Tiny House Gravel Pad Construction

We now have a gravel pad ready for our tiny house on wheels!

Excavated site being filled with gravel. Looked like mini mountains!

Amanda sits on a gravel pile after the first day, feeling hopeful.

The house is being delivered “soon” (we don’t know when, with confidence). So life lately has been a flurry of activity to get ready for the big day. Ryan worked fairly last-minute with a wonderful local contractor who was knowledgeable about gravel pads in addition to native plants, which was cool. We highly recommend MJ Mitchell Enterprises (479) 841-5110. They worked FAST and it was all a blur. It took just a couple of days. Our gravel pad is 20 x 40 feet to accommodate not only the house (which is roughly 8.5 x 24 feet) but also the water cistern, and provide space for maneuvering around the exterior during delivery and for future repairs. It also helps us avoid tracking mud into the home. Ryan explains, “They used #2 road base gravel for our pad.  The gravel, at its thinnest point, contains six inches of material.  After laying each layer of two to three inches of loose gravel, they would run a gas-powered plate compactor over the whole surface, to ensure stability.  At its thickest point, the pad is probably about 2 feet thick.”

Personally, I expected something visibly different than this (just Google “gravel pad” and you’ll see what I mean) but we are committed to beautifying the space and filling it with native plant gardens for wildlife, pollinators, wild edibles, seasonal beauty, and educational videos and blog posts. The ugly phase is temporary.

Ryan consults with the contractor on his cell phone while pacing atop the new pad. He had to take off work rather abruptly.

Completed gravel pad for our tiny house. It hurt us emotionally to see even shallow spots dug into the earth we care about.

It’s nice to experience a week or so of empty gravel pad – we’ve been using it as a sunset-viewing and firefly-watching spot! It’s a Big Sky sort of place, when you walk the driveway along the field’s edge, cross through the gateway of forest, and step onto a hill overlooking Kessler Mountain. We saw a Great Blue Heron fly away south from the pond.  This is a cloud watcher’s paradise. The bats come out at dusk and dart through fading colors to eat insects and perform aerial acrobatics. A curious armadillo was our first visitor post-construction. The deer love the mowed driveway leading up to the pad. Fawns are prancing all over the meadows!