Hey, everyone. I am here with Mike from Tiny House Chattanooga here at the North Carolina Street Festival.
And this is your new tiny house on wheels isn't it?
Absolutely yeah, we appreciate it.
It's hard to call this a tiny house on wheels because it's pretty huge.
Correct.
This is a tiny mansion, I guess you could say. It is a custom unit for somebody and for what they're going to do is it just kept growing.
So it's 39 total feet. So it's a very large one.
And the total square footage on the house?
Uh, 375.
Wow, and what does something like that weigh?
Well, for us it weighs seventeen thousand three hundred pounds.
It's a steel frame house, not a wood frame, and so it's an easy 3,000 pounds lighter.
Really like the finish on this one as well.
Yeah.
It looks like you've actually use some really interesting materials with this one.
Like, from a distance this looks like wood siding but it's not, is it?
Correct.
It's made by Quality Edge, it has got the wood grain look to it and it has multiple colors, you know?
But it's steel, foam-backed, it's super lightweight.
Goosenecks are kind of a new thing when it comes to tiny homes.
We're starting to see goosenecks become more popular as the size of tiny houses increase, particularly here in the United States.
What's actually the benefit of building a gooseneck?
It is way easier to move the gooseneck. Like, 200 times safer.
It's the way it holds the weight in the truckbed. It never wants to sway.
Okay?
And from there it's a different layout function, to me. It gives you the option to build a structure on top of that gooseneck
that you can stand up in and so when we go inside, you'll be able to see what I mean.
It's six foot seven in the center of our gooseneck right now.
Six seven?
Yes, sir.
I gotta see this. Can we have a step inside?
Absolutely yeah, please.
Alright, let's do it.
Check this out. I walked into a lot of tiny houses, right?
But this just has a completely different feel. I mean, this is so open and
40 feet in length I can see to the back there, right?
That's pretty long, yeah.
That's really something.
It's just the shift that I'm seeing. You know, we do build the 20s and the 24s and all that stuff
but this is actually more doable, at this size.
Especially if you've got a family or something
I can really see this working for larger families or even just people who are perhaps intending on having something which is portable
but not something that they are wanting to necessarily move all the time.
Correct. Right.
Yeah.
It also helps out with taller folks.
And beautiful kitchen, look at this.
Yeah, it's a nice kitchen.
Really nice outlets.
You know, it's a lot of kitchen and so you have plenty of room to do anything you want here.
You can have a party, you can cook, you can do anything.
But at the same time, it's not too big.
Yeah.
Right, it's just got all the necessary parts.
You know, this is a semi full-size stove, not quite the full-size. Decent size fridge, microwave.
Um, it's just usable. That's kind of point.
That's what the bigger size does, it makes it more usable.
Absolutely, you've even managed to get your washer/dryer in here?
Yeah, washer/dryer combo, washes and it dries. Tucks in nicely right there.
You know, you can actually fit nice double doors and units like this, you know?
You can do the glass where it lets in the light. It's big enough, not too big
Oh, that's nice!
That way it's big enough, not too big.
It's only a 4-foot double, not a five or six to take the way wall space, but you can still bring in a light, right?
Because we all know more windows the better, but to me there's a balance. Too many windows,
you've lost a lot of wall space and especially in a smaller unit you need the wall space for something.
Especially the storage you can see on this side which doesn't have as many windows, but you managed to get all of the storage up here, right?
Yeah.
So then, coming up into the gooseneck. sure stare up into the bedroom area and on the way up you have
Sure.
Stairs up into the bedroom area.
And all the way up you have, uh, stairs that lift open.
Oh, look at that!
Just little cubbies here, and of course they could be drawers or whatever you might want.
Electrical panel is hiding in this little cubby right here, just somewhere to hide it.
Because there's a couple things in a tiny house: electrical and water heater, where you put it.
And so for this particular unit, there was nowhere to put the electrical it ended up right here.
Great.
Really good solution. And then again, up here is really spacious.
Yeah, you're six four, correct?
Six four, yeah.
Yeah, so this six seven for sure, finished.
You've even managed to get storage under this bed right?
Correct.
Uh, it does lift.
We won't go too far with because there's not a lot of weight on it right now.
Uh, but you got drawers and you have full access back there.
When you actually do make the decision to boost up to a larger size like this, it just gives you so much more options.
I mean when you think about what you can achieve and the smaller model of tiny homes
that extra few feet can make all the difference width-
Sure.
-and all of a sudden we've got all of the functionality, but it's really the ease of access that's improved, isn't it?
You're not having to climb ladders to get into the sleeping loft or stairs or compromising on, like crawl spaces.
Exactly, yeah.
I mean, it's just a bit more normal, isn't it?
Yeah, I mean like so we've done many shorter ones. We do like to do them, um, but we're seeing that
it's the baby boomer age, they do not want 24 feet.
They almost won't do it. And so you got to get that unit just big enough to make it simple for them.
Yeah.
Whether its ease of use, stairs not too steep, right? Or no stairs at all, we do that as well.
And so it has to be kind of geared towards where they're at in life, versus maybe where the millennials are in life.
They don't mind the stairs or the tight stairs, the ladders, and crawling, right?
And so is offering a different option for the folks that want the other way.
And bathroom, bathroom's right the way down the other end.
Yeah.
And really, really nice-size bathroom.
This is a full size bathroom. You know, 60 inch shower pan or a tub option could be there as well.
Sure, it is definitely big enough for a tub there.
Absolutely.
Is that a seat you've got in the shower in this one?
Yeah, that one's a seat.
Uh, this is like a pan that you can buy with a seat for the kind of the old older crowd I guess you could say.
Composting toilet as well. There's no compromise in space.
This is actually quite a normal sort of ensuite sized bathroom.
Exactly.
If you do the layouts correctly you can pretty much achieve this size bathroom, even in a 24.
So what actually pulled you into building tiny houses?
I was in the residential world doing building and flipping houses, remodels, everything
and I saw the shows, like everybody else,
I was like, well that'd be kind of fun. Different was what I was shooting for and so we tried one-
-but we did it different.
We went steel frame, not wood frame, and so we searched out
took me four months to find somebody in the U.S.
then we found a company called Vollstruct struct and we kind of worked together and now they're everywhere.
When we're building tiny houses, we're building a vehicle first and a house second.
It needs to be safe, it needs to be secure and there's something about the strength and weight benefits
to building with steel that really does make it a very strong contender.
Absolutely, because what folks don't realize sometimes is like you said this is a vehicle first.
It is a home, and that's fine. But it has to take the abuse of a road.
So you have to start correctly, so its trailer, make sure it's the correct one because there's plenty that are not.
And then for us, it's a steel frame. That way it can take that abuse.
So obviously, this tiny house is a little bit larger than the ones that we're used to seeing.
How does that affect the budget of a project like this?
The budget for this one ended up being 96 thousand, for what they wanted.
I think this is a really exciting project. It's really cool for me to be in this house
and being here in the United States, the tiny homes are definitely bigger
just as I expected and it's really cool for me to be here. Thank you so much for showing me around
and I hope the festival was great for you.
Definitely appreciate it. Thank you