TINY HOUSE PROJECT

The idea for the Tiny House Project started in the Year 10 Sustainable Architecture class last year. Rather than building a model of a sustainable house, Ella Garbut asked “why can’t we build a real house?”The idea grew from there and Year 9 STEAM classes have built the house during Friday classes.

The house plans changed once Michelle from Science saw us plotting out the site for the house. The Science department had long wanted a house for the school’s telescope. And so the Tiny Sustainable STEAM House became the Tiny Sustainable Telescope House.

This change of plan made the project much more complicated. A telescope house needs a removable roof to allow the telescope to point up to the sky. We thought about ways we could do this but found help from experts in our community for this kind of thing.

The roof was built at ground level and uses industrial rollers inside a large steel beam which act like a train track for the roof to roll open. The steel tracks and completed roof were then lifted into place with a crane. 

We decided to try out some boat winches to see if we could use these to pull the roof open and closed. These work pretty well as you will see soon!

The house has many sustainability features including:

A north facing clear story window in the roof to capture the natural warmth and light energy from the sun.

It has insulated walls that use recycled glass insulation, Australian made Colourbond steel cladding and locally made plywood lining on the inside.

The heavy cement sheet flooring helps stabilise the inside temperature of the house.

The recycled solid and heavy doors were sourced from the C school renovation.

A solar electric system charges a home battery which powers the LED lights

A wind turbine power system will also charge batteries to power the telescope and also provide one standard 240 Volt power point inside the house. The house is “Off Grid”.

The wind farm was also designed and built by Year 9 STEAM students.

The construction of the house involved students working together in small teams each week to solve a number of Tech and Engineering challenges. There have been lots of ideas discussed in class, woodwork, electrical installations, engineering work, painting and decorating, stair design and construction and much more!

The Tiny House has been a fun STEAM project. It has shown how something substantial can be done when students work together on a community type project. The house could be sold, used for homeless people, and shows our community that we care about the environment and sustainability!

Thank you all for coming to celebrate the opening of our Tiny House! We are very proud of it!

Tim Beare - STEAM Learning specialist