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WE LOVE TINY MOVEABLE HOUSES |
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Not only are
we building our own Tiny Trailer Home to live in
.... Millie and I are big-time advocates of
the Tiny Homes movement . We, like lots of
other people believe that its time for folks
to realize that the majority of the Big
Houses that they were taught to see as a
good thing are actually very inefficient
when it comes to heating and cooling .
Then there's always the reality that since a
Big Home has 'acres' of space.... it forces
us to buy lots of expensive & questionable
stuff to fill up that space.
These are just a few of the reasons why a
Tiny Home is such a great thing.
They're easy and inexpensive to heat and
keep cool .... and since they're Small we
just don't feel the need to run out and buy
lots of stuff to fill them up with.
That doesn't mean we have to live like a
Monk.... we can still own all sorts of cool
and fun things...we just cant have
Everything.
Which undoubtedly is a very good thing for us and the
environment ..... |
Jay Shafer's Mobile Hermitage |
Any of
the well-designed Tiny Homes are wonderful
....and were very thankful for the wonderful people out there
who are working on designing and producing
small energy efficient homes that look
beautiful .
This is a very
good thing for our planet to be less
resource hungry.
But....Personally speaking even though we Love
all Tiny Homes...we feel that Tiny Moveable
Homes are where its at .
You can build them with very efficient
materials which will make them easy to heat
and cool ... and like the picture above &
below of
Jay Shafer's Mobile Hermitage shows ,they're
absolutely beautiful ...plus most important
to us , you can move them about.
Even if you don't intend to travel
about much ...There are a lot of good
reasons why a house on wheels is better than
homes built on foundations.
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You can easily move them to face the Sun at
any time of year ....which improves Solar
gain for heating and power for your solar
modules.
Since all your systems (Water Tanks ,
Holding Tanks , etc. ) are self-contained ...this makes it
very easy to move your Home and also protects your water
systems from temperature Fluctuations ( Freezing ) .
In emergency situations like hurricanes ,
Forest Fires , Floods etc....you can easily move
your 'Home' out of the affected area....
If you've had it with where your living
...You can pack up and move you Home
to another area of the Country anytime you
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Also we feel it's important to realize that
just because the Home is on wheels , that
doesn't mean it has to be so small you have
to live uncomfortably . It's perfectly
possible to build 2 or more Tiny movable
Homes that could be attached together to
make a larger dwelling.
This would give you a reasonably large Tiny
house , whose 'modular' sections could be
moved to a different location whenever you
wanted.
Jay Shafer has designed what he calls a
'Dogtrot Connecter ' ...so that a person can
attach 2 of his Home designs together. We
see no reason a person couldn't do the same
with moveable tiny homes.
Here are some pictures of Tiny Rolling Homes
with some Character ..... |
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How do you go
about Building your Tiny Rolling Home ?
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Many people buy a
School Bus , which is the most affordable way to
have a decent sized area to build their Home in and
still be mobile ... and some buy trucks to build
their House on....
We've done the School Bus thing a few times , and
personally know many good folks who built lovely
Rolling Homes in their School Buses...but, nowadays
we feel , for numerous reasons its a smarter move to
build a Rolling Home on a trailer base.
Another great detail here is ...you can build your
Trailer Home without the need to own a truck to tow
it around with. You could ask a friend to help tow
it to a new location location or if the trailers too heavy for
average trucks to tow ,there are towing services
that can move you. |
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So....Where do you get a Trailer Base to build your Tiny
House on?
The folks who built their 5th Wheel trailer
Wayz-a-lot'
were able to buy the Trailer Frame from a company
that manufactures Travel Trailers ....so that saved
them the time and expense of putting together all
the parts and materials you need to build a trailer
frame.
You can also buy all sorts and sizes of new and used
trailers to build on .
We were going
to build our Trailer frame from
scratch....but after crunching the numbers we
decided to buy a trailer frame and make things easy
on us....here's our Frame we'll build our relatively
Tiny Rolling Home on....it's a 40 foot long used
commercial Flatbed trailer that we picked up for
just under $3000.00
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This Trailer Frame
will make a very good and hefty Base for us to build
on....
But what if you personally want to go the route of
designing & building a frame from scratch but don't
know where to find out how to do something like
that?
Here's how we figured that out.....
Since were not engineers we needed to find out how a
Trailer frame is designed.
So...What we did was buy a few sets of Excellent Trailer
Building plans from Glen-L so we could get an Idea
on how a 5th Wheel and Travel Trailer frame are
designed.
Here's Glen-L's website
GLEN-L'S TRAVEL TRAILER PLANS
But since Glen-L's frames are a bit on the
light-weight side for the Big Trailer we intended to build
...we searched around and looked at Frames designed
for Bigger loads.
Found a bunch of pics and info online and.... Also
got a lot of help from Stan Miller who took
wonderful pictures of his Automate Trailer being
built...in particular his Trailer Frame pics were
invaluable in helping us come to an understanding on
how Good Trailer frames are designed and put
together ...so with all this information we just
modified the Glen-L plans .
Here's Stan's great website
.http://www.stanmiller.info/pages/automate/am-intro.html
Once you get your
trailer frame figured out....There are a number of
ways to build the house section of the Trailer....
Here's
Roger Beck's website
...
He shows how he built his 4th
House truck in some detail . Roger's a great guy who
wrote the best book ever written on House trucks &
School Bus conversions. Called Some Turtles have
Nice Shells...The pictures in his wonderful book are
amazing and brought back lots of happy memories of
days gone by for us.
You
can also check out
Superior Park Model
Homes
....they
have a wonderful Pictorial tour that shows in great
detail how they Build their pretty little Park Model
Trailers
Here are some links to Tiny Homes to check out ....
some are moveable , some are not.
Tumbleweed Tiny Houses
( Jay Shafer's gorgeous Tiny
House designs ,including his wonderful homes built
on trailer frames.)
Website with Construction
pictures and more of Jay Shafer's wonderful Mobile
Hermitage house.
The Small House Society
...wonderful group of
folks who not only work at enlightening Folks on the
benefits of living a less resource hungry lifestyle
, they also work tirelessly on protecting the rights
of Tiny House owners.
Tiny Houses
...neat
website with pics and good info on this subject
Great NPR story about building
Tiny houses to help out victims of Hurricane Katrina
MUST HAVE
BOOKS.....
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