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If you would like to apply for a trade account with Treadway, please download and complete the trade account application form here.
In a world often over-complicated and over-cluttered, many are opting for a simplified life and downsizing with tiny homes.
With an average area size of 20 square meters, the tiny home is certainly a significant drop in usable space. However, modern tech and innovation offer all the comforts of your standard home without feeling cluttered.
So, other than a simplistic lifestyle, what else can a tiny home do for us? What should probably come first and foremost as the most valuable benefit is time.
Consider the amount of time spent cleaning and maintaining a home – which is important if you want your home to remain functional. From vacuuming to gutter cleaning, a tiny home can be cared for in a fraction of the time it takes to care for a standard house. You could say tiny homes give back our most precious resource.
Now you have your time back, it can be used to imagine what upgrades you can apply to your life now that you can afford it. With less space, comes fewer building resources meaning less money to be spent. With the money saved, a tiny homeowner can instead choose the top of the line oven, or perhaps a mountain bike to hook onto the back of the trailer for all the extra adventures they can have with all their extra time.
However, you view it, choosing to downsize your life can dramatically upsize your lifestyle.
But is an upsized lifestyle all a tiny homeowner wants?
The time and financial benefits are clear, but a homeowner wants security. To own a home is to own a personal sanctuary, where you can safely be, for a long period of time, if necessary.
You want to know your sanctuary will always be there for you when you need it, especially if you fall ill, or in our most recent reality, need a safe haven to hunker down while the world fixes itself. Essentially, what a tiny homeowner wants from their home is what any other homeowner wants.
They want it to be safe, secure, and to be completely up to standard.
Last year, the NZ Herald ran an article on Tiny Homes, and how some councils were accepting of them, whereas others weren’t clear on the rules and regulations.
In particular, was the Hurunui councils clash with resident Alan Dall, on whether his tiny home was classified as a vehicle or a fixed building, leaving Dall with a Notice to Fix even though the building could be towed.
His ensuing battle with the council in court would help determine how tiny homeowners could be treated by councils in future.
In a statement, the Waimakariri District Council’s manager of regulation Nick Harrison said until the Building Act offered greater clarity around tiny houses, building consent authorities needed to continue their role making sure new builds were up to minimum safety standards.
In a statement, MBIE’s GM Building System Performance, Anna Butler, said regardless of building type, the Building Act aimed to ensure users of buildings could use them safely and without endangering their health.
“The government wants to ensure that tiny houses are healthy, safe and durable so that the well-being of people is safeguarded,” she said.
The first and most important structure of a home is the foundations it is built upon. For a relocatable tiny home, that foundation is the trailer.
Just as a pole used to hold up a house needs to be strong and secure, so too does the chassis of a Tiny Homes trailer. As well as strength, it requires to be lightweight and also needs to be cost-effective to keep the tiny homes build experience inexpensive. Essentially, get the foundations right, and the rest will stack on top nicely.
For Dall and his notice to fix, the cost of full building code compliance removed the financial benefits of his tiny home.
Through crowdfunding he managed to successfully overcome the council in court, where his tiny home was ruled as a vehicle, releasing it from standard building obligations.
A huge win for all current and future tiny homeowners across the country, as it helps to outline what and what isn’t a vehicle.
With all councils taking heed of the ruling, it is still important to make sure all Tiny Homes are well up to standard, and set a precedent for Tiny Homes builders in the future, so the community can remain confident in their homes being accepted by all councils, throughout any changes that may be made to building standards.
This will remain essential as Tiny Homes are looked to more and more as a modern solution to an ancient problem. Providing housing is a constant headache for most governments around the world, with older solutions all taking up too much time, space and money.
For most, the increasing need for housing is an overwhelming task which if not remedied, leads to unpayable rent sizes, overcrowded apartments and more people finding themselves without a home.
Fortunately, Tiny Homes are a viable solution, just waiting to be properly utilised. Treadway recognizes this and is eager to bring along years of engineering expertise to help ease the tiny homes building process, by providing top quality, lightweight and easy to assemble trailer chassis, jockey wheels, and trailer parts; thus making the process even easier and give more confidence to owners of Tiny Homes.
With the foundation being such an important part of a home, many will base who they choose to build their Tiny Home for them on the quality of the trailer parts they use.
Decades of experience and access to the latest technologies means Treadway can offer you the ability to give your customers that confidence while reducing production time and increasing profits.
Tiny Homes are likely to take off as they become increasingly popular, so let’s simplify the process and become part of a movement set to improve the livelihoods of thousands of Kiwis across New Zealand.