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Anonymous Metal Trailer is Secret Hideout

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Tumbleweed’s newest tiny movable house is completely different from their traditional wooden gnome’s cottages on wheels – that might be embarrassing to actually drive around towing – and you can build one for $20,000 from their plans.

From the outside, the Popomo, with its rolled hot steel siding is a quite anonymous looking industrial box, making it possible to try to find a gorgeous private place to set up camp without arousing attention.

Tiny houses can be illegal so Tumbleweed designs them to go on a 24′ flat bed trailer, and stay on it: a supposedly mobile home. If it is on wheels, it is not “a building” but a vehicle, and thus not subject to building codes.

In their newest, the tiny house actually almost competes with the RV, exactly the right size for being actually mobile – and is designed to actually go places and enjoy them once set up, while maintaining anonymity till you get there, with its anonymous industrial exterior.

Unlike most RVs or caravan campers, it is not beset by curves that cut into storage space.

For one thing, every square inch allowed on the road without a special permit gets used: it measures the full allowable 8′ 6″ wide. At about 7,500 lbs, any full size truck can tow it, and at 24′ long including the hitch, it maximizes the allowable size.

The tiniest kitchen occupies one end with a two-burner stove, an under-counter refrigerator, a bar sink, an RV on-demand hot water heater, and under the corner blind spot, a propane boat heater.

All of their houses on wheels are wired for electricity and ready to be plugged in through a plug on the outside, and plumbed to be connected to public water with RV hoses.

Like on many boats, the bathroom becomes the shower … and it is called a “wet bath”. Using water proof truck liner paint, the walls of the bathroom are sealed tight, allowing for a quick shower. There are no pictures of how the toilet looks when it’s in the shower, but it would seem that a fold down shelf over it for when the bathroom is used as a shower would make combining the two a less weird, if extremely innovative, use of very scarce space that after all, is not in constant use.

Water enters via an RV white hose and leaves via an RV sewer valve. A sewer hose would connect the house to the sewer, and the plans include options for a standard, compost, or RV-type toilet.

A tiny but livable camper.

Tumbleweed is known for their traditional-style tiny, tiny, tiny wooden cottages, and starting to get a lot of business in this second great depression, as their tiny little houses can actually be built quite cheaply by a do-it-yourselfer from between $20,000 and $50,000.