I portray myself as someone into tiny houses, but in reality, I live in an RV. 

There may be many similarities between the two, but RVs are meant for the road, and are pre-fabricated. They are built in a factory on an assembly line. As a result, it is much like a car, in that there aren't too many options. Many decisions are made for the consumer, and almost every RV purchase includes surprises that are unexpected. There are too many options and there isn't much time to receive guidance before making a purchase. Dealers usually limit instruction to about 2 hours, and limitations might not be discovered until after months of use. Many decisions are made by the factory for the consumer, and most of them involve concessions involving cost of materials, weight, volume, and safety/maneuverability on the road.

I own a 30 foot, fifth wheel trailer, that is towable by a 3/4 ton truck (e.g. Ford F-250). It's maximum towable weight is about 11 thousand pounds. It has most of the appliances you would find in a small home, except for a washer and dryer. The interior looks a lot like a studio apartment, complete with a stylish kitchen that has an island, stainless steel sink, and a granite counter top. There seem to be more gadgets, lights, furniture and appliances than I would have in my own apartment. Sometimes I felt strange drivign all of this accross the country. It felt a bit wrong to pull an entire apartment behind me.

But appearances are deceiving. Many concessions were made in the factory, to keep costs and weight down, to make it towable and maneuverable on the road. It is a home designed for the road and not necessarily for permanent living, and this becomes obvious once you really do try to live in it. Appliances are cheap and they break, and furniture looks more durable than it is. Things break. Perceptions change.

A tiny home, by contrast, is usually made of normal materials for home construction, and has normal household appliances. It can be placed on a trailer, but even if it is pre-fabricated, it seems more like a regular house in the way it is built. It might have less planning behind it, but it will have more durable construction, designed less for the road and recreation, and more for living in.

The biggest "gotcha" of all regarding RVs is that they are not designed for winter living. Insulation is terrible. Since it is on wheels, there is a giant gap between the bottom and the ground, and therefore none of the benefits of an earth foundation. You can get a winter package, but it will not do much for you. They are simply not intended for harsh winter climates, or non-recreational uses. This is to be expected, however- can you imagine someone going camping or on a road trip in the snow and ice? 

RVs are definitely not meant to be winter dwellings. Especially not for really cold conditions. I live in Alaska so I learned this fact well. All the walls in the trailer and really thin, and unlike a tiny house, I have large pop-outs that create surfaces that are exposed to the elements. In my current location I expect average temperatures of 11 degrees Fahrenheit, and occasional lows of around -25 (although it can get as low as -40 F. in my town). Worse still, I'm in a location that can be very windy, with 80 mph gusts coming from between a mountain pass, over a glacier (the glacier is visible year long in clear conditions). My pop-outs may create extra space in the trailer, making it like a studio apartment, but it also makes it like a heat sink allowing cold air blasting by to suck the all the heat out. The trailer is really drafty as a result, and requires heavy energy costs to compensate.

The issue however, isn't just staying warm. It is also important for water and plumbing, and I already experienced a pipe freeze making it so I had no water at all. This meant I couldn't wash dishes, take a shower, or use the toilet (since the outlet tube was frozen completely solid). There is no permanent septic system on an RV (how would you tow that around?). So there are holding tanks and an outlet that has to plug into a dump station. This creates a spot that is prone to freezing and failure, and it isn't insulated or protected. My outlet froze unexpectedly on a very windy day at about one degree.

Since there is no foundation to an RV, many benefits are lost that are taken for granted in a home:

* The best insulation is from the earth itself, and that is completely missing in an RV.
* Cold air blowing underneath the trailer can suck heat out.
* Water pipes, septic systems, etc.. that use gravity for evacuation, are exposed.

To make it possible for an RV to survive the winter without freezing, the entire undercarriage has to be insulated. This is called "skirting" since the trailer. This is when you convert your luxury, high end, road-ready RV, to a much less glamorous. You convert it to something that looks like it came straight from the ghetto. 

It's not fabulous... but if you are humble, and don't take it to seriously, it can be a lot of fun. If you are willing to accept that things will break, and that plans will not work out, it can be a great learning experience. 

I planned for things to break, and well, they did... 

After failing to complete the entire skirting (I got only a third of the way through), and my pipes froze up, I decided to complete the job in a less than professional way. While digging my waterline and electrical lines out of a snow drift, I discovered that the snow had compacted enough to bust out large ice chunks. Realizing that the chunks were heavy, and that they also had good insulation properties, I decided to "complete" the insulation work by making my trailer part igloo.

An Alaskan would say they've seen a better igloo and they would be right.

A person more experienced living in RVs in the winter would say that I'm lazy, but at the same time, they would be jealous. I already got some positive feedback from more than one fellow trailer people.

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