The Chatham Cottage

The Chatham Cottage Story

Last fall, a handful of students, from all different locations and backgrounds, came together with similar interests to accomplish one goal. This goal was to alter peopleis standards of living, to take a step forward by taking a step back. This idea has been transferred into one house, the Chatham Cottage. The idea is to build a small, affordable, energy efficient home with simple applications such as passive solar design and 1inch thermal break sheathing.

Concentration on the fundamentals of building science is very important to us as they are generally over-looked in the typical building community these days. While this house is not energy independent, it is a transition home, giving consumers freedom from the inefficiencies of typical suburban homes while also being able to live on-grid in a more energy efficient way. At the same time, the house will be built so that solar systems are an option, giving the consumer the option to do as much, or as little, with this as they so choose.

At the onset of our journey to a small home we worked almost an entire semester on understanding the fundamentals of how a building functions as a whole, the flow of energy into and out of the structure and the individual components that all come together to form something stronger than any individual combination could be. This understanding came together along with the vital components of our team to manifest itself through the tools of our trade. From shooting stuff together with the nail gun to ripping 2o4is with the table saw, we became comfortable with building the concepts we learned, and applying them to our house.

The plan for this house came from the "Whidbey", a Tumbleweed Tiny house company design. From this we worked together to re-design the interior and make it our own. Once this was finalized, we went through the process of getting the permits needed to build the house on school grounds so that it is able to be moved to the location of the buyeris choice. Now that the house is being built, we invite you to become a part of our vision.