Coast to Coast Tour

This summer, begining on May 25, 2009, Jay Shafer will drive a Tiny House from San Francisco to New York. Along the way, Jay will stop in 14 different cities, making the house available for you to see. In addition, Jay will host Tiny House Building and Design Workshops in Boulder, Chicago and New York along the way.

Last summer, in 2008, Jay drove his house from Canada to Mexico with Greg Johnson co-founder of the Small House Society. This video documents their trip.

This time, Jay will not be driving his personal residence. Instead, he will build a house for a customer and deliver it after the trip is complete. [Read more]

The Cost of Frugality

Square footage is really the cheapest thing you can add onto a house. At the core of most any dwelling you will generally find that the electrical system, plumbing, heating, appliances and structural components are similar in at least one key way. They are all expensive. This costly core is housed in the relatively cheap volume that surrounds it. Because the price of extending core components outward to accommodate any amount of additional space really isn’t all that high, and open space itself is priced at next to nothing, square footage is really the cheapest thing you can add onto a house. [Read more]

House Material Costs

Estimated material costs for Tiny Houses

	XS-House	Epu	Weebee	Lusby Tarleton
Trailer	2,000	2,800	3,200	3,800
General Materials	4,000	5,000	5,000	6,000
Insulation	350	450	450	550
Roofing	450	550	550	650
Exterior Siding	800	1000	1000	1200
Interior Siding	600	800	800	900
Flooring	400	500	500	600
Windows	2,000	2,400	3,300	2,700
Heater	1,000	1,000	1,000	1,000
Appliances	1,000	1,000	1,000	1,000
Shower	1,500	1,500	1,500	500
Counters	800	1,500	1,100	800
Sales Tax	1,200	1,450	1,550	1,550
Total	16,050	19,800	21,050	21,050

Please note that the prices are only estimates.
We’ve included sales tax since it’s often overlooked, but is a large number.

Trailers

A typical flatbed trailer is ideal for building a Tumbleweed Tiny House. They are available at many trailer and RV stores. The picture is a typical flatbed trailer.

Often when you purchase a trailer, it will have sides or ramps. That’s okay, you will just need to remove the sides and ramp. It’s actually pretty hard to find a trailer without some sides built in. Sometimes they are referred to as utility trailers. [Read more]

VIVA LA TINY REVOLUTION

All of our midsize houses (250s.f.- 800s.f.) should meet all IBC size restrictions, and the little ones should get around such building codes because they are not buildings; they are vehicles.

Laws dictating how small our homes can be were introduced back in the 70s and 80s by lobbyists from the housing industry. It had become clear that, as the number of houses being sold by the industry leveled off, fiscal growth would remain possible only so long as the size of their product was increased. Size restrictions were thus written into building code at the federal level and adopted by municipalities throughout the US. Banks quickly followed suit by providing loans only for houses large enough to warrant the cost of the land on which they would sit. Local zoning, in turn, ensured exorbitant land costs by generally demanding that each little house sit on a parcel no smaller than one required for a large structure. [Read more]

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