Hey guys, Jenna here,
and I'm going to talk this week about something I get questioned about all the
time, and that's the cost of building a tiny house, so let's break it down.
Tiny houses do not costs less per square foot than a regular traditional home,
but they do cost less overall. What really costs money in a house.
It's not the lumber, it's not the empty space.
It's making it the most efficient house that you possibly can and tiny houses
are efficient and not only that,
the appliances cost more in most cases than a traditional home for a couple of
reasons. Think like Batman's gadgets. Are they small? Yes. Are they efficient?
Yes. Okay. They're probably expensive. Now that I've got on my spiel,
let's talk about the most expensive items in my tiny house.
At the top of the list is the trailer.
It's important to have a good foundation.
I knew I was going to travel with my tiny house and I want it to last a really
long time, so I spent money on my tiny house trailer.
I had no problem doing that. I have one of the first tumbleweed trailers.
There are a lot of different companies now that make trailers specifically for
tiny houses. Sure. If you have the skill set,
you can refurbish an old trailer and save a lot of money,
but what you won't save is a lot of time I didn't have the skillset and I was
willing to pay for the peace of mind that my tiny house was not going to slip
off the trailer or break down a first couple of miles going down the road up to
you, but worth it to me to spend money on the foundation of my house.
The second most expensive thing in my tiny house is my woodstove.
You can actually see the pipe right behind me.
I wanted to be able to live in my tiny house in cold climates and heat it
without wasting a lot of energy and again,
my woodstove is super efficient.
It doesn't take oxygen from the inside of my house.
Instead it takes it from the outside. That was really important to me.
It's made of stainless steel,
so it's lightweight and it doesn't take up as much space as a traditional
woodstove.
Now all of those things mean it's more expensive than a regular woodstove,
but for me it was worth the cost.
The third most expensive thing in my tiny house was the windows and skylights.
I have 14 windows and two skylights in 165 square feet.
That's a lot of glass. Now I have double pane tempered glass,
high elevation windows, and almost all of them open. They're also custom size,
which means they cost more than regular windows.
If you can build your tiny house with standard sized windows,
you're going to save a lot of money. You live and you learn.
Another expensive item in my tiny house is my solar system.
I wanted a portable solar system and it definitely doesn't power everything in
my tiny house. For instance, I can't use my hairdryer when I'm off grid,
but it's great if I want to rough it and park somewhere beautiful off-grid for
up to a week.
If you're going to live off grid for a long period of time or even permanently,
you're going to need a bigger system than this. I love my solar system,
but for me it's only meant for temporary parking situations and the ability to
give me flexibility with parking.
Another big ticket item in my tiny house is my water heater.
My water heater is a propane tankless water heater and meant that I could have
unlimited amounts of hot water in a tiny house.
You can't really have a huge tank like you would in a regular home,
so tankless was the way to go in my mind. Otherwise,
you're dealing with maybe a 10 or 15 gallon hot water heater.
Now that means you're going to be able to take maybe a five to seven minute
shower and you're going to be out of hot water. That wasn't okay with me.
I wanted to have endless hot water when I wanted it,
so I went with a propane tankless water heater.
Why propane? To save on electricity
Another expensive item in my tiny house is my toilet. Now,
I've talked a lot about my toilet on my website.
I'm not going to go into the dirty details here,
but I was willing to pay extra for something that worked really well. Now, yes,
you could just build a composting toilet for five bucks,
but it's not going to be as efficient and it might smell.
At least that's what I heard. I only have to dump my toilet every three months.
I love it. It's easy to use. I can park off grid. No problem.
If you're not planning on parking off grid, you can do a regular flush toilet,
but I will say a black water tank is not fun to deal with.
I would much rather empty a composting toilet.
Another off-grid item that I splurged for in my tiny house was my refrigerator.
I want to be able to use my refrigerator on my small solar system,
so I splurged and went with a three-way RV refrigerator.
What does that mean? It means it can work off a propane electric or DC.
Little things add up in a tiny house as well. For instance, my hardwood floors,
it's a small space,
so altogether it doesn't cost a lot to put nice flooring inside of a tiny house.
The difference between the cheapest stuff and the most expensive stuff was
really only a hundred dollars so I splurged and spent the extra hundred dollars
and got the nicest hardwood floors I could find.
Now when you do that and everything in the tiny house, it all adds up.
I could go through each and every item in my tiny house and break down the
costs, but I've already done it on my website.
So click the link in the description if you really want to see a breakdown of
costs with links to the different materials and appliances.
I've met dozens and dozens of people who have built their own tiny homes talking
with these people. The average tiny house costs about $25,000 now,
my tiny house costs a little bit more than that.
Costs about $30,000 because I have a lot of off-grid appliances and I spent more
on each item to make sure I had the highest quality possible.
Still a $30,000 home. That's pretty cheap.
The space in a tiny house is worth more than the space in a regular home,
so it costs more per square foot, but less overall.
And that's the way we should realistically look at tiny house costs.
So tell me what you guys think in the comments. I'll be doing more videos,
including how you can cut costs on your build and the cost of living in a tiny
house and maintaining it.
Don't forget to subscribe for more videos and until next time I'll see you guys
later.