The folks at Tiny Texas Houses explain why they don’t build tiny houses on wheels.
“…As to people building them and using them to run down the road a lot. Weight, pieces falling off at 60 mph, cross winds, driving into winds affecting true wind pressures and likely lack of consideration in construction will eventually lead to disastrous results, in my humble opinion.”
Continue reading Why We Don’t Build Our Houses To Be House Trailers at Tiny Texas Houses.
No kidding. These tiny houses are the weight equivalent of a trailer loaded high with logs. Not a very efficient way to save money by bringing home with you on the road. Many of those photo montages of folks building tiny houses on trailers show standard building techniques. Just horizontal and vertical studs. Lots of protruding dormer windows and kitschy window boxes for flowers. Ugh.
These things need LOTS of extra bracing and could benefit from having a rounded front like a horse trailer. I’d build my own really light-weight metal bar frame, lots of diagonal braces, double-insulated with Styrofoam, vinyl siding outside and false wood paneling on the inside. Plus, I’d plan on jacking it up and driving the trailer out from under it when parked. Instead of a useless, teeny-tiny little pretty-porch on the end, I’d have a fold-out screened porch along an entire long wall, with french doors for light. To reduce solar gain in the summer, I’d erect a portable pavilion large enough to shade the whole house.
Tiny houses are not meant to be on the road very often. The main reason they are built on a trailer is get around building codes that require a certain size house and septic tank, etc. They are meant to stay in one place most of the time just like a park model RV. But they can be moved if needed, CAREFULLY. People confuse tiny houses with travel trailers. They are not meant to be taken with you everywhere you go. If you need to travel a lot, then get a travel trailer.
I suppose that building houses on trailers to begin with was a function of making them “legal”, in that they were not permanent homes and could be moved in a moment’s notice, namely into another trailer park. I agree entirely with the first post: these tiny homes have got to be a disastrous thing to pull about the highways. A bad idea all around.
In a proper spirit of rebellion, small houses should be anchored like any other; and we need to fight for the right to live in, buy lots for, small houses to start with, instead of capitulating a priori to “the establishment” developers who are the relevant dictators and plutocrats. As it is, these trailer houses are half-way houses that are an embarrassment and a hazard. We must do better.