Windy Or Not

It's Saturday. Let me sleep in. Oh, but there are things to do. I can enjoy rainy windy weekends which are an excuse to slide back under the covers. But all is quiet. I should get up. And I did, and I saw a windy stormy day getting ready for rain. I saw it, but didn't hear it. That's a good thing?

The 'tiny' in tiny houses diminishes expectations. They may be cute, but aren't they shaky? Not mine. Big houses catch big amounts of wind. My previous house was a 1964 cottage that creaked with every gust. I liked it, as long as it didn't creak too much. I like weather. It's alive. Gusts were reminders that life isn't abstract. I miss them, and I don't.

Big things can be wobbly. They can have longer gaps between supports. Their walls can become bass drums as wind hits them, and hits them again.

Tiny things can be tough. Insects can sustain shells. So can crabs and turtles. It is harder to make and maintain a shell the size of an elephant.

My tiny house is on wheels, though the skirting keeps that from being evident. The wheels means it is taller, and the peaked roof adds height, but modern tiny houses, or at least this one, are built so well that, even as I am awake and typing, I have to look out the window to notice flags snapping with gusts. My washing machine makes more noise and shakes the house more than the weather does.

Bury the wheels or buttress the house with another or with a shed, and create something that resists motion even more.

Pyramids are large and incredibly stable, which proves that size isn't the only determinant. But we live in variations of boxes, rectangles with occasional domes, and hexagons and octagons. All very stable. A-frames accidentally mimic aspects of the pyramids. But of all the houses I've lived in, it has been the traditional boxy wood frames that wracked the most in the weather.

I do not live in a very windy place, though Hurricane Ridge is only about an hour and a half drive. I live in a weather window, a relatively benign (temperate) banana belt, but the breezes blow through because everywhere gets weather that comes and goes. 

How much would this kind of stable luxury and quietness cost to build into a conventional box? How much does that comfort afford in terms of lower stress and lower health care costs? I don't know. I'm not going to quantify it. I am, however, going to enjoy it - and maybe go for a blustery walk later.