The Low Down On Green Living
February 20th, 2009
Build Your Own Free Tiny House with Shipping Pallets
Stumble it!
Written by Brian Liloia, courtesy of Green Building Elements.com
Last week I talked about how to live simply and decrease your carbon footprint living in a tiny house. Even better than buying a tiny house is making your own, and Michael Janzen is blazing a trail with his free tiny pallet house. Not only is his house made out of recycled shipping pallets, it isn’t costing him anything to build. And lucky for us, he’s sharing his plans so you too can build your own tiny free house.
You can save money, sharpen your DIY skills, and further decrease your environmental impact by following Janzen’s example of building a free pallet house.
Keep pallets out of landfills
Here are some disturbing statistics about shipping pallets:
- Approximately 40% of all hardwood harvested in the U.S. is for making shipping pallets
- About two-thirds of pallets are used only once before being thrown out
- 1/4 of all wood in landfills is from used pallets
You can help prevent deforestation and keep pallets out of landfills by finding creative alternative uses for them, like building a house. Pallets can be found everywhere. Once you start looking for them, you’ll see them scattered all over your town or city.
Contact a local warehouse, supermarket, or any business that receives large shipments, and get permission to pick up their used pallets. Most companies are happy to give their pallets away.
Plans for a free pallet house
Janzen has made plans for building a free pallet house available on his website. These plans are a guide for building what he calls a disaster preparedness and emergency shelter. Janzen says:
As hurricane Gustav plowed across Cuba headed for the gulf coast of the United States memories of Katrina and the potential displacement of thousands got me thinking. I wanted to do something to help. It occurred to me that someone else might find what I now about building with shipping pallets useful in the coming weeks and months.
With some creativity, you may find that shipping pallets can be reappropriated in other ways to build your own free tiny house. For example, I have a friend that has disassembled shipping pallets and used the wood to build roof trusses for his straw bale building.
Ultimately, you can help prevent deforestation and keep pallets out of landfills by using them to build creative housing.
Think tiny and free!
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Comments
Julie
February 24th, 2009 at 10:40 am
This is an interesting idea but you must take into consideration what the pallets have been treated with. Usually, they are fumigated with very toxic pesticides to kill any sort of infestation that may be present prior to export. Many when built are also heavily treated. The company I worked for looked into donating shipping pallets and other wood used in shipping (plywood for separations for example) in other countries and found out that there were too many health hazards and restrictions in place to actually make it a viable and health conscious prospect. Good idea but devil is in the details.
Cat
February 25th, 2009 at 6:56 pm
Very true.. most pallets are treated. We have our heat source delivered on pallets and we’ve kept reusing them, but I’m not sure what else to do with them other than use them to keep stuff off my basement floor, to stack feed on, and our heating supply.
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