Building a Tiny Home

So you are designing a tiny home? Congrats! It is the latest trend, people are living in small spaces, but “living big!” Living big means they are living more with less. Enjoying life with fewer things and less home maintenance. To fulfill those dreams of worrying less about home repairs, it is critical to build your tiny home right. Your motto should be “Don’t just build it, Protect it.”

There are unique considerations when building a tiny house especially if you plan to transport it. A tiny house on a trailer has to endure hurricane strength winds and pounding rain. So, how do you ensure your tiny dream home stands up to the rigors of transportation and Mother Nature?

One of the biggest challenges is keeping water from leaking through your roof. By its nature, water runs down a roof. In the summer, wind driven rain can blow water under the shingles, and in the winter, ice dams can cause water to back up under the shingles. Once there, if there is a way into the house, water will find it. To prevent damage and costly repairs, it is critical that every surface and corner of the roof is constructed to withstand driving rains and ice dams. Beyond the roof, be sure to protect the walls and windows of your tiny home with the latest weatherproofing innovations to keep it water tight.

To protect your tiny dream home from water damage, follow these three steps:

• Roof:
• Windows:
• Outer Walls:

The complete roof system consists of multiple layers – not just the shingles. Shingles are the exterior layer, and shingles alone will not keep the water out. What makes the difference and protects your roof from water damage is the roofing underlayment, which is installed underneath the shingles. Roofing underlayments perform many functions in a roofing assembly, but first and foremost, they serve as the last line of defense between you and the damaging effects of water infiltration. There are multiple product types that can be used. Be sure you use quality self-adhered roofing underlayments so you receive the ultimate waterproofing protection.

Requesting that you or your tiny house builder uses self-adhered roofing underlayments is important, especially at the eaves and at all critical detail areas. There is a wide variation in product quality and performance. One example is GCP Applied Technologies’ Ice & Water Shield® which pioneered the self-adhered roofing underlayment category more than 35 years ago. Ice & Water Shield® provides premium performance as it seals to itself at overlaps, seals to the roof deck and, most importantly, seals around the fasteners used to attach the shingles, which helps prevent water from leaking into your tiny home. Check out these tiny homes that used Ice & Water Shield®.

Windows are the largest openings in your tiny home so they can definitely be major leak zones. Even if windows are well shuttered in a storm, or in transport, wind-driven rain can be blown into the house at these points, especially if they have not been properly flashed and weatherproofed.

Proper selection and installation of flashing at the windows and doors is critical to the performance of your tiny home’s weather barrier system. If not properly selected and installed, wind-driven rain can leak and quickly cause rot and mold in your walls. Flexible flashings such as GCP Applied Technologies’ Vycor® Plus and Vycor® PRO can be used to seal windows, doors, corners, and other non-roof detail areas, like they did on these tiny luxury homes. These products are designed to form a watertight and airtight seal with building materials; thus protecting your tiny home from water damage and air infiltration.

As you would guess the walls of your tiny home are pretty important! While walls may seem pretty simple to the eye, there are complex layers hidden underneath the siding of your home. It is important that the materials that comprise those layers are selected and installed properly.

You may be familiar with traditional house wraps that are used during construction or remodeling of a house, but today there are new innovations that provide cutting-edge weather protection. For instance, an advanced alternative to house wraps is Vycor®enV- S™ which utilizes the latest in residential building science to create an air-tight, yet “breathable” home, and achieve the highest product performance available. Unlike mechanically-attached house wraps, Vycor® enV-S™ seals to itself at overlaps, seals around fasteners, and forms a strong bond with the substrate. See it used on these air-tight tiny homes.

The added bonus of properly installing and using these new innovations is a reduced rate of air leakage, lowering annual heating and cooling costs.

Follow these three steps and your tiny home will stay dry and care-free, giving you the time you always dreamed of to enjoy the new big adventure!