RODMAN: In this episode of Urban Conversion: Gina and I are looking towards the future.

We're looking for options.

And we're starting out thinking tiny.

This is your house.

Your tiny house.

Savoring the style of upcycle housing.

I designed this so it doesn't run on fossil fuels.

And admiring the ultimate DIY project.

We built this almost entirely with just our two hands.

As we discover what's so sustainable about living small.

All, in this Urban Conversion.

GINA: My husband Rodman is passionate about creating new businesses and opportunities, but let's just say he's not too eco-friendly.

RODMAN: My wife Gina, she's amazing, but she can be a little over the top when it comes to going green.

GINA: The sustainability movement is not just a trend.

It's a concept that will impact the future.

RODMAN: I'm not against sustainability.

I just need to understand it first.

Yeah, now we're talking!

So I'm taking myself out of my comfort zone... sometimes to extremes.

Wow.

GINA: And we're making it part of our lives.

(horn honking) RODMAN: Yeah, well, most of it.

GINA: Who knows where it will take us?

Welcome to Michigan, welcome to Detroit, Rodman.

RODMAN: It's all part of making our own "Urban Conversion."

♪ So Gina and I, we are definitely ready to get into another house, but what do you do?

Do you build, do you buy, do you remodel, do you renovate?

This time around, we want to pursue environmental homes.

What do you do?

Now we get to really think outside of the box and think creatively.

RODMAN: So today we're meeting Brian Fuentes.

He's gonna take me through the steps as far as building something that's sustainable.

GINA: We're exploring.

We're exploring what the options are.

We primarily work on green homes.

Passive house type projects.

I'm interested to hear what you guys are trying to do for your home.

We're looking for options.

We want to go out to see what's out there.

Do you want to do something green, something... Definitely sustainable.

The popular ones right now, it's like living simply, living smaller.

That's a national trend, the millennial generation is ready to live with less but be more connected to the community.

Live a more simple life, and we're also seeing that trend with, you know, the older generation, the kids are leaving, they're wanting to downsize from their big houses, having to maintain those.

What's really great about the tiny house movement and the smaller home movement, it's also trying to get people to take a critical look at their level of material possession.

How much stuff they have and how much it costs to have that stuff.

People are in general downsizing in our culture to try to just live a simpler life and really enjoy things more.

You know, I'm certainly not gonna go out and buy a piece of land and throw up a teepee.

I mean that's not, that doesn't make any sense for me or my family.

But on the other hand, I don't need the great big huge McMansion.

We don't need all that space.

Great, so I think we'll set you guys up with the whole tour.

You can check out some of these options and, you know, see, just what's out there and what's maybe right for you and maybe what's not right for you.

We definitely know we want to live smaller.

Being able to focus on our family, our relationships more than working harder to build more stuff.

I think it'll be good to think about those types of projects and how well designed they can be and how they can actually reduce the amount of space you really need to live in.

And so some of the tiny home strategies may be applicable even if you're not building a tiny house.

I want to understand what components of these houses really make a difference.

Hopefully we can integrate that into whatever we decide to do.

I really wanted to build a house with my own hands, from scratch.

So I learned about tiny houses, and I realized that I could make this dream happen.

So tiny houses and the tiny house movement is really exploding.

It's really popular all across the world.

Tiny houses aren't really a new thing.

Thoreau was writing about them in the 1800s.

It wasn't until really the 1950s that we started growing new homes.

Since the 1970s, the average house size in the United States has actually almost doubled.

It wasn't until the downturn of the economy and the housing crisis that people really started to question it.

They tend to use less energy.

They also use less materials when we build them, they create less waste.

Honestly, anybody could live in a tiny house, but they're also not right for everybody.

We're here in Louisville, Colorado and we are gonna check out a tiny home.

Teeny-tiny.

Itsy-bitsy, teeny-tiny home.

GINA: I'm curious to see how they find amore in living in these very small homes.

We're in a pretty small house right now with a family of four.

I can't imagine going down any smaller.

Thank you.

This is your house.

Your tiny house.

This is... small.

You know, from the outside it looks like maybe a shed or a barn.

This might be as, you know, as big as our closet right now.

Right.

We'd have to downsize a lot.

Yeah, downsizing, I think you really, what you're doing is you're clearing out your life from all this excess stuff and that really opens up a lot of opportunity.

Well, this thing is on wheels, and I see you got a license plate.

Can this go anywhere?

I don't know about anywhere, but it can certainly go anywhere there's roads.

C'mon in... Wow.

So Rodman and Gina come in and their faces just light up.

Chris, this is beautiful.

Thanks.

Man.

It's pretty darn nice on the inside.

I was not expecting it to be, so well done inside.

I mean it just looks like... craftsmen.

When you're outside, you think, let's go in the shed, and you're expecting to go in and it's gonna look like a shed.

This is beautiful.

It's like you've taken a beautiful house and just crammed it into a little space.

There are tricks to making spaces feel bigger than they actually are.

For instance, we have these vaulted ceilings here.

And so you don't feel crammed in something if, you know, it actually opens up on the inside.

GINA: You know, I think most trailers can have that flat roof and it gives it a different feel, where here it really does look like a house.

Yeah.

Nice.

This isn't bad, this is cozy, not too crowded.

You know, the most that we've probably put in here is, you know, we watched a movie with six or seven people in here before.

Really?

The sleeping area was right above the kitchen, right off the living room, so everything is right there.

You climb up this little ladder.

You have this little sleeping area that's kind of your special little place.

And this would meet your needs.

I mean, this would meet your basic needs.

Which is really what it's all about.

GINA: If it was just us two, it would be, I think it would be pretty easy.

It'd be romantic, it's cozy up here.

I love it.

It'd be romantic for the first week.

After that I think we'd be, like, killing each other.

This could, though, make a really great office.

Man cave.

Mom cave.

After many times up there, they might find out it's a little too cozy for them, especially considering how big Rodman is.

Okay.

Babe, I'm gonna let you check out the kitchen.

It doesn't look like a three-man kitchen, so I'm gonna sit here and uh... Read a book.

Pretty narrow, pretty small.

I'm thinking, you know what, I try to stay out of there anyway.

CHRIS: This basically is a galley style kitchen.

What we did is we went for small shelves and just a limited amount of dishes.

And then also we really liked the look of stuff just hanging.

Frees up a lot of cabinet space where you store food.

Even down here, it's very open.

The sink here is basically um, we haul water in.

You know, normal five gallon jugs.

Do some tiny homes have running water?

You know, these days most tiny houses have running water.

Oh, they do?

I chose to go the simpler route of just.. Hauling water, yeah.

Bringing water.

The fridge, which is basically just like a 1.8 or 2 cubic foot fridge.

The refrigerator, you know, is a small box which would not even fit a day worth of food in the Schley household.

You know, it's surprising what you don't need to refrigerate.

We tend to just like... Refrigerate everything.

Refrigerate everything, right.

But really, all you really need to refrigerate is things like, you know, milk and meat.

I like your spice cabinet here.

Built the spice cabinet right into the wall.

You know, it's a really good example of finding storage in places that, you know, you don't normally put storage in.

In this case, it's the space between the kitchen and the bathroom in the walls.

She probably is used to much better kitchens that are better appointed.

Just a little small for a family of four.

So I assume this is the bathroom.

Yeah, that's the bathroom.

Rodman, you have to come check this out.

I'm coming!

Basically, it's a composting toilet.

Okay.

See, I don't know if I could do that.

Here, let me show you.

Um, basically, inside here, is a bucket.

Ohhhhh, man...

This compostable toilet consisted of a ring to sit on and a bucket.

Does a tiny home have some other toilet options?

Yeah, actually there are many other options.

There's more traditional or the more high-tech composting toilets.

People have those.

Incinerating toilets.

Um, and you can actually have a real toilet as long as you are in a place where you can hook it up into a proper sewage system.

He's kind of a wimp when it comes to the toilet.

[chuckles] So the bathroom has a little area where you can shower.

It's almost like a camping shower.

This is kind of like the sink.

Okay.

It's a shower, but it's mostly just a drain.

What we do is we hang up a camp shower thing that we, like, let warm in the sun and then, you take a shower and it just drains down and we capture it in a bucket.

Now we're gonna go outside and check out the e solar panels.

So there are the solar panels that power the house.

So the house runs off of three 120 watt solar panels and three 100 amp hour batteries.

It's amazing to me that this, these three panels and these batteries power the entire house.

These batteries will last all night.

One of my favorite features on the tiny house is the fact that everything is fully sustainable and supportable.

Everything from how it's powered to how the water comes.

Even the toilet.

If there's one thing that Rodman and Gina can take away from their visit to the tiny house, I think it would really be that less is more.

I don't think we'd live in a tiny home.

I mean, there's two of us and two children.

I don't think we could do it.

Keeping it very functional and really thinking about what do we need as a family, what rooms do we need, what are essential?

And eliminating that space that is just unused.

RODMAN: It is inspiring to me to go, okay, you know, what?

This might be the extreme, but I can still take my footprint and reduce it significantly.

You know, it really takes a certain type of person and a certain personality to, for it to be a really good choice.

But I think it is a thing that we should embrace as a community and as a culture.

There are lots of things to learn from that, and to incorporate into larger designs.

The container homes that we're building are 28 foot wide by 20 foot or 24 foot long home.

Most containers come from other countries like China, full of stuff, but when they get here, it's more expensive to ship them back empty to China and fill them back up, than it is just to leave them here.

So there's literally millions and millions of shipping containers that are finding other kinds of uses.

So it's taking something that's probably one step above garbage and making it into one of the most high uses that we need, which is housing.

We're here in Louisville, Colorado today and we're gonna check out these cool shipping container homes.

We've seen a lot of them on the internet, but I've never seen one in person.

It's gonna be fascinating to see, how are they doing this?

Curious to see, walking in, does it really feel like a home?

Got one that's kind of uh, cut up.

Got a lot of holes cut in it, and we just got started working on it.

Yeah, I've been so fascinated with shipping container homes.

It's just nice to bring out the wife and the kids to see this thing.

This is a 24 foot refurbished container.

It's a really great size for a shipping container house that has a bathroom.

This thing has been around the world, and here it sits, and it's gonna be a house.

I'm gonna show them how we frame the container out, how we plan to insulate the container.

This is actually the inside wall of the container itself, and you can see it's got kind of a crenulation in it.

And we've gone ahead and framed in a regular framed wall, which is attached at the top from the outside and to the floor.

RODMAN: You're seeing the metal roof, you're seeing the original structure on the floors.

It's all ready to be built out.

All of this is going to be spray foamed Okay.

with closed cell foam.

Now that will fill every nook and cranny and it's also quite structural.

They use spray foam which does have a very high R value, and it adds a structural component as well.

So the whole thing is a really sealed envelope.

This wall will end up being about R-20.

Really zero air infiltration.

Super tight, because the foam actually acts as a vapor barrier and sealer.

It goes right up against the metal.

Not only seals the walls, but it almost connects the interior stud wall to the exterior of the metal container.

They're rated to stack six high.

So you could open up this ceiling?

You could, you could put another container on top and cut the metal out.

Um-hmm.

The smallest house you can live in... Has to be at least seven feet wide, one room, that's 120 square feet.

And has to have a bathroom and running water, and a kitchen.

And that's what's required for a house.

Tiny homes are just what they say.

They're these little, built houses, right?

I mean but the shipping container, man, is kind of like contemporary.

It's contemporary versus traditional.

I'd love to show you another container that's finished.

I'd love to see the finished product.

I'm really showing Rodman and Gina how the container can look.

The exterior is sweet.

You can add your own personality.

There are the original doors that come on the shipping container.

Sam opens these things up and boom, there it is.

Beautiful.

[triumphant music] ♪ Okay.

This one's called the Zulu Queen.

Which is a ski run in Telluride which is particularly gnarly.

Everything in here runs off of either electricity that's made off the roof, or alcohol.

This bikes?

This was for bikes, but kids like so much going through it we decided not to close it off.

Yeah, I think we might go through the other door.

I'll go through this door.

You can do it!

Alright.

We'll meet you around the side.

Yeah, I'm going through the side.

So this door, Rodman, is a 350 pound door that we made here in the shop.

I don't even know how they made it, you know?

It's got these big hinges with these big ball bearings.

The door's all rusty, it's got this leather handle on it.

Design-wise, I think of it as being a little bit monster truck on the outside and New York loft on the inside.

Hey.

Holy cow.

This is cool.

SAM: People don't expect to see that inside of the shipping container, especially when you see the raw product.

Little refrigerator.

See here... Nice.

How's this stuff running?

Is this stuff plugged in?

This is a special refrigerator that's designed to run off a very high end car battery.

We generate electricity off the roof.

Lo and behold, what do we have?

Solar.

Solar right on the roof, feeding a power generator right there in the kitchen.

This is the stove.

Oh, nice.

It's a little, this is a little marine grade stove that runs off of alcohol.

I designed this so that it doesn't run on fossil fuels.

We have a version that runs off of propane, too.

Small kitchen, but still has the features of a, you know, everything that you need from a refrigerator to a little stove, to water.

So we step into the living room, which by chance, happens to also be the bedroom.

This is where we were when we were looking outside, originally.

Bed's upstairs.

I think that's something that you'd probably always do to maximize the space.

Our goal here, was even in this little footprint, to have some room where you could hang out.

[grunting] Climb up there.

Ugh.

Oh my gosh, you're much heavier than your sister.

Now I don't want you jumping out of there.

RODMAN: The container home is just another example of innovative people doing innovative things.

GINA: I don't think that it's one style fits all.

It's really meant to use your imagination.

RODMAN: This is something that would just be sitting around.

The fact that we can recycle it into housing.

I mean, that's amazing in itself.

GINA: You know, it's a reuse project and it would be that constant reminder of what else can we reuse in our life.

Could we use multiple shipping containers to build something larger for our family?

Absolutely.

We built a cordwood masonry because when we found this lot, we wanted to work with the resources that we had here, just seemed like the natural building technique to use.

As a couple, we built this almost entirely with just our two hands, each, so that would be four.

A typical day of cordwooding would involve mixing up a batch of mortar.

So you'd lay a bunch of logs and then you'd traverse over those with another stack of mortar and start making your way up the wall.

It is a good couples' activity.

[laughs] If you like each other!

People often think, six years, I couldn't do something that long.

People work for a mortgage, sometimes 30 years.

Six years of weekends is not a bad tradeoff.

We're about two hours outside of Denver, near Woodland Park, Colorado and we're checking out this cordwood masonry house today.

GINA: I'm very excited to see, what does it look like on the inside, and just to experience it.

So the first thing we do is, we walk up to one of the exterior walls to get a little lesson on how the whole thing is built.

The first thing that jumps out at me is this beautiful wood that's surrounded with this masonry.

Do you paint this?

No?

That's just the natural mortar?

That's the natural mortar.

GINA: The warmth of the wood and masonry, it's a really good balance.

These walls are about 18 inches thick and there's a thermal break between the mortar runs.

So just like a gap, is it like an air gap?

There's a gap with wood shavings in between.

Ahhhh!

So the cold mortar on the outside does not travel to the inside.

Ahh, to the inside.

Those are some thick walls.

The R value for this size wall is about a 28.

A really high R value.

Helps keep heat in.

It helps keep, depending on the season, keep cool in.

It also feels solid, acoustically, really appealing.

It's quiet.

The wood does have a different energy to it.

It seems like it's more alive.

Beautiful...

So do all these logs come from your property also?

Yes, and my wife Lois, she debarked all these logs with my grandfather's draw knife.

Why'd you pick a round house?

The magic of mathematical pi, if you put it in a circle, you end up with more square footage.

It feels softer.

The edges aren't so rough.

Your floors, this is a poured concrete, right?

It is.

We have the PEX tubing through it...

Okay.

...so the solar, heated water that we generate we move through the floors.

After he tells me about the collector, I'm intrigued.

We use some of the recycled bottles in the walls, which is often a technique that other cordwood builders do.

One is, will catch the light, the sunrise in the morning on the summer solstice.

In another section of the home, those will catch the sunlight at sunrise for the winter solstice.

RODMAN: It brings this artistic flair to this home.

People's reaction to the odd features of the cordwood masonry, I always get a kick out of.

So then we go upstairs and the first thing that I see is this beautiful vaulted ceiling.

Wow.

Look at the size of this!

That reminds me of kind of a canopy of a tree.

We call that the cork.

But it's a tension compression ring design, like a big umbrella.

A lot of churches and pagodas are built with a tension compression ring roof.

You know, it's over 1400 square foot.

It's just my wife and I now.

The only thing we didn't do was pouring the concrete floors.

It's really kind of f a love.

You can really tell that every time you go in, it's a love for what they're building.

So you got to think of it almost as, in terms of being, like a job, but the great thing about this job is you're building your home.

GINA: When you take your time, really put the energy in all of the details, it's just... delicious!

I see your Three Little Pigs book.

You decided to build your house out of wood.

Wood and concrete.

Right, that was one of the strongest ones.

The Three Little Pigs.

There's something to learn from The Three Little Pigs.

The next thing I did was to take Rodman and Gina out to what we call our solar manufacturing station.

I want to see these collectors and see how this house is heated.

Most people, when they talk about solar, they think electric, but I like to ask people, okay, when you're talking about solar, are you talking electric or are you talking solar thermal?

Those convert the sunlight to hot water.

We move cold water in, hot water rises and then returns to the house.

Two little pumps in the house circulating that 500 gallons of water up through those solar collectors transform that 500 gallon tank from about 80 degrees in the morning to about 140 degrees at night, creating about 210,000 BTUs of heat, stored in water.

And then we move it around the floors.

I saw that it caught Rodman's eye quite a bit.

Any time that we can heat our house, power our house from the sun, we need to be doing it.

RODMAN: When I first got here, I didn't quite know what the process was to build a home like this.

I wasn't familiar with it.

GINA: The biggest takeaway for me, that I learned from Bryan, is really looking at the environment and what's here.

There is something to be said about doing it yourself.

RODMAN: But coming here now and looking at it and really getting deep into how thick the walls are and how they shaved down the wood.

I could just go through this entire process.

It's been enlightening.

Yeah, I do want solar.

Yeah, I do want the collectors.

They're heating the floors from the sun, and I want to do that.

I don't think there's anything that would necessarily scare me away from a cordwood home, however, we still have to make sure we're thinking about city codes.

We always have to make sure that we can actually build what we want.

You know, a lot of these things are really cool, but there is a chance that they might get knocked off my list.

We are in Evergreen, Colorado today and we're checking out a tree house as a potential home opportunity.

[excited chatter] No... A little too small for us.

RODMAN: You guys want a tree house?

KIDS: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!

GINA: Not like this one...

So, you're for sure?

Sophie...

I don't know yet.

The kids should be excited, it's a tree house!

GINA: Kids love tree houses, but this one kind of takes it up a notch.

What is it missing?

Your bedroom.

It's missing a tree... We have seen a lot of homes and every one is a little bit different, the way they built it, the way it is in terms of sustainability.

They've all got different things that I like and I don't like.

And what size of house, you know, we went from very tiny to a little bit more normal size and we have to figure out where do we want to lean to next.

What really do we need in a house?

Well, the McMansion days are done, I mean, really build what you need and then get yourself out, you know, get yourself out.

GINA: What I loved was the string that runs between them is that people are doing it with their own hands, they're involved in it.

We've just got to kind of find that sweet spot for our family.

What can really sustain us as a family?

Learning how to make my own urban conversion has me all over the map.

Cars that run on hydrogen gas or veggie oil?

Making things at home that you can just buy at the store?

Chickens, goats, and bees in your backyard?

It all sounded pretty crazy at first, but the more I explore the sustainability movement, the more fun I have.

Come along with me as my family and I figure out what will work in our household.

It's all a part of making our own Urban Conversion.

♪ ♪ Sustainability is a huge topic.

On urbanconversion.com we cover it all.

We bring you news, how-to, the quick tips for going green and much more.

My education may start on the show, but it continues at urbanconversion.com.

Full seasons of Urban Conversion are available on DVD for 20 dollars.

Follow Rodman and Gina as they explore the sustainability movement through unscripted fun with education as the goal.

To order, please visit urbanconversion.com.