Firstly, thanks to those who became early-adopter paid subscribers or forayed into the list of other ways to support my work at the bottom of my newsletters - I really appreciate it! This is the final piece of a 3 part series on our building a tiny house to live in while we build a ‘proper’ house. Read part one and part two for the complete story.
Preface
This newsletter may perhaps be a bit uninteresting to some, but I really wanted to discuss technical details of our tiny house build, as well as break down our tiny into dollars in 2023, because I think it’s an interesting topic and a lot of people ask me about it. Housing seems to be a global crisis at the moment, and living in smaller spaces without enormous debt or unnecessary luxury is becoming more and more attractive to many. I’ve shared our journey as more of a brief story in the last two posts, however this is a bit more technical on the costs and challenges involved. If this is not of interest, bear with me, I’ll get back to sailing very soon!
Legalities of tiny house living
As I mentioned in my first newsletter on this subject, the reason for choosing a tiny house on wheels for shelter over something else (such as a shed, or other fixed foundation dwelling), was both the convenience of being able to construct offsite, as well as the legal status of a dwelling on a road registrable platform (versus fixed or portable dwellings). Having built container cabins, renovated boat sheds and now ventured into tiny houses on wheels, I’ve learned more than I’ve ever dreamt I would about what’s legal, a grey area, or not legal at all.
For some people, whether something is ‘allowed’ or not does not bother them, and they’re happy to keep out of sight on their properties surrounded by trees and live happily ever after - I fully support this and 99% of the time there are not any issues. However, due to the visibility of the site for our tiny house, vanishing into the bushes to live a carefree existence was not really possible - we had to consider the amenity of neighbours and also the legalities when it comes to council regulation. I find this entire subject very frustrating and fraught with misnomers - frustrating, because I believe housing is over-regulated (this is a complex and long discussion I won’t venture into here), and fraught with misnomers, because many people think, for example, that if a structure is portable, that it is somehow legal: It is almost always not (I am referring to Australia, however, I’ve seen that virtually all western nations share extremely similar housing policy which has evolved in parallel over decades).
In most states in Australia, a tiny house is more or less considered a caravan. In fact, many tiny house builders will construct to caravan standards in order to road register the tiny house as a caravan - this is for insurance purposes, as well as council approval reasons. Unfortunately, most insurers do not recognise tiny houses, (which is frustrating, as many are worth upwards of $100,000) and nor do many councils, requiring owners to prove they’re actually caravans via the caravan registration framework (which is ill-suited and laborious). Thankfully, in Tasmania, a tiny house is recognised for what it is, as long as it sits on either a platform which could be registered for the road, or already is registered for the road (meaning, its doesn’t necessarily have to meet caravan construction standards and be registered as such, however, it must reside on a platform which is or can be registered for the road - this could be an open frame trailer, for example).
Regardless of what a tiny house is recognised as, there is still not really any legal way to actually live in a tiny house in 2023. You can often get temporary accommodation permits, and sometimes Development Application sign off on a tiny house as visitor accommodation, however, going to council and asking to live in your tiny house on your land permanently will almost always yield the same answer: No. So, what to do? How did we achieve this? One option is to classify your tiny house as temporary accommodation while you build. This is the option we have taken. In the submission of our house Development Application documentation (the application and designs for our ‘proper’ house build), we included the tiny house as temporary site accommodation for our build. Technically, the tiny house must be removed once the build is finished. For the most part, people living in tiny houses are doing so completely on the fringe, because there is no other option. This is crazy. There are dozens & dozens of professional tiny house building companies, tiny house expo’s, huge FB groups and communities - all for something that is, for the most part, not legally accepted at all.
In tiny house communities, you will hear a lot about composting toilets and grey water. Surprisingly, the toilet situation is the easiest to solve - we have very simple composting toilets available which work extremely well, are low cost, and even in most all states are council approved. The trickiest ‘output’ to manage in a tiny, is actually grey water: The water coming out of your sinks & shower. There is virtually no simple, cost effective and council accepted way to manage grey water. Some councils may discuss things like ‘French drains’ (sequestration trenches) or reed beds, however many won’t accept anything other than costly septics or aerated water treatment systems. There unfortunately isn’t an easy acceptable solution for grey water like there is for black water (toilet waste).
That all said, every council recognises the concept of ‘manual bucketing’, which, as the name suggestions, literally means to throw your bath water out the window onto the grass. Unfortunately, this does not mean you can just run your plumbing onto the ground, however, bucketing is a completely acceptable solution for grey water, and perhaps the only solution which is universally available to tiny house owners. Grey water can be stored for no longer than 24hrs in this method, so, one could technically run all their grey water (their kitchen sink first through a grease trap) into a tank, which then spray irrigates onto the nearby lawn on a timer, for example.
When it comes to decks and attached structures, technically these are for the most part not accepted. Some states will accept ‘temporary structures’ which are no higher than 1m off the ground and within size limits such as 18sqm, however, the best solution to the deck problem (not so much a problem, but rather a nice addition where you can add an outdoor space and literally ‘double your livable area’ by having a nicely sized outside deck), is to build a deck on a trailer of the same size and park it in parallel to your tiny house. Unfortunately, if you’ve kept an eye on steel and trailer prices, this is now a very expensive solution, although, it’s likely the best.
Take everything I have said with a grain of salt and do your own research. This is tricky territory.
Choosing a trailer
When I first started looking into finding a trailer to build on, I didn’t quite realise the length of rabbit hole I was about to embark on exploring. I first went to a local builder and asked him to build me a 2.4x11m open trailer frame, which I was then going to just bolt my stud wall bottom plate to and start construction. As I kept researching, I began to realise it was going to be impossible to build a tiny house of this size and keep it under the 4.5T legal road weight. I also started to realise that ‘bolting the stud walls to the trailer frame’ might not be as easy, or safe as I thought. Could I trust bolting pine studs to a trailer and hope they were strong enough to hold the entire weight of the build while it traveled by road to site? I wasn’t so sure.
I kept digging and found Fred’s Tiny House Trailers - not only did Fred supply trailers, but he also supplied a video course & online community of builders when you bought one. I looked closely at the suggested building style and attachment methods, and decided a lot more thought had been put into all this than I had time for, and ordered a 2.4x8m trailer from them after some phone discussions about our requirements and how I could build the largest tiny house, using more or less traditional construction methods (pine stud framing). In this method, 8m is about the biggest you’re going to be able to build within weight limits - I would have liked to go larger, however, to do so would have required building methods I had absolutely no knowledge of nor easy access to - this could be pre-made steel framing which bolts together like Meccano (lighter than timber) or something like SIPs panels (pre-made wall panels which incorporate insulation and structural integrity in one).
Designing a tiny house
You can spend your life on Pinterest, Facebook or Google images looking at tiny house designs. There are so many smart solutions to many problems - most of the problems in tiny house building revolve around smart storage and weight. I spent a lot of time researching and thinking, having to compromise on many design decisions because of time, tool and skill constraints. If I had 12 months to design and build on my own, along with training & experience in cabinetry making, I would have made some different decisions. But, I’m not actually a carpenter or a cabinet maker or a builder - I’m just enthusiastic about learning and doing and also keenly aware of my own limitations.
One of the great additional things you receive with one of Fred’s trailers, is a detailed Sketchup 3D scale model of the trailer you’ve bought. This allows you to start designing your build digitally, while you wait for it to be physically built. Fred’s trailers force you into some construction decisions by virtue of their design - these decisions are pre-made by Fred and include the size of framing timber and their trailer attachment method. This was fine by me and allowed me to not have to worry about what the frame was made from and how it attached to the trailer - this was reflected within the Sketchup design, and allowed me to start the design of the stud wall framing components.
Now, I can fumble my way through Sketchup, but, I’m slow and I cannot draw as fast as I think and visualise, so I become frustrated. I didn’t have the time to learn it effectively and I just wanted the design done - so I hired someone via Upwork and supplied basic drawings and verbal direction to someone who could use it rapidly. In the end, this exercise ended up costing around $200 - I thought this was money well spent considering it would have taken me days to achieve the same thing. I was able to get a complete render of the tiny house from the stud wall framing right up to the external cladding and basic interior layout work. From this model, I was able to use the measurement tool in Sketchup and literally measure the individual pieces and begin cutting & attaching.
Building a tiny house
In my first newsletter on this subject, I gave an account of how I spent a month with my father in law building - we spent our time framing and cladding, and within about 3 weeks we had the framing, external cladding, roof & flooring on. A week was then spent doing more detail work, constructing loft beds and starting on the interior ceiling cladding. The framing & cladding goes on quick, and with two people working full time, it starts to appear that one might be able to build an entire tiny house in about 6-8 weeks. I think this kind of tight timeframe could be achieved with more planning and easier access to materials (a run to the hardware store from where we were living could take up most of the day), however, it’s the interior work which slows you down. After a month, my father in law went home and I was left alone to complete the build. Mentally, toiling away on your own is often slow and taxing, so everything started to slow down, not just because the work because more complex and detailed, but also mentally it took a lot more effort to keep going.
Along with general construction, there are two speciality trades involved in a tiny house: Plumbing & electricity. In Australia, these are considered licensed & regulated trades - you cannot do your own plumbing or electricity. Since tiny houses on wheels (like caravans) are still fairly unregulated, you can do these if you want. I did not do the electricity because the risk of mistakes seemed to high (as in, a mistake in wiring has potentially dire consequences). Also, if we ever decide to sell our tiny house, it would be important to have a certificate for the electricity, at least. For the plumbing, I decided to do this on my own, because using modern PEX pipe and push fit fittings, it’s possible to do amateur plumbing very effectively, and after learning how it all works, it can be done quite quickly.
With a max weight limit of 4.5 ton, minus the weight of the trailer (around 820kg), you are left with around 3.6T to build your tiny house. This might sound like a lot, but, I assure you, building traditionally (timber stud walls, etc), things add up quickly. During the build, I tried to maintain a detailed weight spreadsheet. I quite literally weighed 1 metre of whatever material I was working with, calculated how many lineal metres I was using of said material, and multiplied it by the measured weight. The reason I was being so fastidious about weight, because the one person I could find at the time to tow the tiny to site, insisted on the tiny being weighed before he would tow it. Additionally, I was going to need a weigh bridge certificate to register the tiny house as a caravan. In the end, I found someone less concerned about the weight to tow, and also I decided there was no point registering it as a caravan. While I never did end up weighing our tiny, I think my estimate is good within 10% of error and matches the trailer rating. When towed, the driver mentioned he said it felt light compared to others.
What I would have done differently
Now that we have been living in our tiny for a few months, I constantly think about what I would have done differently if I were to do it again.
With small kids, loft ladders are pretty unsafe. If you have kids, consideration of how lofts will be accessed is very important.
Of all the things you want to nerd out on for permanent living, nerd out on storage. Particularly clothes storage. If you are not a skilled cabinet maker or don’t have a lot of time, look closely into pre-fabricated storage solutions. Building your own is ideal, but doing it well is very hard.
Don’t try to save weight on your floor - save weight elsewhere and make a nice timber floor which feels good on your feet.
With small spaces, make sure you have lots of openable windows and ideally a fly screen on your entrance door.
Avoid using external timber cladding on tiny houses - because of the physical building constraints, it’s not possible to have eaves, and therefore timber cladding has a hard life, particularly on weather facing sides.
Building costs in 2022/2023
The bit you’ve actually been waiting for!! These are raw materials costs + an electrical contractor + tow driver + excavator driver - all construction was done ourselves. This is for an 8m tiny house on wheels, utilising a fully hot dip galvanised tiny house trailer, built for purpose. All prices in AUD.
Rough breakdown:
$18,000: General hardware store receipts - this includes: Sinks, tapware, instant HW heater, insulation, rangehood, framing & general timber, paints & consumables, screws, nails, small tools (bits, etc), 8x3m treated decking timber & footings, PEX plumbing hardware, lighting fixtures, internal pine lining.
$16,000: Cost of 8m trailer from Fred’s Tiny House trailers
$2,900: Tin wall/roof cladding & flashings including deck polycarbonate roofing
$800: Timber end-wall hardwood cladding & HW details
$1000: Hardwood flooring overlay
$2,500: Internal cladding 6mm marine ply
$6000: Double glazed windows & door
$900: Reverse AC
$5000: Electrical/wiring installation with certificate
$650: Dishwasher
$1000: Gravel / site excavation
$2000: Water tank 9000 litres
$1750: Greenloo composting toilet
$500: Oven
Total construction cost: $58,000 AUD ($38,000 USD or 33,800EUR)
Total construction time (one month with two people, remaining build done singlehanded): 3.5 months. (I would estimate I spent another $3500 on tools - this includes table saw, framing & finishing guns, track saw & biscuit joiner plus some others I cannot remember! I do not include these as part of the build cost as they are tools I will use for the rest of my life on other projects including our house build.)
In todays tiny house market, a house of similar size and specification would be expected to sell for anywhere between $95,000-120,000 depending on level of finish etc.
I hope this post was helpful to some!
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Really interesting, and how frustrating the regulatory system!
I'm wondering how building, and applying for a conventional small home compares, and why that was not a choice?o
I enjoy all your writing.