Heating our Tiny House

Previously we were heating our Tiny House with a tower space heater similar to this one.

We brought it from our 1700 sq foot house when we moved.  It was getting old and wasn't running well but still kept our house at a good 70 degrees or higher.

This Tiny House is WARM.

Even in the freezing temperatures the last few weeks, we have been nice and toasty in our tiny house. Never, in all the houses we have lived in, has our house stayed this warm.

Our first apartment we spent a year in and never turned on the heat.  It was cold in the winter but we weren't in the house much and being our first year of marriage we chose to save on the heating bill.  It helped to have apartments under and on either side of us using their heat.

Our second place was a tri-plex.  It stayed pretty warm in the winter but we still wore our warm clothes in the house. 

In the next place, a 1000 sq. ft duplex, I think is where I started wearing slippers.  I never really wore slippers before but my feet always seemed to be cold at the duplex.  I had babies at the time and they were always cuddled up in onesies and warm sleepers.  I might have also started wearing slippers because I was home all day instead of at work.

The last place before our tiny house was our 1700 sq. foot rambler.  That place never seemed to stay warm without a very large gas bill in the winter.  Even then, we wore sweaters, wool socks and slippers.  We tried getting a wood stove.  We got in trouble for using our wood stove because it wasn't certified.  We got a new wood stove.  We got in trouble using it when there was (unknown to my husband) a burn ban in effect ($1000 fine).  Then our furnace broke while a burn ban was in effect.  No furnace and no access to our wood stove when the temperatures dropped below freezing.  We were really bundled up then.  The poor space heater was almost run into the ground but did not keep that sprawling house warm! 

This was the winter before we moved.  Not being allowed to use our wood stove in freezing temperatures might have influenced us to move out of that county.

I think we got a reputation of having a chilly house; my sister-in-law one time told me she always had to remember to bring a sweater to my house.  I wasn't surprised when my brother-in-law asked me about how warm my new house is.  HE seemed surprised, however, when I told him my new house is so warm I wear shorts and a t-shirt in house in the winter.

Last week my husband replaced our tower space heater with this little beast:

It attaches straight to the plug-in on the wall, providing us with much needed floor space.  It has sweet little red LED lights around the inside to make it look hot, outlets on the sides so you don't lose outlet space, the normal Hi and Low heat settings with built-in thermostat and it keeps our house nice and toasty!

As much as we like this new Tiny Heater, we are hoping to be self-sustaining some day AND we have a terrible moisture problem in our tiny house.  We tried a dehumidifier (it drank up gallons each day!) but we couldn't run the heater and the dehumidifier at the same time (we're still running on an extension cord) and we think the dehumidifier broke because we had it running in freezing temperatures.

We were left with the dilemma of buying a new dehumidifier and running it alternately with the heater (which we want to ditch someday anyway), buying the propane heater we had originally planned to purchase for our tiny house OR buying the tiny wood stove my husband found online (there were other options but these were the main ones we considered!).

We are expecting this new arrival in the beginning of February:

Made by the Tiny Wood Stove company specifically for spaces smaller than 500 sq. ft the Dwarf 4kw   will be installed on our metal front door, saving space and (hopefully!) warming and drying our Tiny House.

My husband has taken the door off to reinforce it with additional hinges and to make it easier to install the wood stove when it comes.  Oh, AND he's going to finish painting the door because I never did like that blue color!  The space where our front door should be is boarded up and insulated with canvas.  Even with a boarded up door with canvas we're still warm!  

Our Tiny House is by-far the warmest house we have ever lived in.