Compost pile hot tub water heater

For a Tiny House on wheels you don’t have to concern yourself with municipality regulations for waste water treatment, you need to look into highway regulations, and the systems would be quite different than with houses. It can be a pretty complicated set up, so rather than doing it piecemeal, your best option is probably a turnkey engineered greywater system specifically designed for tiny houses and RVs. For more design and building tips see this page - 

How to build a tiny house for cold climates 

You might also consider a dry composting toilet to reduce water consumption and just send your remaining grey and black water to a holding tank and empty it as you would any RV, at a campground facility. I will reach out to some of the tiny house builders we know and see if we can come up with some ideas for you, but in the meantime,  I would check with any tiny house builders you can find one locally, or RV services. Glad you enjoy the site!

If you’ve got that big a house on a slab then we would say yes, it’s a good idea to have two tanks to service individual sides of the house. And it won’t cost a whole lot more to have two smaller tanks rather than one big one. It would certainly cut down on energy loss and wasted water in not having to feed hot water from a long distance.

The upfront cost of heat pump water heaters would be quite a burden, so I wouldn’t do that for both, but maybe for one of them if one side of the house will have the majority of use.

 We would also caution you not to get too enamoured with ‘tankless and on demand water heaters’, they have their place, but when running off well water there is an increased risk of them breaking down if there is high mineral content in the water. I installed one in my own house (it was not cheap) and it only lasted about 3 years until a coil burnt out and I had to switch it out for a standard water heater.

Here are our pages about home water efficiency, choosing low-flow fixtures and toilets, water-efficient showerheads and heat pump water heaters. You should also fix dripping faucets (or leaking taps in the UK) using our comprehensive guide. If you are looking to improve your overall home efficiency and you have the budget to do it, our favourite heat pump water heater is the SANC02 (see here). It is the most efficient, but as you may have guessed it is also the most expensive!