College Student's Impressive Tiny House Floods in Hurricane BUT Survives

[Music] welcome my name is Bradley I'm a college student living in Jacksonville Florida and this is my tiny house I built this one in about a year and a half pretty much all by myself with a little bit of help from friends it's 22 and a half feet long with a 5 foot porch it's got vinyl siding on it I'll show you around the outside and then we can take a tour on the inside [Music] because it's a tiny house you know you kind of want to go outside sometimes and so I made this deck here out of just a bunch of pallets and so whenever I move my house I can just throw these back in the trash or use them for something else but it's it's very temporary and so my whole setup here is pretty much cost nothing and it's a good space to come out and have a fire and hang out with friends when it's cold out if we come to the front of the trailer I'll show you my utility hookups my house is 100% electric so there's no propane there's no sewage because I have a composting toilet on nature's head so all I need to run my house is an extension cord and a hose right now I have it plugged in with two 15 amp extension cords into this box here I plug one into my water heater which runs about 13 amps and the other one runs everything else in my house so I never trip breakers that way and beneath there I have my water hookup which just runs from the neighbor's house over here and then I drain out into the ground and running out to the woods this right here is my copper piping for my AC unit which is a mini split like you see on a lot of other tiny houses and it's a brand called mr. cool and they offer a DIY model which comes with pre charged copper lines which really helped me keep the project completely non-contracted it cost a little bit more money but you know it gives me a sense of pride that I did it all myself I purchased my trailer used it's a repurposed travel trailer and it's a deck over which means the starting height is right about here as opposed to a drop axle trailer which you could start it there that doesn't give me as much head height on the inside of the house but it does give me a little more storage underneath so these car top carriers are good because they're really lightweight and they're cheap if you get them using on Craigslist you can fit a lot of stuff in them like camping chairs and other stuff that you don't want out in the weather that works out well for me so I think we spent enough time in the rain so we can go inside and I'll give you a tour of the inside welcome to my tiny house for starters this is where I put my shoes I've got myself some reclaimed lockers under here this is my living room and my dining room and my kitchen all in one this is my l-shaped couch that I custom-made with the lockers and some storage behind there one thing I tried to do was get a lot of windows around the walls and kind of open the area up this is probably the best window right here in front of the dining area this table folds down and these chairs turn around in case I have more guests I also have my TV over on this wall in my fireplace which is electric so it really is just a nice area to spend a lot of living timing if I have you know more than two people here eating I can just fold this down turn these chairs around and I have this movable island that I'll pull right here in the middle it's also good to play play games on the table do other things like that [Applause] so I can sit here or I can sit here and another person could sit right here or right here [Music] so this is my small storage loft up here it's my roommate peanut the snake Pina is a Brazilian rainbow boa I got him about a year ago and I got him specifically for the tiny house because he's just so low maintenance only feed him once every couple weeks and that's just really good if I ever want to go out and you know travel for a week or something then I don't have to worry about a pet like a dog or a cat finding a babysitter and things like that so he was really good [Music] for simplicity purposes I kept everything electric including my six gallon tank water heater my two burner convection oven fridge everything is electric yeah like I said simplicity the main reason is so that I don't have to refill my tanks every wall again I can just plug in and be done with it but I did keep into consideration if I ever want to convert like this island right here this space against the wall would be good to plug in a propane range if I wanted to do that but that's not on my list of things to do because I'm on grid with a good spot my kitchen countertop here is about 8 feet long and all of the cabinets were made myself the doors I got out of a dumpster for free and just built the frame around it for super cheap with scraps I had leftover from other parts of the house the countertop is 3/4 inch pine plywood with some stain and polyurethane on top I've had it for about 4 months and it's holding up just fine and that was only probably about $40 to build that countertop which is a good deal and there's my phone hey Rob you're in the middle of an interview nothing you later sorry so to give myself some more counter space I opted for a a two burner that just plugs in because I don't need it most of the time I just keep it right here in my cabinet and I also keep my microwave in here because I don't think it's too aesthetic and I keep just some other you know skillets and things like that but honestly most of my kitchen space down here is unused so lots more room for stuff and things I have so much counter space here I didn't need a lot of overhead cabinets so I just opted for some open shelves to hang with my million mugs here and a couple of things like sugar and that kind of thing up there and of course my pots which are aesthetic and it saves a lot of space underneath here is my pantry and my glassware on this counter what I did here was I used the three-and-a-half inch space between the the wall right there to put my little shelves and for one person this is way more than enough storage and I even have storage back here next to the fridge that I'm not even using so down the road if I ever start to eat more I got more space there my fridge is a 10 cubic foot Magic Chef fridge it's got more space than I need as well with a nice sized freezer up top and I am in college so of course Roza pizzas are the main part of my diet I put my convection oven underneath the fridge that way it's away from the kitchen a little bit and if I'm cooking two different things I don't have all the heat in one spot and I lifted the fridge just because I don't like to see them when they're standing alone so I thought it was a little more aesthetic to have that like that especially considering it's part of my living room so that was important one of my favorite parts about my kitchen is how you can see everything that you need all the time so you don't have to go digging around through a lot of drawers like if I need the spatula while I'm cooking I just turned around and there it is and again this is hidden hidden in the three-and-a-half inches that in a standard house you wouldn't utilize so it's really nice there I've had friends come over there'll be they'll be cooking and they'll say alright where's the pot and I'll say look up I'll be like okay well where's the pizza cutter turn around you know I never even have to say like go look in that cabinet it's always just somewhere they can see it um which is really funny so one of my favorite parts about my kitchen is my sink here because it's really big and it's not like one of those little bars bar sinks that you see where people have to wash and then dry somewhere on the counter this thing you just wash it here and dry it on this half it's got this little grating that just keeps the dishes up and then when it's time to put them away I should stick them up there in this little hidden plate in bowl storage so when you have a tiny space it's fun to get creative and kind of put things in space that doesn't get used otherwise I've seen a lot of tiny house videos and if they don't show one thing I'm wondering well where do you put the trash or where do you do your laundry so I'll try and show you as much as I can about what I do on the daily so here's my trash right under my sink and my laundry is over here in my closet just in a couple baskets like this so when I fill up one I just move to the next I have my hanging clothes right here clothes in my drawers and my six gallon water you're back there so if I ever need more space in here and I can always opt for a propane heater that I can put on the outside but for now I don't really need that much space and in the back of my closet here is where my breaker box is and first-aid kit and things like that here is my corner desk with a view of the woods right now overall this is where I study or it's in the back of the house where I'll just throw all my mess when I don't want to deal with it otherwise I keep all my books in this shelf and up top I have surround sound six speakers throughout the house another thing is if this house ever has two people living in it I can wipe out these cabinets here and make this clothes storage for a second person a third idea is that this whole area back here could be converted into a second bedroom this part of my desk folds down which I did manly just to give myself more walking room around here if I needed to or working the room so that just goes down real easy like that and this folds up so if I'm not working at my desk and I want the space to feel a little bigger I can do that when I was designing my house I didn't really see much reason for having a kitchen sink three feet away from the bathroom sink so I just used my kitchen sink when I brush my teeth and things so I open up this cabinet and I have my mirror and my toiletries and so this is pretty much my vanity which works out for me I think if there was a girl living here she probably want a little more room for makeup and all that kind of thing but this house is for me so this works welcome to my doorless bathroom time with the curtain which makes it just you know easy and more open as well so I have my nature's head composting toilet about two feet of legroom and then I have my shower which is a one-piece fiberglass shell shower that I actually got off the side of the road for free so happy about that one I also have some storage underneath the shower for cleaning supplies and things like that because by raising the shower I was able to keep the plumbing out of the wall and so I have the plumbing running along behind this box to the back of the trailer as well as the water from the sink so that really made it so that I had peace of mind that my pipes weren't leaking inside the walls considering this is the first bit of plumbing I've done so that worked out well also have this fogged window here which offers a nice view when you're doing your business this cabinet is actually an antique breadbox that I just flipped sideways and it worked out well it was an afterthought and I kind of carried it into the house holding up against different walls trying to figure out where it would go and that's where it landed and it works out perfect to get into my loft I opted for a ladder rather than stairs because it only takes up half a square foot and I thought it was really efficient not to mention I'm building this house for myself and I'm pretty fit so it doesn't really bother me much to climb up here for three seconds twice today so when I get up here I have enough Headroom and I'm 510 so someone that six-foot could even sit up here and then I have a standard full-size mattress back here but you could put a queen or king if you wanted to so I do have a little bit more storage everything behind this wall is what's on top of the shower so that stuff that I throw that I don't get to often then also have another set of lockers on this wall to use as a nightstand but those are also empty because it's just still too much space for me I do have a small TV up here but I actually don't use it that much I just use the one downstairs for sleeping it's easy you close your eyes when I was looking for a place to park I did look at the city zoning laws thinking about how my tiny house wouldn't fit in I just classified it to myself as an RV or recreational vehicle and for those there has to be a house on the property and it has to be parked next to or behind it so I couldn't just go and buy an empty plot of land for me renting someone's yard or is a great way to to park my house without too much risk because if there is any issue I can always just hook it up to a hitch and move it somewhere else the neighborhood that I chose I avoided one with an HOA and when I got here I went and talked to all my immediate neighbors and introduced myself and told them what I was doing because just one call to the city can have a lot of problems with it so I've been here for four months without any issues and if an issue does arise I'm prepared for it I'll just move and go somewhere else it's also a good thing to look for places to park even while you have a spot just because you never know when you're gonna have to move I started my search through Craigslist didn't find many good options either they were too expensive or they were just far out of town and so then I moved to Facebook which I got a lot of results from just because people could tie your profile in your face and your personality to the house itself and so I ended up going to this property because I knew the person and they didn't even know I had a tiny house until I posted on Facebook I think I have the best parking spot in Jacksonville I'm right on the creek in the middle of woods basically with no neighbors I moved into my house and I was super excited lived there for about two weeks thought I would be done working hard and thought I could enter a lazy stage in my life and then a category-5 hurricane came and proved to me that flood zones do exist and then I parked my house in one I really had to learn a lot of lessons avoiding stubbornness and listening to the experts on the weather channel but just in general not turning my head to serious disasters I can and so I could have easily moved my trailer and that's what everyone asked me why don't you move it no that's just because I just moved there and I just wanted to think that nothing bad was gonna happen then I had to move out for three weeks and deal with flood damage while I was in school and I just learned a lot of lessons right there because my trailers up three feet three and a half feet I thought I was good you know I thought okay two-foot flood water that's fine three that's okay and throughout the night while I was staying here I just kept going up and up and up and it was a long night but eventually filled my house with about one inch of water which it was just enough to make me have to redo all the floors and insulation and everything but it wasn't so bad that I had to dig into the walls which was nice because my floors were flooded and they were wood I had to throw them out and it just so happened that my neighbor also flooded of course and they gave me about 200 square feet of hardwood and solid wood flooring that I could use about $800 worth and so that was kind of a you know a bright moment and those awful weeks that was really nice and the floors came out great and I'm really appreciative of them [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey guys Alexis and Christian here with tiny-house expedition don't forget to Like comment and subscribe and click left or right for more tiny house stories and tours

Channel: Tiny House Expedition

Views: 1,082,042

Rating: 4.8970041 out of 5

Keywords: Tiny House Tour, Tiny House, Tiny House On Wheels, Rolling Quarters, Hurricane, Flooding, Debt Free Living, DIY Tiny House, College Student Tiny House, Student Tiny House, Student Life, Alternative Living, Tiny House Movement, Tiny House Living, Tiny Home, Florida Tiny House, Tiny House Design, Living Big in a Tiny House, Tiny House Building, DIY House Building, Simple Living, Tiny House Hurricane, flooded tiny house, pet snake, flooded house, hurricane damage, jacksonville

Id: akCGJHNiEPE

Length: 19min 53sec (1193 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 14 2019