• Kathleen B
  December 31, 2019, 5:53 pm

  Based on this list, except for the Acorn, it appears “tiny” has been lost in the focus to be wider, longer, and fancier. My 20′ x 8.5′ tiny house is all I aspire to and serves me well.

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  • ALVIS
    December 31, 2019, 9:34 pm

    I agree that the tiny house on wheels would be limited by the 102 inches maximum for moving on a highway. But aren’t we just reinventing the mobile home again? I have a former travel trailer frame I plan to use for a home made tiny house on wheels.

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    • James D.
      January 2, 2020, 12:35 am

      @ALVIS – No, not really as most tiny homes are not really meant to be mobile and meant to be used more like traditional homes.

      For most, the wheels are just a way to get around restrictions that would otherwise force them to get a much larger and far more costly home. While those who are lucky enough to be in areas without those restrictions can and often do put them on foundations.

      There’s also the difference in how they are constructed, mobile homes were very generic and not built to high standards and some were done to lower than even RV standards. At its worst it got to the point they had to invent the HUD code and force standards on them to create the modern manufactured houses.

      Versus Tiny Houses that are largely going to be built with the same materials and building techniques as traditional homes and many will do them custom and to higher than needed standards. The 2018 IRC ICC with Appendix Q even has official building code standards that would allow a tiny house to be placed on a foundation and be able to meet local building codes the same as any other residential house, which mobile homes were never able to do…

      Builders like Cornerstone Tiny Homes, for example, does both THOWs and Tiny houses on foundations as they operate in a county that allows them and the more states start legalizing them and adopting the newer codes then the more Tiny Homes will trend towards being more like traditional houses on foundations instead of wheels.

      So they are different…

      Btw, be careful when doing a conversion with a RV trailer if you intend to actually build a tiny house on it. RV’s are much lighter and more minimally built than tiny homes and many times the trailer chassis is barely rated to handle the weight of the original trailer. So be careful how much weight you end up putting on it and how the weight is distributed.

      Tiny houses tend to be a lot heavier than RV’s… A 16′ THOW can be over 9000 lbs versus say a similar size Airstream Basecamp at just 3500 lbs, for example, and THOWs tend to put much more weight to the outer edges, where typical RV don’t and thus don’t have proper support… This is why most have moved on to trailers specifically made for building tiny houses on…

      You can re-enforce the trailer but that’s a lot of work and can end up costing more than just buying a new trailer… But if you can keep the weight and weight distribution similar to the original trailer then you should be fine… Or you lucked out and have a trailer that can handle the extra weight and just needs a few modifications to make work but double check the trailer’s specs before going through with the build…

      Mind, the trailer functions as the foundation and the structure of the home is only as strong as the foundation…

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  • James D.
    December 31, 2019, 10:15 pm

    But that’s just you… How about families, people with special needs, people with pets, people with different lifestyles…?

    Each of the homes on the list don’t all have the same use case or are intended to support the exact same lifestyles…

    Not that you were suggesting anything egregious or without basis but I believe we have to be careful of the slippery slope when we start thinking in terms of absolutes or specific standards with no flexibility as that will always mean someone else will be left out or treated differently simply for being different and we start treating diversity as a negative, even to the detriment of quality of life, and forget people are individuals that can be very different from one another…

    Too much of the reasons we have a housing problem stem from how people treat it as a competition, choose to judge others, ignores individuality and tries to enforce conformity, ignores what’s efficient and practical and how they can change in different situations, and treats freedom as something that must be regulated all the time or only allowed when certain standards are met that never seem able to fit everyone…

    At least that’s how I see it…

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  • Harmony Kieding
    January 3, 2020, 10:49 pm

    Kathleen, I quite agree! Tiny houses are getting larger and larger, and more and more complicated. I also wish to keep things simple and go with either a stealth van, or a 20 foot by 8.5 such as you have. Not interested in monstrosities.

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• Jo Murphey
  December 31, 2019, 8:21 pm

  Alex, My favorite is the Acorn. It’s just a shame they are so far away from the east coast.

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• Andy
  January 13, 2020, 4:35 pm

  Tiny house has become not so tiny in a race to be longer, wider and higher than the others. Surely this misses the point?
  There is also a safety issue. Can you imagine bowling down the road towing one of these 6 ton Monsters?
  Try a panic stop or a swerve and recovery. Good luck with that plan!

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  • Alex
    January 14, 2020, 11:26 am

    These larger tiny homes are not usually being used as recreational vehicles/travel trailers. I can’t speak for everyone, but most larger tiny homes are being kept in one place. Since it’s so difficult to build under 1000sf legally unless it’s an ADU/DADU/guesthouse, well, park models and larger THOWs are an interesting way to still do it legally and you get to have around 400sf, which is still very small to most. But as I said, they are not being towed around frequently because it’s so impractical and when they are, they’re being towed under permit. They’re being delivered to a site usually, and that’s it. Oftentimes on park models, the hitches are removed.

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