The Ultimate Tiny House on Wheels Setup Guide

The day your custom tiny home gets delivered is an electrifying milestone! You’ve navigated the journey of selecting a modern design, sorted out your financing options, and chosen a stunning location in Australia for your new tiny lifestyle. But the arrival of the tiny home is just the start. The next important phase is setting up your new dwelling for stable, comfortable, and potentially off-grid living.

Whether your goal is a personal sanctuary, a great tiny house Airbnb investment, or a charming backyard tiny house for family, here is your essential guide to transforming that delivery into a perfectly positioned, fully connected, and certified home.

Positioning, Foundations, and Delivery Logistics

The first step is placing your tiny house on its final spot. This requires careful planning before the delivery truck rolls up.

Site Preparation: The Essential Groundwork

Before delivery, your site needs to be prepped. This typically involves clearing and levelling the chosen area.

• Access Route: Crucially, the access road must be wide enough (a minimum of 3m) and high enough (4.3m clearance) for the transport vehicle and the home itself. Overhanging branches or tight corners must be addressed beforehand.
• The Landing Pad: While not always required, a flat, level area is preferred. Many tiny homes on wheels simply sit on compacted crusher dust or road base, with concrete pads placed beneath the stabilising landing legs and the wheels for maximum support.

Foundations: Securing Your Home

Even though your home is on a trailer (making it a movable tiny home), once it’s in place, you need to secure and level it.

• Tiny House on Wheels: The foundation is the steel trailer chassis itself. Stabilising jacks or adjustable piers are deployed at each of the four corners to help level the home. The tiny house’s weight is supported by the wheels, with the stabilisers simply ensuring the home sits level and steady once parked. A final and essential step is often the installation of tie-down systems, securing the home to the ground, which is vital for compliance and safety. For a more permanent look, you may choose to attach a deck and skirting to hide the trailer base and removable drawbar.
• Class 1a Tiny Houses: For tiny homes that are intended to remain in one place for longer periods — such as granny flats, secondary dwellings, or Class 1a council-approved tiny homes — the installation process often mirrors that of a small traditional dwelling. These transportable tiny homes are typically positioned on a system of concrete piers or blocks, providing a stable and level foundation while still keeping the structure technically moveable. On more challenging or sloped sites, a steel footing system may be used to achieve proper height, balance, and engineering compliance.

This approach offers the best of both worlds: the flexibility of a movable structure and the stability required for a comfortable, long-term living setup. It also helps meet council expectations for Class 1a buildings, ensuring the home is safely supported, well-ventilated underneath, and protected from moisture. Once the footings are in place, the tiny home is craned or manoeuvred onto position, levelled, secured, and connected to services — creating a long-lasting, compliant, and comfortable living solution.

Crane Hire: When is it Needed?

For most standard deliveries of a tiny house on wheels, a specialist tow truck or delivery vehicle will tow the house right into its spot—no crane needed!

Crane hire is required if:

If you are concerned about access to your Queensland tiny houses or any other site nationally, rest assured that our specialist team will cover this during the pre-build site assessment. They can do a desktop site assessment to determine the best (and most affordable) delivery method.

Connecting the Services

This is where your tiny structure truly becomes a functioning home, connecting you to power, water, and waste management.

Power: Plug-and-Play Connections

One of the great advantages of an Aussie Tiny Houses’ tiny home is that the internal wiring is already set up and ready to go—it’s essentially plug-and-play! Once you’ve positioned your home, the next step is connecting this established internal system to your chosen power source. The method of powering your home, whether traditional or independent, defines your lifestyle and budget.

• On-Grid Connection: If you’re placing your tiny home on an existing property — for example, in a backyard — you can connect it directly to power from the main house or an existing power pole. All you need is a dedicated 20-amp circuit to plug in the power lead. An electrician is only required if that 20-amp circuit still needs to be installed, which is a straightforward job for them.
• Off-Grid Living: For true independence and lower bills, a solar system is key. Solar-powered tiny homes are hugely popular in Australia, especially for tiny houses for rural properties.
  • The Setup: A system consists of solar panels mounted on the roof or, for optimal angle and maintenance, on a ground rack or solar trailer, a charge controller, an inverter, and a battery bank, typically Lithium-ion due to their efficiency and smaller footprint.
  • Sizing is Critical: The size of your depends entirely on your daily energy consumption. High-draw appliances like air conditioning or electric ovens will necessitate a larger, more powerful system (think luxury off-grid tiny homes). You may also consider a backup generator for prolonged cloudy periods.

Water Supply: Tanks and Mains

• On-Grid/Mains: Your tiny house comes fitted with a standard water inlet, making connection to an existing water supply straight forward. You can supply water to your tiny home by simply connecting a standard garden hose to any regular outdoor tap. This setup provides water to your kitchen sink, bathroom vanity, shower, washing machine, and even your dishwasher — with no plumbing required.
• Off-Grid Water: If you prefer an off-grid approach, you can collect and store your own water using tanks. The right tank size depends on where your tiny house is located, how much water you use, and whether you have another water source available. Because tiny houses have a smaller roof area than traditional homes, they collect less rainwater, so if you’re relying solely on what you harvest, a 5,000L water tank is generally recommended.

For a complete off-grid water system, you’ll need a water tank, water pump, grey-water diverter system, and a grease trap. While the setup is relatively straightforward, a licensed plumber is required to install and connect these components safely and in line with regulations. Once installed, the water pump feeds the tank supply directly to the tiny house water inlet using standard fittings, ensuring consistent water pressure throughout the home.

Waste Water: Greywater and Blackwater

Managing waste is critical for compliance and sustainability. For your wastewater, pairing a grease trap with a grey water diverter system helps manage outflow responsibly and keeps everything operating smoothly.

• Greywater: This is an essential component of sustainable tiny house living. Greywater includes the water that comes from your sinks, shower, and washing machine. A simple and popular solution is a Grey Water Diverter System — such as the G-Flow — which filters and redirects this water for safe irrigation in your garden, helping you reduce waste and maximise every drop.
• Grease Trap: The Grease trap is just for the kitchen sink and is connected to the grey water diverter system. The grey water diverter system is also connected to the grey water outlet of the bathroom/laundry and has a small pump to pump all the grey water out to your gardens.
• Blackwater (Toilet Waste): When it comes to toilet waste in a tiny house, the choice you make affects everything — from mobility to water use — so it’s worth exploring your options in depth.
  • Standard Flush: For on-grid setups, this connects to a sewer line or septic system, requiring professional plumbing and council approval (important for those seeking council-approved tiny homes).
  • Composting Toilets: The gold standard for off-grid tiny homes. These waterless, urine-diverting systems separate liquids from solids, reducing human waste to a safe, soil-like material. They require no plumbing to a sewer/septic, which simplifies the setup process immensely and conserves tens of thousands of litres of water per year. Maintenance is simple, with only the solids chamber needing to be emptied every few months, while the liquid drains from the chamber and is diverted underground, with no separate urine container to manage.
  • Incinerating Toilets: A high-tech, high-cost alternative. These toilets use electricity to burn waste, reducing it to a small handful of sterile ash. While incredibly low maintenance, they have a high upfront cost and require a significant burst of energy for each burn cycle, which can challenge an otherwise modest solar setup.

Learn more about tiny house toilets (flush, compost, or incinerate) here: Tiny House Toilets: Which Option Wins?

Final Touches

With the big infrastructure in place, the final phase involves securing your investment and making it feel like home.

• Decks and Awnings: Adding a deck trailer instantly expands your living footprint and elevates the livability of your tiny home. With Aussie Tiny Houses, you can choose from a Deck Trailer with Pergola or a Deck Trailer with Pod and Pergola, available in lengths from 6 m to 10 m. The composite decking creates a seamless indoor-outdoor flow, while the insulated ceiling and LED lighting deliver year-round comfort. You can even customise the trailer to match your tiny house’s COLORBOND cladding and opt for a pod room — ideal as a studio, extra bedroom, or private retreat.
• Skirting and Landscaping: Adding skirting around the base of your tiny house hides the trailer and gives it a more traditional, grounded look, dramatically improving curb appeal—a plus if you are planning a tiny house Airbnb investment.
• Certifications: Ensure all electrical, gas, and plumbing work completed on-site by tradespeople is certified and compliant with local Australian standards and regulations.

The setup process, is your final step to embracing the tiny home lifestyle. By planning your position, securing the correct foundations, and selecting the right off-grid or on-grid connections, you will quickly move from delivery day excitement to enjoying your beautiful, Australian-made tiny homes!

Ready to start the design process for your own perfect movable home?

Aussie Tiny Houses a leading builder of custom tiny homes and luxury tiny houses in Australia. Get in touch and start your journey towards sustainable tiny homes today.