Father Daughter Forced to Rebuild After Losing Tiny Home

These are two massive glass garage doors on either side of my main living space. When I'm ready to move my home, I can slide both of the decks in as I'm traveling with it and whenever I reach a destination, I can pull them out again. Upstairs is my daughter's loft bedroom. She's really comfortable up there in that space. It is a little loud. It's bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. This bed is actually on a wench. The bed lowers all the way down. Most recently, we've had a pretty horrible once-in-a-thousand-year flood. My tiny home on wheels did get decimated. Hey, I'm Ryan. Welcome to my tiny home on wheels. My daughter lives here. She's 14. My dog, Scarlet, lives here and I live here. Just the three of us. We've been living here in the tiny house for probably about a year and a half. The size of my tiny home is 8 feet wide by 29 feet long. The square footage on the inside is around 250 to 280 square feet, somewhere in there. That's including the loft space and I custom designed and built this place myself. I put in most of the labor myself and my friends and my family helped out as well. So the labor costs would have been significantly more expensive if I had hired someone to do this for me. This ended up costing me around $100,000 to design and build this thing. So as you walk into my house, you're walking underneath of my master bed up here. This is my living room space here and walk into my kitchen area. I've got a propane heater here. This is a propane-powered cooktop and stove. This is a secondary heat source of pellets. This is gravity-fed pellet stove, which works really, really well. I had a wood-burning stove, but I had to keep getting up during the night to restock it with wood because it's not very big. So this works out a lot better because it feeds it consistently through the evening. These counters I designed and I made them myself. They're actually 100-year-old red oak. I also burnt all of this wood so you can see the grain patterns in it. I really like that design. I've got a mini split up top, which is an electric heating source as well. Big old giant industrial sink here, which is amazing. I've got a full-size fridge on this side. I gotta have a full-size fridge. Upstairs is my daughter's loft bedroom. My daughter is 14 and she's really comfortable up there in that space. So surrounded by windows, a number of these are operable windows and open, and there's a drop-down ladder just in case she needs to get out. And then there's actually a bubble up on the top of the ceiling and she can stick her head out the top of the bubble and look out all the way around the house. So it's kind of like a fun little treehouse space up here for her. She really loves it. Then she's got her privacy, all of her space back here for all of her clothes and essential items. And then this is my bathroom. I've got a sliding door that I designed in there. And as you come into the bathroom space, got a full-size shower. As you can see, I still have some trim left to do, but I do have a really nice rain showerhead here and a regular showerhead on the other side. This is not tile. This is a fake tile, but it's a lot lighter. I've got a stackable washer and dryer here. This is a propane-operated washer and dryer. And then this is my propane heater right here on the wall. Really easy access. And then I've got a really nice little sink corner over here with a mirror. And yeah, easy to be able to brush your teeth and stuff. And the door also locks, which is nice. Yeah. Hi. So that's my bathroom. I also really love the tiny pieces. So this countertop actually continues to go through. And I sliced it in here. The perfect way for the sink to be able to fit. We are parked currently about 20 minutes outside of Asheville, North Carolina. I am right on the Ivy River. So being parked on the Ivy River is absolutely beautiful. I can throw a stone from my front porch and get it in the creek. But it also is really scary. Most recently, we've had a pretty horrible once-in-a-thousand-year flood called Hurricane Helene. Take a look at the creek out here. That's a little Ivy River right there. I've never ever in my life seen it that high. That is absolutely insane. When Helene hit, it flooded not only my tiny home on wheels, but it also flooded my parents' 130-year-old farmhouse that I grew up in. Pretty much anything along the Ivy River got either completely destroyed and washed away or flooded so badly that it needed to be torn down or completely gutted and renovated. My tiny home on wheels luckily did not wash away. But it did get decimated. I mean, the water got probably a couple of inches high inside, which doesn't sound like much, but it's not a good thing to have it sitting in water. We had a lot of volunteers. My background is construction management. And so I was able to manage the volunteers and the donations and focus the last year on repairing my parents' houses as well as my own. And even though this is sitting on blocks and didn't wash away, I had to completely tear out the entire bottom floor and then rebuild everything from the frame of the trailer up. So that cost a lot of money. But I'm living here again, which is great. And now I'm trying to find a place to move this tiny home that's safer because every time that it storms, you know, that trauma comes up. And I get really stressed because I'm really worried that it's going to happen again. So eventually, we hope to raise enough money that I can find another piece of property that's safer to park my tiny home away from the Ivy. OK, so I'm going to move from the bathroom over to the living room and show you guys my main living space and my master bedroom. I have eight foot wide walls here. The curtains open, which these are two massive glass garage doors on either side of my main living space. Works out really well in the summertime, especially because these can both lift and they lift over each other like that. My friend is a garage door guy, and he said he's never put garage doors in this tight of a space in his career. So the way that they lift is perfect. They almost lift all the way up and you can walk out without hitting your head. This is a TV stand. I actually compiled this Frankenstein style out of like five or six different parts and pieces of TV lifts. And the way that it works is it actually the TV locks into place like this. It's slow, but the TV lifts all the way up to the ceiling. So the couch, this is like a seating spot up here, you know, but this bed is actually on a wench that resides in the frame of the wall back here. And so the way that this wench works is it goes up and out of the way of these. These actually keep it from having tension on the rope the entire time. Once those are up and out of the way, the bed lowers all the way down. Hop on up in here. And it's pretty sweet because I have these windows, which are both operable. So if it gets too hot out, you can open both of these up and it lets air breeze through the entire house. So that's really amazing in the summertime as well to be able to get the airflow moving through. These ropes are a lot of fun for doing all kinds of really awesome things up in this bed. Yeah, so I love my bed very much. It's a California king size bed as well, which is pretty cool because lots of people can hang out up here. And then the TV, when it lowers down and faces this direction, it's kind of like you're in a little movie theater or something. And then I use these climbing holds to be able to open this. And these are hydraulics, which hold this up. And then this is my master closet right here. So this is like pretty much all the clothes that I need, you know, and closes down. This thing is probably like 800, 1000 pounds. Whenever I want to have company over and I'm not using it, it's Bluetooth. It's the only Bluetooth powered wench available. Well, when I designed this place anyway. And so I could just push a button on my phone, lift this sucker all the way up, flip these down, lower it down. And then the tension is off of the rope and it's being held by the pullouts on the wall. Between inside and outside of a house is so extremely important. So to be able to go from the inside to the outside easily without a whole lot of trouble makes the space feel so much more livable. The first thing that I'll show you is this is actually an aluminum deck right here. And this deck is operable. There's a cavity underneath of my main living space. So it slides in. There's another aluminum deck on the other side and it also slides in. So that way, when I'm ready to move my home, I can slide both of the decks in as I'm traveling with it. And whenever I reach a destination, I can pull them out again and still be able to enjoy the outside deck experience wherever I'm at. This was all built after Hurricane Helene hit. When the volunteers were here and donated materials, they decided to build this as an extra part of my home, which is incredible to be able to hang out outside during the rain. It's beautiful. It's wonderful space. And I just built this a number of days ago. You know, basically when you've got a tiny home, it's nice to have extra space to be able to store things. So I put a gutter system on here. That's a used gutter from another house. But, you know, a lot of rain comes off whenever it's raining out and it pretty much drenches you as you're walking in and out. But with that gutter system, it takes care of that completely. So this is the mini split and this is the tongue. I have solar panels on top. Those were donated, believe it or not, by Amish solar company. And I was amazed because I didn't know that Amish had anything to do with electricity whatsoever. But apparently if it's solar, they're OK with it. And so they installed a number of solar panels on my roof. The solar panels come down and they go into this is what's called a doghouse. And the doghouse is only accessible from the outside of the tiny home. But this is where all the essentials lie. I've got two propane tanks here. And this is actually a switch so I can go back and forth between the two. So that way, when one propane tank runs out, I can switch it over to the other one and have time to go refill that one. On this side, I have a diesel heater. This is extremely convenient. That's emergency backup heating for my house. It is a little loud. It's bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. But, you know, you can fall asleep to it, especially if it's warm inside and not freezing. This is where the vent comes out for the diesel heater and the air intake for the diesel heater. And then this is grid power. This is where my main power line comes in. And I'll show you the solar setup over here. I've got three doors on this so I can access it from any side. This is the inverter right here. And this is the solar battery right here. Right now, I only have one. Really, I probably need like three or four to be able to power this for long enough in between power outages. But this gets us by with bare essentials. And yeah, right now it's mainly used for emergency backup. So I'm not pulling from the solar power unless the power goes out to the house. We get caught up and sold on this idea of the more stuff you have, the more important you are, the more successful you are, the better a person you are, the more attractive you are. But the truth is that stuff isn't fulfilling. I feel like a true life is lived in the moment. And whenever you have a smaller space, it gets you out of the space. You're not trapped inside of your house all the time. So it completely changes your lifestyle. And I think that's the biggest benefit to living in a tiny home is it's not just about the house. It's about how you live your life. And I would rather have a life lived outside under the sunshine than inside of a house. I'm trying to raise enough money to find a piece of property close by here to be able to move my tiny home away from the river so I don't have to worry about it getting flooded again. Hopefully, you can help. Honestly, $1, $10 will be a huge impact on our GoFundMe page. If you can share it and pitch in, that would be really greatly appreciated.