We're planning a tiny house move

 

Yes,... we've been told that our homeowner friend accepted a job in New Mexico and that the house we live next to will be sold. We need to find a place to move our tiny house by the end of September. The sooner, the better though.

We're putting out the word that we're looking for a space to move,
but we would appreciate it if you'd try to think of places and would pass along the word as well.

What we need:
- the spot should fit our tiny house (about 24' long, 8' wide and 13'-6" tall)
- the space should be available soon through June 2014
- utility connections within 15 feet of our house for an outdoor extension cord (preferably 20amps),   
   an RV water hose and internet (wi-fi or wire)
- within an hour drive or ferry ride of Seattle
- either urban or rural would be fine

What would also be nice:
- a space equal in size to a one car garage or bedroom where I could do my art projects
   (either at your location or a place nearby that I could rent)
- an area for a small vegetable garden or space for a few containers
- washer and dryer privileges once a week

What you'd get:
- two very nice neighbors who are quiet, are willing to house-sit and look after your pets when
  you're on vacation, and have a great reference from their current landlord
- monthly income while we live on your property
- the possibility of you owning our tiny house once Jeff graduates in June

Do you own a residential or light commercial space with enough room for our tiny house?

Do you have a vacation property that you'd like watched or that you'd like to earn some income on? (Maybe on Bainbridge Island or east of Seattle?)

Maybe you want to own a well-built, nice looking, tiny house at a fraction of what it would cost to build your own? We've thought about trading it.

Maybe you always pass a spot that you think would be a great place for a tiny house or you know someone that has a space for us?

We're great at thinking 'outside the box'. (We live in a tiny house, right?)
We're open to all ideas. What can you think of?    :)

 

Thanks for your help,
Jeff and Arlene 

On the Road

There were a lot of last minute details before moving the trailer. We had to put lights on it, since the trailer lights were partly covered, attach our license plate, and fill it with stuff that we'll need to have with us at it's new location.



We usually have more vehicles in the parking lot, but Saturday we were lucky and the lot was mostly empty. This means there was enough room to get out of the space without using the Jeep. Rick's truck is an 8500 lbs, 20 foot long, Dodge diesel cummins - it was made to tow this kind of thing.



The ride was a bit bouncy, and took us, say, an hour and a half. We did city driving, freeway driving, and curvy 2-lane highway driving. The freeway was toughest because we stayed in the truck lanes which gave us some bouncing, but otherwise it was fine and the tiny house made it to its new location without a scratch.



Now we take a week off. We'll sort of. We take a week to do some down sizing and clear out our build space. Then it will be back to building.

Forward, but not out

I mentioned before that I wouldn't use the Jeep to tow the tiny house on the road. But I will use it to pull the tiny house out of the shop because the house and truck together are too long to maneuver in the parking lot. But hooking the trailer up to Jeep is slightly nerving as the bumper drops about 4 inches.



But, it pulled the tiny house forward just fine.



When I pulled forward, I had enough space to do some work on the porch and other pre-road trip work.



If all goes well, the next post should about the move to our friend's house.

Bolts

Hello again!
Arlene has been doing most of the work on our tiny house for the past couple weeks as I finished off school (my undergraduate degree). With that done, I'll be spending a great deal of time over the next few weeks on our project.

Today's post is about bolts. If you've been following us, you saw us work on the trailer and the floor a while back. If not, this link brings up the relevant posts:

http://mobilecottage.blogspot.com/search/label/Trailer

At the time, I didn't take a picture (or a not a decent one) of the underside to show the bolts. There isn't much to see really. I just bolted through the decking into the floor frame (made of 2x4's) with 3 inch lag bolts. And as I mentioned in one of the earlier posts, since our floor frame is thicker towards the back of the trailer, I used longer bolts back there.




We also probably used more bolts than the plans called for. This was due to paranoia on my part. I kept having visions of loosing my house while on the road. In fact, all along I had planned to also bolt through the wall base board, through the floor, floor framing and connect it to the steel of the trailer. Otherwise, what we'd have is the floor frame bolted to the trailer decking, the floor nailed to the floor frame, and then the walls nailed (screwed, actually) to floor and floor frame. I wanted a direct connection from my walls to the steel of the trailer.



You can buy long, 1/2 inch think, threaded rods at most good hardware stores. I got 2 of them, with washers and nuts and a four small steel plates. Now our trailer is a utility trailer and has slots along the sides, front and back that are there so you could put 2x4s into them to make a wooden rail around the trailer. In the photo below, you can see two of these. One has my bolt through it, and the one further back does not.



The steel plate on the bottom (photo above) has a longish slot in it that allows you move the plate to best fit your application. I found this handy as not all of the holes ended up perfectly where I planned them.

And this brings me to holes and drills. Where the floor frame is thickest, there is a bit over 8 inches from the top of the wall frame base to the bottom of the floor frame. Add to that the depth of the 2x4-fence holder on the trailer and you have about 11 inches that is not perfectly vertical. So if you do this sort of thing, you have to be aware that there might be a slight angle you have to introduce. In this case, it was easiest to drill the hole from the bottom up, with a spotter watching the angle of my extra extra long 5/8's inch wood boar drill bit.

Finally, I cut a short 2x4 block, drilled a 3/4 inch hole in it (for wiggle room), and stuffed into the 2x4-fence holder. This made that bottom plate you see in the pic fit without moving around.

Now our walls are fully attached to the steel of the trailer and I'm feeling more secure.

The Floor on the Floor and Back Again

Once we cut all the floor shims, we lifted the floor frame off the trailer and turned it upside down on the floor next to the trailer to work on. We nailed the shims in place on the now upside down floor frame (the underside of the frame so that the top has a more consistent surface area) and then got to work installing the flashing.

The flashing is mainly to protect the underside of the floor frame and insulation from road debris and to prevent rodents from entering the cottage from the bottom. To that end, we used a staple gun to fix the flashing to the frame with staples every 3 or so inches. Note that we don't seal the flashing because if any water did get up in there we'd want it to flow out.



It took three of us to get the flashed floor frame back on the trailer. This took a bit of thinking. It was pretty heavy at this point. Also, our floor frame is made of 3 parts: front, middle and back. At each connection point there is a weak spot. We didn't want the frame to separate as we moved it into place.

Our saw horses are about the same height as the tops of the wheel wells, so we put one in front of the wheel well and one behind - both right next to the trailer. This gave us an even tipping point. Then we stood the frame up on its side, tilted it against this new pivot (so the frame was supported in the back, middle and front by a saw horse, wheel well and saw horse in that order), and slowly lowered it into place onto the trailer.



We used 3 inch lag bolts in the front 2/3 rds to secure the floor framing to the trailer deck. With the flashing in place, we were concerned about knowing where to drill through the deck to make sure we connected with the frame studs. This turned out to be no problem since we had a nice line of staples to follow.

Since the back of the floor frame has shims, we used progressively longer bolts going back, measured so we always had 1 1/2 inch bite into the studs of the frame (so with a shim of 1 inch, and the deck at 1 1/2 inches, our total bolt length at that point was 4 inches). The plans suggest a bolt every 2 or 3 feet, but, being paranoid, we did a bit more than that.

So that pretty much sums our weekend. This week we should be moving forward on insulation and adding a few supports here and there.

If you aren't aware of it, the Tiny House Company is building a Fencl (the name of the tiny house design we bought from them). It is amazing how fast you can put one of these together if you have 2 or 3 full-time dedicated, experienced construction workers on it. The best source of information for the progress on it can be found on the Tiny House Blog. Stop by there and tell 'em Jeff and Arlene sent you!

On the Level

I've been talking about how our trailer isn't level. In fact, the floor of our build space isn't level either. This makes it challenging to create a fairly flat, level floor for our tiny cottage. Is a flat floor important? I mean, whenever we move the trailer the floor will flex anyway, and we don't generally play marbles on the living room floor. So what's the big deal? Certainly it would be simpler to just ignore it.

But Arlene and I are both the type of people who walk into a room and notice if a picture is 1/32 inch lower on one side than the other. And while we realize that we aren't going to make this thing perfect, and that no one will notice our mistakes as readily as we will, we also note that the degree to which this trailer is off, and the way in which it is off, will impact building the walls and roof.

From the front of the trailer to about mid-way between the two axles (the front 2/3 rds), the trailer is straight and true and easy to level. But from between the axles on back it dips so that if the front of the trailer is level, the rear end is about 1 1/2 inches lower than the front. Fortunately, the slope seems roughly constant. The trailer is made for hauling vehicles and normally comes with ramps that attach to the back, so it makes sense that the back end dips - that would be the end you load the car on from.



After leveling the front, I put a nail near each corner of our floor frame. Then I tied a string - very tightly - from one corner to the next so that I had a string box floating above the floor frame. On the front two nails, I set the string height at about 1/8th inch up from the floor frame. Then, using a level, I inched the string up or down each of the nails until the string was level. At this point, I had about 1 1/2 inches between the string and floor frame at the back. From the front to mid-way between the axles the string stayed at about 1/8th inch above the frame.

A few things to note: I checked the levelness of the string by eyeballing the string against a long leveling tool and doing this at several points on the string to make sure he string was taught and that I was being as accurate as I could. Also, if the strings are all level, the strings going from front to back and the ones going from side to side should be at the same height on the nails in the corners.



So I needed to create a shim that was 1 1/2 inches tall for the back. Then I needed to create other shims to support the other members of the frame - including angled ones for the sides because the depth of the shim needed to be shallower as we moved forward.

Measuring from between the axles to the end of the floor frame is 90 inches. Between the axles we need a shim of zero height; at the back we need one 1 1/2 inches. So we have a long short triangle. Measuring from between the axles, or the point of the triangle, to each place I need a shim gives me some measurement, say Y inches. The shim for that location is (Y times 1.5) divided by 90 inches tall. [ 1.5Y/90= height of shim. ]

The front to back boards needed to be cut such that one end was taller than the other, but I used the same the process to find the height of the end points, marked the board at those heights and drew a line from one mark to the other and cut it along the line.

Well, that was probably more than ever wanted to know about leveling. We made lots of other progress this weekend. I'll post pics and notes on in the next day or so.

Recent Progress

First, I should note that I'm still in school and so have to study a fair amount. Doing that at the build space means that when I need a break I can do some work on the cottage. But it has the down side of occasionally distracting me from my school work. :-)



Arlene has done most of the work of putting the floor framing together. In the photo below you can see that we used treated wood around areas that will be more likely to be exposed to water. There a few more photos of the floor framing here.



Originally we intended to build the floor frame next to the trailer on the shop floor. That is, in fact, how the plans suggest you do it. However, the dimensions of our trailer are different than the plans expect. So if we built the floor frame exactly as the plans suggest we'd be disappointed when we put it on the trailer and found it didn't fit. Measuring and setting up the frame on the trailer made more sense. We could adjust as we went. So the tip here, if you building one of these, is to measure measure measure.

Now, we still have to work out some issues around leveling, but more on that later.



And finally, here I am sanding out the inside of the wine barrel.

Are you wondering what we have a wine barrel for? Me too.

Trailer Modifications

The plans call for removing roughly every other board from the deck. This helps reduce weight and prevent water from pooling under the floor framing. The screws that hold the deck to the trailer require a square bit instead of flat-head, Philips, or star (also called torx). We only had one suborn screw, probably because the trailer is new.



Sometimes a quick way to get a screw unstuck is to use a small, flat tipped, metal chisel. Place the tip of the chisel against the edge of the screw at about a 45 degree angle from the deck. Tap the chisel until you have a good dent in the side of the screw head. Keeping the chisel at about 45 degrees from the deck, rotate the chisel - keeping the tip in the dent you just created - so that tapping chisel will tend to turn the screw counter-clockwise. A few taps may loosen the screw enough so you can use the square-head bit to remove the screw.

Of course, if the head is stripped out it's better to just drill the screw out.



In the front of the trailer there is (was) a low bar. We needed to remove this, otherwise we'd have to figure out how to build the walls around it. Arlene used a rotozip, which cut through the supports quickly. Then she smoothed the edges with a grinder. Arlene is always telling me she likes metal, but all I see her do to metal is hack it, cut it, grind it, and otherwise turn it into dust.



Another thing you might notice from the pictures is that we have a set of jacks under all 4 corners of the trailer. The jacks will stabilize our work surface. Now if the trailer were perfectly square and level, making level floors and square walls would be a snap. Unfortunately, the trailer is actually bowed such that the highest point is above the wheels. But we have a plan...

The Foundation

We have a foundation. Our foundation is a $3124.70, Iron Eagle, 7000 Series trailer. It's gross (trailer and load) vehicle weight is 7000 lbs. It has a tubular frame, electric brakes and a longer tongue than many others in its class. The longer tongue gives the trailer a bit more stability on the road and means that we could distribute the weight a bit more evenly. Normally, you'd want around 15% of the trailer weight on the tongue. With ours we can go as low as 10%, but we don't need to.



We ordered the trailer about two weeks ago, and yesterday Rick and I picked it up with my Jeep Wrangler. It is important to note that we will NOT be towing the fully built cottage with the Jeep. My Jeep has a class three hitch, and ideally we'd want a class four to tow more than 5000lbs - and our cottage, even after being extremely conscientious about weight - will be up there.

So why not put a class 4 hitch on the Jeep? The Wrangler isn't built for towing. This kind of load would ruin the clutch, and the frame isn't built for it. Still, I may be able to use the Jeep for backing the finished cottage into tight spots, or other fine maneuvering - like pulling our trailer out of the build space when the time comes (the parking lot isn't long enough for a big truck).

Now, I haven't done a lot of towing before. I was actually a bit nervous. That's why I brought Rick along (well, and he's fun to hang out with). So after picking up the trailer we went to DMV and got a permanent trailer registration for 38 bucks (so once I put the plates on, the trailer is street legal). Then we found an empty parking lot and I practiced backing up with Rick's patient guidance. It turns out that it's easier to do gradual, arc-like, maneuvers than sharp, kink-like turns - you can get stuck quickly that way. Also, when pulling forward to straighten out, I found that if I cut the wheel hard in the opposite direction over just the last few feet, it sets the trailer and Jeep up in a nice arc for backing up.



Much to my surprise, I only had to pull forward and back about 3 or 4 times to get the trailer right into the build space. I expected it to take a lot longer and be a lot more frustrating.



Anyway, the trailer is 18 feet long - not including the tongue - and 7 feet wide between the wheel wells. This is our foundation. Before we begin building, we'll need to bring some tools in and make a few modifications to the trailer.

Also, Arlene's birthday is coming up. She likes tools. Maybe I'll get her something useful for the project.