Tiny House Moving Update!

Macy M8 comments14610 views

I haven’t moved my tiny house in over 5 years!  I had no idea how long I could leave it there when we moved it to it’s current location.  Maybe a week, a year, not at all. A concrete pad was a big cost that could have been unused. It really didn’t make sense for me to lay down a concrete pad for it.  So, I parked it on the dirt, put it up on blocks and figured I’d see what happened.

I landed on the best case scenario!

It’s been over 5 years.  I’ve been able to have some meaningful discussions with the City.  We have made huge progress with tiny house codes nationally. All the framework is in place to take things forward to zoning. Our neighborhood has grown a lot, in both good and bad ways.  The empty lot that the tiny house has sat on for the last several years has increased in value.  It seems like a wasted opportunity to use a city lot to host a single tiny house.  So it’s moving.

I don’t have the details figured out about where so today, I officially rented a lot in a storage facility.  We’ll be living in limbo while we design and general contract a ‘standard’ house on our lot which we will either sell or rent out for income.

What I’m Feeling:

I am both super sad about this but also pretty excited. There is no way to describe the level of fear you feel when getting ready to move your baby, I mean tiny house. I don’t even know why!  I know it’s sturdy. Even if something breaks I know I can fix it.  Sitting somewhere where I cant keep an eye on it worried me. Even though the entire last year+ we have been traveling around the country with it sitting out in the open and not one thing happened to it.  Something instinctively makes me try to protect it and worry about it.  It will be sad to drive around the corner and NOT see it sitting in it’s place. This is where I remind myself that the tiny house is just another ‘thing’.  If it all goes away tomorrow it will have been worth it and I will be ok.

I am happy about this next phase.  James and I have some bigger goals now (and they definitely DO involve being reunited with the tiny house, just in a different spot in the country).  We’re doing the work it takes to make those things a reality.  It’s a time of transition and those things do take time.  I feel like I did when building the house. Work is happening, even if you can’t see it every day, there is a lot of work being done!

What we have done to stabilize the house for storage:

We’ve got work to do since we didn’t have a pad to park on and we’ve gone through 5-6 freeze/thaw cycles. AND we’re at the end of an irrigation line (we get flooded yearly, we’re basically in a marsh)!  We sank into the ground a solid 9-10 inches.  It’s been uniform so we didn’t really notice it but it would be a bear to pull the house out unless we raised it and build some sort of temporary road.  So that’s what we’ve done.  I bought 4 12-ton jacks and we’ve been inching the house upward enough to dig out the topsoil under the wheels in preparation for making a gravel path.  It’s not easy and had I known I’d get to be here for 5+ years I would have done a lot of things different.  It is what it is though, one small step at a time, just like building the house was!

The shortlist of to-do items

  • Fix leaf spring (done) – we had one axle that wouldn’t sit tight on the leaf spring due to the home-made nature of our trailer it was lacking a connection.  We didn’t know about this until we moved the house and while backing up it came loose.  We fixed but it needed a more permanent fix before we moved it again.
  • Raise House (done)
  • Build road (done)
  • Reseal siding/paint trim (done)
  • Check waterproofing seals (done)
  • Staple siding that has warped over the years (done) – pallet wood is not the highest quality, minor warping was expected.
  • Secure parking for storage (done – thankfully! this region gets busy for winter parking)
  • Move tiny house to street (Hopefully any moment now!)
  • Hire tow truck (as soon as it’s street side)
  • Buy RV cover and wheel covers (purchased Here and Here)

Things to do to the tiny house for storage

We learned a few things about storing the tiny house after leaving it empty for 13 months.  First, all the food is removed. all the valuables are out. any temptations are [hopefully] gone!  I have taken any breakables (kitchen lights) down and protected them.  Any free standing stuff will be carefully laid on the floor.  All lines and the appliances have been drained of water.

If you can think of anything I haven’t thought of, PLEASE, share!  I’d love to do this the right way! 

Here are some photos of how we are leaving the tiny! 

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8 Comments

  1. macy i’m wondering about the windows . . . grids or locks or anything to prevent breakage/entrance from outside? also tires: do you leave them on or off during storage? theft more difficult if they’re off . . . just wondering 🙂

    1. Great questions, as always, I don’t know the answers BUT I will explain the logic I thought through on these and let you poke holes in that where I need it! 🙂

      Since it will be covered I hope I am already deterring break-ins. Considering this lot has over 300 RV spots and the majority of the parked RVs are not under cover I am thinking the heard mentality applies to the tiny house, other RVs are easier targets! My parking spot is also the closest one to the Storage office and the house that is onsite and occupied so again I hope the further back ones seem an easier target :). There is also one dump station in the entire facility which is just around the corner from where I’ll be parked so at any point it’s more likely someone could drive by, hopefully another deterrent. Lastly, there will be literally nothing of value inside the place, just a dry place to sit maybe, and if someone needs shelter that bad I think I can make my peace with their necessity.

      For the wheels, I will have them covered to protect as much as I can from dry rot and UV rays. There are a lot of instances of jack failures which would be a nightmare so I plan to leave the tires on. The facility doesn’t allow you to place blocks under anything so tires are my protection against any sort of jack failure. I WILL place jacks under the four corners that give one more step to the process of stealing that is hopefully a deterrent. It’s also behind a security fence, with security cameras and guards on site. It would be pretty bold of anyone to try anything. It is a whole lot more secure there then it was for the last year, sitting, unlocked in our front yard :).

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