Category: Prep

The Tiny home starts with the trailer, and there are several reasons for this:

• It provides the solid foundation that supports the house.
• As a designated “Travel-Trailer”, no home inspections are required*.
• It is illegal to live in a structure as small as the Tiny home**
• When moving day arrives (or you want to get out of town for a while), just hook up the truck and go.

* Your results may vary due to local laws. Also, by not having your home inspected it is on YOU if you build crap that falls down and kills someone. YOU must build and build well, my friend.

** For a number of reasons: many communities don’t want vagrants camping on their streets; to prevent Tenement-squalor conditions; etc.

When picking a trailer, there are three things you will want to look for:

1. A flat bed with wooden planks. No dovetails (the slope at the end to aid in loading vehicles), because this will make it harder to build your subfloor. You want wooden planks so you can remove 1/2 of them and lighten up the trailer.
2. For my 96″ x 20′ trailer, I made sure mine had a GVWR of 10,000 lbs (5 tons) and a double-axle. Tiny house will be heavy and needs the proper support.
3. No railings. Tiny house will extend to the edge of the trailer and a railing will get in the way. On my particular trailer, the construction required a front railing, so I am building around that.

Other considerations

• Get a hitch lock. Don’t be this guy.
• Make sure you know what kind of electrical connection your trailer will require and get an adapter to fit whatever truck you’re using to haul it. You can get these adapters at auto-parts stores, onine and probably places like Harbor Freight. They’re like $15-30 and better than getting a ticket for having no tail lights/turn signals.
• Get insurance, because it is dirt cheap and you don’t want to be an idiot with no trailer because you were cheap. When you finish building your house on the trailer you will need more insurance, but that can wait for another day (don’t forget!)
• If you plan on moving your house a bit, consider getting a spare. Trailer folk I spoke with mentioned that blowouts are common, so having a spare can mean the difference between being stranded in BFE and getting to where you’re going.
• If I had to do it again, I’d get built-in jacks, because it would’ve been much easier to raise and level the trailer. Parking your trailer for long periods in the same spot will ruin the tires unless you raise them off the ground. I ended up using a 6 ton-capacity bottle jack and a bunch of cinder-blocks to do the job.

I shopped around and got my trailer for low-$4,000s. I could’ve gotten one for about half that off Craigslist or whatever, but (at the time), I didn’t know much about trailers and how to tell if they were still in good condition.