Tarleton
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117 square feet - click here for more dimensions
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The Tarleton features the largest kitchen of the teeny houses on wheels. The great room has vaulted ceilings which are accented by the pine interior finishing. Stainless steel counters show off the kitchen, and the bathroom has a full shower, toilet and sink. The sleeping loft is upstairs and accessible by a ladder. Two full size closets flank the front door on either side.
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Comments
54 Responses to “Tarleton”
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Does this unit have to come with metal siding on the exterior ?
Are there other options for exterior finish ?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on June 3, 2008 4:46 am:
There are 3 choices for siding:
1. Clapboard - Wood siding that runs horizontal
2. Board & Batton - Wood siding that has strips running up and down every 16 inches.
3. Metal siding.
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BJ reply on August 5, 2008 8:03 pm:
Ok,
great plan thats defintley good for the environment, but one problem I encountered. I built a similar version and had a small housewarming party during football season, well needless to say after a few hours of chili dip things got pretty bad!!!
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Jay Shafer reply on August 20, 2008 2:27 am:
It’s all about the cross venting and Beano shots.
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Are any of the older plans available for sale? I remember a 2-story wood house with about 500 sq. feet that had a flexible upper floor for as many as 3 bedrooms.
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on June 4, 2008 7:10 pm:
The older floor plans are no longer for sale. Our new and updated plans for the larger houses are designed to meet the International Building Code. We have a couple models with 2 rooms on the top floor. We are designing 3 bedroom models currently, and the first one should be posted to our website within 1 week. Check back for it.
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Daniel reply on June 5, 2008 3:47 pm:
I remember seeing the plans for the Rockport. I thought that would be great for something small but not transportable. I liked the open look to the plan and the loft looked to be situated very well too. Is that one unavailable too?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on June 5, 2008 4:04 pm:
The Rockport has been slightly modified and is now called the Bernhardt. The Bernhardt is smaller than the Rockport so that it squeezes under the 120 feet limit, but looks almost identical.
Is there a particular brand of trailer that is recommended as a platform? Like any home, a strong foundation can not be over-emphasized, especially when that home may be headed down a bumpy backroad. Also, for the largest trailer designs, would anyone have an approximate weight (without furniture, etc.)?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on June 5, 2008 6:50 pm:
The approximate weight is listed with the dimensions on this page. Just click on the text where the square footage is listed at the top of the page. We don’t have a recommended brand. A typical flatbed trailer is used. Usually, they come with sides rails that will need to be removed. Here’s an excellent sample picture.
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Nate reply on June 30, 2008 5:49 pm:
On the topic of the houses on trailers… I currently live in a reasonably hilly county, and I’d probably stay in the area after I switch to a Tumbleweed home. How would a house like this fare in a Hilly area, or any land that has inclines, declines, etc?
Can you only Park and use a house in valleys or 100% flat area, or are there jacks you could use to level the house out if you’re on a hillside?
I looked around other comments on the site, and unless I missed it, I couldn’t find this topic covered elsewhere. If it ahs been covered elsewhere, you can send me the link and I’ll check it out.
Thanks a lot!
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on July 1, 2008 3:41 pm:
You can level the house with jacks. In fact Jay lives on a slight incline now and has done that as well.
Just curious, but how do you come up with the names for your homes? I found you through a friend of mine, and was completely surprised to find that one of your houses shares its name with ME!:)
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on June 13, 2008 3:28 pm:
They are named after people who have helped us in one way or another.
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Would it be possible to use a used travel trailer frame to build one of your houses? I’d rather recycle a used frame than order a new one. What Gross Trailer Weight Rating (GTWR) do you recommend? Thanks for designing such wonderful tiny houses!
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Robin Bobula reply on July 5, 2008 1:16 pm:
Recycling an old travel trailer frame is a great idea. There are sure plenty of older, dilapidated camping trailers around. Does anyone know if those frames are heavy enough to work well?
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i’m looking at the Tarleton and i wonder if the front porch is actually sitting on the trailer bed or is it a seperate entity, and if so can the porch be attached to the house while driving it down the road or is built after the house reaches it’s destination…
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I am looking at the beautiful trailers in awe. I live in a tiny holiday trailer right now and hope to have a Tumbleweed in the future.
Questions:
I would like to know if the houses can be designed with a pointy front /sloped roof to be more aerodynamic?
I would like to know if the interior design could be tweeked a bit so that the kitchen isn’t directly under the access to the loft; I don’t want to sleep with my cooking smells.
I also have a cat and would like to know if the stairs could be made more easy for my him to walk up as he is a terrible climber.
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on June 24, 2008 11:18 am:
The Lusby model has the kitchen in the main room, so it’s not directly under the loft. I don’t know about other options for stairs. Maybe someone else has a good suggestion. Perhaps some climbing furniture for the cat can be used to help it get up to the loft. We’ve never designed the houses with an aero-dynamic roof, and they travel just fine as they are. It’s something you could modify on your own, however, it will really reduce the loft space.
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Ryan reply on June 25, 2008 5:57 pm:
Hey I don’t know if you could find narow enough spirail stair cases but those would be easier for your cat and not take up to much room.
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joe nichols reply on July 7, 2008 5:24 am:
How about a basket with comparable rope or cloth material to pull your cat up. maybe a pully would make it easier.
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Crystal Heshmat reply on July 19, 2008 2:54 am:
From the pictures, I think you could slip a few shelves in along the wall and around the window to create more comfortable steps for your cat.
In fact, you might want to put a shelf by the window anyway so that kitty will have a pleasant place to sit in the sun or just look out the window. You will probably want to make it big enough to hold an enclosed cat carrier and add a safety strap to be used while the vehicle is in motion.
Thanks for the question! I hadn’t thought about how I would transport my two kitties!
~ Crystal
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What would it cost aprox to build this unit on my own?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on June 26, 2008 10:21 am:
The materials are approximately in the range of $18,000 to $23,000. We also suggest hiring a professional to install the electric and plumbing.
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The idea of extending the sleeping loft over the front porch in the Lusby or Tarleton is wonderful — something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I would be very interested in a supplemental design along those lines for the Tarleton, especially. It would even make sense, from a storage perspective, to have a full loft, as in the smaller houses on wheels, with the square loft opening in the center of the house, and the side loft closets forming partial dividers upstairs. A curtain could be hung across the foot of each bed, separating the two loft areas for a bit of privacy. Let’s face it, sometimes you might need to have someone stay over, and this would give them some space that was their own. The only drawback would be losing the cathedral ceiling effect. But you can’t have everything…
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gerrie r. reply on July 27, 2008 3:29 am:
Hi Robin, You might be able to have everything! I love your double loft ideas. Scroll down and check out my ideas.
Gerrie
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Is the cost on your website how much it would cost for someone else to build one of your homes?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on June 26, 2008 6:34 pm:
The price of $46,997 for the Tarleton (for exmample) is the cost for us to build it. When people build it themselves we suggest estimating about 40%-50% of the cost for building materials.
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I’m thinking about building the Tarlelton. I’d like to use salvage materials. Are the doors and windows standard size?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on July 1, 2008 3:39 pm:
The windows are standard sizes. The front door is hand made using a standard window.
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I LOVE these mini houses! I hope to own the Tarleton one day soon!
It would be really neat if there were a few themed ones. Like a mini Gothic style with a mansard roof and a mini Castle with a turret! You could be Green and super whimsical at the same time. ^_^
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Plumbing?
Are there holding tanks like an RV, or a mobile home type hookup?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on July 6, 2008 6:25 pm:
Yes, you can put a tank on the house. However if you’re going to keep it stationary, it’s far more convenient to hook it up to the sewer.
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These houses have really inspired me! I am just now entering college and my dorm room is smaller and definetely not as good looking than these houses and i will be living in a dorm room for at least 1 year, maybe 2. This would be a far more cheaper way to live the rest of my college and early adult life.
I have a question though, is it possible to have custom plans made?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on July 7, 2008 5:13 pm:
We can make small modifications to plans such as adding a skylight. Jay’s been too busy to do custom plans, and therefore has stopped taking on new orders.
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These look great!
However I have not seen any information on water heating. Do you use a propane on demand RV water heater?
How does water heating work?
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On your newsletter you said that the new house the Fencl is a combo between the tarleton and the weebee…Is it merging the designs together or is it really adding the sq ft of one to the sq ft of the other? I love your houses and my fiance and I are planning on building one in the fall!
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on July 11, 2008 3:41 pm:
It’s a combo, but it’s larger than the rest of the tiny houses. It totals 130 square feet.
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Tom reply on July 12, 2008 1:37 pm:
When will there be a layout available for the fencl,really interested in what it looks like but I can not find it on your website.
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The description for the Tarleton says “the bathroom has a full shower, toilet and sink”. I can’t determine from the photographs or the plan drawing where the sink in the bathroom is located.
Thanks!
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jl reply on July 15, 2008 11:55 pm:
http://www.boingboing.net/2006/04/04/toilet-tank-sinks.html
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Ahhh….nifty! The model in the link requires a flush toilet. I suppose if one chose to outfit a Tumbleweed house with a composting toilet, one would just need to use the kitchen sink. Is this so or are there other options?
Thanks for the reply!
-D.
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You’re asking $46,000 dollars for a tag-along trailer with a shed on it??? Dude, I could build that thing without your “plans” or your “help” for under five grand… Where do you get off asking anywhere near the number you have advertised?
Want some advice? I’ll tellya like your my own brother… DON’T go out on the road telling people you want $46,000 dollars for this thing okay? Don’t even tell em you want $20,000 dollars for it. Believe me if you do you might wind up with a fist in your mouth!
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on July 18, 2008 9:06 pm:
Hi Bill, well we haven’t been punched yet. Ouch! I think most people understand that these homes are a quality product, and we don’t cut corners for the sake of a couple thousand dollars. If you were to cost out the materials, you’d find that for $5000 you can buy the trailer and the fireplace. Of course, you’d still need the house… Actually, the material cost on this house is about $20-$22K. It takes approximately 500-800 hours to build. Keep in mind this is a fully insulated and functional home with running water and electricity.
If you take a look at new Airstream trailers, you’ll find our prices to be very comprable.
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I love these efficient homes! I currently rent a 300 square foot apartment and after viewing your homes I constantly think about all the wasted space there is, even though most Americans would consider 300 feet a very small space. God willing, I would love for my first home to be a teeny tiny one. Kudos!
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I want to know if the price on these houses includes sales tax or not and aslo I wondered if extending the roof out to make another bed out of the loft storage space is possible. I would rather buy it pre built since I don’t really trust myself to build it.
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These houses are great, but where do you put them if you live in an urban area? Most cities have zoning ordinances that are slanted against “mobile homes,” clustering them into ratty little parks. It’s just not possible to purchase a vacant lot in a city and park a tiny home on it in this way. What do you do, then? Do you find someone willing to let you park in their back yard? Do you settle on a trailer park (even those places have minimum size requirements, usually)? Do you just keep moving?
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Steve with Tumbleweed reply on July 22, 2008 12:43 am:
That a great question. Backyards are a great place to try. In most cities, these houses won’t meet code on a permanent foundation. That’s why they are on wheels. Many cities don’t allow people to “live” in an RV, but they do allow people to “camp out” in an RV. It’s a fine distinction, and you’ll have to interpret it yourself. Some cities require that you move the RV every month. Jay encountered this in Iowa, and he would take his house on the road each month.
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The DOUBLE LOFT idea:
Don’t build inward and lose floor space and ceiling height! Build outward and increase the front porch space.
If you added an additional 12” to 18”, extending the depth of the front porch, you could have an extra, full, sleeping loft (or for storage) and have a usable porch that would accommodate two chairs or rockers, comfortably, and extend the outdoor living space, which, to me, is as important as the inside! The porches on some models are very narrow and I am a porch lover! Extra support would have to be added to the porch to support the new loft but it probably wouldn’t add to much weight, I don’t think.
This idea is for the TARLETON and the LUSBY models.
Another idea:
The LADDER! If you look at the photos of both of the models, that ladder takes up a lot of floor space (I am estimating close to 3’)! Especially, if you have two sleeping lofts with two ladders or WORSE sharing one ladder at night, this could be hard, OR WAR!
Suggestions: Both models have an interior wall (similar in both designs, the TARLETON has a large wall separating the kitchen/bath from the main room and the LUSBY has a tiny, interior wall separating the lower bed and bath from the main room).
These walls could be used to support a permanent, fixed ladder (like the kind that some office buildings attach to the wall for access to the roof) to get to the original lofts. If supported properly and given adequate, larger rungs, one could do away with ladders altogether and gain more permanent floor space. The bookshelf area, on both models, could be strengthened to support a similar ladder to the new, second, “guest loft” side.
These Permanent ladders, that I suggest, take more arm strength and coordination to climb so a portable ladder could always be on hand if needed.
Gerrie
… Your comments?
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Still nothing on the water heating?
how does it heat water? or does it?
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Jay Shafer reply on August 20, 2008 3:24 am:
We use an RV water heater or, sometimes, an on demand unit.
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I wanted to know if you could put a ‘bump out’ on the Tarleton like the Weebee or is the porch is non load bearing.
Thanks
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Nicole Marie reply on July 29, 2008 3:49 am:
You’ve got to get the new portfolio. I just got mine and what you are describing is the new FENCEL. It looks really nice!
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Has anyone considered using 20′ shipping containers (they’re roughly 8′ tall, 8′ wide, 20′ long) as a base? Recycled materials are ideal for living “green” and many shipping containers just sit around, which you can pick up for around $2,000-3,000. There is a growing number of people using shipping containers for homes and using one for a Tumbleweed-like house might save a person some money and construction time. Perhaps Tumbleweed could make a design based on the usage of one?
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