I've had to spend foamie-building time on work for quite a while (which often extended into the wee hours), but it was all worth it as I'm now in a new-to-me home and my income has doubled permanently. My home is in a low-cost-of-living area in proximity to Mountain West National Parks, Forests, Monuments, etc., that I'll be able to visit for as long as I'm wandering around the planet.
The design I'd been pursuing earlier was inspired by the Safari Condo Alto R-1713/1723 tiltable-roof, lightweight trailers:
COVID-19 shutdowns at Safari Condo's four factories in Quebec, Canada, for about two months last Spring, along with continued receipt of new orders, the closure of the U.S.-Canadian border through the Summer (preventing pickup by U.S. customers), and no deliveries from December through March each year due to weather, have extended waiting times for delivery of Altos to 20 months for orders made today. So, now i'm more motivated than ever to build my own tiltable-roof RV trailer.
Here are drawings of my idea about how fiberglass-reinforced plastic (FRP) and kerfed 2-inch thick foam sheets (a form of structural insulated panel - SIP) might be used to create a dual slide-out variant of the Alto, which I nicknamed the Corto (Alto is Spanish for "tall", and Corto is Spanish for "short"):
Yes, I'm aware that the floor panels in the drawings with the slide-outs extended/retracted aren't oriented the same, the tires aren't faired-in when the slide-outs are extended, and that the trailer might be unstable in a strong crosswind. These are concept drawings, not structural plans. I'll be fleshing out my ideas some more, but in the meantime, I have actually done trailer building that's independent of the living quarters portion. I could just pitch a pup tent on what I have completed, at this point!
I've also acquired enough FRP and foam sheets to build 12 SIPs, but that will only be enough to build about half of its full, 7 x 16-foot potential size. The Altos are about 8 x 17 feet in footprint, in comparison. I'm considering building a 4 x 8 foot prototype first, since I have the trailer frame built and have more than enough SIPs to fabricate a traditional small teardrop trailer. That would likely be very useful to work out issues before I make mistakes that might be much more expensive, in terms of material/money and time, at full scale.
I haven't quite worked out what to use along the panel edges for both protection of the foam, as well as bonding structure corners. I had considered using a thick polyethylene sheet material that's relatively easy to cut, but it's too flexible for structural use. I could just saw strips of FRP and bend/fold them around corners, bolted through the panels, as they're very stiff and resistant to damage due to structural flexing under dynamic pressure from airflow on the road. However, they couldn't be easily bent around curved corners without radial cuts through the curved edges. I'm trying to keep the number of cuts, holes drilled, etc., to an absolute minimum to reduce the build time and effort as much as possible.
Much, much, much more to come ...
