Basic Boondocker - be at home everywhere

Tiny house and dry camping websites are everywhere nowadays. The advantages of living small, avoiding debt and simplifying your life are obvious… and yet it's still an anomaly to do so. Wanting to live alone and reject the consumer monoculture somehow makes you a Unibomber, or at least antisocial. The entire subject is a minefield of bad advice and crazy talk. 

 

There are the various businesses getting rich off of the ignorant, selling various scams to those who are looking for a way to avoid debt rather than accrue more of it. 

Websites telling you with a straight face that you need their expert advice to build a box onto a trailer. News people telling you that a proper tiny house must look like a miniature house on wheels even though said trailer is now ticket-bait wherever you go; news articles on houses that are heavy, dangerous to move around and impossible to park anywhere on a lot, backyard, or a street in the US. TV shows that seem to enjoy focusing on $30k-, $40k- and even $60,000 tiny houses and see nothing wrong with the concept of a fifteen-foot long sixty thousand dollar box on wheels that you can't really take anywhere and cannot meet any city's zoning with.

In other words, the mainstream and corporate focus is misplaced onto a smaller version of the existing trap that everyone else is caught in- the trap that tiny house people are trying to get away from: overpriced shelter that you can't build, can't move, can't conceal and can't find any place to legally park.

The 'experts' aren't really helping much, are they?

What a lot of us are looking for is less: less bills, less debt, less problems, less stress and for many of us, less visibility.

This site is NOT going to show you how to build a penthouse apartment on wheels.

What we ARE going to do is demonstrate affordable ways to build a comfortable living space for average people, living in the real world that is stealthy and mobile. You, personally, can build a tiny house for less than $2000 dollars. We have done this more than once and we will show you ways to afford it in small purchases that your paycheck can afford.

Our system isn't perfect. There are compromises and drawbacks to our builds, and as time passes we will try other builds to expand on what we have learned so far. We have made some amazing discoveries as well as a few frustrating mistakes along the way. By sharing those, our sweat equity will save all of you reading this a lot of time and trouble.

Our current trailer is strong, naturally well-lit, solar powered, lightweight and R-27/14 insulated, which means that it is far more comfortable than the houses many of you are living in now. Furthermore, it gives the appearance of a standard high-top work trailer with a ladder rack, which means that it is almost invisible. Anyone who sees a work trailer dismisses it immediately. We have all seen thousands of similar trailers, and one more simply fades into the scenery, especially if you choose your parking locations carefully. 

 

Our story as a couple seeking affordable shelter is like so many others in post-oligarchy America after the housing meltdown; we work for a company that supplies experts to a second company, who does customer support for a third company. Both of our credit unions were unwilling to loan money to us for fear that we be laid off at any time. The fact that I've worked on the same project for four years means nothing; we carry the scarlet letter as “temps” and temps we will remain forever. I tried to purchase several houses and quickly discovered how fast trying to buy a house can burn through several thousand dollars at a time without actually getting you a house.

Both a standard house bid and a assumption were tried; each effort cost us about $2000 for the attempt without actually getting us a house. Inspections, lawyers, etc, etc, etc. When the second attempt blew up in our faces, I had to gather funds to move our belongings, and I started thinking about buying a trailer instead of renting another truck, since the costs were similar. 

 

The cheapest trailer would be either used or bought new from somewhere like Harbor Freight and then assembled by me. As I looked at trailers, I had an epiphany; I could have built a whole damn tiny house on wheels for what I had spent on inspecting just one of these crap houses. I was sure of it. These stupid websites with $20,000+ tiny houses were full of baloney! 

If I kept it simple and stealthy, I could park it anywhere and just dry camp wherever I put the trailer. 

It could be a house or a travel trailer, whatever I needed. Why pay for a campsite or a mobile home park if I could park it in plain sight somewhere for free? Logically, it would need to blend in and belong wherever I put it, to pull this off, but with a little planning I was sure I could do that. 

 

Now, I will admit that my work background is varied and more appropriate for this task than most people; I've done many jobs including auto repair, carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and cable/ telephone installation, so building my own stealth tiny house on a trailer didn't seem like much of a battle to try and do from scratch.

Nevertheless, I believe that anyone can duplicate our effort once you see it done, and I'll walk you through it. Grab a notepad and let's get started.... 

 

Copyright © 2016
Tags:Boondocking, Tiny house, Small house, Gypsy camping, Living simply, Vandwelling, Workamping, Autocaravana, Stealth Trailer, Casa Rodante, Fulltime RVer, Stealth Camping, Dry Camping, Shunpiker, Dispersed Camping, Wallydocking, Allstays, Shunpiking, Wohnwagen, Housetruckers, Fulltiming, Véhicule Récréatif, Travellers, Wild camping, Housecamping, Gypsy faire, Peace convoy, Mobile Eco-communalism, New Age Traveler, Tiny house ninja, On the road, Ninja camping, Christian camping, Small is beautiful, DiY, Do it yourself, Handmade housing, Kiwi Housetrucker, Wallydocker, Handmade trailer, Monocoque construction, Appropriate Technology, Cloth over Foam, Harbor Freight Trailer Build, DiY Camping.