And that's the question I always start with people. I just say, "How often are you actually going to move this?" Like if it's only once every two years even then hire a tow truck company or us to come back for you to move it around and it's their problem to try to maneuver it.
Welcome to the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast, the show where you learn how to plan, build and live the tiny lifestyle. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and this is episode 145 with Daniel Ott. I recently saw a video tour on Exploring Alternatives for a tiny house called "the nest", which is a tiny home that can be easily transported on a custom trailer, and then removed from the trailer and installed on a
permanent foundation. There were so many uniquely well thought out elements to the design, build and execution that I immediately invited the designer Daniel Ott of True North Tiny Homes onto the show. In this interview, Daniel and I nerd out about trailer systems, foundations, in-floor hydronic heating for cold climates, and more. Plus Daniel tells us why it's so hard to build a legal tiny house in Ontario, Canada. Stick around.
If you enjoy the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast, one of the best ways you can help the show is by sharing it with others. Post on social media, send an email, or even grab your friend's phone and subscribe them to the show. Whether they're interested in tiny houses, skoolies, vanlife, sailboats, or even living off-grid in a yurt in the woods, the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast
has something for everyone. So again, if you enjoy the show, please share it with others and help us grow and reach more tiny house hopefuls, tiny house dwellers, and DIY builders. And if you're listening on the web, don't forget to hit subscribe in your favorite podcast app, where you'll get a new episode of theTiny House Lifestyle Podcast every Friday morning. All right, let's get on with the show. And thanks. All right, I am here with Dan
Ott. Dan is one of the first tiny home builders in Ontario working to change the housing market by designing and building legal Tiny Homes, which is no small feat under the Ontario building code one of the strictest codes in North America. Using his unique UpSizeDown Method, Daniel and his team at truenorth Tiny Homes not only design your dream home, but they help you get prepared to thrive in it. Dan, Daniel, Dan Ott, welcome to the show.
Thanks, Ethan.
I actually was just curious, what is the UpSizeDown Method?
Oh, the UpSizeDown Method. So that is our what we call our signature method. And that's how we help our clients prepare their mindset to be able to not only survive, but thrive, living tiny, and then go through the design process and the mental preparation of education before actually building. Building is only a small part of our method because we believe the mental preparedness and the impact on yourself and the world around you on both ends of the build are far more important. So
our method is five steps. And we minimalize or simplify, we educate, we design, build, and then impact.
Cool. And so impact is like you move in?
Well, it's more than that. It's impact to yourself. And I like to say well, it impacts your finances because you can live so much more cost effectively. But you also impact just your whole the whole mentality of the world out there today is to live so quick. And so everything on top of itself over and over and right in rapid succession but when you live in
a tiny home. One great example is it only takes you an hour to do a really deep clean so you end up with all this extra time on your hands and you end up with this extra money on your hands - that impacts your lifestyle yourself because you can spend that but it also helps you to impact the world around you. So we say even if you don't want to impact the world around you, you're just going to by default because you're using less materials and less energy
to run your house. But it also gives you the opportunity with this extra time and money to impact your local community by helping out at the local food bank or volunteering at the library or something that impacts people around you.
Nice. What's so difficult about the Ontario building codes for tiny homes - specifically, but also in general?
In general, everything. So I have, I also have a design company. And I've been designing regular houses for years. And even there, we run into problems where, because everything with the internet has gone so global. When we do our designs, we get people to save stuff on Pinterest and other such things like that. And we look through what their designs are. And we would see like spiral staircases and cable railings, I mean, those are two things that have been huge throughout the rest of the
world. Those are two things are illegal in Ontario, you can't have horizontal members in a railing because you might climb it and fall over. You can have spiral staircases through more than 90 degrees, and the rules just keep coming at you. And it seems it seems ridiculous. But when we get into tiny homes, specifically, some of the things that really impact us in our are that Ontario is the only place in North America that has minimum room sizes and ceiling
heights. So ceiling height for livable space must be a minimum of six foot 11.
Difficult under the loft.
Yes, very well, yeah, or it is doable, but your loft becomes very small. However, your loft, must also have 6ft 11in. So now to be classified as living space or a bedroom, because that's living space, you need to have six foot 11. So now we can't live in our lofts. So there's always - I've in my career, I've gone through finding ways around the rules to use them, to work within them, but kind of like on the very edges. So I like to say, we can
design you a storage loft. And if you happen to store a mattress and a spare body up there in your time, that's up to you. And then some of the other things are the minimum room sizes. So you mentioned you found us by by seeing a video on the nest, and that is Ontario's smallest legal house and it's 230 square feet. I cannot build a house smaller than that and be legal. Maybe 220 I can get away with because the bathroom doesn't have a size, it only has
a ceiling height. But the main living area has to be (it's actually in meters, because that's how Canada is), but it's 13.5 square meters, which gives me an outside wall dimension of 10 by 20. And that it has to be the combination space of cooking, eating, living and sleeping. And then I have a bathroom on the side of it. And so that's how we get the 220 or 230 square feet. So I like to say to people, oh, then there's one more thing. It's illegal to live in Ontario, in anything
that has wheels. So I like to say to people, everything you've seen on the internet about tiny homes would never pass the code in Ontario. But we can still design houses within the code. And it's more of there's a lot of lobbyists out there who say, "Hey, I'm all for tiny homes, we have to change the rules." And do you know how long it takes to get the government to change rules? Decades! It's ridiculous. So I'd rather say, "Hey, we have
the rules. I'm an expert on figuring out how to work within them." The most of our ability and then, you know, like I said, kind of dwelling on the outer edges of those rules. And then what you have to do though, is bend your mind of bend that idea a little bit in your mind of what you think a tiny home is, and we can make it work.
Right. So sounds like building people what they might have in their head as the picture of a tiny home, which is, you know, a little house on a trailer might not be legal in Ontario. I'm sure that doesn't stop people from doing it, though.
Oh, no, we build those, too.
Yeah. But you just kind of say I mean, it's just like it's the same in the States. It's not legal to live in a tiny house in most places. And a lot of people manage to do it. But the the nest is a legal home.
Yes. So that is, like I said 230 square feet, and we bring it around on a trailer and then take it off the trailer to put on a foundation. And that's what makes it legal. And one of the other things that we have in the code is the amount of insulation, which is far more than is necessary for such a small space. But we have to do some of those things just to
Right And yeah, there are so many things that I want to talk about in the nest. The first thing is using the helical piers, which I've een not like obsessed with. But I've been, you know, I lived n my tiny house for years he e in Vermont, I'm not I'm not in it full-time anymore. But I jus parked that thing right on the ground. And it was never level ever again. You know, because e get major freeze/thaw cycles meet the code.
here, especially like, M rch, April, when you can't - w en it's still winter, and then y u get a warm day. And it just t e frost line, as I'm sure it's s milar for you is, is like six fe t. So so really digging a f undation to put my tiny house n would be kind of overkill.
o I started, you know, reading bout these ground screws, and and started thinking about wha if I could build, just, you k ow, get some of these ground sc ews, put, like jack the tiny house up really tall and th n put like a steel, I beam betw en them and then bring the tin house just back down. And so t's so cool to see you using t em on the nest. And actually I'm a bad podcast host becau e I should have asked you fir t to explain what they are befo e I started just talking about them.
But no one you haven't explained. So unless all of your listeners already know what they are, but essentially, it's an auger. So I explained to people, it's like drilling an auger into the ground. But rather than using the auger and pulling it back up, take the dirt out, you just keep drilling in, and that the fins on the bottom of the auger act as the footing. And the two and a half to three inch steel pipe that sticks out of the top acts as they call one more the pier that
we can rest structure on. And the coolest thing is that we usually end up between seven and 10 feet to get proper bearing capacity. But if we don't, they just weld another pipe on and keep screwing. So it's awesome. The first time I used the hel cal piers was almost 20 years go. And we dug out this is be ore tiny homes. So we dug o t a basement for a house becaus up here probably in Vermont oo. They do basements anyw ys, because you got a big
lue Cross, right? We dug out for this basement edition n a house. And there was no bea ing capacity was not there to put this house on. And so they d g a test pilot hole another 10 eet down. So now we're 17 feet b low grade before they hit anyt ing possible. And we're saying W ll, how do you dig out a hol 17 feet deep and then fill it all the gravel again. So you can build a house on top of it s
ems ridiculous. And so that's hen we discovered helical piers we drilled 17 of those str ts, where the footing would go, and then laid a beam on top of i as a grade beam and then bui t a concrete foundation walls on top of just amazing stuff. And w 've been using them for all kind of things up until now. And so hen we started building tiny ho es, I said this, this is the ans
er. This is how we do it. Bec use just for a quick cost analy is, the average trailer right now to put a tiny home on it co t me about 10 grand Canadian. An the average foundation sy tem in heels piers is like 3000 So I can put a foundation for our house and three diff rent locations and move it arou d for you for cheaper than you uy a trailer.
Yeah, it's compelling. Now, the nest, the system is that the house is not built on its own trailer it's built is it kind of built on skids? What's the foundation sys em on the house itself?
So the actual house itself just as a 2x6 floor system. And we and then it has a beam inside the floor system on either end. And we have this is all kind of proprietary. I've designed this all myself to make it work and then had engineers stamp at all. We have what I've deemed to be a jack saddle. So just like a saddle, like you would that you would put in a concrete pier that would hold a beam. We have one of those in the four corners wrapped around the beam and then bolted through
the beam. And what that gives us is a piece of steel without having to have built the whole skid out of steel that we can weld pieces to and we weld a pipe onto the side of it that a jack can connect to with a with a drop pin and a cotter pin. And then we can we have a 5000 pound jack on each corner so you can lift 20,000 pounds like that which is far more than what the next Actually weighs. So on a bigger house, it might have six
jacks. And then you just jack it up, drive the trailer underneath and jack it down until the house sits on the trailer. And when when you get to site and you drive over top of where those gears are, you jack the house up, you drive the trailer out. Andthen when there's no trailer in the way you put a beam on top of the piers and drop your house on top.
And how long does that whole process take?
The first time or now? Now? Now we can we can do it in about an hour. And I've been working on like, so if anyone if any of your listeners have actually seen the video of the master, if you link it on the podcast, that'd be great. But yeah, I've, I've been working on the design of the trailer. And so every trailer that we build gets a little bit better and a little bit better. So the trailer that you see in the video does make that transition kind of difficult.
But I've gotten to the point where I am building almost every one of our houses whether they go on a trailer or not, before I get the trailer. And the reason being one of the things that is taking so long in this COVID-ridden world is that axles are taking a really long time to get. So I can have the whole house built before I have the axle that I was waiting for. So we've been building the whole house and then driving the trailer underneath afterwards.
And then even if it's going to be permanently on there bolting it together afterwards. So I've gotten pretty good at this trailer system. And now we can do it in like less than 30 minutes.
Are these trailers - that's fascinating, by the way - are the trailers that you're driving under these tiny house on wheels, do they have wheel wells are these deck over trailers?
I have created a deck over trailer that's 27 inches tall. So and that's exactly it. Because if you have the trailer afterwards, this is one of the first thing problems I came up with was how do you build around a wheel well, before you can wheel well to build around? Because it makes for a very disjointed structurally unsound building if you don't have the wheel wheel
there already. So I have devised a way to get a deck over trailer that really isn't anywhere close to the same height as with a regular deck over trailer is I mean,
I guess you're using drop axles.
And technically, when you do a deck over, it doesn't matter if it's a drop axle or not, because it's the top of the tire that we're worried about. Right? So we've actually gone to four axles, okay, as a standard, just because we can use much smaller tires that take less weight and distribute it out farther. Okay, so smaller. And then though there's still a wheel well, in the actual trailer, it just doesn't stick up higher than the
trailer itself. Cool. So a traditional deck over would have the whole frame of the trailer be higher than the top of the tire. Right? Where we have the we have the top of the frame level with the top of the rubber.
Right. Don't you lose some maneuverability when you add axles?
Absolutely. Yeah. But how often, like even people who live in tiny homes that are permanently on wheels, how often do they really move? Right? And that's the question. I always start with people, right when they think they want to build on wheels. Just say how often are you actually going to move this? Like, if it's only once every two years even? Then it's it's Who cares? Hire a tow truck company or us to come back for you to move it around. And it's their problem to try to maneuver it.
I like it. And so you you do that. You kind of are a - I don't want to say full service - but you will move tiny homes for for clients.
As long as they're close enough.
Yeah, I was gonna say, "Do you want to come to Vermont and move mine?"
It'll be a hefty bill.
Yeah. I took us on this sidetrack, but the the jacking system with the D rings for for, you know, attaching the the nest down to the trailer is is very clever. And I'll embed the video on the show notes page for this episode, which I'll you know, at the end of the show, I kind of read that out. And so people can go and I encourage people to go and check out the video because it's pretty sweet. So have you adapted that trailer list system to other models?
Because I know you mentioned in the video that you develop the nest for... with kids who are exiting the foster care system in mind.
Yes, but it was more, that was the layout and the color scheme of the of the home that we talked about developing that for. The technology to take it on and off the trailer was being developed for a broader purpose. Because a lot of our homes have to be on a
foundation to be legal. Although they are talking about changing that a little bit in some areas, but because most of them do have to be off the wheels to be legal, we wanted to figure out a system where we could reuse our trailer over and over and over again. And it started actually with being able to detach the axles as a separate piece, and then the tongue as a separate piece, and just leave the actual trailer system as a floor system. And that idea flopped
and didn't work very well. So you know, we've modified it since then. But yeah, this is definitely something that we're using all over the board. We're actually getting calls now because of the popularity of that video. And I'm willing to do it for people who are just looking for this kind of technology to build them a trailer like this. And a floor system that already has everything part of it, and then they'll build the rest of the tiny home themselves. Nice. Yeah.
That's a really compelling idea, you know, of buying that, instead of just a DIY build trailer, because they're getting the trailer and the floor system, then it's it's movable in this unique way.
Yeah.
Very cool. How many of these are out there using this system?
Right now? Not many, but there's a bunch of them in the works.
Nice.
So I think I think we had three emails this week, or more? or more of the trailers.
Yeah. No. And it's, it sounds like you kind of are, are all the houses you build on trailers that you've also designed and fabricated?
Yes. Yeah. Now, to be clear, I don't actually fabricate the trailer in-house. I have a guy who's not far away, who builds tiny home trailers for a bunch of the companies on the Eastern seaboard. And so he was actually really excited when we opened up here, because all the other tiny home trailers he'd been building, he sends away and never hears from the people again. And here he is somewhere where he can come over here and see how the house attached to
it. And we can talk together and make these changes on the fly or develop it for how we're going to do the next one based on how this one performed. So it's been a very good relationship.
That's awesome. And then one other thing about the nest that I that I appreciated is, is using the in floor hydronic heating, which, you know, is certainly a complaint that I have about tiny house living in the winter, which is that the floors are damn cold.
Yeah.
So have you found that that system is able to put out enough btus to heat the house completely in a Canadian winter?
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. And I'm assuming the the winters right here are very close to what you have in the area that you are in Vermont, but that was the first thing to the first tiny home that we built, we built for ourselves. And we kept it as an Airbnb unit for 18 months to collect data because it's really great when you have a client who's only around for three days, and they can complain about something and you don't have to fix it because
they're not there anymore. So it was really great to collect data that way. But we did the same thing as what, you know, I saw everyone else doing in Tiny Homes, and that's the ductless mini split. And it really didn't like it. Because your feet were cold, the ambient temperature in the air was great. But the your feet were cold. So if you're a person who wants to wear slippers all the time, maybe you can get away with it. But I really wanted to change the way
that works. So our standard now is to do the floor hydronic heating. And it's far better. The boiler that we're using is good enough, because we have to do things that meet the code. The boiler that we're using would actually heat a 1200 square foot house. They just
don't make something smaller. So I could use a smaller, like tankless water heater, but because those are not specifically made for hydronic heating it won't pass the code and my engineers, so we have to use this combination boiler and hence the smallest one they make is way too big.
Yeah, and I'm curious, and this is completely anecdotally, I know a handful of people who have put in some kind of in-floor heating. Macy Miller, who's kind of a famous tiny Hauser did like electric, radiant mats and the floor. And she didn't she didn't recommend them because they she, she's in Boise, Idaho, so that wasn't able to heat the house fully. And then I know another couple in Colorado that did, like an open direct in-floor hydronic
system. So where it was one little hot water on demand eater that heated, the you know, there was a basically a loop in the floor. But that also was the same water that would eventually then come out of their tap, I think. But they also found that it wasn't quite able to, like, really heat the house up fully. And I wonder if it's like either the fact that your house is so well insulated, or you've probably just properly sized the boiler and you're putting out enough btus to do it.
It is definitely something because the technology that I'm using, I've used in regular sized houses for years. So taking the same thing and applying it into a tiny home. It has no chance but to work better, right?
Well, I guess the issue in the tiny home is that you are floating above the ground, you're not, you know, and there's also not as much mass, you're not running the pipes through a concrete slab.
There there is that for sure. Yeah.
But it's awesome that, that it's working out. And yeah, that's one thing that it's very difficult, or maybe impossible to go back and add later. So anybody listening, you're thinking about in floor heating, if you're going to be in a cold climate, I think it's probably the most luxurious, you can go with in a tiny house.
Yeah, it is very nice. But it's also because it's called radiant heating and heats up your furniture that sits on it, too. Right? Yeah. So when you and that's what creates your mass a little bit more. So yes, you're not heating the concrete slab for sure. But um, you are eating more of the elements in the home rather than just the air that's inside it.
Got it.
o it is far better. And and you're absolutely right. I tell people that all the time. There's certain things that are a lot harder to change later. And they happen to all be in the floor. Yes. So whether it's the flooring itself, or as the heating underneath, something you definitely want to at least rough in now because the downfall to putting the influence of hydronic heating in is that as a minimum, you don't have air conditioning. When you do a ductless mini split, you
get both. But a ductless mini split is something you can always add later to just do the air conditioning.
Right. Yeah, I mean, I think that it really comes down to the climate that you're living in. I think that, you know, for somebody who's in a more temperate climate where, you know, maybe isn't getting below freezing all that often. You know, the floors will be cold, but not like chilled your bones called and then you you're gonna benefit from that AC.
Yeah, exactly. When it's minus 30 degrees Celsius, which is actually close to minus 30. Fahrenheit your floors are cold.
So I'm just seems like you're doing so many cool things. And you just made a big announcement about Blue Water village. Is that is that the Yes. All right. All right. Well, tell us about it.
I have been looking for several years to create a tiny home village, in Ontario here and with different partners over time, as the financial backers or the people who know the financial backers, or whatever we've actually had, this is the third property that we've actually had under contract in as many years. And it's the first one that actually might go somewhere, or actually will go somewhere. Let's use that language.
I mean, it's got a tab on your website. It's
Exactly. So one of the hardest things about Tiny gotta go somewhere. Homes in Ontario, as per the rest of North America even is a lot of the tiny home builders are registering their units as RVs. And that's how you can get away around the financing issue. And that's how you can get away with some of the zoning issues but an interior you're not allowed to live in an RV. So you can camp in an RV but you can't
live in one. So if you buy a trailer park, by definition is a campground in Ontario, and that is seasonal, so you can live in an RV there so that'd be great. But if you find a place that was a year round campground, you can't put an RV there. You're just not allowed. So we had to find another way to get around that sort of thing. And then you have mobile home parks. So typically those are year round, but some of them are even only
seasonal as well. But finding the year round ones up here is extremely difficult, because a lot of the big corporations are buying these things up because they see that they are moneymakers for themselves. And then once they are bought up, they're tied in with a particular mobile home builder. And usually one of the bigger builders. And so when people build a tiny home and think, Oh, I can just bring it to a mobile home park. They can't because they will only accept homes that
were built by that builder. And so that gets a little frustrating for clients. I'm sure you've talked to a lot of people about but the the other issue is that we've looked for properties and had them under contract and wanted to turn them into a mobile home park. Because legally speaking the way the zoning works, that's exactly what we want to do with a tiny
home village. We may not be doing actually what most people would do in a mobile home park, but we're kind of that's where we're, you know, dealing on the outskirts of the rules, right, where we're using the rules in a way that benefits us. The problem is that I have not found a municipality in Ontario that wants to change any properties into year long mobile home parks, I believe it's because they have a bad reputation. So the zonings exist, becau e they mobile home parks alrea
y there. But no one will allow you to buy vacant property and t rn it into one. So in a very oundabout fortuitous way, I was part of a or my office used o be in a shared office space And the guys who owned the b ilding, were property devel pers who were always doing comme cial and industrial stuff. And t en they learned about Tiny Homes because I had an office in one o the buildings. And they got t thinking, wow, this is a cool dea. So they called me last
Wow. Big ummer. Yeah, so only like six m nths ago or so and said, Look, we want to go buy property and i vest. We've got a bunch of our i vestors on board, we want to pu aside several million dolla s to invest in tiny homes. Are y u in? I said absolutely. Where do I sign? So they found this roperty, they got it under contr ct on a great deal. And it's lready an existing mobile home ark that is already year round So we don't have to try to ch
nge things. There's anoth r place in Ontario here that as been just got their chang happening. And it took them 3 years to get year round desig ation. I don't want to wait hat long, but neither do my cl ents. So this place alrea y is year round. And it alrea y has 78 sites. But half of th m are seasonal trailers, even hough the zoning allows for i
to be year round. So we're going to give those people an op ortunity to change their speci ic plot of land to be year round But if they have a seaso al trailer, they're going to ha e to upgrade. And if they don't want to upgrade, then they're ju t going to bring their seasona trailer somewhere else. And that gives us a spot to sell a tiny home to someone and they ha e a spot to go. And then this y ar we're working on the expa
sion of another 20 lots. An then there's a whole oth r area of the property that's about 17 acres where we figur we can put another 140 lots in.
Yeah, so we're looking at expanding 160 tiny homes to be able to go on here.
Now will people be able to like bring their own BYOTH? Bring your ow tiny home?
No, because everything that goes on here is going to have to be certified to be a mobile home, or a park model trailer. Okay, so we're under, we're in the midst of obtaining our CSA certifications for park model trailers. So we'll still be building a tiny home just like we'd be building another tiny home. It's just that the certification process that we apply to it as we build it in our factory will be as a
park model trailer. And that will allow it by zoning and the planning department there to actually go on the property.
Cool. That's exciting. What's the timeline for all this? And is this the first of its kind in Ontario?
It's for everything that we're trying to do? Yes, but we are combining a bunch of different ideas that have already happened in different capacities in different areas. And we're trying to combine them all into one spot, and then prove to all the other municipalities in Ontario to say hey, look, this is what we actually want to do. Open your minds a little bit and allow us to even if you want us to use mobile home park, zoning designations allow us to buy vacant land. Repeat this over
and over again. Cool. The final thing that we're actually going to do to this property is we're going to allow a typical trailer park or mobile home park, you lease the land forever. We are going to apply condo titles to the properties and allow people to buy the land that their house sits on.
That's great.
I'm super, super excited.
Yeah, that's, that's awesome. Very exciting. And, and sorry, I combined two questions in one timeline on on these expansions. And, yeah
Oh, yes. So we should have the approvals for the 20 lat expansion by a year rom now. So 12 months, okay. But the biggest thing is we don' get the final approvals unti the entire septic systems ha e been upgraded. So that's abou a three quarters of a mill on dollar project. And so w hope to have that done by the end of the summer. And then the other expansion is going to pro ably take another year to devel p the land with all the servi ing, and then another year to
get all the houses in. So we're ooking at about three years,
All right, well, where do people go to, to get on though, three to five years. the waitlist?
Yeah, the waitlist is already for the next phase, because the first phase waitlist is full. That's only been two weeks. So that's kind of awesome. Go to our website, www.truenorthtinyhomes.ca. And like you said, there's a whole tab there with all the information about that property.
Awesome. Well, one thing that I like to ask all my guests is what are two or three resources that have helped you on your tiny house journey, this could be related to design, it doesn't have to be related to tiny house specifics, but any design or building resources, books, movies, anything like that, that you'd like to recommend to our listeners?
Oh, so one of the big ones for Ontario, especially, is that the Ontario government actually put out a pamphlet about a year ago about how to design and build a tiny home and meet Ontario codes. So that's a huge resource around here for people to look into. And because Ontario's district displace in North America to build, if you follow that you can meet it anywhere. So that's
a big one. And then, of course, I'm gonna like to say our YouTube channel is, is a great resource for finding stuff specific, especially to Ontario, for sure. But same thing applies if it works here, it's going to work anywhere. And then after that, man, it's all it's the school of hard knocks, it's figuring out what works and doesn't work. And that's just sometimes a lot of trial and error and banging your head against the wall.
Awesome. Daniel, thank you so much. If you can stick around for another minute or two, I have two kinds of Bonus questions related back to the nest that I wanted to ask.
Okay. Cool.
Is it possible to do the nest with a loft and still be you know, within road height and have it be livable/comfortable.
Absolutely. your loft tight ends up being three and a half feet on the one side, and then two and a half on the other? And, but it does give you a storage loft. That like we said, If you store a mattress and a body up there later, that's completely up to you. No one's gonna come chase you and throw you in prison for doing something like that. But we do have designs for that same size in multiple different arrangements that do have lofts in them. Yes.
Nice. And then my second bonus question is, is related to the helical piles, which is, you know, many tiny house owner owners don't own the land. And that is, you know, part of the appeal of, you know, you can own a tiny house without having to own the land. And so there you know, we're oftentimes striking agreements with with people to put tiny homes in their backyards. Yeah, how, how high impact are the helical piles, like can they be removed easily?
You can just take the same machine back in again, and they can unscrew it in the other direction and take everything out.
And then can they be reused even?
They could? I don't, I mean, it Oh, that'd be up to their engineers on whether they accept it for sure. But the other thing I've said to people is a worst case scenario is you dig out the shaft of the pier, so six, eight inches below grade and then just cut it off with a grinder and fill the hole back in.
Just leave it in the ground.
Yeah.
Well, Daniel Ott, Dan Ott, I know I'm gonna call you Daniel because that's what it says on your website. And when people get your name Daniel Ott thank you so much for being a guest on the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast. It was it was great to have you on.
Yeah, thanks for having me, Ethan. It was, it was great. I love to talk about this stuff.
Thank you so much to Daniel Ott for being a guest on the show today. You can find the show notes from today's episode, including links to TrueNorthTiny Homes, a transcript of the episode (that's a new feature), and photos of some of their amazing homes at thetinyhouse.net/145. Again, that's thetinyhouse.net/145. Well, that's all for this week. I'm your host, Ethan Waldman, and I'll be back next week with another episode of the Tiny House Lifestyle Podcast.