Your DIY Tiny House build should be light, well-insulated, strong, and waterproof. One factor that impacts on these things is the material you choose to use for your frame.
Here we explore a couple of options in the Australian market that you can choose from to construct your tiny house.
Steel framing
Steel is one of the best tiny house framing materials in Australia and many companies prefer it over composite and fridge panels. Steel is versatile and makes it easy to make additions such as a recess awning to the tiny house frame or extra storage space.
Steel framing is either bolted or welded to the subfloor making the structure firmer and it is also easier to run wires and cables through it. An affordable compromise is to use a cool room panel for the roof and floor and then use a steel frame on the walls.
All walls and internal structures like bed frames, couch frames, and benches etc can be framed with steel to help support the whole structure.
Cool room panel
Framing with cool room panels makes the tiny house structure extremely insulated, absolutely waterproof, self-supporting, and thin making it another good option. It is painless to work on as you only need to cut the panels to whatever size you want and then stick them together with poly glue.
Cutting door and window panels is effortless and the product has high span capabilities. The cool room panel is affordable and is purchased in a range of thicknesses and lengths. It is mostly recommended to use 50 mm thickness for the floor and 30-50 mm thickness on the walls. It is however difficult to run cables and wires through the walls of cool room panels.
Fibreglass composite panel
This material is quite similar to cool room panels but is lighter and can weigh 4-5 kg’s lighter per sqm2 than the cool room panels making it another great option for tiny house’s in Australia. This panel type however is more expensive and can only be custom made with all windows, doors, and other penetrations cut at the factory.
Its walls are usually made as single pieces then glued together by the buyer at home. This requires that you have a full wiring diagram before having the panels manufactured.
Fiberglass composite panel is an excellent insulator from weather elements, it is easy to maintain, and easy to repair.
Wood
If you are searching for a cost-friendly way to frame your tiny house then wood would be the way to go. Note that you will need to use new wood because it will serve as the skeleton of the tiny house and therefore must be sturdy and strong.
Some fine wood choices are fir, pine, and spruce as they are softwood trees that are planed and sawn into standardized dimensions for building. Cypress and cedar are other good sources of lumber that you can use because they are sturdy, lightweight, durable, and water-resistant.
Many tiny house owners have come to love constructing a natural and woodsy interior. You can use sheets of plywood to build the interior walls, floor, sides, and shelves as it is easy to purchase and transport from the hardware store. Birch plywood is particularly affordable and light in weight.
Conclusion
When it comes to framing your tiny house, these materials are some of the best we have to use here in Australia. Weigh up the pros and cons of each and choose whatever works best for you. At the end of the day, any of these can be used in the creation of your beautiful new house and home.
