Tim’s Tiny Home Project Notes 3

This is a continuing series.  Part two is here.

Tiny Home Infrastructure and Systems

Lighting

I’ve always been a huge fan of mood and indirect ambient lighting so I’d like to try and incorporate as much indirect and ambient lighting as I can in Tim’s Tiny Home. It would be really sweet to integrated the lighting directly into the building design whenever possible. Workspaces will make use of built-in LED spot and down lights . Space lighting will be provided by two or three 10 watt LED light bulbs. I’m paying less than ten euro for these types of bulbs now and they are the first bulbs I’ve seen that can match ‘normal’ incandescents in light quality.  I can’t imagine needing any more than two or three to brightly and cheerfully illuminate the interior of such a diminutive environment.

There is a rather interesting (and more expensive) option for these types of lights that can allow them to change to nearly any color or hue you want to program into them (thru your iPhone..duh).  I had a firsthand experience with them in an upscale hotel in Stuttgart.

I don’t know if I’d invest in a whole houseful of Philips Hue lights, but when your house is basically one big room they certainly deserve consideration. These color adjusting lights are something I find specially interesting since lighting in such a claustrophobia inducing environment will be of utmost importance in maintaining one’s sanity. These LED lights last forever and run on peanuts.  That favorably changes the cost/benefit calculus as well as adding to an environmentally conscious build option. When all the lighting is switched on simultaneously at Tim’s Tiny Home, it will glow like a Chinese carnival on less juice than it takes to power the average American’s porch light. On any average day under normal conditions, I’d expect natural sunlight to provide the majority of indoor illumination though creative use of windows as well as site positioning of the home.  The greatest demand for the interior lighting would normally be waking hours after sunset, a period of time I’m estimating in at about six hours average per day.  Electrical demand for patio and security lighting outside, as well as convenience and/or safety lighting inside, can be reduced to a minimum through the use of infrared motion control.

I tackle the math involved in sizing the lighting portion of my solar project here in Project Notes 4.

Enjoy.