The First Order of Business

The first order of business is to decide what to build.  Square footage will dictate how much of an area to clear for building, but the style and shape will dictate the intended approach to the house,, where windows and doors will be best and a host of other issues relating to the style of house.
Most of my friends and I love Cape Cod houses.

The beauty of the Cape Cod is unparalleled in a country sort of way.   They are also very energy efficient.  The closer to square and low a building, the less surface area there is in the building and therefore there is less heat loss.  But in my case there is a basic drawback.  In order to build one accurately, there is a lot of wasted space in the middle with a central chimney, and there is a central front entry hall with rooms leading to each side to eat up space.

I feel that I can compromise without that loss of space and still keep the surface area pretty small. 
I have always loved Greek Revival houses as they appear in rural areas.  High style is not practical for a country house.  The same floor plans appear in Gothic Revival houses as they are roughly contemporary styles to each other.

The floor plan and general arrangement of the exterior facades recurs too, all the way up into the first decades of the 20th century. Scale and decoration changes dramatically, but the same general plan.

This is a larger version of my Greek plan

 

 

This similarity gives you a larger search to find the floor plan on the Internet.

Basically the house is rectangular.  On the narrow side of the rectangle, there is a gable roofline.  In classic Greek houses the pitch will be rather low, and in Gothic rather high.  In country styles, it will be roughly 12:12 on top of a stub wall to raise the upstairs ceilings a couple of feet.
Across this end façade(generally used as the front) there will be a door and two windows evenly spaced and the door to one side.   This sort of breaks up the symmetry that I like, but as you see in the house above, they helped that by making very tall windows.
Inside you generally enter the house facing the foot of the stairs.  The main living space is two rooms, one behind the other to the side of the stair-hall.  Behind the staircase and adjoining hall, there is a narrow room that  fills the space to the back of the house(often later added on to through this small room by means of an ell of some kind).
In my case, I plan to eliminate the hall beside the stairs, and make the narrow back room even smaller(narrower) to install an outer wall kitchen between the back of the stairs and the back wall.  This will be open to the back main room  with perhaps a decorative arch, and perhaps a wall of screens, or drapes to hide the kitchen if desired.

And another large version in New England

 

 

The first (front) main room will be living room.  The back space will be the dining room with the kitchen open to it.(this is because the kitchen will be basically only as deep as the width of the stairs enough room for the kitchen counter and basically you will be standing in the dining room to prepare meals in the kitchen).
Upstairs, the stairs will rise to a landing and turn to face the middle of the house.  Either the entire upstairs can be one room, or there can be a tiny room(Bath?) just in front of you as you stand on the stairs, and a room to the right and one to the left.  These two rooms will have one or two windows in the gable ends of the house.
The downstairs living spaces generally have windows all along the three sides of the house.  In my case, I plan to save energy by eliminating the two windows in the front gable beside the door, and the three windows generally at the opposite gable end.  I plan to put a large window or bank of windows on the long wall in each room. This plan will save energy and provide solar gain, being on the south side in my case.
I have always loved a watercolor painting by Swedish artist Carl Larson.  He painted a room with a bank of windows along one wall that had plants on the sills.  I may never be able to afford a whole bank of windows, but perhaps three in each room would be possible.
I rather hate the idea of losing the two windows beside the door, so perhaps I will relent if good windows can be afforded.  I also like the idea of solid wall space for that wall for display.

 

This might be a good place for window seats to sit and read in as well.

 

 

The gable end bedrooms upstairs would allow one to use one room as a library, guest room or den and the other for a bedroom.  One would get morning sun to wake you, and the other, evening sun to extend the daylight...you choose which is best for you.  I could do a dormer in each room, but they break the skin of the house and so become an energy waster, and add to the expense of the build.

Also, every break in the seamless character of a roof makes it vulnerable to failure.  Valleys, dormers, ells all compromise the seal of the roof....if not at first then as it ages.  I simply do not understand all the jogs and angles and additions to a house that seems the norm in modern construction and design.  yes, I love a Queen Anne house with all the turrets and dormers and jog, but they are endlessly difficult to maintain.  Leaks are always creeping up.  A simple outer skin to a house, like a Cape Cod or a simple single shed roof or gable roof will be easy to install and easy to maintain through the life of the house

 

If you need to add space in your house, add an ell at right angles to a wall and drop the roofline down to below the overhang of the main roof, either the gable end or a side overhang.  Alternatively, cover new space with a continuation of the old roof so that it is seamless and does not form an angle that will require a valley.  Obviously this is a recommendation, but take it seriously, don't test my logic by finding out ten years down the road that your roof is leaking. You do not want to have to tear off a whole or part of a roof that still has twenty years of life in it, and may not be still available so you have a terrible looking patch with non matching roofing.

 

The dimensions of the house are modest.  I have not quite settled, but have a good idea of them  I want inside dimensions to be about 16 by 24.  I had a living room that size and always loved the space.  That may be fine just building the house 16x24, or if the framing seems to take up too much space, perhaps 17x25 or 18x26 to end up with the same space as I planned inside.

This should give me just enough space for the furniture I have and keep it small to be affordable and easy to keep clean and repaired.

 



I do not have a penny to my name, so all this will be on the tiniest budget. Small and simple will make it possible to build myself, the only thing that will allow me to accomplish this.

My Friend's Adventure in Building

My friend Robert is planning a new home in New Hampshire.  As he has no computer, I will let him take over the administration of the blog for a time.  I may still post to it, as he is planning to spread this over a long time, He can relate his adventure in building to you.  I am of course all the way in my terribly unfinished house, with little opportunity to use the computer, so I guess this is the best of all worlds.
So, welcome Bob to the world of blogging and building.

Thanks.  I am planning to build here in New Hampshire so I can have a comfortable retirement home.  I already have a Tiny House, that is how I met Bill with a common interest before he went away to start over. 

I have always wanted a small house, but it is a little difficult to live in the tiny space I constructed.  I really do not mind the lack of space, but I miss all my possessions.  I got rid of most everything when I retired, but I have retained many of my best things that are sitting in storage here, not far from Conway.
I have purchased a piece of land that has a couple of sites to use for housing.  One site is not too far from the road, is easy to get in and out of and as it is already cleared and rather "park-like" will be fine for my Tiny House.  It will be a fine guest house when I am finished with my new venture. 

The other end of the property, on the high ground of a topographically diverse lot will need a great amount of work to site the house.  This is fine, as I will have to do a lot of saving up and preparatory work...basically finishing old projects...before I can build.  That is in addition to the fact that I have very little money. The tiny house consumed a lot of my ready funds, and now I will have to accomplish all this on my meager retirement income.  It will not help that I am paying roughly 40% of my income for the land.

 

I look at this as an opportunity to... Do it right... Slow and steady will be the watchword.  I hope that you will not get bored with my project as it will be at least two to three years before I finish.  Meanwhile, I must move and finish my current screen house in order to use it to store the furniture I have in storage.  That will free up some money to devote to the new project.

At the same time, I hope that doing this project so slowly and with so little money might inspire others to do the same.  You can do a great deal with just your two hands to drive a project forward.

Period Fireplace.

Some of the problems I am finding with the Internet have been terribly obvious this week.  I want to know more about building a period fireplace.  I search with every possible combination of words to find period designs, to find construction videos...anything really that will give me a clue as to how to begin. 
The problem I find is that first of all, no matter what I input, all I get is results of how to hire a local contractor.  It also offers ways to purchase fireplace inserts or mantle shelves or any number of ways to purchase something.  But the Internet and you tube is determined to be of no help whatsoever with design and construction. 
I would think that perhaps no one wants to be responsible for giving faulty advice and then be responsible for a fire in someone's house , but it is painfully easy to find ways to slap together a mud and stone fireplace that is so obviously dangerous that it is frightening.  I cannot figure out why this is so terribly difficult.
 So while I am still writing about period houses, I am going to make it my mission to provide the information that I can to help you out.  Now I am not a mason, and I cannot give full instructions on how to do this, but having lived with plenty of 18th century fireplaces, I can at least describe what I know 
So painfully slowly, I will add to this and the period house posts so that we can get a relatively comprehensive set of instruction for both goals.  So, be patient.

BUILDING A REPRODUCTION OF AN EARLY HOUSE

My main interest is in Federal and Georgian houses, both formal and country.  Many of the things I talk about apply to all old houses.  Later Victorian, Greek Revival, Gothic Revival, Italianate houses, etc., have many similar issues, but I intend to speak about my first love here...all the rest may be treated as I have the opportunity to study the specifics. Early houses are familiar to me because I have had the opportunity to study and work on them.  Of course I grew up in a big Victorian, so I am not totally unfamiliar.

First you must understand that we are living in the 21st century, and building codes enforcement people do not have a sense of humor, or any sympathy for your dumb ass desires.

People in the 18th century were smaller.  That does not mean that the men were 5 foot 2, but the average was much smaller than today's average.  Also, they did not work with 2x4s and 1/2" plaster board.  Materials were heavier and thicker, so if you were doing 8 foot posts in your walls, your layers of materials that led to the finished ceiling mounted up, lowering the ceiling a bit.  Chairs were lower, so chair rails were lower....well you get the point.

Your codes people are not going  to let you copy a house from the 18th or 19th century exactly, in any location where codes mean anything to them.

There are locations in the world though, where it is unlikely that the city will give a damn.  I know of rural places where the codes people are only interested in whether you are wiring up to state code, and that you have a good and approved way to handle waste water.

They recognize that you can use a composting toilet to dispose of toilet waste, and that there are alternative methods of getting your water and getting rid of your water and that is just about the end of their interference.

If you can find one of these places then you can build one of these simple houses in the old way without too many compromises. 

If you cannot, then you will have to modify your plans to suit all modern codes. Your windows will not be made in the same way.  Your foundation will be different.  You will have to have higher ceilings, windows that will be a certain size and shape.  Materials will have to be of certain dimensions and you must use minimum R values in the insulation of the walls, roof and cellar.  Then they will be looking at your heating source.... and so it will go.

There are many rules that make good sense, but many are subject to alternative solutions...and that is what I like about rural and reasonable towns.

I love using candles and oil lamps etc. for my lighting.  I like composting toilets... If you want a traditional look, put your composting toilet in an outhouse with a solid floor.  I only use electricity to charge my phone and computer, and that is the way I want it to stay.  My carbon footprint is pretty small.  Over here, it is very common to shop for every meal and so refrigeration is a non-issue. and I only drive to a bigger town once a month or so.  Even my gasoline(benzina) consumption is minimal.

You may wish to make concessions for your comfort, like a gas stove or a modern heat source, but such creature comforts can easily be put into a back room or "ell" if you want your home to retain its pure design.

You really should insulate well, and that can be done without too many compromises.  If you do not, your feet will never be warm again in winter and you will sweat out every summer.  Fortunately there are plenty of modern insulation methods that should do the job efficiently.

In my little stone house in the mountains I heat to temperature in the morning.  It goes most of the day without heat.(unless I am sitting there for some reason)  Then I heat it well when I come home to read or sit with friends.  At bed time...which is fairly early now... I heat it up and turn off the heat till morning except in the bitterest cold.  Good insulation has served me well, even with poorly fitting windows.

That reminds me to mention something I have probably said before.  Before Jimmy Carter and the first great fuel shortage, it was mandatory to have a complete change of air in the house every 8 hours.  When prices went up, houses tightened up and mold started growing inside houses all over the country!

I like my gas heat...It needs air to burn properly and my loose, ancient windows serve me well, keeping be breathing easily.

The gas flame and the fireplaces all lend a beautiful glow to the rooms...flickering their light on the 500 year old chestnut beams and stone interior walls...the exterior walls have a thin insulation.

I used an old method.  Cellulose ground up and mixed with an adhesive was sprayed on the stone... smoothed slightly and spray painted. It will probably be a nightmare to remove, but who cares what happens to my successors!  Oops...I sound like a senator from a coal state or a CEO, don't I.

So, where do I begin....

Very early houses, my favorite being a Cape Cod, were as small as they could be to enclose a rectangular space.  A cube shape is one of the best...and a sphere is perfect, but neither will give you much period charm.

Capes were very efficient.  Most are not too terribly far off a square and the lowish roof contained floor space with the roof covering the square with few cubic feet to heat...Low eaves you know.
I like to build a roof with a 12/12 pitch, but there can be a lot of wasted heat in a high peak.  Tiny houses are no problem as they do not end up with that much headroom.

I love the ticket booth at Blithewold in Rhode Island, but I guess it would be impractical.

 

I guess the Cape is the best choice for maximum space and efficiency...so I will discuss that first.

 

Most 18th century houses...OOPS...all 18th century houses were POST AND BEAM...

The best frames were of oak.  But many regions have a serious shortage of oak, so, perhaps hemlock would do.  Many early homes were of pine, but if you must use a softwood, it might be better to use something that does not mind a little damp without deteriorating.  Cedar might be good, but I doubt if long floor or roof beams will stay very straight for long with gravity dragging them down.  More complex joist patterns might help this.

 

 

Local people might tell you what is traditional in your area, and search for tables on the Internet that tell you how long a span you can get from a certain size beam in various species..  Nevertheless, Oak is the frame of choice.  There will be those who will criticize various woods, but if you check what the spans can be, use what you can get, possibly cutting them for yourself.  (Members that will be inside the house with no possible contact with the weather, might be anything you want as long as they won't sag)

 

 

 

This frame has raised corner posts that give more headroom on the second floor...a later choice than my favorites. and a continuous top plate so probably stick built or front and back bents. probably a barn.

 

My early house in Maine had floor joists made of un-peeled(8-10 inch) pine logs 22 feet long, still in place after 235 years...they needed a little support in the middle, but they still held up.

If post and beam construction is not in the cards, just use modern lumber, and make false corner beam boxes, and use them to hide wiring, plumbing, air conditioning and heat ducts.

 

Post and beam construction might be built stick by stick to make the frame, but most frames were made in "BENTS".

 

Basically, the entire gable end of the building in a cape would be constructed in a single piece(minus the sill).  Then the interior walls would be constructed in a similar way, but with a configuration made to allow doors and rooms to pass through them.  Usually there would be four bents.  The gable, made with even the wall studs attached or notched into them, a bottomless pentagon with a point at the top.  Then one pentagon on the near side of the central fireplace/chimney stack.  Another similar one on the far side of the chimney(the stair hall, fireplaces etc., would be sandwiched between these two) and the far gable end pentagon beyond that.

 

Sill plates went all around the foundation(this could be field stone, or just a big stone under each post.) We might even substitute a rectangle of doubled, pressure treated 2x material, under the sill plate/beams. The sill plates would be the entire perimeter obviously(pegged together at the joints by tenons from the vertical posts of the bents), with two main beams crossing from front to back of the building under the two central bents.

 

Horizontal top plate beams would notch into each bent at the eaves and ridge(sometimes no ridge, but I think you would regret that) and fit between the bents as they are successively raised to vertical.

The vertical posts had tenons that fit into mortises in the sills.

 

A good book on post and beam construction will help a lot, but you would be surprised how different modern frames can be from old ones.

 

I have told you about it before, but I suggest you look for a book called: "The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay 1625-1725".  by Abbot Lowell Cummings which I describe in more detail elsewhere in this blog.

 

The very best thing about a post and beam cape is that you can build most of it completely alone till you get to the roof joists as none of the members are terribly long.  With a "come along" or winch or car and a pulley, you might even get those up alone.  The bents are terribly heavy, but if you do not have a winch, you can build the bents piece by piece standing up instead of lifting the whole thing up after assembly.  Again...you need some kind of winch. (piece by piece you end up lifting the top plates and cross beams and those are heavy, but you have the rest of the frame to help you to lift.)

 

If you have access to very long logs, build an A of two logs,(or a three legged tepee) chained or tied together(consult your boy scout manual from the fifties) and use that A to lift heavy loads into place with a winch. This is great if you do not have an over head point of attachment to lift heavy loads like a very large tree.

 

Your only tricky part in building piece by piece is fitting in the corner braces...more on this later.

 

 

It is tough finding very long trees suitable for sills and top plates, so the size of this house is limited.  The alternative is to join beams end to end with scarf joints to allow more length.  Building piece by piece allows for more length as well.  A house 40 by 36 was a pretty big example.  Also any larger made for a short squat looking house as the height of ceilings did not increase proportionately.  You do not want it to look like a toadstool just emerging from the ground.

 

Ceiling heights did  not often exceed 7 feet, and big Summer Beams(big beams that ran from fireplace bent to gable bent parallel to the front.  These were not always used.) might only be 6 feet 5 to 7 inches. early houses felt higher if no ceiling was applied to the joists.  The  bare skeleton gave more visual height though the dark wood overhead did not help.

 

Old houses rarely had a lot of exposed wood on the inside.  They were very practical people and knew that white plaster would reflect light and make for lighter rooms.  Later, exposed wood would be painted, sometimes in light colors as time went on.  Only wood of extremely high quality would remain exposed almost always at least painted.  As time went on, papers and colored walls were possible and of course lighting improved to help the dark rooms. 

Some paint colors were very elegant...Grays, peaches, forest and pine greens...but others could be real eye openers especially startling cerulean blues!

 

Many of the colors we think of as Colonial have been copied from colors that have been uncovered after being on walls for a couple of centuries...dirty, faded, greasy.  Mount Vernon corrected some of their colors and threw people into a tizzy when they saw them...

 

To be continued.....

Tips to keep you out of trouble

These days I am working with very old stone construction where I live...chestnut beams and tiles everywhere, But I have still to upload pictures of construction projects from the past.  Here is a bit of general advice when doing wood construction, till I can figure out a way to upload photos of other construction.

One of the happiest accidents I had when constructing the building so prominent in this blog is the overhang at one end.  This could have been over the tongue of the trailer or in my case over the rear end.  The benefit has been to have a window that could be open(mine is an outswing stained glass one but any will benefit.) almost anytime, that is very much out of the weather.  A pouring rain or beating sun have little effect on this window and the ventilation that it gives as it is recessed 20 inches or so under the roof and upper loft floor.

Use a framing square.  There are many times when you use a square, to make straight cuts on your 2x4s or on your plywood.  I am pretty sure that most people know those.  However, it is imperative to use it other times as well. When you gang several framing members together, such as when you add cripples to a framing member to support as window lintel or the bottom of a window.  You might think it is Ok to eyeball or use your fingers to determine if the bottom is level.  But it is so easy to run the ganged members uphill by just feeling that they are flush with your hands, and if you do it with one, several ganged together will really go uphill.  Use the square to make sure the bottom of the column is level.  This is true of corner posts as well.

When you put blocking between floor joists to make nailing surfaces on sheet goods or board seams, or if you put in blocks to keep joists from twisting, make sure that they are not too tight.  you can easily bow the entire joist out of straight by just forcing one block in that you have cut a 16th too long.  If you continue to do this, you can multiply the problem each time till you are way out of straight and no longer can match up seams going the other way.  The only remedy is to take the blocking out and start over, or sister new beams onto the joists so that the edge of the sheet goods land on a joist.

Don't allow a mistake to go unrepaired as you are doing the lower parts of a building.  As you work on the building, the mistakes show up as you try to fit the walls, and roofing together and they can get to be bigger and bigger headaches as you continue to work.  Take it apart when it happens even if it is difficult...correct it and start fresh.

Use the proper nails.  Get advice from the lumber yard.  Tell them what you are doing and have them advise you as to guage, length, material and special texture of the shank or head.  There are nails for decking, roofing, laying floors, shingles and clapboards.  Choose the right one.

Choosing between nails and screws is another personal issue for me.  When I am working where there is no electricity, it is hard to use screws, and I hate battery operated tools!
One thing I have to say in this age of sheet rock and similar screws, is that nails have great tensile strength.  They will take a lot of twisting, wind movement and walking over, before they will break.  Screws tend to be a bit more brittle when they are bent a couple of times.  When the wind buffets your hose a lot, it is not good to have metal fasteners fail from metal fatigue.  Nails do have a weaker hold when you try to pry members apart, but if you choose the right nail that is large enough to do the job, I find them better in many ways.

Use diagonal metal straps to help reduce sway and racking in your building.  This is essential....DO NOT OVERLOOK THIS... when you build with boards, even tongue and groove or ship lap boards.  Sheet goods such as plywood, Oriented Strand Board etc., will do much of this job for you, but it might be wise to do diagonal bracing anyway, in case metal fasteners or even the wood itself around the fasteners and on seams fail in time from repeated movement. Use the braces horizontally in ceilings, rafters, on roofs, floors, and vertical places like in all walls.  This is very true if you are using a purlin system for your roof

, like in metal roofing.  They are very cheap, and though they may prove to be redundant, it will not bankrupt you to be sure.  This is extremely important in buildings with very large openings in the walls, like screen houses, open pavilions and buildings with large windows and doors.

One thing you might not realize when working in these days of standardization.  You need to check your lumber before using it.
It is not unusual to find that your 8 foot long 2x4 is 8 feet 1/2 inch long, or 7 feet 11 1/2 inches short...so to speak.
Measure every piece of wood that you use.  Lumber is often a little long or short, and this can be a nightmare if you have constructed something complicated and find that that last piece of wood just does not fit, because three other pieces that you assumed were a standard length....WEREN'T.
This also goes for the dimensions of the lumber...your 2x4 is supposed to be 1 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches.  But sometimes this is not the case...again...to late to fix it after the construction is almost done.  I find this to be a real problem with pressure treated lumber that can often be much smaller than you expect.

Also, check your sheet goods....you may be planning on using a sheet of plywood only to find that it does not fit because it has tongue and groove or lap cuts.  Your piece may be 4 feet wide, but do you have to overlap or fit the tongue into a groove to make a slight difference, or it might be a bit wider that you expect. 

Gimme Some Air! Mold Problems

In the olden days,when I was young, there was a sort of rule of thumb that the entire volume of air in a building should be exchanged  or replaced every 8 hours.

  No one stood there with an instrument to check this out.  There were no such instruments. However, with the construction techniques of the time, it was likely that no seal against the outside air or sealing the inside air in would have been possible anyway.

The advent of vinyl and aluminum siding sealed many a house up and promoted wet insulation and mold growth. damp air passed through the walls into the cavities and was stopped by the siding. Venting the siding helped but did not stop this problem.

  There were no vapor barriers.  There were few sheet goods.  Plastic was new to the markets and unused when it was.

In the center of the photo you will see a trial spot where chemicals were tried out to remove the mold. Here is a building that I worked on.  It was clad in Aluminum, then later capped with a metal roof.  It was sealed up tight as a  tuna fish can.  Then the mold started as the basement was damp.

 

 

Walls were built of separate boards, and few would have bothered, unless there was a lot of money involved, with tongue and grove for sheathing.  Floors were rarely insulated, and many times the walls and roof were not insulated either.  Sometimes you used saw dust, which would get wet and pack down to the bottom of the cavities that they were meant to insulate.  Early houses had cavities that were filled in with brick and mortar, sometimes there were woven sticks plastered over with mud or plaster, sometimes left over from the first year where that was all there was for walls. Those too would develop cracks  and allow air to pass through.

 

 

I believe that where people were using the almost endless supplies of wood that were cut for fields and roads, they were much healthier than they might have been because of the exchange of air in rooms that had smokey fires.
 
Also, I think we were much healthier when there was this exchange of air even up to my high school days, when plywood and heavy insulation with vapor barriers appeared in houses.
With a space heater heating a small space, a gas heater, small wood stove, a gas range, etc., it is necessary to let air into the house.  First they need air inside to combust the fuel, and second, the inhabitants need air to replace what air the burning fuel consumes.  Carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide are not the only people and pet killers in a confined heated space.  Once a flame dies from oxygen deprivation and the fuel does not stop, there is the plain gas still coming in.

Of course we use gas and smoke detectors to warn us of these killers, but still, there is enough of these gasses in a small space to be uncomfortable, to be constantly smelling the air up and to make a very unhealthy environment, especially since we, too, exhale CO2 and consume oxygen. Our plants may love it, and provide a bit of oxygen, but it truly is not enough.

So you can choose to build lots of air leaks into your envelope, fill your house...literally... with house plants, smother in one of may ways in your small space or be constantly awakened by buzzers in the night.

I do not really have an easy solution to this impossible choice.  Bring outside air in with an air vent and use outside air to combust your fuel....but is this really enough to be healthy in a small space?
All of this became critical when Jimmy Carter was in office, and fuel shortages became the norm.  We buttoned up the houses at that time, and air simply does not easily come into your house anymore.
 
Another unexpected byproduct of this tightening, is MOLD!  Some molds will not exactly kill you, but they can be awfully unpleasant, especially if you are sensitive to them.  Spores go everywhere, and soon your walls and possessions are covered and often stained by the mold beyond recovery. Those few deadly forms must be promptly treated professionally, and can often put you in the position of having to find alternate places to go and burning or scrapping the materials infected and indeed, possibly the entire house.

Dehumidifiers will help. If you have no electricity, you can get the dryers that are available in grocery stores and hardware stores that attract moisture to a chemical.  Some drop the moisture into a reservoir and last much longer especially with refill crystals.

Wash mold with chlorine or chlorine based products immediately, and always be on the lookout for it in corners, and in blind spaces like cabinets and closets...We are so fond of these in tiny houses!

Drill decorative holes in doors...clover patterns are easy with a bit and brace or electric drill, hearts are traditional, as are flowers and their stems and leaves along the seams between boards, using the seams as the stem of the flower. This will help air to circulate a bit.  Leaving doors ajar will help as well.
 
Tiny computer fans that consume very small amounts of energy will help to circulate drier air into these spaces.
 
It is hard to pack these spaces with our possessions and still get air circulating to all the surfaces.  The Damp-Rid crystals will help. but may not be enough.

If you get a leak from outside, or have a corner where there is no air circulation, you are almost certain to get mold or mildew.

Another issue is absorbent materials.  Carpets in storage spaces are a real no no.
Clothing harbors mold, unpainted wood or plywood absorb moisture...Paint them.
If you do get mold and clean it off unpainted wood, paint it to seal it up. Cardboard boxes will absorb moisture and promote mold growth, but plastic will seal moisture in to a box and promote mold inside, even if it WILL keep mold from growing on the outside in a storage place. Let in all the air you can, but stop the water from coming in....now how do you do that????

You cannot make your house clean enough to stop mold!

Using those vacuum storage bags for all soft and absorbent articles will help immeasurably, but make certain that anything put inside is BONE DRY!

Do not cram your spaces full.  Allow air to circulate in all spaces.

Remember, that mold spores are everywhere...you cannot eliminate them in the air, the soil, on pets and on you!  You must be vigilant and watch for signs of mold and for places it may be starting, unseen.  Be aware of smells and coughing or stuffy noses in your house.
 
Gas heat is notorious for putting moisture into the air, as there is lots of moisture in the gas.  If you have it, or NOT TOO DRY WOOD heat, you must be doubly vigilant and should start the heating and cooking(steam trapped in the house from your tea water and the moisture from a composting toilet is pretty bad too.) season in your sealed up house is the time to start the drying inside the house.
 
Summer, as the mold grows above 45 degrees, can be awful, as the mold loves the warm and humid summer air.

If you live by the sea or a lake, make checking for mold a daily activity!

Mold is much like the barbarians on the borders of Rome....you may keep them at bay, but they will never be defeated.  The only remedy is constant vigilance.

When the tiny house was moved last spring on one of my trips over here.