Sustainable Residential Buildings in the Anthropocene: A Case Study Investigating Resilience Strategies for Tiny Houses

There is a growing need for affordable, sustainable housing solutions that minimize environmental impact while maintaining livability and safety. This project uses thermal and structural analysis techniques to develop and evaluate a resilient tiny house prototype for a case study in Banning, California. Background research included interviews with experts, such as San Tan Adobe, General Tiny Home, and Francisco Gil, which informed three preliminary designs incorporating a variety of building resilience strategies. These designs were synthesized into a conceptual prototype featuring a gable, wooden roof truss with a one-foot overhang, adobe walls, solar panels, and a raised foundation. This prototype was modeled using AutoCAD and Revit. A thermal diffusion simulation model was developed using MATLAB and Wolfram Mathematica to analyze the benefits of the adobe wall’s thermal properties as compared to typical fiberglass batt insulation. The simulated inside face of a 16-inch adobe wall achieved design requirements, maintaining temperatures under 80℉ (~27℃) throughout a summer day. This indicates that adobe’s thermal diffusivity coefficient (α) of 0.3 mm2/sec makes it well-suited for extreme temperatures, as it minimizes heat transfer to or from the environment to the house system compared to conventional fiberglass batt insulation (α = 3 mm2/sec). The wooden gable roof truss was structurally analyzed following ASCE 7-22 loading requirements and combinations, using SAP2000 to simulate the truss and identify controlling members. The American Wood Council National Design Specification (AWC NDS) was then used to determine the capacity of the prototype’s 24F glulam wood material. The demand for the truss was well within the capacity for every analyzed maximum load and moment. Finally, the validity of the adobe wall design was tested using ASCE 7-22 standards. Ultimately, the unreinforced adobe was not up to code, as it did not meet the requirements for Banning’s seismic loading. Future work includes designing and analyzing reinforcement for the walls and testing various additive combinations in the adobe to see if it improves the material’s performance under seismic conditions. Additionally, the truss materials could be further optimized to minimize material usage, and a cost and life-cycle analysis could be done to ensure the prototype is feasible and effective.