Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Hi everyone, this is my first in what will I'm sure be a long list of questions that I have while I'm in the design stage of my teardrop, so thanks in advance for your help and here goes....

I live in New Brunswick, Canada and winters here can be long, cold, and very beautiful affairs so I'd like to find out if anyone out there in the forumland has successfully winterized their teardrop?

MY initial idea was to build the walls using 2x4s on edge, the way you do when you build roof trusses but I'm not sure that would give me enough room for insulation. Then while browsing the forum I saw that people have used 1x2 to frame the walls which would give me the same thickness but be much lighter.

So who's done what and how did it work?

2x3 construction with 3" of blue foam.

http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=48&t=30307

I used 1 1/2 inch blue for floor, walls and roof and my tear is really quiet. I would do it again if just for the sound dampening.

I used 1" H x 3/4" W for roof (spars 10" apart), front & back walls.
I used 1" W x 3/4" H for side walls.
These 3/4" x 1" spars were sndwiched between 1/4" plywood, inside & out.
I can climb on the roof (78" accross). The roof holds my weight (225 lbs).
I used epoxy as a glue. It is very strong.
I would say that this construction is fine.
I have been on five trips with my TTT with no construction problems.
You would probably want to go thicker on the spars, and use a high R factor foam for insulation.

Been looking into R-Values vs thickness and it seems the optimum is unsurprisingly 3 1/2". The trailer I'm getting is certainly big enough to have walls that thick without losing too much space, so is there any reason why I [url]shouldn't[/url] go with 3 1/2" of insulation all round or would that be overkill?

I will admit that at this stage I haven't given too much thought to heating and have been working on the basis that if I can keep more of the heat in, and more of the cold out, then heating would be a lesser issue (meaning it would require less heat and consume less energy). I also considered that more insulation would be better when it came to water storage and piping etc.

I have used mine in November in N. Ontario and have been quite warm with a small electric heater. I will be camping next February on a crosscountry ski trip and we wil only use the electric heater. I basically have 3/4 plywood walls(aluminum sides only) but the floor has 1 1/2" insulation on the roof and floor. A goose down blanket helps alot. The biggest problem with winter camping is condensation.

You can buy over the internet tanks of the stuff the professional spray foamers use. I'm not sure on the cost or how much you one tank covers. Just an idea.

I've camped in mine with nothing more than 3/4" plywood walls down to some pretty cold temps while hunting. I just use a sleeping bag rated for 20 cooler than the low, and just treat the camper at that point as a sturdy tent. Probalby not what you had in mind however.

If you are going to camp off grid, it would be important, if you camp at parks with electric, the smallest little electric heater will blast you out. My old teardrop had only 3/4" foam insulation on top and plywood floor and walls with no insulation.

I can agree that 2x4's is over building such a small structure, I would rip them thinner to 1x2's or just get 1x2's to frame with.

Yeah but how often do you camp in -20F? I have while hunting and a little heater gets really hot right in front of it the rest of the camper stays cold soaked. That's when I break out the -40F sleeping bag.

I lived in a regular house that had no insulation and without a word of a lie there was the odd day when the wood stove would be blazing but 8ft away from it you couldn't feel the heat. I know the answer is going to be about compromise, I was hoping that someone would chime in and say something like an inch isn't enough, or 2 inches is way too hot etc etc

If I wanted the best insulation for a thin wall I would really look at getting it professional spray foamed. That stuff is amazing over regular insulation.

Spray foam has a R value of 6.0 per inch of thickness which is almost double the R-value per inch that most of the foam board people use on a teardrop.

Below is a quick sketch of my proposed construction detail.



The members on the trailer are 2" thick so there will be 2" of insulation in the floor. I looked at the Rvalue per inch of polyISO and it seems to be between 6.5 and 6.8 so a 3" framed wall would give me an R value of 17+ which I think would be fine. I know I need to incorporate a waterproof membrane that isn't on the detail yet but what does everything think of it so far, does it make sense or have missed something?

Screwing the wall into the end grain of the floor plywood should be avoided. You would be better off screwing into the long side member in between.

Make sure to seal your end grain extra special.

Good point, thanks for the tip