'It's no small ordeal to build your own home,' Okanagan tiny home workshop shows you how to do it
Anyone feeling pinched out of homeownership in the Okanagan can always sign up for a Tiny House Workshop in Vernon.
For those who are used to living in a regular-sized house, instructor Kenton Zerbin said the biggest adjustment they have to make is conscientiously deciding what their life is going to be about.
“What do you want your home and lifestyle to be about? Tiny houses are about making those compromises and doing away with what you don’t need,” he said.
For example, Zerbin points out how many full-sized homes have a dining room that only gets used a handful of times each year for special meals.
As an Albertan, he’s well aware of how cold Canadian winters can get so he built his two-bedroom 260-square-foot home to be efficient. He said he only paid $260 to heat for an entire year.
Being able to entertain guests is important to Zerbin, so he built his tiny home with kitchen and breakfast bar that can seat up to eight once a bench has been unfolded.
READ MORE: Uptick in tiny home sales continue amid Okanagan housing crunch
He has two upstairs lofts, one with a queen sized bed and one with a double, and both have their own closet. The home has tanks for 2,000 litres of water, a bathroom with a shower, it’s 28-feet long, eight-feet wide and there’s a big comfy couch.
Zerbin’s tiny home adheres to building codes across Canada as a recreation vehicle.
But there is no clear definition as to what a tiny house is, he said, adding that many tiny home are built within a grey area of the law. Regulations are inconsistent between municipalities and provinces, so part of his workshop teaches how to navigate the rules in whichever jurisdictions is being explored.
This will be the third workshop Zerbin hosts in Vernon. While he teaches them all across Canada, he feels like there is a greater appreciation for sustainability, minimalism and conscientious living in B.C. and finds himself being drawn here more than any other province.
Zerbin used to be a public school teacher, but said students need to be taught how to live more efficiently in their physical world, and feels like the education system is failing them by neglecting to do so. For the past eight years he has been hosting tiny house workshops.
He’s enthusiastic about doing his part to help mitigate the impact of human-caused climate change and is very serious about the dire consequences of not addressing it.
“Humans aren’t thriving right now – we know that,” he said. “At the end of the day we have to face the music and ask if we’re a parasite or not. And right now we’re destroying our host… our host is trying to throw us off the same way a fever tries to rid our bodies of an illness.”
Zerbin’s workshops have drawn attendees from as young as 13 to people of retirement age. Many are just curious about tiny homes while others are serious about making it happen.
The weekend-long workshop takes place from May 27 to 29. It costs $400 until early bird prices end on April 29.
Somebody serious about building their own tiny home can expect to pay at least $40,000 to $80,000 in supplies, he said, although it's difficult to gauge because of the recent instability of global markets. Tiny home owners can expect to pay about double the cost of supplies to have a professional build it for them.
"It's no small ordeal to build your own home."
Zerbin said his 260 square foot home cost $88,000 in supplies.
"Some people say the cost per square foot seems expensive, but you're reducing the size of your house, not its function."
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