Thrifty Alternatives ..Building Foam Campers

[Bogo]

What materials were used in the construction? What coated the foam, etc.? Was any food of stuff that contacted food left in the trailer over winter? What I'm trying to figure out is if there was anything that attracted the rodent other than it just being dry and sheltered inside. Some glues, and paints have components that are basically food.

[GPW]

Seal it up tight!!! ... even a misplaced bag of peanuts will start a mouse family ...

[Wobbly Wheels]

Just a thought Louella, would it help to have some straps stitched to the mattress cover ?
When we tent camped out of the truck, we did that so we could have sheets and blankets in the tent (very important if you're trying to introduce a non-camper to a tent).
It was easier to roll up and compress it with the straps to get it in and out of the tent flap.
That was only 4" foam and no memory foam though...

Of course, one could always cut it into more manageable sized panels too.

When I was a kid I worked in a garden center for a while. The little buggers got into everything - we even had to keep the grass seed in a shipping container.

[eaglesdare]

There was a TearJerker bag of pop corn in there. It was several years old, giving to me as an award, but warned not to eat it. Just a hole in the empty bag. But I did gorilla glue the holes I saw. And threw out everything, pots, pans, plates, cups, the old stove, everything. So everything is brand new out there (except for the foamie itself).
Hubby did repaint for me, but I really will have to give in and "buy" a decent color and do it all again. The colors out there are just wild.
Must go grocery shopping for the food, fill the cooler and have hubby hook up the tear to car and I am ready for the first trip, can't wait!

[KCStudly]

Pots, pans and the stove?

Those things can be sanitized quite easily. Seems a shame to throw out a stove. I hope it wasn't a Coleman white gas.

[GPW]

KC, you know how those girls are... if a mouse even came near it they don’t want to touch it, ever again ... it’s been “tainted” ... and it’s just an excuse to do more SHOPPING...

[eaglesdare]

Naw, it was a very used and old Ozark trail stove. A Walmart special in its day. It was down to one out of two burners anyway, so no real big deal. I needed an excuse (like Glen says) to go shopping! Even so, I was not about to go near anything left in that trailer, yuck, gross just no way.

[Bogo]

I've been playing around with weights in some spreadsheets. For the two inch thick walls I've been designing into my popup designs. Wood borders and glued together like Elddis (ELDDIS) is doing on their caravans is a bit heavier than using the Aluminum Perimeter Frame (APF) I had come up with before. It all comes down to the SIP's wood borders vs. the APF. For the Elddis construction method each SIP panel needs a full wood border. For my APF design the SIPs only have foam at the edge unless something needs to be mounted there and can't be mounted to the frame. Otherwise wood blocking would be placed into the SIP panels at the same spots.

It is interesting to note that for a 1" thick wall, the ELDDIS method is close in weight to the APF method. The APF method doesn't change in weight with different wall thicknesses, while the ELDDIS method doubles in weight from 1" to 2" thick walls.

As an example of the weight difference I'll use the top left edge joint between the 2 inch thick wall, and the 3 inch thick roof. The ELDDIS method uses three pieces of wood. The Border piece on the side wall, which in my design has a 2" x 2" cross section, and the border piece on the roof, has a 2" x 3" cross section. There is also a key piece, but I won't count it's weight as it is placed into groves routed into the other two pieces of wood so it adds only the slight additional weight due to it being made out of Baltic birch plywood versus pine. The piece of wood at the top of the wall weighs 10.7 lbs, and the piece at the side of the roof weighs 15.9 lbs. For the APF there is the exterior frame piece which weighs 7.2 lbs, and the interior piece that weighs 5 lbs. So that gives an effective weight of 26.6 lbs for ELDDIS and 12.2 lbs for APF. In both designs the roof is 3" thick, and the side wall is 2" thick. The border wood is 2" wide and the thickness of the wall or roof. The APF is made from 0.100" thick aluminum sheet bent into a 2" angle for the inside corners, and for the outside piece a 2" radius corner round flanked by 2" wide gluing areas. The sizes of the trailers are the same, and so are all other construction details.

Construction wise, I think the ELDDIS method is maybe a bit easier. What you gain from not having to do metal fabrication and welding, you loose in having to make moderately more complex SIP panels. Both designs use gluing for holding the SIPs in place. There are things that can be done to lighten the wood borders used in the ELDDIS SIPs. Lightening holes can be bored into them, then filled with foam. Care would be needed to be taken that enough structural strength is left in the glue joint and wood, but there is plenty of excess strength there.

As a side note: Using oak edge boards is 66% heavier than pine. Laminating up Baltic birch plywood for them ends up being around 33% heavier than pine.

What does this mean to me. Well, I was hoping to save some weight. It didn't work out, but The ELDDIS method does negate the need for large metal working equipment so that does help give it some edge over the APF method even though it adds a couple hundred pounds to the weight of the hard sided pop-up TTT. I'll be looking into ways of lightening the perimeter wood frames, but still may not use them as any of them would require much more labor time to implement. There are some spots where major amounts of lightening could be done. The top edge of my base walls doesn't need to be solid. There isn't a mating glue joint edge there so I don't need a solid block there. Same goes for the top and bottom edges of the middle walls, and the bottom edges of the top's walls. They all could be narrowed to 1" wide instead of 2". That should save allot of weight.

My weight calculations are telling me that my 7' tall, by 5' 6" wide, by 12' long interior size hard sided pop up TTT will weigh around 300 lbs more because of the hard sided pop up feature, but it will have much much less than half the towing resistance because it will mostly sit in the hole punched by the tow vehicle. All in all it is looking like a 3,000 lbs towing weight with full fuel and water on board with 400lbs allowance for personal gear like clothing and food. I threw into the "base" weight the weights for two 40# propane tanks, 20 gallons fresh water in a tank, RV appliances, a couple spare tires, 210 Watt solar system, a portable generator, couple full 20L cans of gas, lawn chairs, etc.. Yeah, I loaded it down with allot of optional gear. Got to be prepared... But that also allows me to plan for it's possible inclusion later on.

Elddis video that has been linked to before: http://www.caravantimes.co.uk/video/industry/video-what-makes-elddis-solid-construction-a-revolution-in-caravan-building--$21381771.htm Part way through they show an animated diagram of how the ELDDIS SIP panels are joined and what the joint looks like.

The APF corner detail, but with only 1" thick SIP panel walls instead of the 2" I'm now using.

[atahoekid]

We are running the A/C already. Over 80 the last 2 days.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? Overnight lows in the low 20's, Forecast says 2 - 3" of snow on the valley floor. High for Tuesday 34. Welcome to Spring in the Sierra's

[KCStudly]

Gotta love that Gulf Stream! Starts bringing the warm wet weather up the eastern coast as soon as Easter breaks.

[Jack B.]

Okay now. This is the second time I've spent twenty minutes writing the perfect post and then submitted it only to have it not show up after it says it's been uploaded. Is it just me or was it something I "said"? Not looking forward to trying to remember the pearls I just got done digging out of the oyster that's my mind.

Jack

[KCStudly]

Happens. I have found that if I post when some one else has just posted before me there is a message that comes up saying something like 'do you want to review your post, someone has posted in front of you' that I don't always catch that and it can dump you. Other times it is just a time out issue where you don't update the screen soon enough and the forum dumps you (although I have not had that happen in a long time now since the upgrades).

Whenever posting a long and thoughtful composition it is best to do it in a word or text file and past it into the forum composition area. That way you can keep a copy and have it as a backup. Learned the hard way.

[Jack B.]

And it was a beauty too. Oh well, I'll do the write it outside and then move it in. I would guess you're right about being bumped while taking the time to think/type on the fly. Curse you Red Baron!

Jack

[Bogo]

Preview often, and copy drafts to a text editor is what I do.

[Jack B.]

Take two as we say in the music biz:

Looking at the drawings for the pop-up corners above I got to thinking, not a good thing for me sometimes. How about taking some 6" or so diameter PVC pipe, cut it in half length wise and use it around the corners of our foam construction projects? Using an adhesive between the half-round and foam on the outside and bolting through to some sort of strip/plate/layer with adhesive on the inside would give us very strong corners where it's needed, anchor points/strips on the inside and make sure there was no chance of water damage while giving us smooth, aerodynamic corners. Could probably cut other PVC connectors such as elbows to cover the mitered corner pipe joints to give a better finished look. You could run your wiring in a slot in the foam under the corner half rounds. There would also be the ability to extend the PVC below the foam to the trailer frame so it could be bolted through to strengthen the box to trailer connection even more. Might even be doable to use this idea to frame around window and door openings thus giving solid anchor points for hinges and covering up fabric edges and less-than-perfect opening cuts.

The negatives I see are a little more weight and a bit higher cost. Also it would be pretty much impossible to get the curves needed for the traditional tear drop shape, but since a lot of folks are going with "articulated" curves using straight edges instead of flowing arcs, this would be an easy adaptation to the form.

The positives seem to be abundant. Strength where it's needed. Possibly a smoother, more "finished" look in the very places where that could be the hardest to accomplish. Strong places on the exterior to anchor such things as awnings, removable shelves, solar panels AND even puppy tethers. Proving that I'm an engineering genius in the making . . . But I digress.

What do ya'll think? Now that I've written this thing twice, the idea still seems to be a passably good one to me.

Jack