Coast to Coast Tour

This summer, beginning on May 25, 2009, Jay Shafer will drive a Tiny House from San Francisco to New York. Along the way, Jay will stop in 14 different cities, making the house available for you to see. In addition, Jay will host Tiny House Building and Design Workshops in Boulder, Chicago, and New York along the way.

Last summer, in 2008, Jay drove his house from Canada to Mexico with Greg Johnson, co-founder of the Small House Society. This video documents their trip.
[Read more]

The Cost of Frugality

Square footage is really the cheapest thing you can add onto a house. At the core of most any dwelling you will generally find that the electrical system, plumbing, heating, appliances and structural components are similar in at least one key way. They are all expensive. This costly core is housed in the relatively cheap volume that surrounds it. Because the price of extending core components outward to accommodate any amount of additional space really isn’t all that high, and open space itself is priced at next to nothing, square footage is really the cheapest thing you can add onto a house. [Read more]

House Material Costs

Estimated material costs for Tiny Houses

	XS-House	Epu	Weebee	Lusby Tarleton	Fencl
Trailer	2,000	3,200	3,200	3,800	3,800
General Materials	4,000	5,000	5,000	6,000	6,500
Insulation	350	450	450	550	550
Roofing	450	550	550	650	700
Exterior Siding	800	1000	1000	1200	1200
Interior Siding	600	800	800	900	1000
Flooring	400	500	500	600	700
Windows	2,000	2,400	3,300	2,700	3,300
Heater	1,000	1,000	1,000	1,000	1,000
Appliances	1,000	1,000	1,000	1,000	1,000
Shower	1,500	1,500	1,500	500	500
Counters	800	1,500	1,100	800	1,100
Sales Tax	1,200	1,450	1,550	1,550	1,650
Total	16,100	19,950	21,150	21,250	23,000

Please note that the prices are only estimates.
We’ve included sales tax since it is often overlooked, but is a large number.

Trailers

A typical flatbed trailer is ideal for building a Tumbleweed Tiny House. They are available at many trailer and RV stores. The picture is a typical flatbed trailer.

Often when you purchase a trailer, it will have sides or ramps. That’s okay, you will just need to remove the sides and ramp. It’s actually pretty hard to find a trailer without some sides built in. Sometimes they are referred to as utility trailers.

Trailer sizes are listed as the size of the actual trailer bed. It does not include the hitch or the wheels. For example, a 7? x 14? trailer would be 7? between the wheels. Almost all trailers are
8?6? wide when you include the wheels; and as it turns out, this is the widest possible width for road travel without a permit. The bed of the trailer would be 14? long, and when you add the hitch, it would probably measure 17? long.

Except for the New Popomo, all of our portable homes require a flatbed trailer where the wheels are taller than the trailer bed. The maximum legal road height in the US (without a permit) is 13?6?. None of our homes are taller than 13?5?. But more important than the legal road height is the height of the bridges. Most bridges are in fact much taller than 13?6?, but to be safe, you can not build on a trailer where the entire bed is above the wheels.

The Popomo does not have a loft, and therefore is designed to fit on a trailer bed that is “over the axle”. The advantage to that design is that it provides for a wider house, albeit shorter.

Most trailers come with a double axle. Usually, each axle is rated to hold 3,500 lbs. However, some axles are rated for 5,000 lbs each. Therefore, a double axle trailer will have a total rating of 7,000 lbs or 10,000 lbs. This rating will have a large impact on the price. It is referred to as “GVWR”, which means Gross Vehicle Weight Rating. Keep in mind that the GVWR includes the weight of the trailer. So if the trailer is rated for 7,000 lbs and the trailer weighs 1,000 lbs, you can put 6,000 lbs on it. On our website, we list the weight of our houses including the weight of the trailer.

Except for the XS-House, all of our homes require a double axle trailer. The XS-House can be built on a single axle trailer if the axle is rated for 5,000 lbs.

Trailers usually include brake lights, a license plate, and a breaking mechanism. The lights and brakes attach to your car/truck, and when you use the brakes, it will also apply the brakes to the trailer.

There are many sizes for hitch balls, but almost all are either 2? or 2 5/8?. The hitch ball on your car/truck is easily changable, and probably around $30.

Because the trailer is roughly 18% of the material cost, saving money on the trailer is the easiest way to control construction costs. Consider buying a used trailer. craigslist.org is an excellent place to look for a used trailer. Prices for used trailers range from $500-$1500, a savings of $1000-$2000.

VIVA LA TINY REVOLUTION

All of our midsize houses (250s.f.- 800s.f.) should meet all IBC size restrictions, and the little ones should get around such building codes because they are not buildings; they are vehicles.

Laws dictating how small our homes can be were introduced back in the 70s and 80s by lobbyists from the housing industry. It had become clear that, as the number of houses being sold by the industry leveled off, fiscal growth would remain possible only so long as the size of their product was increased. Size restrictions were thus written into building code at the federal level and adopted by municipalities throughout the US. Banks quickly followed suit by providing loans only for houses large enough to warrant the cost of the land on which they would sit. Local zoning, in turn, ensured exorbitant land costs by generally demanding that each little house sit on a parcel no smaller than one required for a large structure. [Read more]