We will happily answer any questions you have, and set up a consultation when you’re ready!
A home ready for a Canadian winter with proper amenities can be $90,000 – $140,000. The price will depend on size and options chosen.
For example, making it off-grid capable adds about $1500 to the price of the home. Building the tiny house out out of steel studding (to make it lighter and able to be pulled by smaller vehicle) can add around $10,000.
For a typical 24’ long trailered tiny home, you are looking at an average of 12,000 lbs.
Again, this depends on many things including overall length, how much tile was used, what other sorts of finishes were incorporated, etc.
This will depend on the final weight of your specific trailer, but you can assume you will need at least a 3/4 ton truck. For best performance, we are choosing to pull this one with a one ton dual wheel diesel pickup truck. The extra width on the wheels will give us better stability on the road.
We have opted for a galvanized steel roof for The Bachelor. Our roof top patio is covered with Duradek. Both surfaces will last 30-50 years.
Other than that, maintaining or renovating is very similar to a regular house.
We are proud to be working with Canadian Financial to offer our clients financing solutions. Please visit: https://canadian-financial.ca/megan-gilbertson/tinyfootprinthomes and speak with an agent today.
The cost will be very similar. The advantage to a foundation, however, is that you can build it square instead of long and skinny. Of course, the advantage of a trailer is that if you don’t like the neighbours, you can move!
The fastest way to cut down on weight is to build out of steel studding instead of wood. However, this vastly limits the structural capabilities, and also conduct cold.
There are many other ways to be weight conscious throughout the build. Putting studs on 24” centres to minimize the amount of wood framing is one idea. We had the shiplap for the walls planed down 1/8” thinner, which doesn’t seem like a lot, but saved 700 lbs on the entire weight. On our model, we also used a Shou Sugi Ban siding, which is the ancient Japanese art of preserving wood by burning it. Another upside to this is that burning removes all the moisture in the wood, thereby making it weigh half as much. Of course, if the weight of the siding were the biggest concern, a commercial steel siding is your best bet.
There are different ways to connect a build to solar.
We have opted to have the panels charge 12V batteries, which then run through a converter to 115V, and can run anything that plugs into a regular house outlet.
We have a wall-mounted ductless mini-split that does our heating, and our cooling with the help of an air conditioning condenser unit mounted to the front of the home.
Yes. Anything that you can have in a large home, you can also have in a tiny home. It comes down what you want included.
The bathroom can be wherever you want.
For a trailer unit, having a bathtub would simply mean the unit would be two feet longer. However, since it takes a lot of water to fill a tub, you would not be able to make this home completely off grid.
If you are building a permanent tiny home on a foundation, then the options are whatever the main house of the property has, since zoning by-laws will require you to connect to city services through the main house.
On a trailer, you can’t hook up to natural gas, but you can convert everything to propane. What isn’t propane, you make electric, which can be run from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
**Please note: This does not include any damage incurred by the homeowner once they have taken possession of the home. This includes any damage incurred while transporting the home to your location if you choose your own transportation.