After leveling your small home trailer, it's time to lay the foundation for the walls, roof, flooring, and almost everything else. This book will teach you how to frame your foundation, including the subfloor, sheathing, and flashing.
What exactly is a Tiny House Subfloor?
The subfloor's role is to provide structural support for completed flooring.
A portion of the flooring is already constructed into tiny house trailers. The cross elements serve as joists and provide a platform for installing subflooring sheathing.
This characteristic of a small house trailer removes the need for extra joist building, saving labor and decreasing the total weight of a tiny home.
Subfloor Flashing should be installed
Attach aluminum or galvanized steel flashing to the bottom of your trailer or flooring.
Subfloor flashing offers two functions. It serves as a basis for underfloor insulation and acts as a barrier to keep debris from entering your house when a small home is being transported.
As an alternative, some manufacturers provide pre-attached and pre-painted flashing. If so, go with this choice!
I have many regrets about not having it properly installed since it took me much too long and cost far too much money to get a mediocre finish. Don't allow this to happen to you!
If you don't have a choice or choose to do it yourself, you must wear construction gloves and safety goggles to prevent your hands and eyes from being cut by metal flashing.
After cutting the flashing to the length of your trailer using a sheet metal shear, use an impact driver to drive metal screws into the flashing to secure it to the trailer's bottom.
Every 6 inches, overlap two rows of flashing and fasten them both to the trailer frame with metal screws.
Simply roll and cut the flashing to the required length before gluing it to the hardwood flooring. Then attach them together using metal-to-wood screws.
Finally, cover any seams and gaps with metal foil tape to keep insects and debris out of your subfloor.
Hot Tip: Use Irwin Bar Clamps to temporarily hold the flashing to the trailer while you attach it. This will expedite the installation procedure.
Subfloor Insulation
Insulation effectiveness is assessed by its insulation value, sometimes known as the R-value. The greater the R-value, the thicker the insulation, and the greater the heat resistance.
Simply cut the insulation to length using an insulation knife to install Rockwool insulation. You must cut the insulation 1 inch thicker than the area you are attempting to fill.
For example, if the width and length of the area you want to insulate are 14′′ x 46′′, you must trim the insulation to 14.5′′ x 46.5′′ to fit snugly into the space.
R-23 Our trailer's cross members were completely insulated with rockwool insulation. We completed the installation in a matter of hours.
Install Subfloor Sheathing
You must avoid thermal bridging between the trailer deck and the subfloor sheathing before installing the sheathing.
The transport of heat along the route of least resistance is referred to as thermal bridging. In our situation, we wish to use thermal-bridging to avoid heat loss through the flooring during the winter.
Install an insulating gap between the trailer deck and the subfloor sheathing to achieve this. Let's go through how to set it up.
Subfloor Sheathing
Cut 3/4′′ 4′ x 8′ T&G plywood or OSB to the length required. To prevent waste and save money, use as many full pieces of OSB as feasible.
When two pieces of plywood meet, use 1/8′′ gap spacers to leave a 1/8′′ gap. Alternatively, you may introduce a 1/8′′ gap using the edge of a Speed Square.
To attach everything together, drive wood-to-metal screws into the plywood, insulating foam, and trailer metal frame.
Screws should be positioned 12 inches apart on the inside and 6 inches apart on the outside.
This video provides an excellent visual picture of installing subfloor sheathing. We must use wood-to-metal fasteners instead of normal screws to secure the sheathing to the trailer frame.
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