r/TinyHouses

Hey all,

We are in the northeast and are planning on stick building a 12x24 temporary dwelling to live in while we get our house built. It will be me, my husband, and our son who will be 5 and most likely 6 years old.

Anyone have any recommendations for doing this with a child and and recommendations on heating and plumbing with no electricity or septic yet? We don’t have to move in until next March and will most likely start building in a month or so when we can get some money together to start.

We need to move in before the septic/electricity so we are able to save for it without our 2.5k a month rent eating up our income.

Any/all advice and thoughts are welcome and appreciated 😊

Which more compact & easy to store/use?

Im also disabled so whichever is easier to use and most versatile would be best! I cook for me and my also disabled husband!

Lemme hear your votes!!!!!! 🤘❤️‍🔥

Hey r/tinyhouses,

Ryan here, I’m doing an AMA this Saturday, April 18 and wanted to give everyone a heads up so you can get your questions ready.

A bit about me: I spent 10 years living in my tiny house, fully off-grid. That meant solar panels for power, a compost toilet, and a greywater system.

I just wrote a book called Living Off Grid through Princeton University Press that is out April 15th that pulls together everything I learned the hard way over that decade — system design, the real costs, what I’d do differently, and the day-to-day reality nobody talks about.

https://preview.redd.it/9l7tp7mtafvg1.jpg?width=2147&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=93f2cde3b85cfd802bfa060610c3a6564e02445e

Ask Me Anything About:

• Solar setup, sizing, and what I’d change
• Compost toilets (yes, the smell question is fair game)
• Grey water systems and what’s actually legal
• The real monthly cost of off-grid tiny living
• Mistakes that cost me money
• Whether I’d do it again
• Anything else you’re curious about

I’ll be live answering questions throughout the day on Saturday, April 18 from noon to midnight EST.

See you Saturday.

Ryan

Hey everyone, I live in a tiny house around 400 sq ft, and my current portable AC is loud, not very energy efficient, and definitely not the most eco friendly option.

I’m thinking about a 9000 BTU mini split for cooling and planning to set up solar panels to help power it in the summer and save on electricity.

My main questions:

Has anyone here run a mini split partially on solar? How did it go?

Do they really run more efficiently and save money over time?

Anyone have experience with Costway unit?

Any tips, real experiences, or advice would be super helpful! I want to make a smart, long-lasting choice rather than swapping out portable units every few years.

These prices just seem too good to be true. This guy messaged me back on Facebook and said transportation plus install would be $2500, making the grand total 22500 plus tax.

I'm looking into tiny living. I love everything about my home except the size, it's too big now the kids have gone. So I want to downsize & move to a tiny version of my current house. I've actually sent off designs for the house to be constructed. I don't like caravans but I would like to live more off the grid too. Basically, I don't need all this space & it will also save a lot of time & money.

Thoughts on "tiny houses"? If you've experienced it, what are the pros & cons of it all (besides the obvious "less space" etc)?

Hi, we're exploring the possibility of adding a tiny house to our lot but being in the suburbs, we have tight size limitations.

Are there any good websites to find floorplans for tiny houses? I'm not even looking for blueprints, I just want to come up with different designs that would work well for us.

On a related note, are there any good free software / websites to draw up floorplans?

FWIW, we're hoping to build something with a footprint of roughly 30x12 with a full foundation so we'd have a lower level and a main level but we'd also have stairs which complicates the layout. Further complicating the layout is that we'd like to have the entrance door along the shorter edge.

I'm planning to buy a plot of land and building a tiny home on it. Who sells the cheapest tiny house and do they do all the permits and stuff? I'm looking to spend no more than $50,000.

I'm moving into a tiny studio apartment next month where the kitchen area is essentially a corner with a hot plate and a sink. There's no space for a full size refrigerator and honestly barely room for anything bigger than a mini fridge. I've been researching very small refrigerators trying to figure out if this is actually livable or if I need to reconsider the apartment entirely. The smallest fridges I've found are those cube shaped ones you see in hotel rooms, maybe 1.5 cubic feet. Those seem impossibly small for actually living. Slightly larger mini fridges around 3 to 4 cubic feet might be manageable but I'm trying to imagine fitting a week's worth of groceries in that space and I just can't picture it.

How do people actually live with mini fridges? Do you just grocery shop daily for small amounts? Give up on cooking anything that requires multiple ingredients? Live on takeout and non perishables? I'm trying to maintain some level of normal healthy eating but I don't know if that's possible with such limited refrigeration. I've found various compact refrigerators on appliance sites and platforms like Alibaba at different sizes and price points. But specifications about cubic feet don't help me understand what fits inside in practical terms. Has anyone successfully lived long term with a very small refrigerator? What adjustments did you make? What's the minimum viable fridge size for actually cooking and eating like a normal person? I need realistic expectations before I commit to this apartment.

I know a lot of ppl in this subreddit probably choose to live in tiny spaces, but I didn't, and I'm struggling to cope with cleaning, organizing and finding a place to put all of my stuff. How do you guys do it??

Background: I live in what is essentially a renovated bus. It is roughly 2m wide and 9m long, or 193 square feet. I don't have a bathroom or toilet, nor do I have a proper kitchen. I live with my partner and my three cats. Me and my partner (both nearly 6'0") sleep in a king single bed. Our sink is ridiculously small, has no hot water and barely fits more than a few plates/cups at a time. I'm literally going insane because it feels like rubbish accumulates in seconds. Every time I turn around, there's more crap that needs to be cleaned up. We're dead broke, too, so it's not like we can afford nifty storage solutions or anything.

How do y'all cope with the small space? How do you keep things clean and stop rubbish/laundry/dishes from piling up so fast? Any advice would be appreciated.

If I want to put two tiny homes on my back lot, what kind of electrical set up do I need? I'm going to run them off the same panel, but I think they each need their own outlet. Can anyone confirm?

And can anyone tell me how many volts I need? Would 220 be enough or should I go with 240?

Each tiny house will have a kitchenette that will have a microwave and a convection oven and a hot plate. They will likely plug in a TV, and could run a hair dryer in the bathroom. They might also charge their phone and be working on a laptop. All of this could happen simultaneously.