Yale student builds small 'green' house
NEW HAVEN, Conn. --Tall woman. Tiny house. Big statement.
Any way you measure it, Elizabeth Turnbull has taken her concern for affordable "green" housing to a new dimension.
Over the summer, the 26-year-old Yale University graduate student built an 8-foot-by-18-foot environmentally friendly home with a sleeping loft, kitchen area, living room, study and bathroom with composting toilet.
At just under 6-feet tall, Turnbull did some customizing, such as 40-inch high countertops and a 13-foot high ceiling, allowing her to take advantage of the vertical space, as well as horizontal.
"It feels a lot bigger than it is. My dorm room my sophomore year in college was smaller," said Turnbull, in a recent interview on the Yale campus, where she has just begun her studies at the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
With $10,000 invested so far, she is under budget and within a few weeks hopes to have the house towed to New Haven from the grounds of the Governor's Academy in Byfield, Mass., where it was constructed on a flatbed trailer.
Probably the most complicated aspect of the project is finding a place to park the tiny abode, but Turnbull is hopeful that will be resolved.
"There are two great potential sites under review," she said as she works with the property owners and city officials on zoning issues. "I'm an optimist by nature."
In the meantime, she is subletting space in the nearby East Rock neighborhood.
While the rest of New Haven faces daunting heating and utility bills this winter, Turnbull said she will probably pay about $200 for the year to cook and stay warm with propane gas. The three solar panels on the house should provide enough free electricity to illuminate the space and power her laptop computer.
Estimating it would take about $14,000 to live in New Haven for a year, Turnbull took that figure and challenged herself to apply it to her "green" lifestyle. More than just saving money, the tiny house project "was about figuring out a creative way of living well" in a sustainable space, Turnbull said.
She has gotten this close to her goal with the help of old friends who dropped by to help with construction and volunteers intrigued by the project, including a young builder, Andy Vecchione, who was between jobs and showed up every day.
"The house would be ashes and tears if it wasn't for Andy," she said.
The Governor's Academy, from which she graduated, not only let her build on its campus, officials there lent her tools and the maintenance staff provided technical advice.
Turnbull kept her costs down through donated building materials, including the oak floors in the house. Her carbon-footprint was minimized through the use of such things as soy-based insulation, environmentally friendly paint and a countertop made from recycled glass.
The project was open to the public on the weekends and her progress was followed in a multipart series in the local press in Newburyport, Mass., which generated continuing interest. Turnbull also documents her journey in her blog, turnbulltinyhouse(at)blogspot.com.
"I've always tended to be a fairly independent person, kind of 'I'll figure it out by myself,' but this project proved that some things are better done with a team and with a community. It was a pretty beautiful and restorative process for me in that way," Turnbull said.
She plans to continue the educational aspects of the tiny house by hopefully working with schoolchildren in New Haven.
"I want to hitch it up and bring it to schools and work with the university, as appropriate, to open it up and have it be part of a greater sustainability agenda," Turnbull said.
The West Virginia native took courses on fine furniture making while a student at Colby College in Maine, and had previously built herself a desk and bed, but before this summer had never framed a room, hung a door or installed a window.
Turnbull will study environmental management at Yale, while she also hopes to take some courses at the architecture school.
While she waits for zoning officials to determine the fate of her house, Turnbull is happy to be studying at Yale.
"People here are interested in solutions, and there is an incredible environmental optimism, she said. "It's pretty refreshing. Others tend to take a snapshot of the way the world is and just despair. And while it is good to know how things are, it ultimately is not a good frame of mind." 