What You Need To Prevent Your Tiny Home From Freezing In The Winter
Stop Your Tiny Home From Freezing In The Winter
Let's not pretend that freezing pipes, waterlines and no heat aren't plaguing your mind every time you think about having a tiny home.
Hi! I'm Jen. I'm a interior designer turned entrepreneur after 15 years in residential construction. I own Teacup Tiny Homes. In 2022, my partner and I, built a tiny home to use as a cabin/ cottage/ short term rental so we would know the good, the bad, and the ugly that our clients may experience in the tiny homes that we built for them. We rent it out as a short term rental, which has a list of it's own hurdles, but ultimately it has been a relatively headache free experience through our first fall and winter.
Today, I'm going to help you understand how to stay warm and keep your tiny warm even when it is freezing cold outside.
Rest assured, it really isn't that bad if you know what you're doing, if you're prepared and have these two things.
- A tiny home that is ACTUALLY built for extreme temperatures
- The home is set up to ensure the systems will work in a cold snap.
Let's start with making sure that you have a tiny home that is built for the cold.
This sounds like a no brainer, but you would be amazed at the amount of people who don't actually know what they need, are sold something that wont keep them warm, and then have all of the issues and horror stories you see posted on the internet.
Then there are all of the other people who buy the RIGHT tiny home, and you never hear anything from them.
Why? Probably because they are just over there living their normal lives.
But enough of that. If you have an Air Bnb you want to make sure that your tiny home is not going to leave your guests cold, without water, and a toilet that you can't flush. If you have a vacation tiny home that you use all year round, you want to make sure pipes aren't bursting when you aren't there, and if you live in a tiny house, you want to make sure you will have a warm shower when you wake up in the morning.
When you are looking to buy or build a tiny home here is what to look for if you live where it gets to freezing temperatures:
- Make sure it uses propane to heat. A heat-pump will keep you warm for a little while in the cold, but not long term. We need to use propane or natural gas to get the proper heat raise in the air and in the cold water in the tiny home.
- Make sure you know where the waterlines are run in the home. If you EVER see waterlines ran in exterior walls, do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars, and run for the hills because that tiny will have more issues than you want to know about.
- An in-floor heating system. Your tiny home floor should have some sort of system in it that keeps the floors warm. You don't want to have to wear snow boots in your tiny when it is cold out. One of the ways to make sure your utilities don't freeze under your home is to also have some of that heat transfer that is in the floor to below. It wont be a lot, and we don't want it to be a lot, but when you home is skirted on the outside and your floors are warm, there will be ambient heat under the chassis to help keep everything flowing.
Site installation is the second most important thing, and learning how to do it properly will save you and your guests in the dead of winter, and keep things from freezing up.
Now, if you are a Teacup client, you likely already know that there is an online training course called, The Teacup Academy, that teaches Teacup clients how to set up their home. So you don't have to figure it out on your own. But YouTube and Google are also amazing assets where you can learn how to set up a tiny home.
The most important things in your site install are:
1. Skirting: you must have insulated skirting installed on your tiny home to keep heat in, and drafts out. Wind and exposure to outside is the number one cause for cold in a tiny in the winter. There are a lot of different ways to do skirting, but all of them will have to be a custom solution. Google is your best friend on this one, although we opted for a custom canvas skirt that was made to fit our tiny house exactly. This option was about $6000.00, but it saved us a lot of headache in the extreme cold we had this past winter.
2. Heat Tape (or heat trace): which is basically a wire that you will wrap around your pressurized waterlines and plug it into an outlet. The heat tape will have a heat sensor where it will turn on when temperatures reach freezing. The low amount of electricity running through the wires heats the hose enough for the water to stay fluid.
3. You can use a heated RV hose instead for your fresh water, which will be insulated, or use an RV fresh water drinking hose, wrap the heat tape around it, and insulate it... you can even use pool noodles as insulation! Believe it! - Make sure to cover the connection point, where the hose screws into the tiny home as well to protect from freezing.
After you have these items in place, you will very likely have a few adjustments that will need to be done on the first freeze. When the temperature drops for the first time, keep a closer eye on things and make any adjustments needed in your insulation, heat trace or skirting.
In the event that your water is frozen up, having a handy little outdoor space heater will do the trick to get it running again. Turn the heater on underneath, open a faucet inside, and leave the heater on until the water starts running. Adjust your install as needed.
Now that you know what you need to make sure you don't have an ice cube for a tiny home in the winter, we put together a list of some options for you below to make it super easy.
Don't wait until it's too late to get them ordered.
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