Plumbing - the good stuff!
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I must have spent over 100 hours researching plumbing for tiny houses - what to buy, how to plan, how to design, and what would be the best way to set up our system. Brian and I realized that since we don’t know where we’re going to be located we would like to have the option of either connecting to a well, connecting to an inlet at a campground, or filling a fresh water tank with an outside source and having access to fresh water within our house.
We decided to have our friend Ryan, a professional plumber by trade, hook up our tiny plumbing system.
The plumbing components that compose our system: washer hookups, shower, tub faucet, kitchen faucet, fresh water tank, gray water tank (below the house’s trailer), and an on-demand hot water heater.
One of the most difficult parts of the job was drilling holes down through the stud walls to the ground for the gray water to exit the house. The first hole we drilled ran right into the member of the trailer frame! Whoops!
The second hole we drilled was inward from the 2x4 stud wall (which will be hidden underneath our kitchen counter).
The cold and hot water piping was fairly easy, even though the electrical trade had already taken a good chunk of the “prime real estate” within the walls.
Our bathtub: a 67-gallon galvanized metal feeding trough! We want to be able to wash our future dog, and other large items, in a deep tub! Originally we had purchased a 90-gallon feeding trough but soon realized it would not fit in the bathroom, due to some last minute framing decisions we had to make. Some fellow tiny-housers complement some really cute and successful bathroom designs with the 80-gallon, circular tub!
Shown above is our 46-gallon, fresh water tank. We will use this when we cannot hook up to a spigot, well, or other fresh water source. This needed to be connected to a pump, which is also connected to our on-demand hot water heater.
We followed the advice of one of our favorite tiny house bloggers, Jenna from www.tinyhousegiantjourney.com and went with a quiet water pump designed for motorhomes. It’s a bit more expensive than its competitors, but it is quiet and efficient. In the following photo you will find the pump laying on the floor between the fresh water tank and the hot water heater (tiny little thing!).
The white square box to the right of the photo above is our on-demand, tankless water heater made by PrecisionTemp. It was also designed for RVs and vents through the floor of the trailer (just like our wood stove!). I cannot wait to try it out. It claims to have an exquisite propane efficiency and runs on less than 1.5 amps!
You can see our hot and cold water hook-ups for the washer / dryer unit, below:
Gotta have a shower and a tub, right?! Here’s our tub valve:
Stay tuned for when we connect everything and try out the water inflow! Yikes! We’ve also purchased a tank into which our gray water will drain from the house. Once we relocate the house our plan is to custom make a gray water filtration system to water our grass and gardens!
For now that’s just dreaming and scheming for the future. Until next time!