Water management in tiny houses

Are you planning to build a Tiny House and wondering how to manage the water supply? Is it possible to make it completely independent of the public network, or on the contrary, allow it to be easily connected to it?

The good news is that anything is possible with this type ofnomadic habitat!

Different solutions are available, depending on your desire for independence and your need for comfort. In this article, we explain everything you need to know about supplying water to your little home on wheels.

Connected to the public grid like a conventional house

This is the most comfortable solution if you don’t want to anticipate your water consumption, transport and store it.

Thanks to a plumbing system identical to that of traditional houses, your Tiny House is connected to the public drinking water network.

Of course, the land on which you install your Tiny House must be designed for this purpose, otherwise you’ll have to carry out the connection work. If you don’t want to make your Tiny House totally sedentary and dependent on the public grid, you can also opt for a so-called “hybrid” solution: installing a tank with pump so you can move around freely! As soon as you feel like taking your Tiny somewhere else, fill up the tank and your nomadic home comes into its own!

Installing a water tank for nomadic living

As mentioned above, if you want to take your Tiny House with you without worrying about connecting it to the public network, you can install a water tank with a pump, to be filled regularly.

In this case, we advise you to take the time to consider its location, taking into account its size, weight and the noise caused by the pump when in use.

Please note! The larger the tank, the greater its storage capacity, but the more it will weigh on the Tiny House (which, as a reminder, must not exceed a total weight of 3.5 tonnes for circulation).

Lightweight housing for day-to-day living

You can also opt for the simplest possible solution: no connection, no water tank. The simplest way to manage water. Store a few cans or bottles of water where you need them: near the sink for washing up, in the bathroom for a gravity shower.

It’s a different way of consuming, of course. You use your water resources sensibly, avoid waste and live in total independence.

Be careful! With this type of water management, you need to be close to a source of fresh water… or to friendly neighbors!

It also involves transporting and regularly replenishing water. But it’s the simplest and most radical method if you want to live in total autarky and cut yourself off from the world for a few days, or even longer for the most convinced.

Using ingenuity to preserve resources

To go even further in water management in a Tiny House, you can also use low-tech, i.e. simple, economical and ecological techniques (the opposite of high-tech ^^) that will enable you to responsibly manage your water consumption.

When you consider that a French person consumes 148 liters of water per day at home, it’s easy to see why we should want to reduce this economic and ecological bill!

Let’s take the example of these 2 engineers from the Low-Tech Lab who have set themselves the goal of achieving a consumption of 30 L per person per day, using various solutions.

Start with your toilets, by installing dry toilets to save 20% of your water consumption (see our article The different types of dry toilets ).

Then there’s the shower. Did you know that your conventional shower accounts for 40% of your water consumption?

So these 2 engineers came up with a revolutionary shower prototype: a recycling shower! Using a closed-circuit system, this invention allows shower water to be filtered and reused ad infinitum. Still at the prototype stage, it will eventually reduce shower water consumption by a factor of 7 !(For full details of this Low-Tech Lab prototype here ).

You can alsorecover rainwater, simply by directing your Tiny House’s gutters into a reservoir.

So you can water your plants without wasting water and, if you’ve got stock, use the water to wash yourself, thanks to a completely natural treatment: oyster shells! Used by these engineers from the Low-Tech Lab, they remineralize the water and raise its PH level. And to make it drinkable, they simply use activated carbon !

All that’s left to do is make your choice according to your desires for your future Tiny House, and plan for its water supply. And don’t forget: water means sanitation! See our article on phytodepuration for ecological wastewater treatment.