5 Tips to Prepare Your Tiny Home for Winter
Just like that, we have gone from colorful leaves and cool nights full blast into winter. Over the past two days, almost a foot of snow has fallen in Bend! It seems like the last day it snowed this much was the day we moved in, back in March. Back then, the snow and the cold temps brought to our attention to exactly how much us Floridians did not know about winter living as Tiny Home owners and how unprepared we were. Looking back at our first couple of weeks in the house is quite comical now, but it was no joke at the time. This post is intended to be educational in sharing our most valuable winter prep practices and products with you.
Water for a Tiny Home in the winter is kind of like a credit card. If you keep it liquid, you are golden, but as soon as it freezes, it is a royal pain in the butt to resolve. To be 100% honest, we did not even know heated hoses existed before moving into our Tiny Home. We were truly starting from square one. After getting our water connected, we had not opened our sewer valve yet (we literally had no idea how anything worked, please excuse us, no one told us anything), causing the water to freeze in our PVC plumbing underneath the house. Our solution for this was to actually open the sewer valve (brilliant, we know) and stick an electric space heater right under the PVC pipe to thaw it out. This did work, but was the first indicator that our efforts from that point on would be in the mold of damage control, not that of prevention.
The biggest issue we had early last spring was that our brand new on-demand propane water heater, which is inside our utility closet, actually froze. Unlike electronic tank water heaters that constantly run heating elements to have hot water available all the time, a propane water heater only heats the water when you need it, which uses far less energy. However, when the water was sitting inside the copper pipes of our water heater between uses, the uninsulated utility closet could not prevent the water inside the pipes from freezing, eventually causing the pipes to burst. This required us to completely replace our two-week old water heating unit, which was beyond frustrating.
Anyway, lets move on from the problems of the past, and get on with the solutions!
When we first looked into adding skirting to our home, we were baffled by the cost of custom skirting systems. Some companies charge as much as $3,000 for a custom skirt. While I am sure these look better than most, we were not in a position after just buying our home to splurge in what at the time seemed like a luxury. However, some good friends at our first RV park taught Christian how to make a DIY skirt using a 100-ft roll of 6 mil Vinyl wrap, a dozen clamps, and some PVC pipes. This solution cost a total of under $150, and works incredibly well. It is a bit more tricky than some solutions to set up, but since that is something that we only have to do once a year, it is not something we mind spending a couple of hours on to make it look nice.
If you would care to see how you can make your own DIY skirting system, please just let us know and if there is enough interest, I would be more than happy to make a video for you guys.
That is all of the winter-prep related knowledge we have amassed over the past 9-months, but if you guys have any pro-tips that you would like to share, please let us know and we would be happy to consolidate and amend your recommendations to a future blog post. Thanks for reading and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Water for a Tiny Home in the winter is kind of like a credit card. If you keep it liquid, you are golden, but as soon as it freezes, it is a royal pain in the butt to resolve. To be 100% honest, we did not even know heated hoses existed before moving into our Tiny Home. We were truly starting from square one. After getting our water connected, we had not opened our sewer valve yet (we literally had no idea how anything worked, please excuse us, no one told us anything), causing the water to freeze in our PVC plumbing underneath the house. Our solution for this was to actually open the sewer valve (brilliant, we know) and stick an electric space heater right under the PVC pipe to thaw it out. This did work, but was the first indicator that our efforts from that point on would be in the mold of damage control, not that of prevention.
The biggest issue we had early last spring was that our brand new on-demand propane water heater, which is inside our utility closet, actually froze. Unlike electronic tank water heaters that constantly run heating elements to have hot water available all the time, a propane water heater only heats the water when you need it, which uses far less energy. However, when the water was sitting inside the copper pipes of our water heater between uses, the uninsulated utility closet could not prevent the water inside the pipes from freezing, eventually causing the pipes to burst. This required us to completely replace our two-week old water heating unit, which was beyond frustrating.
Anyway, lets move on from the problems of the past, and get on with the solutions!
1. Heated Water Hose
With that said, we have learned a thing or two along the way that have helped us greatly, and could help many people living tiny in a colder climate. Some tips, like owning a heated water hose, seem to be a no-brainer, but need to be stated for people like us. Heated water hoses are significantly more expensive than traditional RV hoses, but are quite simply the most essential single item you could purchase to prepare your Tiny Home or RV for winter. |
| First snowfall of the season in Bend! |
2. Using a Sewer Hose Stand
The next most critical item you can buy for only $30 is a graduated stand for your sewer hose. What this does is it keeps your sewer hose at a gradual downward angle all the way to the sewer connection where you are parked. This gradual angle keeps the water moving the whole way, and moving water is your golden ticket. Even a single dip in the sewer hose, let alone an extended dip that you would have without the sewer hose support, would create a spot where the liquids stay stagnant and are far more likely to freeze, causing a blockage in your sewage system. This is a serious problem that would completely prevent you from using any water (bathroom, shower, kitchen, etc.) in your house until you get the entire blockage thawed out.3. Owning A Good Sewer Hose
While we are on the exciting topic of sewer, it would be worth noting that your sewer hose is not one of the things that you should be frugal about when setting up your Tiny Home/RV. Buy the best dang sewer hose out there, seriously. The better (and generally more expensive the sewer hose), the thicker the material that it is made of. The thin plastic compounds that are used in the cheap stuff is prone to cracking and leaking your sewage even without a severe winter storm to blame. Throw in freezing temps, and even a subtle adjustment of position or an extreme swing in temperature (dumping hot water down the sink when there is an ice blockage) will cause the sewer hose to break. Buy a good one, simple as that.4. Using a Space Heater in the Utility Closet
Moving on to better and less smelly things, is investing in a decent space heater, especially if you have your water heater or any inbound plumbing for that matter running through your utility closet. A small $30 space heater like this one will be more than powerful enough to keep it a comfortable temperature inside the utility closet. We try to be conservative about how much we keep the space heater on, as we don't want to eat up a bunch of electricity unnecessarily, but anytime it drops below 40, we turn it on low for good measure.5. Create a DIY Skirting System
Lastly, one of the best investments you can make to help weatherproof your Tiny Home is in a skirting system. Trailer skirts are very effective in keeping a draft away from the underside of your home, which can be a big source of heat loss in the winter, even if you have really good insulation. For example, we have some serious spray foam insulation underneath our trailer, but we still felt like our floor was frozen when it got cold last spring. Having a skirt keeps the air underneath the trailer from escaping and prevents cold air from coming in.When we first looked into adding skirting to our home, we were baffled by the cost of custom skirting systems. Some companies charge as much as $3,000 for a custom skirt. While I am sure these look better than most, we were not in a position after just buying our home to splurge in what at the time seemed like a luxury. However, some good friends at our first RV park taught Christian how to make a DIY skirt using a 100-ft roll of 6 mil Vinyl wrap, a dozen clamps, and some PVC pipes. This solution cost a total of under $150, and works incredibly well. It is a bit more tricky than some solutions to set up, but since that is something that we only have to do once a year, it is not something we mind spending a couple of hours on to make it look nice.
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| If you look closely, you can see our tiny "mosquito house" nestled in our Yucca plant |
If you would care to see how you can make your own DIY skirting system, please just let us know and if there is enough interest, I would be more than happy to make a video for you guys.
That is all of the winter-prep related knowledge we have amassed over the past 9-months, but if you guys have any pro-tips that you would like to share, please let us know and we would be happy to consolidate and amend your recommendations to a future blog post. Thanks for reading and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
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