Tiny House Living in a PNW Winter

After spending several winters in a van, and one in an uninsulated, unplumbed, unfurnished cabin, we looked forward to the luxury of spending our first winter in our new tiny home last year. It was indeed glorious to be able to turn on the heat, have running water, and utilize a fully functional kitchen. It also came with it's own set of lessons, which I will pass on to you here.

Here are the most important things we learned in our first winter in the tiny home:

Moisture management is crucial.

This was by far the biggest and hardest part of getting through a wet PNW winter. Living in a small space with three dogs and two humans and a bunch of wet gear and paws makes for a really moisture rich environment. Add in the accumulation of water from showering and cooking, and the cold trailer causing a bit of wall sweat, and you’ve got a recipe for high humidity and mold! In order to manage this we did several things. First, we got a hygrometer so we could always monitor the level of humidity in the house. Somewhere between 30-50% humidity is usually ideal for the indoors and we were consistently in the 60-70%+ range all winter. Next ,we ran two dehumidifiers 24 hours a day through the entire winter. One larger unit would have sufficed for our small space but we had two smaller ones so we kept them at either end of the house. In addition, we were always sure to run a vent fan during and after a shower and cooking to remove extra moisture. In order for this to be more effective, you’ll need to crack a window to replace the air you’re sending outside. We also stored all our wet gear in a separate building, (our well house, which is heated to keep our water pump and filter from freezing). We STILL ended up with mold in our closet which didn’t get much airflow, so we painted the inside of the closet with a mold-killing paint, and put a moisture absorber in there as well.

In order to avoid a lot of these issues, you could install a woodstove, which would do wonders for drying out your house!

Snow management is also incredibly important

This one may sound obvious but it caught us off guard. Our first winter on our property was relatively mild, with warming and cooling temps that diminished the snowpack in between big storms. Last winter was COLD throughout and we had a number of really large storms that just stacked up snow. The snow didn’t melt out at ALL during the winter so we had to deal with the accumulation without being totally prepared for it. Midway through the winter we ran out of places to blow snow and the usable surface area of our property got smaller and smaller as large snowdrifts made things inaccessible unless you wanted to posthole to your hip. More related to our actual house, we didn’t think about the fact that our stairs are level with our door, which opens outward, meaning that when the snow stacked up outside it was incredibly hard to open the door, and if you did, when it came time to close it you were basically scraping a bunch of snow off the stairs and into the house. To mitigate that this year we built an awning and are also planning on drilling drain holes in our stairs to help snow fall through instead of stack up on top of them.

Pipes can freeze. Make sure they’re protected, and consider insulating the bottom of your house.

OK y’all. I lived without running water for YEARS and was fine. But once I was into the tiny house I immediately became a spoiled, water-dependent fool! The first time our pipes froze last winter I was devastated! I was primarily upset because I thought we had taken all the necessary steps to avoid this. For example we buried our water line 36” so it would be below the frost line. Next, we got heated pipe wrap for the water spigot that came from the water line to above ground, and finally we connected the spigot to the house using a heated hose. None of these components froze throughout the whole winter. As far as house design, our builder put all our our pipes inside the house, where they would be warmest. EXCEPT for one tiny 3 foot section, which runs under the house! This is the part that froze! In order to combat that this year, we added insulation to skirt the house and will keep a lightbulb under the trailer, which will provide enough warmth to prevent that section of pipe from freezing (you need to use a traditional lightbulb, not an LED or CFL). We are hoping this will also keep our floor warmer!

Make sure you’re heating your house in the most efficient way possible by moving air from the ceiling back to the floor

Last winter we constantly struggled with feeling cold while we were in the main part of the house, but then when we got into the loft for bed we were way too hot! We discovered that a simple fan pointed down towards the floor (ceiling fan would also work, we strapped a tower fan to our railing) pulls the hot air out of the loft and pushes it back down to the main level. In the last few weeks we have consistently raised the temperature downstairs 5-7 degrees by turning on the fan.

Protect yo house!

This one wasn’t too major, but we discovered that when our roof shed snow, it was dumping it down towards all our utility plug ins. It didn’t damage anything but the increased amount of snow did tug down on our hose and electric cord and bury them in the snow. This year, we will have little protective awnings for our water and electricity port.

That’s it for now! Winter #2 is on its way and I’m sure we will learn some more tips and tricks this year! If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments!