DIY Tiny House Plumbing and Electrics
This is an overview of how to plan out tiny house plumbing and electrics. When planning out a tiny house there are a lot of things to consider. This is magnified by fitting a lot into a small space. Often one decision will effect the next. For example, should I run 240v or 24v fridge? The fridge may need to fit under the stairs and there is limited height. So you need to answer this question early in the design process. If you go with 24v what wiring circuits do you need to run? Will you need to be off grid? So you need solar? Do I? What does that mean in terms of roof angle? I don't know what pitch my roof even needs to be?? Help...
Sometimes it can feel all to much especially when it comes to plumbing & electrics. Novice designers & builders of tiny houses have these questions going around in their head at all times of the day. These fields tend to be harder than the rest of the build due to the fact most people are not exposed to these disciplines. Also you can't see electricity so its harder to understand, this is somewhat true for plumbing to.
If you are designing yourself it does help if you have a basic understanding of your tiny house system. The second option is to work it out for yourself. This was not really an option before the internet. But how with a wealth of information in the form of videos, text and pictures you can teach yourself anything! Ok this approach is going to take much longer but you will learn a lot and save coin. The more you learn about the systems the more you can nail down the design in hope a better product at the end. Or course you still need to get you plumbing and electrics signed off.
We put this video together to try to explain the basic overview of a tiny house system after many questions on the subject. We cover off the following:
Plumbing
Running and connecting up different components in the system.
Pressuring water to feed the tiny house using pumps or header tanks.
Heating hot water with hot water cylinders, wet back and hot water heaters.
Electrics
What is best to run, low voltage or high voltage in a tiny house?
High voltage 240V
Plugging into mains with a caravan plug.
Whats is a distribution broad, switch, RCD, and circuit beakers?
How many circuits and sockets to run in the tiny house.
Low voltage 12/24v
What does a LED driver or power supply do?
What sort of low voltage lights to run.
Gas Fitting
LPG gas bottle mounting and sourcing.
Why use a gas oven?
Solar
Retro fitting solar after running on mains.
Should you run a electric oven on solar?
What is a charge controller?
Solar batteries and inventors.
Heating
We don't need it hopefully. Air tight well insulated house!
Remember all plumbing, gas fitting and electrics need to be completed and signed off by a resisted and licenced tradesman.
We offer a service to help out DIYers though these issues, so get in touch if you need any help.
