Thinking about going full time: weird questions

Towable RVs tend to look and feel "flimsy" because they are lightly constructed to enable moving them around constantly with light-duty tow vehicles, and to reach price points that makes them accessible to buyers. There are better-built RVs, at much higher prices, and they have quite low sales volumes. Even with the better RVs, there are compromises for weight control and mobile use, compared to manufactured housing. They also have to be self contained, so that you can park anywhere and live in them.

Tiny houses, even when built on wheels, are more often built using permanent housing construction methods and materials, and thus might be several times heavier for the same floor space (and are usually lofted for additional living space. These are meant to be moved to a semi-permanent or permanent location by more capable tow vehicles. What utilities they have, relationship to infrastructure, varies a lot with the owner-builder intentions, some are just little houses fully on the grid, and at the other end of the scale they can be totally off-grid and back to 17th century lifestyle, or anything in between.

Manufactured housing, descendant from the house trailer and mobile home, is built to HUD standards for permanent occupancy. This makes them much heavier than RVs (especially considering the HUD standard includes a minimum size) and more standardized than tiny houses with respect to facilities and performance. They are meant to be put on location by a fairly large tow vehicle (or team of tow vehicles for double-wides) and hooked up to power, water and sewer like a stick-built house.

Park model RV is kind of a odd duck. Most are at maximum size for a RV, some cross over into manufactured housing sizes by stretching the meaning of the HUD rules. They are usually heavier than a "normal" RV of similar size and often require specialty towing. You will find a spectrum of features ranging from RV facilities for long term hookup at a RV park to mobile home facilities for permanent hookup in a mobile home community. They are almost always built to RV construction standards, intended for part-time use, or short term use, but they can do pretty well in less stressful climate conditions.

Park models, instead of mobile homes, are often used for temporary housing at remote work locations because they are light enough to be moved to the next job site after a few months or a few years. You can run into trouble with housing code enforcement if you try to use park models or even smaller RVs as permanent homes. It can also be difficult dealing with power companies and water districts, and the folks that have to enforce sewage disposal standards, if you try siting a RV as a house.

But tiny home folks have to deal with these same issues, or sometimes even putting a mobile home on a remote site. So it can be important for planning, and choosing, that you learn about the regulatory situation at your place of interest.

If you are not moving around, you are not really full time RVing, but this is probably the best place to ask your questions.

I think your final plan of buying a mobile home is ideal for you at this time. Save your money and when you have more time to travel then start looking at RVs. A 'tiny house' is not for traveling, nor is a Park Model. Neither one of those has holding tanks. They are meant to be connected to a sewage system so you wouldn't be traveling with them.

Well yall done got me thinking.

About us: Im 33, shes younger than me. We're starting out in the world and have both good credit and some funds available, as well as land, which we're hoping to parlay into a life together.

The initial idea was to get an RV of sorts, because we both LOVE the tiny house thing people are doing, but we would prefer to have something a little more immediate and dont necessarily need a custom deal to live in.

A few months ago, I went to look into an RV for myself and came across a new Montana if I recall, for under $30k (I believe it was a 30-35fter). I almost got it then but life intervened sadly and I missed the shot. While out looking today, we saw a lot of nice campers but nothing with that good of a deal and NONE were as home like as the one I had seen months prior.

When yall suggested I look into the park models since they seemed to fit perfectly the plan (something that COULD be moved if we decided, they looked like those tiny houses but prefabbed and perfect) we had in mind, but alas no one locally has any to look at.

On the way home from lunch, we passed 2 mobile home lots, one which was exceedingly helpful and we got prices on NICE mobile homes for under/at $50k, and while they rule out the potential for travel they do offer more space/better livability.


At first, the idea was to get the RV so we could live now while working towards the dream home or travelling, but the more I look and we talk the more it seems we're going to start trying to find a place to call home first and work on the traveling later.


If anyone has any suggestions on places to look at the park models near charleston SC please let me know, they havent been ruled out just yet!!!

As someone else said rv's mostly don't have good insulation. You need to do a lot of research on which ones are better insulated. An older quality used unit like a Travel Supreme, Drv Mobile Suite, Excel may be good choices for you. Since you have been homeless a lot I would assume funding may be an issue. Park models or a smaller mobile home may be an option but there would be the costs of moving them. You might give us a little more info as to what you want to spend on a living unit. We may be able to offer more suggestions.

You may want to look at some floor plans, a typical RV has only 300 or so sq ft living space. A park model maybe 600. A single wide manufactured home 1,000 square feet. You need to check first with your local zoning board, see what is allowed to be placed on your land. Even if no zoning, you still may have trouble with sanitary codes, there should be some sort of county or regional environmental engineer who can help you. As for power, bringing power to your land can be expensive, depends how far away from the road you are.
As NCWriter said, sounds like you are planning to live in one area, an RV may not be your best option. Welcome to the forum, lots of great folks here.

Sounds like you plan to live in one spot permanently. You might want to look at "park models" which are designed to stay in one place but can be moved, assuming you have permitted hookups for water, electric and sewage on the property.

An RV is designed for frequent highway travel so there are costs and compromises. The electricity cost of heat and cooling in any type RV also could be higher than in a building. And if anything breaks down (toilet, slide out room, window, fridge, etc) the cost of parts, repair or replacement is generally quite high for an RV compared to a building.

Bed length: std queen is 80 inches, but RV is only 74 inches. However some RV makers offer std length in some models. And some with short beds have room to upgrade with a full length mattress.

I reinforced the plywood under the bed in our RV with a plywood upgrade pretty cheaply.

RoyB wrote:
Some State counties have issues with land being made ready for use of just trailers. Used to you could live in a trailer temporarily while building a house but that is all but gone these modern days..

You may not be able to get a HOME OCCUPATION PERMIT especially in the disposal of sewer just for trailers. Our local county here does not allow a person to live in a trailer home except at designated trailer Courts for instance... We are allowed however to park our RV on our property and connect shore power lines to the house/garage. Have never checked on legally installing sewer lines to the trailer. I suspect that would required a Home Occupation Permit from the County.

Even having Electric brought into the area and terminated to a single pole on the property may not work as well... You may have to terminate Electric into a permanent building of some sort. I suspect getting an official 911 legal address will also be very hard to get as well with something like this...

Just something to check on before spending lots of money and later finding out you can't legally live in it as a permanent home...

Some folks will tell you to do it anyway but everytime I do something quasi-illegal I always seem to meet up with something called KARMA and it costs me alot more monies and headaches... Best to check all of this out first before moving in...

Just saying...
Roy Ken

X1, great suggestions that could save you a lot legal hassels and $$$$$:)

New full timer?
Just some general questions that might help narrow down your choices.
1. What are your possible general RV travel plans? Plan on moving around every month or so? Plan to staying in one location for 6 months or longer at a time? In general, if you plan on traveling around quite a bit then you should be looking at a more upper end $$$ RV. If your RV is going to only move a few times a year, then you could get by with a lower priced RV. The more your RV is going to be moving around the country, the more substantial your RV should be. If I were going to full time RV, I would be looking at a Class A, Class C or a 5th wheel with 3 slides and not necessarily in that order but rather at which one meets the greatest number of my travel plans.
2. Which parts of the country are you most frequently planning to RV in? The general weather conditions should be a strong consideration as to the quality of your RV choices. The more severe/colder weather conditions, the more substantial the RV should be. You might want to consider an RV that has heat pump. RV's in general are not the most well insulated units.
3. I would be looking at used RV's that are 5 yrs. or less old. The prices will generally much lower than if you buy a new one.
4. Those "little house on wheels" make no sense to me primarily because the people that build them tend to focus on the house structure and less on the frame, axels, plumbing etc etc. The weight of the Little House will dictate what type of vehicle you will need to tow it with trailers or 5th wheels. The answers to these questions should help you at least narrow some of your choices.

Some State counties have issues with land being made ready for use of just trailers. Used to you could live in a trailer temporarily while building a house but that is all but gone these modern days..

You may not be able to get a HOME OCCUPATION PERMIT especially in the disposal of sewer just for trailers. Our local county here does not allow a person to live in a trailer home except at designated trailer Courts for instance... We are allowed however to park our RV on our property and connect shore power lines to the house/garage. Have never checked on legally installing sewer lines to the trailer. I suspect that would required a Home Occupation Permit from the County.

Even having Electric brought into the area and terminated to a single pole on the property may not work as well... You may have to terminate Electric into a permanent building of some sort. I suspect getting an official 911 legal address will also be very hard to get as well with something like this...

Just something to check on before spending lots of money and later finding out you can't legally live in it as a permanent home...

Some folks will tell you to do it anyway but everytime I do something quasi-illegal I always seem to meet up with something called KARMA and it costs me alot more monies and headaches... Best to check all of this out first before moving in...

Just saying...
Roy Ken