There is no doubt that winter here in Northern BC is stunningly beautiful.

But just wait…..

“At -30 degrees Celsius, everything changes”

We had been told this when winter started but until you experience -30 or lower, you really can’t imagine what it will feel like. Last year we had been staying in our tiny house over Christmas and it dipped as low at -27. We congratulated ourselves on staying toasty warm and managing the cold just fine but that was when we did not have any water hooked up and we just brought in water for the few days that we stayed here.

Fast forward to a year later and we are living here full time with all systems up and running. Before we built this house we really tried to research cold weather living in a tiny home. There were a few in Alaska that we followed and we thought we had planned well. We had an end compartment with all of our plumbing in it. We had it insulated and we also had the instant hot water tank in there which we believed would provide its own warmth in the compartment (Oh how naive we were! It didn’t).

When the weather is milder (-15 or higher) we have a heat traced hose hooked up directly to an outside source (a frost hydrant). It is also partially heat traced but we have had some freezing at the connection so at -15 we switch to the 40 gallon tank in the compartment. The water comes into the house through an RV pump system and as long as the tank is kept full we manage quite nicely with that system.

In anticipation of colder weather we also installed a small space industrial heater in this compartment. This is a pricey little gadget but we thought it would be the perfect thing to keep everything from freezing. We set it at 5 degrees Celsius which we thought would keep the compartment above freezing level. And it would have been fine except for a few things we discovered just a little too late.

Because then came February, with the nights sinking down to -30 or lower, night after night. It seemed we were breaking cold weather records every day. The sun was shining and it was stunningly beautiful but disaster wasn’t long in coming.

On the left it shows the outdoor temp and on the right the indoor. Ignore the date and time, its never been correct.

Our first sign of trouble came when we turned on the tap and the RV pump ran for a little bit and then the water stopped. However the pump continued to run. This meant we had to turn the breaker off to the end compartment in order to shut the pump off , but as the heater was wired in, it was also shut off. There was some ice in the pumps water filter so we cleaned it out and got it running again and for a little while it seemed ok. We were able to get a separate switch on the heater so it could run independently. But a check the next morning revealed even bigger problems. The 40 gallon tank had a solid layer of ice in it. And the instant hot water heater was leaking water out of the bottom. Matt and John did a close inspection and found that even though our end unit was insulated, it was not weather stripped and there were huge gaps between the doors and the compartment letting cold weather in. In time, the doors, which are very heavy had shifted just slightly enough to cause them to not shut properly so we had to realign the closing mechanism. Also the heater we installed was close to the top of the compartment so it only heated up the upper part and the rest of the lower compartment just got colder and colder. So now we had no water heater, no pump and an ineffective heater. And the weather stayed cold, cold, cold.

I am so thankful that we could get water from next door, and shower and do laundry there as well. What a blessing.

In the meantime we assessed the situation to see what we needed to do first, which was to call a plumber. We weren’t the only ones with water problems and it took a few days for the plumber to come. In the meantime we made some improvements. We thoroughly weather stripped the compartment, tacking the stripping in place, because it was too cold to stick. We added a sheet of Styrofoam insulation as well.

We took the heater and moved it to a lower spot in the compartment, but we placed it on a block of wood so it would still be elevated off the floor. Then we cranked it up to 15 degrees. We also attached two heating pads to the water tank to thaw out the ice.

We were able to get it warmed up and to keep it warm but we were still with out a hot water heater and a pump.

Tank on the left, heater center on the block, new RV water pump above the heater and instant hot water tank on the right.

It took the plumber three visits to get it all resolved. Parts arrived separately but when they did he would come and fix it. We were very thankful that we did not have to replace the hot water heater, it only needed a part. But we did have to order a new pump. We also had separate switches put on all the devices so that they can all be shut off or turned on independently.

Separate switches, which we probably should have put in from the start.

We have also blanketed the end compartment. Yes, it is tucked in with a nice wool blanket that has an outer nylon covering.

The cold also revealed a few other issues that we need to be aware of. The frost heave shifted the skirting that is below the end compartment which contributed to the shift in the doors.

The frost heave shifted the skirting under the end compartment. We’ll have to make adjustments in the spring.

We also have a Lunos air filter system with two vents on opposite ends of the house. Those vents were getting covered in ice and causing water to melt and drip off the vents on the inside. Oddly enough we found this only happens at a particular temperature but now we regularly remove the ice from the outside of the vents.

The vent to the left of the window is our Lunos air exchange. We have to watch for ice build up on it.

On the opposite side of the house we have another compartment where we store our propane tanks. We have heated blankets on them and they did just fine although we do have some frost heave on that end as well. We expected frost heave on our front porch which we added this fall but so far that has been just fine.

Our final problem came once the plumbing was all fixed. We discovered that the drain on our shower was frozen! We spent an evening pouring boiling salted water down it and by the next morning it was flowing freely. Last fall we had actually put heat trace on some of the plumbing drains below the house. We left the cord out and by the time we realized we needed to get it plugged in it was underneath four feet of snow! Rookie mistake that I am sure we will avoid next winter.

Somewhere under this snow is a plug in for the crawl space heat trace. Whoops!

In spite of this crisis we are still very happy in our tiny. Our hobbit stove keeps us toasty warm, the icicles dangling from our eaves are a work of art that amazes me every day. Our driveway is beautifully plowed, our tea is hot, and the sunrises fill our home with beautiful warm light every morning.

We have so much to be thankful for.

But today I am especially thankful for running water.