What to Look for in Tiny House Plans

As you search for tiny house plans, there are a few things that you will want to look out for. Not all plans are created equal.

Intended Audience

An often overlooked aspect of tiny house plans is the experience level expected from the reader or builder. For instance, conventional house plans typically include a floor plan and then a page of detail diagram that show the specific way the materials fit together in specific areas of the house (e.g. above a window or at the roof). The builder is then expected to use his knowledge to fill-in the gaps. This approach makes sense for larger projects, as having drawings that show the placement of every stud would be overwhelming and make the plans too verbose. The problem is that if you aren't an experienced builder this style of plans can lack important details that you need. If you are new to building, look for plans that are do-it-yourself friendly.

Source

Another important consideration when evaluating plans is the source of the plans. Specifically, is the author qualified and have they built one or multiple houses using the plans. It's one thing to know how to use a program like SketchUp, but it's another to understand proper building techniques. The problem is, if you don't know what the proper building techniques are, it can be hard to identify if someone else knows them. After all, we don't know what we don't know. One sign you can use to help identify those that are more qualified is if they've built at least one house, preferable many, of the design you are interested in. The benefit of having built multiple copies of the same house is the designer has had a chance to work out any kinks that may have been accidentally included in the first iteration. Tiny Home Builders only sells plans to houses that we’ve already built ourselves.

Material List

The value of a detailed material list cannot be understated. A material list can save you both time and money, often well exceeding the cost of the plans. With a material list you can significantly decrease the number of trips to the store since you will know what you need before you begin. It can be incredibly frustrating to buy all the supplies you expect you will need for the day only to return to your worksite and realize you forgot something and have to return to the store. Depending on your proximity to the store, each trip can easily consume a good portion of your day.

Having a materials list can also save a lot of money by allowing you to take advantage of significant builders discounts at the big box stores. I go into detail of how to do this in the Tiny House Design & Construction Guide.

Format

Finally, you will want to consider the format of the plans you are buying. Some plans come in a changeable format, like SketchUp or AutoCad, while others can only be printed. This can be extremely important if you are considering changing the plans from what the original builder designed. On the other hand, if you want to build exactly what the originally builder built, the plan format is not as important.

When your tiny house plans come in a change friendly format, any changes are considerably easier for you or an architect to make. If the plans come only as paper plans or a pdf you print yourself, any changes will require the plans to be recreated in an editing tool, again like SketchUp, and then the changes applied. This process can add considerably to the cost and time required to implement your changes.