The Build: Part One
We knew that we had to do this project right, and that all starts with the foundation. With a tiny house, the foundation is a trailer frame, and we did extensive research before choosing a frame from Tumbleweed Tiny Houses, located in Colorado Springs. Tumbleweed trailers are made in the USA and come with brakes, lights, underside flashing and special tiny house trailers radial tires. These tires are a significant upgrade from tires normally found on trailers and extremely important for safety. The suspension package, with multiple 5,200 lb axles, comfortably carries the weight of the tiny home. Standard 3,500 lb axles found on standard trailers do not meet the needs of a tiny home.
Other features include:
- Coated so it won’t rust
- Scissor Jacks on all 4 corners for easy leveling
- Walls go directly on the trailer frame
- Axles are offset to properly balance a tiny house
- Gain 3 ½” headroom with embedded floor design
- Lightest trailer with detachable/replaceable jacks
- Tongue plate is standard
Included with the trailer was a standard blueprint to build a tiny home. Shawn used this blueprint as a starting point, and the house was built completely by Shawn and other Deaf friends over a period of several months while we worked on the excavation of the property. It was obvious that we needed a dry, safe place to build the tiny house, and we rented a large warehouse space, in the country near Ellicott City, for the build.
The framing was established, and extra insulation was put in to ensure that the house is both completely sealed, and holds temperature well. We agreed that we wanted to have as many windows as possible, and installed a large, full-wall window next to the bed, as well as rows of panoramic windows throughout – we ended up with over a dozen windows!
