Teardrops n Tiny Travel Trailers

So I finally figured out what I want to build...mostly, anyway.

I started out looking at the Compact and Winter Warrior style popups and I liked the rear door of those and the Scotties. Because my trailer is built much like a boat trailer, a dropped floor in the galley would be a snap to 'cheat' my way into a bit of headroom while keeping the roof height lower.

A standie is a must, so are an enclosed head and a proper bed with sheets and blankets. My trailer frame is about 4'2" X 9' plus the bridle, so if I make the body 65" wide, the logical place for a 6'6" long bed is in the back...which precludes putting the door there.

Doing it that way leaves me two and a half feet of trailer to incorporate a door on one side and a small galley on the other. The head will be triangular and will occupy the space over the bridle, so by necessity it would seem I'm building a small horse trailer...

Needing only sitting headroom over the head means I can drop the roofline of the 'nose cone' to keep it a bit more aerodynamic and easier to pull with my 4cyl 2wd pickup. So, with all that firmly in my mind's eye, I decided to learn how to use SketchUp.

Here's how THAT part is going (not to scale):





Thoughts ? Suggestions ? Critique ?


Like I mentioned in the other thread, I'm trying to be a bit ruthless about the weight. Obviously that doesn't tie in with 'thrifty' sometimes, so I have to make compromises in spots.
I'm working on the door right now since it's the smallest single panel and it will give me a bit of a learning curve as I shamelessly steal ideas from seeing what you guys have done with yours. The 'hard points' are 4/4 red cedar: light, rot resistant, and it soaks up epoxy like a champ. The vertical pieces are laminated strips of 1/8 X 1" doorskin ripped across the grain so that both outer plies have the grain running vertically to act as a shear web. I used TB3 for the wood/wood bonds and PL300 for foam/wood. The pic doesn't show the back side, which is skinned with more doorskin. Now I have to shape it, glass the foam face and seal the skin on the other side. The window will be fixed plexi.

This panel will tell me if I want to move forward with a foam floor (preferred) or use plywood.

Looks GOOD W2 , but that 82" nose is rather big , no ??? Plenty of room for a potty .... and a tub , and a vanity , lounge area...
Dude , I think your drawing looks Great and very Doable ..

Great start on that door ...

its a start, good for you!

he could put a potty/shower room in there

Thx guys,

How 'bout 28" instead of 82 ?
Lol

And that axle is too far back too...

Looks good Wobbly!

It's almost like a "mini" version of the Mark 2 Dinette design in the design library.

I don't know what part of the country you live in, but if you need it do you have room for an air conditioner?

Take care, and let's see sawdust...er, uhh...foamdust!

Tom

aggie79 wrote: Mark 2 Dinette design in the design library.

an air conditioner?

I looked that up and it's close enough that I can ditch SketchUp in favour of some blatant plagiarism, lol. Scale it down and flip the bed/dinette 90 degrees and that's pretty much it.
Thanks for pointing that out, Tom !

I thought about an a/c and asked in another thread about the portable ones.
The trouble is that this will be for boondocking so the current draw is far too high to feasibly run it off an inverter.
I'm in BC so I'm not in any part of the country, lol.
What that also means is that most campsites are unserviced, so no shore power to run the thing. There are some posts in here somewhere about drawing cold air from under the trailer and using it to ventilate the cabin. I'll probably use a PC fan and do something like that, especially since a big skylight will make it like a greenhouse in there on a hot day !

Wobbly Wheels wrote:

aggie79 wrote: Mark 2 Dinette design in the design library.

an air conditioner?

I looked that up and it's close enough that I can ditch SketchUp in favour of some blatant plagiarism, lol. Scale it down and flip the bed/dinette 90 degrees and that's pretty much it.
Thanks for pointing that out, Tom !

I thought about an a/c and asked in another thread about the portable ones.
The trouble is that this will be for boondocking so the current draw is far too high to feasibly run it off an inverter.
I'm in BC so I'm not in any part of the country, lol.
What that also means is that most campsites are unserviced, so no shore power to run the thing. There are some posts in here somewhere about drawing cold air from under the trailer and using it to ventilate the cabin. I'll probably use a PC fan and do something like that, especially since a big skylight will make it like a greenhouse in there on a hot day !

Brian,

So the BC is British Columbia? What part? We visited Vancouver and Victoria last spring and fell in love with the area. Before we met, my wife traveled and camped in the areas around Whistler. I love where we live, but would also love to live in an area that had seasons.

Can't wait to see the build!

Take care,
Tom

Hehe...you weren't too far from me then, Tom. I spent 20 odd years in Vancouver, mostly building boats. When I was in the Forces, I was posted in Esquimalt, the big army/naval base just outside Victoria.
Pemberton & Whistler hold some of my favorite spots for both hunting and mountain biking and is a mecca for climbers as well.
WAY too many tourists up there skiing in the winter though !! lol

GPW wrote:Plenty of room for a potty .... and a tub , and a vanity , lounge area...

Ssshhh !!!
I don't want anyone to know that the real reason for pushing the weight down is to offset the weight of the cast iron clawfoot tub.
Don't get me wrong though, we're definitely going to be roughing it: I've given up on the bidet and combined the space for the washroom attendant with the maid's quarters....

W2 , do you really need an AC in BC??? When I lived in Seattle (some time ago) the weather was Very Pleasant , even in the summer it didn't seem to get near as HOT as it does here... but we are the same latitude as Cairo Egypt (desert) We absolutely MUST have AC here...
Maybe a small generator would power an AC ... Not the Thriftiest idea , but with no electricity around it would be an alternative to sweating ... Maybe a "swamp cooler" would work if the Humidity isn't that high ... ???

Hey WW

Nice looking trailer design. I live south of BC in Idaho. I been up to BC a few times. Once on a motorcycle trip I took the ferry from Vancouver Island to Prince Rupert then back through Alberta. A great ride. And another bike trip up the center ( sort of ) of BC to Baker ( i think that is the name of the old mining town. Took a ferry across a river that was in flood, and the ferry was not powered tethered to a cable. That was a great ride also.

Ferry

There is an article about it. The water was a lot higher when I was on it.

Randy

GPW, BC has quite a wide range of climate. I live on the coast now and the summer temps are about perfect: averaging in the mid 20s (high 70s for you guys :^). Winters tend to hover around zero (32) or dip a little below. From what I've seen (we get a bunch of tv channels from Seattle and Spokane), Seattle is indeed cooler and wetter than coastal BC. The spot I live is wedged between steep, old growth forests and Strait of Georgia. We have a shorter growing season, but we rarely see snow and can usually grow hardy veggies (under cold frames) year round.
The biggest difference I think is that we're sheltered by Vancouver Island so the worst of the weather gets dried out a bit by the Island's mountain 'spine' - we get wet, milder inflow air from the Japanese current and cooler (hotter in summer), drier outflow through from the interior. It makes for some pretty spectacular winter storms !
The steep coastline and deep inlets also create some wicked katabatic winds that are dynamite for sailing - it's like going downhill both ways if you plan it right.

The area where I grew up in the interior (near where Randy's link is) is semi-arid and sees temps typically 100-110 and less than 2" of rain per month during the summer. I grew up in that so I don't have a problem with it but my wife who's always lived on the coast tends to suffer in that much heat...so I tend to do those trips on my own.

There's a pullout on one of the logging roads there that is a trailhead to a point where you can see all three of the valley lakes (Seton, Carpenter, and Anderson). Because of the mineral composition of the silt, they are three different colors: green, blue, and brown. It's an amazing sight that always reminds me that it's about the journey, not the destination. You'd never even guess it was there if you're pushing to get to camp - I found it by stopping there to sleep one night an noticed it in the morning when I went for a hike before heading out.

I am still keeping the ac option open and have sort of reserved a spot on the back wall under the dinette table or in place of the upper galley cabinet, but I'm not building it in right now. AC is a useful for about four months of the year here, so I don't know that I want to dedicate permanent space to it, especially in a small space that will let me carry more stores for a longer trip.
The bottom of that cabinet will be overbuilt to hold the weight should I go that route. A buddy recently picked up one of those little Honda E2000 gennies for his moho and I'm impressed with how quiet it is. He's got a 50' 12/3 extension cord that lets him drop it down a creek bank and I really have to listen for it to hear it over the water. Unfortunately, I'm building a thrifty trailer for a good reason and the genny will have to come before the ac does.

I did look into swamp coolers after reading the ac posts and that seems like a pretty solid option, as well as pulling cold air in from under the trailer. The humidity is low enough that sweat evaporates as soon as it forms, so it certainly ought to work.

One of the things I love so much about this place is the diversity - you change between temperate rainforest and semi-arid as you crest the Coastal Range - less than an hour's driving time...you can watch the change. Both are a bit of an exception from the boreal forest that makes up most of the province....remember that we're talking about a million square miles and 4 million people, over half of whom live in two cities. Another quarter of us (or so) live in the southern part - within about 100 miles of the border - that leaves a lot of area devoid of people.

Randy, the place you're talking about sounds like Barkerville. It's a restoration of a gold rush town near Quesnel. The gold rush here was contemporary with Cali and the Klondike: late 1800s. There's still gold and silver to be panned and there are still active miners working claims.

Those cable ferries are tucked away all over the province - they are vital links, being essentially an extension of the highways. What the article doesn't mention is that there's so much crap coming down the rivers in the spring that the ferries get pretty beat up and the cables sometimes let go, so they're an extensive link to maintain, but bridges sometimes fare worse...
I knew a guy whose parents ran one of them so he grew up on the river and bussed to school - I always envied him that !

For me the best thing about the Interior (well, besides the climate !) is the flyfishing (though the smell of the Ponderosa pines in the hot sun is pretty sweet too). Many of the lakes have no outlets and the isolation has led to a unique strain of rainbow that people come from all over to chase. The rivers are pretty productive for both rainbows and steelhead, though the coastal river mouths are the best place to chase steelies and salmon though because they aren't so beat up by their long swim upriver.
At the risk of sparking another age-old debate, hunting opportunities are just as rich as fishing.

To that end, I'm allowing for a 6" X 10' piece of pvc with a screw on cap on the back wall and passing under the bed and under the galley cabinet specifically to hold flyrods so I don't have to break them down to move to a new lake. I originally started camping out of trailers because it was the most expedient way to get to one of the lakes on a Friday after work (2-4 hr drive), fish till last light, and not have to set up a tent in the dark. With so many productive little lakes so close together, it's a natural to drop a trailer as a base camp and fish one or two lakes a day. It would take years before you fished the same one twice....

But it won't be for lack of trying !!

Now that I've written an essay, lol - please keep it to yourselves. I wouldn't want it getting out.....it'll be our secret.

Sounds WONDERFUL !!!

Dang, sounds perfect! Makes me wanna move from the right to the left side of the continent!

Hugs,
Ratkity

Hehe - yeah, if you like doing stuff outdoors then this place is a giant playground. I'm sure you guys all have spots that you feel the same way about though...