Tiny House Project: Finance

If I were to buy all the materials I need to build a tiny house (21m², 4m tall) from mainstream stores, I’d need about $6000 according to my calculations.

The mainframe itself is about $900, and the rest of the costs go to the insulation work and the roof. If I include wiring, painting, and furnishing the place, I’d easily reach $10,000. There are probably smarter ways to go about it, by recycling for example, but I have to dig deeper.

An uncle of mine built his own house and lived in it for several years, and I’ve always loved how cozy it was. I don’t need a big house nor see the appeal of it when my most important stuff fits in a suitcase and I can enjoy a quiet garden, but building extensions is always possible.

84m3 is perhaps too much. I’ve lived in camper vans that are less than 20m3. The volume of your habitation drastically influences fixed and running costs: the smaller the house, the less material and energy you need to keep yourself warm.

What I like about tiny houses is also the fact it’s simple enough to run on renewable energy. Heating represents the main source of CO2 emission, and yet we keep living in big houses filled with dead space. There are plenty of solutions to reduce this carbon footprint, and I’d love to experiment with them in a small constrained environment. Some startups make wall and water heaters from servers running on renewable energy, which is apparently enough to warm a small room, but I’ve yet to see any data. Since I’m a web developer, it could be a great thing to try out.

My parents have the terrain, I just have to figure out how to bring the costs down to make the project doable in the short term.