Christmas Elves at Work

'Twas the weekend before Christmas, when all 'round the tiny house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse... Seriously though we were getting some work done. Saturday Abbie and Statia (Abbie's sister) worked on experimenting with Japanese wood burning (known as shō sugi ban) as Drew drank his beer.

Abbie used a propane torch to burn the wood and Statia used a brush to get rid of the charring. Statia would then seal the wood with linseed oil. We experimented with varying levels of charring with the torch and using either a plastic or a wire brush.

We came to the conclusion that it was going to be a lot of work if we wanted to do the whole house in the burnt wood. Also the wood seemed to cup up when it was burned which would make it much more difficult to install on the tiny. So we are going to look at other options for the siding such as staining, but we do like the look of the cedar lap and gap.

When Drew wasn't drinking his beer he was assisting Buddy (Abbie's dad) with building a deck on the side of the concrete pad. That way we could more easily get into and out of the tiny house. We plan on building a platform and a ramp/steps also. Working on the deck went into Sunday, but we got it finished up before the extra help was set to arrive.

Now we both had Christmas Eve and Christmas off, and Drew also had the rest of the week off from work. We hoped to get a lot done during that week! Especially since we were going to have some help from some Christmas elves (AKA the Rosecrans' crew). Drew's parents were able to fly down from Montana to spend the holiday with us and help on Rosey Leigh.

So starting off on Monday, Christmas Eve, we were hoping to pick up the roofing material from Mueller before we picked up Drew's parents at the airport, but unfortunately they were closed. This just meant that instead of working on Christmas day we were going to have to have family time... Lame, we know. The main reason we wanted to work on Christmas day was because rain was in the forecast for Boxing day (day after Christmas). Therefore the day after Christmas was mainly used to gather all our material. But during the breaks in the rain we also got the fascia installed, so Thursday we would be ready to start the roof first thing.

Thursday morning we started installing the roof and it went pretty well, but the last piece was a little off square. Just bad enough that we'll know about it, but no one else will ever notice without us pointing it out. We also got our windows and door delivered on Thursday around noon, so once we finished the roof we were able to jump right in to installing windows. By the end of Thursday we got all the roof panels installed minus some trim and a few of the windows.

Friday we finished up the roof trim and finished installing all the windows and also got the door installed! It's starting to look even more like a real house!

Friday evening we had even more help come in. Nathan (Drew's brother) came down from Oklahoma to lend a hand. Unfortunately though we didn't have too much work for him. All we lacked for the weekend was installing the loft joists and the bathroom wall with a pocket door.

For the loft joists we decided to go with rough cut Douglas Fir because they were going to be exposed (except in the bathroom). They were a little bit more expensive, but we really liked the look they were going to give the tiny. We didn't install the joist hangers yet for a couple reasons. One, we don't need all this help to install them and also we want to stain or seal (we haven't decided yet) the joists first.

On Saturday we took our time getting started, but eventually got some of the joists installed before we had to take a break and go check out Revolver Brewery down the road. We had a great time at Revolver, but once we got back from day drinking it was clear no more work was getting done that day.

With our last day of extra help we finished up the loft joists and the bathroom wall with the pocket door hardware. We don't have the door yet, but it is going to be a standard 24" by 6'8" door that matches the front door style as much as we can. Once we get it we will most likely have to sand/cut a little off of the bottom of the door because the bottom of the joists is going to be 6'8" from the finished floor, but we did flush the pocket door hardware with the bottom of the joists. As of now, if you don't count the stairs, all the framing is done!

Since we had so many helpers the weekend after Christmas and only so many people can work in a tiny house (we do hope to have that many people in the house at once when it's done though!), there was some planning going on in parallel.

Abbie, Statia, and Debi (Drew's mom) made a trip to Lowe's to look at flooring, paint, and stain (interior and exterior) colors. Debi and Statia helped out Abbie a lot by narrowing down the choices. Abbie was understandably getting some analysis paralysis with all the available options. Anyone who has looked at colors for anything on a house knows that there are definitely way way too many options. Stay tuned, we'll have a whole post just for colors and stains!

They returned with some samples and tested out some stains on the Douglas Fir for the joists, the lap and gap cedar for the siding, and for what is an option for our interior wall paneling seen below. Here is a link to it at Lowe's. It has a good price point and is a good lightweight option because it's only 1/4 inch thick. There are some reservations though that the 3 and a half inch boards making the walls look too busy. So we are exploring other options as well for the interior wall paneling.

So we got quite a bit finished on Rosey Leigh and had a great time over the holidays with family! Next will be foaming in all the windows and door and starting with all the routings (electrical, plumbing, refrigerant lines) that need to go in.

Mystery Water and Hurricane Ties

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, in between all the planning and purchasing (outlined in our last blog post), we also did a small amount of work on Rosey Leigh.

Buddy (Abbie's Dad) really helped us out during the week. He was able to get some of the scrap OSB over the windows and door so the wind wouldn't tear up the house wrap or make a racket when the wind blew. He also installed some temporary lighting inside the tiny so we would be able to work inside until the windows get installed and at night.

The only other thing that we did was install the hurricane ties on the rafters. The hurricane ties make a more secure connection between the top plate and the roof rafters. That way we won't lose the roof when we are driving down the highway with the house.

We also found a little surprise waiting for us inside the tiny. After a hard rain in North Texas a few little water pools were standing on the subfloor.

They seemed a little odd and it wasn't immediately obvious where the water was coming in, but we think we narrowed it down. Either that it was coming in through the vent area for the rafters, that will be covered up after the roof is installed, or underneath the bottom plate, which we will be caulking before we move forward. So hopefully we don't see any more water inside Rosey Leigh after we get these two things done!

Ordering Windows, a Door, and a Roof

This was brushed over a little bit in the plans and purchasing post, but we wanted to make a post specifically for it. Because these are kind of big purchases.

Windows

We decided early on that we would go with Jeld-Wen builders vinyl because they are good windows, available at Lowe's, and in our budget. We also ended up ordering our windows after we had Rosey Leigh framed up so knew exactly what size frames we needed Normally you would want to order your windows so they would arrive right after you are finished framing, but it was a good thing we didn't do that. Because we changed one windows' size in the middle of framing, but we did at least know what the standard sizes were so we didn't have to pay extra for a custom window. The window that we changed was the breakfast nook window. We originally had it at 4 feet wide and a sliding window like all the other windows in the house (except the one picture window), but decided to down size it to 3 feet wide. Now a standard size casement window would be able to go there. We are really glad that we decided to downsize the window and go with the casement. It looks amazing and will be great when we are using the deck that we are going to have just outside that window.

Our original design had over 11 windows of different sizes, but after discussions with family and other tiny house owners, we reevaluated and removed 2 windows - one in the loft area and one in the kitchen. The concern with our original number of windows was that we would have a difficult time keeping the temperature regulated. The decision to go with sliding over single hung was purely aesthetic. Abbie really liked the contemporary look of this style and we wanted to have as much consistency as possible. 

Loft egresses are a very important topic for personal safety and coding. The purpose of a loft egress is entry or exit in the case of emergency. Appendix Q in the IRC states that tiny houses are not exempt from meeting Section R310 for emergency escape and rescue openings. This means to meet this standard we needed a minimum opening area of 5.7 square feet. Proportionally, for tiny houses, this is a very large ask. Originally we had thought about doing awning windows in the lofts, but they are not permissible because the clear opening isn't big enough. Unfortunately after reviewing all of our options, meeting this requirement was not feasible for us at this time. We have installed a very large sliding window that both of us are able to escape through if needed, but is not 5.7 square feet. In the future, if appendix Q is adopted in our jurisdiction, then we will likely reconsider  putting a casement window in the sleeping loft to satisfy the requirement. 

Door

The door was one of the easiest thing we have decided on for the tiny house thus far if you ask Drew. Abbie did a little looking online and knew exactly which one she wanted, and then we both walked into Lowe's and the door was front and center and Drew didn't even need to look at any other options. We knew that this one was the one. Then we quickly both agreed that we wanted the door to be an out-swing to not take up room inside the house when it is open. Also for the door to open away from the breakfast nook window so if we wanted to keep the door all the way open we could and not have it blocking our view.

Roof

According to Abbie the roof was the easiest thing we have decided on thus far. We knew we wanted a metal roof, so Drew did some research on it to see what companies were available locally and also what roofing style could be used on such a shallow roof (we have a 1.5:12 pitch roof). Drew's dad recommended Mueller Inc. because he had used them on their house in Oklahoma and they came with his recommendation. So Drew looked them up and they have a location in Fort Worth and Glen Rose (there Glen Rose location is closer to Granbury, where we are building). They also had 2 types of panels that were recommended for our low pitch, R Panel and MLK Standing Seam Panel. After Drew's dad called to ask them some questions (since he had installed two metal roofs before, he knew the questions to ask), we decided to go with the R Panel. We liked the look of it and more importantly it came in the color that Abbie had dreamt the color our roof would be (deep river blue).

Planning & Purchasing

Once the framing was completed and Rosey Leigh was dried in, we could took a step back to the drawing board. Now that we had a physical structure we could better visualize where to place counter tops, appliances, and lights. We made a few tweaks to our original intent, such as:

• raising the kitchen counter tops from the traditional 36" to 38" 
• switching the direction of the composting toilet to allow for more "leg room"
• decided where to place the sink basin and run the plumbing lines
• moved the tank-less water heater and mini split condenser to the back outside wall of the tiny house

Battle of the light switches
Up to this point we had not put extensive thought into our electrical design. We spent a few days, while we waited for our doors, windows and roof to be delivered (more on better project timeline management later), deciding where outlets, light switches and other electrical lines could be run. As it turns out, we have some very different philosophies about light switches and outlets. Abbie is firmly in the "less is more" camp. Drew and Buddy (Abbie's dad) are rooted in the "more the merrier" camp. The haggling over placement came to a head when a (superfluous - Abbie) light switch was proposed at the bottom of the stairs (in the middle of the line of sign from the front door - Abbie) to turn off the loft lights.

Retail Therapy
We also spend a substantial portion of the last few weeks researching and purchasing many of our appliances for the tiny. Fortunately for us, budget is less of a constriction. However, size and weight, something a conventional house worry less about, are major limiting factors and considerably restrict our options for basic household appliances. Take for instance our kitchen range hood, we have approximately 24" of space under the loft. There are 342 wall mounted range hoods on the Lowe's website. When you restrict this to 24" width, the options whittle down to 4.

Below is a list of the appliances and fixtures we have purchased in the last few weeks with links to the items.

• Bathroom vent and heater
• Tank-less water heater
• Mini split
• Kitchen range hood
• Kitchen sink faucet
• Breville Smart Oven
• TV wall mount
• Bedroom loft wall sconces 
• Bathroom mirror
• 1 million electrical boxes
• HRV (heat recovery ventilation) system

Future posts will go more in-depth with why we chose the items that we did, and here are some things that we still need to purchase, but are a little less critical at this time.

• Refrigerator
• Kitchen sink
• Bathroom sink
• Track lighting
• Ceiling fan
• Hot plates

While we have researched these things and have a good idea of what we are going to order, they really aren't needed at the moment and we are quickly running out of space to store everything.

Framing Weekend

In the span of 72 hours our Rosey Leigh morphed from a trailer into a house!

Thursday evening Drew's dad, Rick, flew in from Montana to help with framing. After Drew picked him up from the airport and we indulged in some ramen, Drew and Rick drove out to Granbury so they could get an early start Friday. Also during the day Thursday, Hensen's Lumber delivered our supplies for the weekend.

Unfortunately we weren't able to get started right away Friday morning, because we had to take the trailer to be inspected.We really should have done this earlier, but it definitely needed to be done before we put up walls and a roof. In the state of Texas if a trailer has a maximum gross weight (trailer weight plus payload) of over 7,500 lbs it is required to have a safety inspection and be titled and be registered. So we hooked it up to Abbie's parent's truck and once we fixed a minor issue with the left tail light of the trailer we took it for it's first spin. It passed with flying colors and we were ready to start framing.

After re-leveling the trailer, Rick began laying out the boards for framing and Drew cut the studs.

And pretty soon we had the first half of the first wall up!

If you don't count the missing cripple studs and sills, then the second half of the first wall was up by noon.

By the end of the day on Friday we had both long walls up and framed.

Subfloor and Bottom Plate Complete

Weekend #2 - we were able to finish our initial project. We installed all of the floor insulation, glued and screwed down the subfloor and cut the bottom plate to get ready for framing.

The insulation install went fairly smoothly, but it was a multi-step process and required a bit of math.

Step 1. We installed two 1" thick strips of foam insulation on the outside edges of the trailer. In this compartment the metal flashing on the bottom of the trailer is 6" deep.

Then we installed one layer of 1/2" thick insulation board over those strips of foam insulation on the edges of the trailer (for those keeping track, that is 2.5" of foam in the side compartments) and also in the center of the trailer where it was only 4" deep to the metal flashing on the bottom of the trailer.

Step 2. Then came time for the actual batts of insulation. Each batt is made for a 2x4 wall with studs 16" on center. We decided to go with Rockwool insulation, a mineral wool, for it's added R value and moisture and fire resistance. It cut like a loaf of bread and was easy manipulate into place. Just remember that unlike fiberglass, it does not have a vapor barrier attached. Side note: it is considered a greener alternative to fiberglass insulation. 

Step 3. Next we had to coordinate putting the adhesive on and screwing down the subfloor piece by piece. As mentioned in our previous post, we only had 15 minutes to get the board screwed down from when we started putting down the adhesive. On the bigger boards we pushed right up to the 15 minute mark, but managed the challenge with two people. Pre-drilling all of the holes was critical to getting each board secured within the allotted time.

On Sunday we took it a little easy and did a little pre-work for our big framing weekend. We just cut the bottom plate and the headers over the wheel wells.

Next we frame up, so it will actually start looking like a house! And we are so lucky that a few experienced out-of-towners are coming to lend a hand.

First Weekend Working on The Tiny House

It's official! We've finally started! Last weekend progress was made installing the subfloor. We went out to Abbie's parents Friday evening; stopping at Lowe's on the way (because the Granbury Lowe's didn't have what we needed in stock). Good thing we didn't bring the Fit, because the bundles of insulation were much bigger than we realized! We managed, with the help of some rope, to fit all 4 in and on Abbie's car. Luckily it made it the whole way!

Saturday morning was spent prepping the trailer for the subfloor. This involved:

• Cleaning out the branches and dust;
• Sanding down rust spots and then painting back over them;
• Caulking openings in the metal sheathing on the bottom of the trailer;
• Welding 4 metal plates over holes in the wheel well left open by the manufacturer.

After all of the trailer prep was complete we were able to start cutting the 3/4" OSB tongue & groove subfloor panels to fit on the trailer. We decided that we would cut all of the panels before we glued and screwed them down. This was to make sure everything fit and so we could hopefully get in a groove of cutting the panels.

We picked up where we left off cutting subfloor panels Sunday morning. Other than an impromptu Lowe's trip for the last OSB board, the panels fit together beautifully! Before we pulled the panels up to put the insulation in we elected to pre-drill all the screw holes on all the panels. This will allow us to quickly screw down the panels when we put the adhesive down. This is important because there is a 15 minute drying deadline for the adhesive, and not having to pre-drill holes will make it more likely that we will meet this deadline. As we learned, pre-drilling the holes through the 1/8" steel is time consuming and pretty physically tough. It would have been nearly impossible to complete all of these steps in the 15 minute time frame if we didn't do the pre-drill in advance. Abbie will tell you we drilled a million holes, but hopefully it was less than 500 or else we'll need to go get some more screws.

As the weekend came to a close, we were racing the setting sun to get all of the all of the holes pre-drilled before dark. So we kicked it into overdrive and finished strong. Meaning this coming weekend our Thanksgiving goals are to:

• lay in the insulation, 
• put down the subfloor adhesive, and 
• screw all of the panels in place. 

Then once all that's done it will be on to framing!

Trailer Delivery Scheduled!

Our finished trailer!

We are getting so excited!

After a loooong wait (Tiny House Basics said the manufacturing company had the axles on back order) the trailer is finally scheduled to arrive on August 7th. The pad at Abbie's parent's house in Granbury, where we will be parking it for the build, won't quite be ready, but a week after the trailer gets here the pad should be ready as well.

That's just in time for all the summer and fall trips we have planned... Yay! But that only leaves 4 weekends (two of which are half weekends) between trailer delivery and November to work on our new home. Therefore we have elected to wait until November to get started with the build :/ At that point we will hit it hard!  And according to Abbie, no more vacations until we finish!

Working on a SketchUp Model

We haven't posted in a while, so we thought we should post an update. As the title of this post states, Drew has been working on a SketchUp model of our tiny house. SketchUp is a free 3D modeling software that is very useful for planning out exactly how much space we have for everything, and it is very accurate. So we are going into as much detail as possible to make sure that we don't run into any issues during the build. Lots of other tiny house DIYers use SketchUp for the same reasons and it is turning out to be a very helpful tool. Here are a couple of screenshots from SketchUp to show our progress on the design (note that this is still a work in progress!).

Front of the house (passenger side of trailer) with a yellow door for Abbie :)

Front of the house with the sheathing, siding, and interior paneling off to show the framing

Back of the house (driver's side of trailer) with all the hookups down on the far end

Back of the house with sheathing and siding off (but the interior paneling on) to show the framing

View of livingroom from the kitchen

View of kitchen from the livingroom

View of the bathroom from the back of the house (it's hard to get it all in one pic)

View of the livingroom and secondary loft from the sleeping loft

View of the kitchen and sleeping loft from the secondary loft

As you can see we still have a little bit to do. None of the cabinets are finished, but we just wanted to put their outlines in the model to see how much room we had for our things. You may have noticed some brightly colored boxes with writing on them stuck in places around the house. Those are just place holders for our things. We are measuring everything that is going in the tiny house and making sure there is a place for it. At this point we really just want to make sure that we don't need to alter any of the framing. That way we can be super confident that our framing we've outlined here will be exactly what we need.

Hopefully this gives you a better idea of what we are planning for our house and lets you know what we've been up to!

Trailer Details

The foundation of our tiny house is kind of important.

We settled on a 24 foot bumper pull trailer that is going to be 8' 6" wide when finished (the max legal width without a permit), but there were still many factors we needed to research. First off, we threw out the idea of building the trailer ourselves. Neither of us know how to weld; and even if we did this is the one thing we'd rather leave to the pros. So, we started researching trailer companies.

We compiled a list of trailer companies from referrals and our own internet search. This list can be seen on the "Trailers" tab of our tiny house spreadsheet. We wanted to go with a reputable company, but price point was also important since it is going to be our largest purchase. The two companies that stood out from the beginning were AAA Trailers in Paris, TX (now selling through Centerpoint Trailers) and Tiny House Basics.

AAA Trailers was recommended to us by a couple local tiny house DIYers we met at the 2017 Tiny House Jamboree in Arlington, TX last October. It looked like AAA Trailers would be our cheapest option when factoring in delivery cost (which was Free.99 because we are close enough to pick it up ourselves), but they were not a tiny house specific trailer company. It sounded like they had done a few tiny house trailers; but that most of them had been gooseneck trailers, and we had decided on a bumper pull trailer.

As for Tiny House Basics, they were the cheapest out of the tiny house specialty companies on the list. We didn’t know a whole lot about them, so Drew scoured their website, watched all their YouTube videos, and went through all their Instagram posts. We concluded that they seemed to know what they were doing and would provide a quality product. They also provided plenty of optional features and were willing to do all kinds of custom work.

The Tiny House Basics trailer, with all of our added features and the delivery from Alabama, was a little more expensive, but because they were a tiny house specific company, they became the front runner. We had a few specific questions, so Drew decided to email them directly. They were very responsive, answered all our questions, and were very patient with us (Drew had a LOT of questions). And that made our decision to have Tiny House Basics build our home's foundation. After that we just needed to nail down what options and custom work we wanted on our trailer.

Some of the trailer options/customization we knew we wanted: drop axles, scissor jacks, and the location of the wheels (based on our weight and balance calculations in my previous post). The additional options we weren’t completely sold on: an extended tongue, flush crossmembers, or welded-on under sheathing.

After a brief discussion, drop axles were an obvious choice. Because we have lofts in our floor plan, every inch of extra interior height helps. Drop axles lower the deck height by about 4 inches, which will give us that much needed room for the interior height. Remember, the max height of the house when towing is 13’ 6” without a permit. The only con of the drop axles is the increase in wheel well height by the same 4 inches, but in our plan the wheel wells will be inside the kitchen cabinets, so this is not an issue.

Scissor jacks were another no brainer. Unlike a normal foundation, we need a way to level out the house and keep it level. There will be one jack welded to each corner of the trailer that we can adjust to get the trailer stable wherever we end up parking. Also, this option was very cheap compared to the prices for scissor jacks we’d seen elsewhere.

The extended tongue wasn’t really that hard of a decision either. In our floor plan we envisioned an outside storage “shed” (it will be a tiny house sized shed) sitting on top of the trailer tongue. The stock tongue is only 4 feet long, which doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for the storage shed when you start taking into account the space needed for the ball coupler and the tongue jack. The extended tongue option adds an extra foot to the tongue and will give us plenty of room for our storage shed. That extra foot also helps us out with our weight and balance in being able to move our wheels further back and more under the kitchen cabinets.

Now onto the flush crossmembers. This option was dependent on how we were going to attach our subfloor to the trailer. Tiny House Basics has a pretty good description of the differences here on their website. Just focus on the crossmembers in the pictures on their website though, our trailer is going to look a little different. They first go over installing the floor with flush crossmembers and then without. Both examples are without welded-on under sheathing, which we will get to in a minute. Basically the difference is, are we going to attach the subfloor directly to the metal crossmembers (flush crossmembers) or drop in a wooden subframe and attach the subfloor to it (no flush crossmembers). If you’re anything like us, it seems like win win to go with the flush crossmembers. You eliminate the step of creating a wooden subframe and the subfloor will be more rigidly attached to the trailer (instead of attached to a wooden subframe, that is then attached to the trailer). Although there are two reasons why you may not want to go with flush crossmembers. The main reason against attaching the subfloor directly to the metal crossmembers is the increased thermal bridging. Thermal bridging is when heat is transferred through an object of least resistance, and how well your house is insulated depends on how much thermal bridging you have. Now of course we are going to put some type of insulation below our subfloor, but every 16 inches there is going to be either a wooden 2x4 or metal one. The speed which metal conducts heat is much greater than wood, so the thermal bridging is greater with the metal 2x4’s. This increased thermal bridging will decrease the R-value of our floor substantially. The other reason against flush crossmembers is the worry of condensation on the metal creating a mold issue where it touches the wood subfloor. Although that worry can be solved with a vapor/moisture barrier in between the metal and wood. After weighing the pros and cons of flush crossmembers, we finally came to the conclusion that the ease of construction and rigidity of the subfloor out weighed the decrease in R-value. We would hopefully minimize the heat loss through the floor by putting a skirt around the trailer when we are parked.

Once we decided to go with the flush crossmembers, the welded-on under sheathing made sense for two reasons. First, it would take the difficult and laborious work of attaching the metal sheathing to the bottom of the crossmembers as seen in Tiny House Basics write up from earlier. It would also give us more room (about 2-3 more inches deep) to put insulation, increasing our R-value for the floor. This is because the welded-on under sheathing is attached to the bottom of the main 2x6 beams of the trailer, not the bottom of the crossmembers as shown in the Tiny House Basics write up. As a bonus, aesthetically it will look better and be a cleaner finished product. The only real downside to the welded-on under sheathing is the cost, but we decided that it was worth it.

So now that we've walked you through our thought process on designing our trailer, here is the closest example I can show you. Our trailer will look a lot like this one, except ours will only be 2 axles, will have drop axles, will be wider, will have a longer tongue, and will not have the hole for the deck.

Sorry for the long post, but just wanted to cover everything we went through!

Trailer Is Ordered!

So yesterday we put the deposit down on the trailer from Tiny House Basics! It should be delivered to Abbie's parents in 3 to 4 weeks. Since Abbie was talking trash on me in her last post, I thought I would show you what I was up to. Here is a link to the spreadsheet that we have going for keep track of all things tiny house.

There is a tab called "Weight & Balance" and one called "Flipped Weight & Balance." We originally wanted to have the bathroom on the hitch side of the trailer, but based on the weight and balance the fender would have fell where we wanted to put the door into the tiny house. We could have worked with this, but in the end we decided that it would be better to flip the tiny house around and have the living room on the hitch side. This put the fender under the kitchen counters where we wanted it.

To decide where the fenders (wheels) needed to be placed, I had to do a little research. I knew that you wanted to make sure that you had weight on the tongue of the trailer (more weight in front of the wheels than behind them), but I didn't know what the sweet spot was. After a little googling it seemed like somewhere between 10% and 15% of the weight of the trailer should be on the tongue when it is fulled loaded. I decided that since we are going to have such a heavy tralier (~12,000 lbs) and that class IV and V hitch ratings have max tongue weights of 10% of the max gross trailer weight, we should shoot to have the tongue weight be between 10% and 12%.

So we created a line item in the spreadsheet for everything that would be on the trailer once we were done, gave it a weight, and gave it a center of gravity (CG) from the front edge of the trailer deck. That way we could get the final trailer weight and CG. Then using some math we could figure out the ideal place for the wheels to give us between 10% and 12% of the weight on the tongue. We went with the location required for 11% of the weight on the tongue, just so we would have some play on either side since the weight and CGs of the line items were just best guesses.

I hope that at least kind of explains our rational on deciding the location of the wheels and explains the importance of calculating the weight and balance of your tiny house. I'll create another post soon that goes a little bit more indepth on the trailer and why we choose all the options that we did.

Buy the trailer already!

Weights and balances engineer over here is checking our design for the 100th time.

But he has assured me that we will put down the deposit this weekend. Maybe if we put a wager on it, then he'll feel the pressure?

What's the bet babe?