Ottawa's Northern Nomad Tiny Home 

Like many student tiny home projects, the Northern Nomad is the brainchild of the students themselves. A group of five engineering students designed a mobile, net-zero energy tiny home for their senior capstone project. Under the direction of Professor Scott Bucking, Northern Nomad’s project supervisor, they were able to create a genuinely buildable design.

Stemming from a desire to study building performance and incentivize learning, Professor Bucking and one of the original students decided to make the design a reality. Through assembling a construction crew with an interdisciplinary team of engineering students, and fundraising and partnerships with over 30 industry sponsors, they were able to create the tiny home deemed the Northern Nomad.

Why a tiny home? 

Before jumping into the design details of the Northern Nomad, it is imperative to share the goal of the project: to collect data on home performance. The team wanted to examine various building technologies, such as building-integrated photovoltaics, and gather data on how they perform. In short, they wanted a testbed for building research.

A tiny home was a viable option because it could be built within a relatively short amount of time, be mobile, and did not require a permit to build. In addition, tiny home design is a trending concept, so it was appealing to the students and various stakeholders of the project.

For a mobile home, in particular, there is a greater surface area to insulate since it is elevated off of the ground. For tiny houses on wheels (THOWs), there is more surface area where air can infiltrate into the interior space, which can have a significant impact in terms of energy. This challenge makes tiny homes arguably more difficult to well-insulate than larger homes.

Another unique feature is the unconventional incorporation of solar panels. Typically, homes will have a roof with solar panels attached to the outside. The Northern Nomad incorporates solar panels into the roof itself, allowing seamless integration between the two and a sleek, glass-like finish. Even neater, the team is planning to take advantage of the cooling process of the panels to generate heat for the interior space. The tiny home only consumes as much energy as the solar panels generate in a year; the team has even run computer simulations to ensure this, estimating a net-zero energy performance. The tiny home functions off-grid; however, in the depth of winter, the duration of off-grid operation may be limited by the amount of sun exposure and how the occupants use the space.