‘Everything you know about building a fire …” wood-burning stove expert Finn Finlay slowly looked around his small group of listeners, “… is wrong.”
I confess that when I signed up for this Build a Tiny House course, I didn’t expect to discover that the way I’d been making fires – the tried and trusted method I’d learned in the Cubs, for goodness’ sake – was completely upside-down.
“Logs on the bottom, then kindling, then newspaper, with a firelighter on top,” Finn explained.
This being the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT), I should perhaps have guessed that there’d be a holistic approach to creating one’s own bijou abode. Over five days, my half-dozen fellow participants and I would not just build a tiny house together, we’d learn how to power it, plumb it, furnish it with a loo, and heat it, all while treading as lightly on the Earth as possible.
We could hardly have wished for a more apposite or picturesque setting in which to do so. CAT was founded in 1974 in a disused slate quarry a couple of miles outside the market town of Machynlleth in west Wales. That quarry has since been made a veritable Garden of Eden, in which trees, shrubs and flowers flourish, and a range of curious-looking exhibits and structures have sprung up. Many of these are test sites for eco-friendly and sustainable building techniques, one of several areas in which CAT has established itself as a world-renowned pioneer.
Having arrived by train and bicycle – the sort of transport option that gets the CAT seal of approval – I was greeted with the sight of a funicular railway that takes visitors up the steep hill to the entrance (naturally, it’s powered hydraulically using water from a small reservoir). My lodging for the duration was a room in an eco-friendly building, and meals were taken at CAT’s vegetarian/vegan cafe, where the helpings were plentiful and the ingredients either grown on site or sourced as locally as possible.
I realise that this sounds achingly right on, but CAT turned out to be populated by extraordinarily down-to-earth, practical people. Our course leader, Carwyn Jones, was a local craftsman who happens to have a wonderful gift for creating small places to live. A star of the Channel 4 programme George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, he welcomed us into the hangar-sized shed where we would collectively build our tiny house. If any more inspiration were needed, we would be constructing our little wooden abode beneath the gaze of Carwyn’s latest project: a transportable living space made to look like the eye of a Welsh dragon – it’s now competing in Channel 4’s Sunday night series Cabins in the Wild.
My fellow students (aged from 20s to 50s) all came with their own tiny projects in mind. Ellie, for example, wanted to construct a home with a housing co-operative she was involved with; Alexei had come from Amsterdam to learn how to create an inexpensive, green home for his family; while I’ve a long-held dream of converting and living in a railway carriage.
We were all following in the wake of the tiny homes movement, which took off in the US in the 1990s, inspired in part by Henry David Thoreau’s 19th-century book Walden, in which he records his experiment of living in a self-built cabin in the woods. It has spread to the UK, where designers such as Tiny House Scotland are producing homes of just 20 square metres, for people seeking a simpler, cheaper, more pared-down way of living.
It must be said, however, that we wannabe builders did not begin by covering ourselves in glory.
“Just cut the wood to length,” our tutor had told us as we set about constructing the floor, a plan of which he had drawn for us. Somehow, everything came up either too long or too short. Carwyn, who is a patient man, laughed with us and made us start again.
Gradually, under his guiding hand, our tiny house began to take shape. In his soft mid-Wales accent, Carwyn taught us how to build walls and insulate them; make our corners square using a handy bit of Pythagoras; put in window and door frames; get our load-bearing beams to load-bear; keep rain out without keeping condensation in; install our own plumbing; and carry out a welter of other eco-friendly building tasks besides. I also learned a new vocabulary: noggins (bracing timbers), mono-pitched roof, vapour barrier, stud wall, dew point – none of these hold any terrors for me now.
Sessions in the big shed were interspersed with talks from CAT’s enthusiastic experts, covering green electricity, wood-burning stoves and eco-friendly toilets. Eating our meals together and quaffing a few drinks in the bar of an evening meant we had plenty of time to learn more arcane tidbits from our fellow students too, such as the concept of the nappuccino (a short nap after a shot of coffee; thanks, Libby).
Transformative experiences don’t come along that often in this life. However, I had arrived as a man whose previous experience of DIY was limited to making a few shelves; I left as one who could actually have a decent stab at building his own tiny house. That’s really no small thing.
• The course was provided by the Centre for Alternative Technology (01654 704966, cat.org.uk) and costs £600pp (low waged/concessions £550) including meals and accommodation. Next courses 31 July-3 August, 2-5 October, 10-13 November. Rail travel was provided by Arriva Trains Wales. CAT’s Small is Beautiful festival runs from 8-11 June (tickets £85, concessions £75, accommodation extra)
