What it's like to build and live in a $24,000 Tiny Home
Last Updated: Mar 19, 2025How would you like to build a home for you and your family for under $24,000 dollars even though you essentially have zero building experience? What if that home could be moved anywhere around the country by a simple trailer and the heating and utility bills were nothing more than a negligible monthly expense?
Table of Contents
- What is the square footage of your home?
- How long did it take you to build?
- How much did it cost to build?
- How much construction experience did you have before you started building it?
- Why did you and your girlfriend decide to build a tiny home?
- Tell us about your home. How many rooms does it have? What other features does it include?
- What do you do for water and the toilet?
- You put your house on wheels. Why did you decide to do that instead of on a foundation?
- What did you look for in a trailer to put your tiny home on?
- What would you do differently if you could do it over?
What do you do for water and the toilet?
We use a separate composting toilet, which means that we only generate grey water from our home. The solid human waste is either composted in a bin or collected as municipal compost waste.
When we were parked at a trailer park we were connected to septic and water systems. In the winter, we would have to run a 200-foot long hose to fill our 80-gallon indoor water storage tank. Now that we have moved to Quebec, we have it parked close to the house and run a heated water hose.
You put your house on wheels. Why did you decide to do that instead of on a foundation?
When we were building Toronto, we knew we were not going to stay for a very long period due to contract work. Two years later, we found ourselves moving to Ottawa for a job. We do intend on moving back to British Columbia in the future.
On a sustainability level, Mark's tiny home on wheels uses only a fraction of the raw materials that would have gone into a regular-sized home. Much of the interior design work is focused on reclaimed wood, used appliances, and even finding hidden treasures at antique stores such as a seven-dollar red kitchen sink.
If you want to see more of Mark's tiny home, he has a beautiful YouTube video that takes you on an entire tour of the home.
Tobias Roberts
Tobias runs an agroecology farm and a natural building collective in the mountains of El Salvador. He specializes in earthen construction methods and uses permaculture design methods to integrate structures into the sustainability of the landscape.
