Four Ideas to Warm or Insulate the Floor of Your Tiny Home

If you want your tiny home to be as efficient as possible, you want it to be as insulated and warm as possible. While many people remember to insulate the walls and the roof, they forget to insulate or heat the floor. Want a tiny house that's relatively impervious to the hot and cold? Then, check out these ideas for insulating your floor:

1. Insulating layer

As you build your tiny home, crawl underneath it, and apply some insulation below the floor joists. The floor joists are pieces of timber that hold your subfloor.  You can spray insulation onto the bottom of your subfloor or glue batting underneath your subfloor. Once the insulation is in place, simply add your flooring as usual. Whether you decide to go with an engineered timber flooring, carpet or anything else, the insulation will keep you warm underfoot.

2. Radiant floor heating

In addition to insulating your floor, consider adding radiant heat to your floor. In the past, radiant heat was reserved for concrete floors, but now, radiant heat can be added under almost any type of flooring including hardwood floors. Essentially, radiant flooring consists of PVC pipes which run under the floor. The pipes have hot water running through them, and that warms up the floor radiating heat to the rest of your home. That also saves room compared to putting in a traditional furnace.

3. Trailer flaps

If your tiny home is on a trailer, icy cold wind or warm hot gusts can sweep under the trailer, causing it to heat up or cool down unfavourably. To reduce this effect, consider adding flaps to your trailer. The flaps can be made of rubber and designed to insulate the underside of a trailer home, or you can make them yourself out of materials such as sheets of polystyrene or old carpet samples.

4. Shallow foundation

If you don't plan to move your tiny home around much, you may want to control the temperatures of your flooring by putting your home on a foundation. You don't need a deep foundation to boost how insulated your floor is. In most cases, a shallow foundation works just fine.

To add one, dig a hole the size of your tiny home. Line the hole with concrete blocks. Then, build the tiny home onto the concrete blocks. The proximity to the earth helps to keep your home cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, and as it's only a small foundation, you don't need any special tools. Rather, you can dig it yourself.