I wanted to share some exciting news that I’ve had some involvement in on the tiny house codes and standards development front!
Some Backstory
Ever since the tiny house movement started picking up steam, tiny homes have existed in a confusing legal grey area. Manufactured/mobile homes are regulated through the HUD code for full-time living, while recreational vehicles have their own standards as temporary living quarters. Tiny homes, however, fall somewhere between. They are smaller than manufactured/mobile homes, but unlike an RV, they are built for full-time living. They are also often owner built or built by small artisan builders who can’t afford the HUD pathway.
This is why back in 2016 a group of tiny home advocates, including Andrew Morrison and Macy Miller (two of my inspirations when I was designing my own home around this time), participated in a successful effort to create Appendix Q of the International Residential Code (IRC). This created a realistic pathway for homes under 400 square feet to be built. Most jurisdictions in the US use the IRC, so this allowed jurisdictions everywhere to easily adopt this new code.
At the time it was written, the advocates had intended to include provisions for the trailer chassis in the appendix. Unfortunately, this was determined to be too much of a lift and the chassis language had to be scrapped in order to ensure that the appendix could be approved. This meant that Appendix Q really only applied to tiny homes on a traditional foundation.
RB42-25-1: A Second Chance for the Chassis
The intention was always that the chassis (tiny homes on wheels) option could be revisited in a later revision of the appendix. Well, that time is NOW!
Macy Miller has reunited a group of advocates, including Martin Hammer and David Eisenberg, who were both instrumental in making the original tiny house appendix a reality (and have advocated very effectively for a variety of other alternative building techniques) to back a code change comment (RB42-25-1) that would add chassis provisions to the tiny house appendix (now called Appendix BB). The exact language of the code change comment can be found here. There is a real possibility that this proposal could pass. If it does, it will finally give jurisdictions the tools they need to start zoning for movable tiny houses.
If you’re reading this right now and have ever thought about living in a tiny home yourself, want to see more pathways to more affordable housing, or if you simply believe that people should have the option to live in whatever way they choose, please consider signing this petition to show your support!
While this code change would create a long overdue legal pathway for movable tiny houses on wheels, it would not include prescriptive details for attaching the home to the chassis or temporary foundations for securing these homes to the ground (at least for the time being). Instead, it requires engineered designs for these aspects of the home. This leaves room for some of the other standards efforts going on right now that I’ve been involved in–the ASTM E06.26 tiny house subcommittee and the ICC/THIA 1215 standard–to hopefully fill in some of those gaps.
A big thanks to Macy Miller for her steadfast advocacy for DIYers in the space of code and standards development and for giving me an opportunity to contribute feedback during the development of the language for this proposal. I’m grateful and excited!
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Categories: Standards Development
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