Are Tiny Houses Safe? Common Concerns & Tips

Getting a big house is not always an option for people working on a budget, so they often stress out when picking the best option for them. Tiny houses are a more approachable option, as they are more affordable than other properties. Are tiny houses safe? This page has all the answers.  

Dive into this page to know how safe tiny houses truly are, as well as a few concerns and tips you should consider before moving out to one. This is a page that everyone looking forward to living in a tiny house should read.  

You can visit the Autonomous website to read more blog posts about tiny houses or other topics such as ergonomics or office work. There are many ergonomic products and office furniture available there, too. 

Importance of Safety in Small Houses

Downsizing doesn’t mean moving out to an unsafe place that has fewer safety features than the property where you used to live before. Address safety as a priority, not a disposable function your house can have. How can you move out to a place that doesn’t ensure your health and well-being?  

You need to live in a place where you can rest assured nothing will happen to you, and if you don’t feel that safe in your house, moving out should be your main priority. If you don’t live in a safe place, you may have to spend some money to pay its consequences in the future.  

Whether you live in a prebuilt ADU or a garden shed, there are a few things you can invest in to make sure it’s a safer place for you. These are a few of the considerations you should take into account when talking about tiny house security:    

Fire Safety

Fire safety is one of the most essential things to take care of when you move to a tiny house. You may say house fires only happen to people who are not careful enough, but they are more common than you think.  

The problem with house fires is that they often spread quickly in tiny home communities, which, in extreme cases, could burn the whole community down. No one wants that, so most tiny houses are designed with fire safety in mind. Try to avoid options that don’t take enough measures to prevent fires.  

If you live in a prefab garden room or small guest house, you only need to worry about ensuring your tiny home safety, but things are different if you live in a tiny home community. In that case, you should make sure all the homes in the community are fire-resistant.

Structural Safety

Investing in a property with structural tiny home safety won’t help you avoid more common accidents, such as fires, but it’s surely something your tiny house needs. If you buy a tiny house with poor structure, your home will fall down whenever you face severe weather conditions.  

Moreover, you may need to spend a lot of money on repairs and maintenance due to the issues of having a bad structure. The severe weather conditions we mentioned before just speed up the process, but a house with no structural safety won’t last a lot of time unless you invest enough money to make it safe. 

If you want to avoid this problem, you can buy home office pods that tell you all the structural specs you need to know about the tiny house or get as much information as you can get about your house’s construction project. Either way, try to know the materials they use for the property.  

The main benefit of buying a prefab studio is that most of the high-quality options on the market comply with the legal regulations most states have on ADUs. Thanks to that, you won’t need to worry about getting in trouble with the law. Don’t buy prefab room additions that don’t offer this or haven’t checked the state regulations.   

Keeping an eye on all those things may seem a nuisance, but it ensures the house has a decent resale value in the future. Hence, it’s a decent investment in the long run.

Environmental Safety

Although we already mentioned how severe weather conditions can affect a house with poor structural tiny house safety, environmental safety goes beyond just structural problems. You need your house to be weather-resistant, especially if you live in an area where heavy rain or high snow loads are common.  

However, environmental safety doesn’t only talk about staying safe from severe weather conditions but also about making sure your house doesn’t harm the environment. Tiny houses are built with fewer resources than big ones, but that doesn’t mean they can’t use eco-friendly materials to reduce carbon footprints.  

If you want to take care of our planet, the best you can do is buy a tiny house made of eco-friendly materials. Tiny home security is not only about taking care of ourselves but also of our surroundings.

Security

All the other things we just mentioned are related to how small prefab cottages are built and the materials that people use for them, but it’s useless to buy a tiny house made of the finest materials if you are still in danger of getting robbed all day. Investing in tiny home safety and security is essential to keep you and your loved ones safe in a dangerous area.  

This situation becomes a higher priority if you live in an area with high crime rates, as you are in a more dangerous place than other tiny home communities. Try to pay for a decent tiny house security system and get smart locks. That will help you keep robbers away, even if they want to get into your property.  

If you see the problem worsening, you could hire a security guard to watch the place when you sleep. That will let everyone in the community feel safer.

Are Tiny Home Communities Safe?

Tiny home communities can be safe, but not all of them are. The reason for that is that you and the community leaders need to follow certain criteria before deciding if you can add a new house or if the community can sustain itself in the first place.  

Everyone should know that tiny house safety depends on the owners of the place, so they can’t just expect to buy a random affordable backyard ADU without reading the specs and hoping that it’s a good product. Everyone needs to keep a close eye on the design the whole community will have, the resources they will use, and the materials they will use for the construction.   

The same happens when talking about the security of the place itself. You should invest in a decent security system and security measures for the whole community. Since tiny homes are smaller than actual houses, they are more exposed to floods and other natural disasters.  

Hence, the community should also have other security measures to ensure the safety of all community members in case of a natural disaster and a good evacuation plan in case of emergencies.

How to Make Sure Tiny Houses Are Safe?

Are tiny houses really safe? Now that you know why tiny houses need to be safe, you may wonder how to make them that way. The truth is that there are many things you can do to keep a tiny home community or single backyard bar shed safe. As we just mentioned, having a decent evacuation plan and paying security guards to watch the area is always a good idea.  

However, there are other essential practices people can’t miss to ensure the safety of the owners of prefab ADUs. You shouldn’t ever miss those practices, as more than tips, they are requisites all owners should meet before buying a new property.  

We know that ensuring the safety of a tiny house can be time-consuming, but if you study the money you save if you buy an affordable backyard studio instead of a house, you’ll see it’s all worth it.  

Ensuring Fire Safety

You can do many things to ensure your house is safe from fires. The first of them is installing proper smoke detectors. They should be in each bedroom and level of the tiny house to keep all places covered. 

Smoke detectors will tell you when something’s on fire, but they don’t help you stop the fire. Thus, you need a few fire extinguishers for your house. Knowing how to handle a fire extinguisher will keep fires from spreading throughout the community if they haven’t got too big yet.  

Faulty wiring is one of the main causes of home fires, so hire an electrician to make sure all the wiring in your house is working as it should and doesn’t put you at risk of a house fire in the future. Regardless of that, you should always have clear escape routes in case you can’t stop the fire with an extinguisher. 

Ensuring Structural Safety

As we mentioned before, ensuring structural safety is something you need to do before buying an ADU, as it includes things related to the construction of the house itself. You can’t change the materials of a house that is already made of poor-quality ones.  

Your goal is to get a prefab ADU made of sturdy and resistant materials that won’t give you any problems in the short term. However, you should keep in mind that the quality of the materials is not the only factor you should consider when getting a new tiny house.  

The weight of the materials is also an essential part of the process. Lightweight materials are ideal for houses that will be used with transportation in mind or that need a small footprint. They will help you keep the tiny house safety even if you move it to another place.  

Picking an option made of eco-friendly materials is also an excellent idea. Bamboo and recycled resources are excellent for the job. If the house you are going to buy says it uses non-toxic materials, you should consider it as a strong option. The same applies if they are chemical-free. 

Although this is not directly related to the structural safety of the ADU itself, the materials used for the house and its design have to comply with the building codes and safety requirements for tiny houses in your state.  

Ask a contractor to tell you the main requirements and regulations you should know before buying an ADU. That will prepare you to tell apart legal and trustworthy providers from others that don’t care about the state safety regulations.  

Finding a decent option can be difficult, though. The reason for that is that you may find the perfect ADU to find out it complies with other states’ safety requirements and not yours.

Ensuring Environmental Safety

When you live in a tiny house, you have fewer ways of damaging the environment than owners of big houses. However, that also means you may have more eco-safety problems in the future.  

Issues such as mold, exposure to hazardous materials, and moisture buildup will become huge ordeals if you don’t manage them on time. We recommend that you keep your house clean from day one, invest in a decent ventilation system, and get a dehumidifier to keep the air clean too.   

Ensuring Security

Are modular homes safe from robbers? The risk of burglary in certain areas is highly concerning, and you can’t just sleep knowing there are high chances of another person breaking into your house and sealing your belongings. Hence, decent tiny house security features are the best investment you can make when you move out to a tiny home.  

We recommend that you install smart locks that only you can unlock at night. Get security cameras to keep an eye on everything that happens near your house while you sleep. Monitor sensors can help you with that. Besides all that, paying security guards to watch your house is the best measure you can take to stay safe.

Bottom Line

Are tiny houses safe? Yes, but you are the one in charge of making them safe in the first place. You are good to go if you follow all the tips we mentioned on this page. However, we recommend that you buy the pods available on the Autonomous website, as most of them already have most of the features we mentioned on this page.  

The best part of buying those pods is that they are more affordable than many of the tiny houses available on the market, so you won’t have to spend a fortune on them. Visit the Autonomous website to get more information on the matter.