Thursday 31 July 2014

Moving Days!

Moving a tiny house for the first time is a stressful experience, and to top it off I was starting a job as soon as I arrived.
When I attached the tiny house to my truck the truck's rear wheels looked ready to pop.  The trailer tires didn't look much better.  It was pretty late so i decided to sleep on the problem.  The next morning I called around and came up with a new plan.
Trip 1
Truck loaded with the washing machine and batteries would pull a trailer loaded with my second vehicle which would also be filled with stuff.
Trip 2 Calgary -> Okanagan
Rented 1 ton pickup would bring the rented trailer back to Kelowna
Trip 3 Okanagan -> Calgary
Rented 1 ton would pull the tiny house to Calgary

Feeling a lot more confident about the move I departed on the first trip.  I checked my axle weights and found out I was carrying too much weight on the trucks rear axle.  This was solved by moving the batteries into the trunk of my second vehicle.  The rest of the trip went well except for my headlights being a little high.
I slept in the truck at a visitors center and made it into to the property around noon.  With unloading the car and getting the rental sorted I was 5 hours behind my schedule.  I was able to make up a little bit of time returning to the Okanagan with the empty trailer.  I finally made it to bed around 2 am.
I was up early the next morning to finish cleaning the place that I was leaving. I still had to get the rear bumper and lights done.  I pulled the house into the main parking area to weld the bumper and I was already impressed with how well the rental truck handled the weight.

By 3pm I was on the road back to Calgary, the Tiny house handled really well.  I did keep my speed around 80 to 90 km/h (50 to 55mph).  I averaged 25L/100kms (9.5mpg)for the trip, that's 1 liter of diesel every 4 kms!  The truck handled the weight no problem including going up and down the steep mountain passes.  The only problem was the trailer axles where loaded with 9500lbs, far heavier than I expected.
I arrived at the site at 2:00am and proceeded to position the house and unload the rental.  By the time I returned the truck and crawled into bed it was 5:00am giving me a whole hour of sleep before starting my new job.


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