, and we are using, basically a table
saw or a skill saw and if you really
wanted to you could do it with a hand saw
but we've got the tools.
(Music)
Alright, so we have the site. Now the
first step is to create the foundation.
We are having a little bit of a harder time
than planned with that because we
are on a bigger slope than we had thought,
so we are having to raise it up.
But first step is to create the foundation,
level it, then we are going to put on the
floor, then we are going to create the
frame, then we are going to put on the
sides and the roof. And then the last
step will be to put in the doors and windows.
So, we've actually moved the foundation
back a little bit so that we didn't have
to put it up as high. And one thing that
I want to mention is on the bottom we
are using Douglas Fir which is more
resistant to rot and will last longer and
then the rest of the housing is spruce.
So, a little bit of Douglas Fir on the
bottom that is contacting the ground and
the rest will be spruce.
We got the foundation pretty much set and
it is time to start moving upwards.
We just got this foundation set in really
just about an hour, which for me, was the
part that I was the most worried about
because I am really bad at making things
level or even. Angles, 90 degree angles,
that's what I have a really hard time with.
So, that went really, really well.
Right now we are just putting these giant
screws through and I should mention
this is basically the one material that's
not second hand or from the forest.
These were bought new. And this is pretty
much the main cost, right?
Antoine: Yes, that's the only cost, yeah.
Rob: And some gasoline.
Antoine: Ya, for the chainsaw and the saw machine.
Rob: How much gas do you think we burned?
Antoine: Uh...in total, maybe about 5 to 8 litres.
Rob: Okay so... Antoine: $16...about $20 in gasoline.
Rob: Okay. So, 2 gallons about, less
than $20 worth of gasoline, some screws,
and then the rest is from the forest and
stuff that was laying around in the barn.
So, it's looking pretty good.
Aright, the foundation is done and we used
about 18 of these and that's it.
Wood, 18 of these with the foundation and
now we are putting on the flooring.
Which is pretty simple.
We just have to line that up to
make it even and then we'll have the flooring done.
Alright, so we have the foundation set
and I am pretty amazed. It's basically
2 ingredients, wood and screws.
And it's solid. It's feeling good... yup, it's
looking solid and that only took probably
2 hours and next step, building it up!
So we are putting up the frame now.
The frame is about as simple as can be.
Antoine said this is the simplest
structure that he has ever built.
And so the frame is just the 4 beams.
We have one up and we have one
sitting here that's going to go up right now.
And then in each of them there are about
16 screws...these heavy duty screws,
both at the top and at the bottom.
So total, for the frame, we've got about
30 of these big screws and then the next
step will be to put the planks right on to the frame.
And we are getting pretty close.
(Music)
Alright, so now we are putting up the
walls which is super simple. We're just
taking these planks that we cut with the
machine and then we are just screwing
them on with a couple of screws.
And they have an overlap, and the overlap
keeps the rain running down the sides so
moisture doesn't stay on there.
And that's it. About as simple as can be.
We are going for simple and natural.
We are putting in the last screws to have
the sides and the roof done. On the top
there is just a little overlap to keep the
rain from coming in and now we just have
to do the front and the back.
Alright, once we finished up the sides
then we went ahead and put on the
front and the back in pretty much the
same method. It was just the overlap
and making sure we had enough overlap
to make sure that rain couldn't get in
and it would go down.
The other thing that I didn't mention was
the doors. We have the door in the front
and then door, slash, window in the back.
And we had to put in framing for that as well.
Just some really simple framing
that Antoine put together in order for
those to go in. A little spot left up
there to do, and once we've done that
we'll have built out the entire house,
itself, and still a little bit to do on the inside.
One thing that I do want to mention is
that I did lay things out in a specific
order, but after everything, there was
a lot of back and forth. We had to go back
to the saw and cut a few new planks.
We ended up cutting the sizes of things
many times throughout these couple of days.
Here is the very basic framing that we did
in order to be able to put in the doors,
slash, windows in the front and back.
And you can see the frame here.
Just a very simple structure using the
same wood from the trees, right here, on site.
So that is the inside of the house.
The house is complete.
It is quite small, as you can see.
So there you have it.
From tree to tiny house. That is the
whole process of building this very simple tiny house.
Now, I want to say that this is designed
just to be used during the spring, summer
and fall here in southern France and
it's for woofers or volunteers who are
learning organic farming here at
Le Reve de Gaia. So it's not designed as
a year round structure for one person or
a few people to be living in.
And the key is, whatever you are building,
to design it for the use and the purposes
that you have.
I hope that this video has been helpful
in realizing how simple it can be to build a tiny house.
Now, in the next video I am going to walk
you through the rest of the processes that
I did with the compost toilet and the
compost bin and the outdoor shower and the kitchen.
I'll walk you through that in
the next video and give you a tour of
this place as well.
If you got a lot out of this video then
make sure you subscribe for more videos
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video get out there into the YouTube world.
I love you all very much and I'll see you again real soon.