One of the hardest aspects of mould illness is all of the big decisions you have to make. It affected our whole families life from our health and vitality, our business and income, our house and the girls schooling. One of the biggest decisions for us was to sell our house and simplify our life by moving into a tiny house. We loved our 3 bedroom house and had some amazing memories but it was time for us to have a fresh start.
Not long after I got really unwell, our country went into lockdown from Covid. It was interesting timing as on one hand it did allow a break from seeing so many clients, and our daughters seemed to feel better during lockdown. On the other hand, at the beginning of Covid, there was so many unknowns as to the long term consquences and future for businesses in NZ. So I was still trying to keep the physio business going with online sessions (which are very hard to do!). Like a lot of others, Covid was a time of massive reflection and looking at our values and priorities. With the symptoms of mould illness not really settling for either Julia or myself, we knew we had to make some big changes.
The first step was addressing the house we were living. At the time we didnt know much about testing and remediation, but I knew that when I went into one of the bedrooms I felt particularly bad. I don't recommend this to clients now but we just ripped off all the gib to see what was going on. We wore PPE and sealed off the area with plastic, but even then it wasn't the best thing for a mould-sensitive person to be doing! There wasnt alot of mould but there was some on the framing. The worst part was where some grout was where it shouldnt be as was bridging the cavity between the bricks and the framing. It was the corner of the house that was most exposed to rain and water had been moving through the brick across the grout and into the framing!! We removed the mould by wire brushing and treating with hydrogen peroxide after, and then re-gibbed. Instantly I felt better in that room so I knew we had dealt with it well.
Despite fixing that known problem, we gave alot of thought of selling the house and building a new tiny house. We thought that this would give us the best chance of recovering fully, and would also take the pressure off financially which would mean less stress.
As we went about the process of getting our house ready for sale, we also started looking at and designing our tiny house. There is alot to consider with size and design etc.There is also the legal considerations as Tiny Houses aren't always looked kindly on by councils and neighbours. At the time, there was a bit of uncertainty whether a 3m wide tiny house would be considered a "vehicle" and therefore we opted for a 2.4m one to be on the safe side as we would be living in a residential area. Not long after the MBIE released a document that gave some guidelines and we could have been able to do a 3m wide one. This would have been nice to have the extra room, but it would have been a nightmare getting it down the driveway!
We contacted a few different Tiny House companies and end up opting with Ecospace in Auckland for a few reasons. Firstly, we liked the idea a really well insulated, airtight, tiny house that had a good ventilation unit in it. The owner of Ecospace, Gavin Barr, was really great to deal with and was flexible with working with our own design. The Formance panel system is also quite quick to put up, meaning the building time would be reduced. It was during Covid, so prices did go up a fair bit and we ended up having delays with the second lockdown, but we were happy with how the build went. To help save costs, we asked Gavin to build us the shell of the house with the plumbing and electrical pre-done, and we would finish it ourselves.
Our design included a single loft wtih storage stairs, with the kitchen and bathroom below. We considered doing a double loft, but at the time the idea was for us to live in this temporariliy and then it would become a holiday home for my parents on the property. Even Tiny Houses are such a small space, there are so many design considerations. We opted to have a smaller toilet/shower area and a bigger kitchen bench and lounge.
Again we went for the Lunos Nexxt ventilation unit with heat reocovery. We also used the Pureply again for lining the walls and roof to reduce formaldehyde emissions (although these are a lot better in most plys now). We designed and had the kitchen /stairs cut from laminated ply through Cut Shop, and assembled it ourselves ourselves. For the flooring we went with cork tiles, and glued these down ourselves with a low-toxic glue. It took some time, and lots of learning, but we were happy with how it turned out. The house was pre wired in the formance panels so we didnt use shielded cable for EMF, but we did install Bio lights from Blockblue which gave us the ability to reduce blue light at night.
We moved into this house around March of 2022. Julia and I slept in the upstairs loft, and the girls slept in bunk beds downstairs. Although it was a tiny house, we enjoyed the extra space coming from the 4.8m cabin (see other blog here). It was also nice having the toilet, shower and kitchen in the same building. We noticed the extra thermal performance of the Formance panels compared to the steel framing of the other tiny house. It stayed cooler in the summer (which was good as we didnt have a heat pump) and stayed amazingly warm in the winter. The lunos unit helped with heat regluation and also reduced condensation massively. With 4 people breathing and cooking in a small space, we expected this to be an issue but if we turned the Lunos to high at might we basically had no condensation on the windows!
We lived in this house for about 18 months and really enjoyed the experience. It was also very healing for us having good air quality. Because the girls went to bed downstairs, we couldnt really hang out in the lounge at night but this ended up being a positive. We would both go up to the loft with the red light on for sleep enhancement, read books and fall asleep early. I think having the better sleep, and improved circadian rhythym did wonders for our healing journey
When we initially bought the house, we didn't really know how long we would be in here. Over time, with the girls growing up we realised we would need more space fairly shortly and it wasnt going to work with them sleeping in a seperate cabin. There was another 32m2 consented dwelling on our section (with kitchen and bathroom), and initially our thoughts were to demo it because of the mould problems in there. But after being on the section, and learning more about remediation and building, we decided we could do an extensive renovation and remediaiton and make this space liveable for us. Once this was completed, we planned to sell this Tiny home and then start building a 30m2 sleep out as extra space for our bedrooms.
We ended up selling the Tiny House to another young family who were dealing with mould-related health problems. It was sad to see it towed away, but also we were glad our decisions related to mould and health would move on to benefit another family
