Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

Hi folks, I've been building my 6x10 teardrop (yeah, it's wide - I want to fit a family of 4 so the thinking was we'd sleep sideways, and have roughly 6x8 sleeping area to fit us all). I have been able to progress without any major problems so far thanks to the amazing content on this site.

I'm at the point now, that I want to start designing and building the hatch, and I realized I made a fundamental mistake when building the deck and the walls. I intended to follow a hatch sealing method from Tony Latham's excellent book, but what I didn't realize is that the hatch normally extends all the way to the bottom allowing the water to freely drain.

Instead, I have it designed and built terminating at the floor. While I think I can seal around it - on the sides following Tony's method and on the bottom by adding a little threshold and seal (dark brown elements on the picture) this still leaves a little "shelf" on which the water can stand without any obvious way for it to drain.

Is it ok to leave it like this and simply cover it all well with epoxy to make it waterproof? Are there any other creative way of sealing this and avoiding the problem? Maybe adding a drainage of some kind?
In an ideal world I'd somehow cut the last two inches of what I have built already and extend the hatch all the way to the bottom, but I can't really imagine how to do it without making a mess due to how things are constructed.

Any recommendations greatly appreciated!



Extended galley wall and bottom seal shown in dark brown here. One of the hatch sides in dark gray:

Put a lip extended down past it sealed with flashing or something else that covers it all closed so it just runs off to the ground. Rubber or something synthetic be creative.
Steve

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Is it ok to leave it like this and simply cover it all well with epoxy to make it waterproof?

That's the way Steve Fredrick recommends in his Builder's Manual. So don't panic.

I did it that way on my first.



Make sure the galley floor is well sealed. I ended up installing four lines of D-shaped seal on the bottom of the hatch to get it sealed. It'll work. Ensure that you've got room for the seal to compress of course.



Tony

Also might be easy to make the floor slope to the rear, that way water will try to run out not puddle. Only need to get it up a 1/4 inch on the front and flush to where it is now in the rear.

tony.latham wrote:That's the way Steve Fredrick recommends in his Builder's Manual. So don't panic.
I did it that way on my first

Thanks a lot Tony, that makes me feel better.
Looks like I can stick with what I have, and maybe I'll angle it down just in case as suggested by saltydawg, still not too late to that...

I don't think you need to worry about it.
But if you do, I would be leaning toward cutting it off or drilling some drain holes just outboard of the seal location (and sealing holes appropriately, and/or epoxying in some PTFE or HDPE tubes).
That is, of course, easier said than done, when one has no knowledge of how it was constructed.