'Tiny House Lab' shows what you can do in an ultrasmall house

Corbett Lunsford played piano for ballerinas; Grace Lunsford was a singer and dancer. As for Nanette Lunsford, well, she's only 3 months old and spends her days being adorable, though teething has made her just a bit fussy.

Through Saturday, they're making their home in the parking lot of Sanders Home Services' new showroom on Black Horse Pike in Washington Township.

It's on wheels and all of 200 square feet, but the Lunsfords' is not your typical "tiny" house. It is, in fact, a "Tiny House Lab," which they built themselves and are using to bring the message of performance testing to American homeowners.

"We are part of the tiny-house movement by default," Grace said, but "we are really part of the high-performance movement."

"What we see all of the time with tiny houses is how cute they are or affordable they are," said Hap Haven, a Philadelphia-based energy expert who has long advocated testing to ensure that a house is functioning correctly. (For his philosophy, see http://goo.gl/szvVo1.)

"This is an interesting demonstration of showing how what can be done in a tiny house, you have the ability to do in a larger house," Haven said.

The Lunsfords' demo tiny house - 13.4 feet tall, 24 feet long, and 8.5 feet wide - is an example of "limitation breeding creativity," Corbett observed.

A loft serves as the dining area, with a table that lowers into a coffee table as the space becomes a living room. The underloft is the bedroom, chosen for the baby's benefit because her mother did not want to climb stairs (which double as storage) with her.

The trio, plus two cats, have been on the road since April, bringing their totally crowdfunded 10-month "Proof Is Possible Tour" to 20 cities nationwide. Details of the Washington Township visit are at https://goo.gl/agwOlO, and they head to Princeton on Sunday. (Find tour information at http://goo.gl/siGSsV.)

Being filmed this week is an episode of Home Diagnostics, the Lunsfords' PBS show, which will debut in 2017. "This Old House meets CSI," as Grace described it.

"At 28, I decided to do something more serious" than playing the piano, Corbett, a certified home-performance specialist, said in an interview Sunday, before their house went on public view.

He and Grace were living in a Chicago condo when, in 2008, they decided to immerse themselves in the science of building forensics and spend their lives "teaching consumers and contractors to use scientific testing" to ensure that work is done to standards of highest quality.

"We don't mean an 'energy audit,' " Grace said, "but a comprehensive home-performance assessment" that covers four elements: heat flow; air flow and pressure; moisture; and air quality.

If you have control over these four elements, then a home is high-performance, and testing is how it's done. "It is a whole-house concept," she said, adding that "numbers don't lie."

Peter R. Sanders, a veteran South Jersey HVAC contractor who is sponsoring the Lunsfords' visit, called what they are doing "game-changing."

Builders and contractors "need to test their work, test it going in and test it going out," he said.

The Lunsfords built the tiny house on wheels - in development for a year - in his parents' backyard in Tampa, Fla., in five months, while she was pregnant.

"We stole five months of their weekends," Corbett said. His father, a woodworker, helped and added some fine cabinetry to the project.

"We designed it on Google Sketchup in 3-D," said Grace, acknowledging this was the first thing they had ever built.

Yet their "tiny house hotel," as Corbett described it, is comfortable and high-performance as well as earthquake- and hurricane-proof, and travels flawlessly on any road.

It "exceeds passive-house standards" for energy efficiency, he said. "This is not a 'net zero' house [it has a propane stove], but it is off the grid," with two solar-panel arrays adjacent to it.

Behind a panel under the copper sink (also laundry room and baby bath) is a 50-gallon "bladder" that holds water, with a faucet operated by pedals that keep use under control, Grace said. There is a bathroom with a shower, a composting toilet, and a changing table.

Donated by the manufacturers, Corbett said, were cork flooring, a noiseless air conditioner, and a ventilation hood for the stove that rids the small space of moisture and carbon monoxide, among other products. The house is so tight that "ears pop when I turn on the vent hood," he said.

There are 1.3 air changes per hour. Haven, whose Germantown home has 3.5 per hour, said anything above 5 is "a leaky house."

"The reason we're are on this tour is to tell people to ask for it: Ask for the testing, and use the diagnostics to develop a better product," Grace said.

"We are using this as a prism to teach people about the dynamics of their homes," Corbett said. "People tell us all the time that they have spent tens of thousands to fix problems that haven't been fixed."

Haven, who works to educate consumers and contractors on the whole-house approach, said the couple were using "a different way to reach people."

"If they reach 10 people here and there, it will make a difference," he said. "It may not be enough for them, but it will make inroads."

aheavens@phillynews.com

215-854-2472 @alheavens