Medieval Tudor House Foamie

[GuitarPhotog]

Those measures will mitigate the effects of "trying to push a brick through the wind" but they won't do much to lessen the stresses put on the trailer, or the serious effect it will have on your mileage.

Unless you can get your overall height down under or equal to your tow vehicle's, you are still going to be "pushing a brick..." Remember that wind resistance increases with the cube of the area. The cube. So either figure out how to make a popup, foldup, or make the structure able to withstand 70-80 MPH winds (can you say "hurricane force?"), or get the height below that of the tow vehicle.

You can't beat physics

<Chas>

[joyofweaving]

Unless you can get your overall height down under or equal to your tow vehicle's, you are still going to be "pushing a brick..."
<Chas>

Well, dang. Thanks ever so much. I was afraid of that. I'll have to figure out a way to make it fold without too much bother. Back to the drawing board!

Truly appreciate all the help and suggestions you all have given me. <3

[Socal Tom]

In addition to the slanted roof, what if I added a removable canvas wind deflector, something like this?

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I don't think the canvas peice would have a meaningful impact ( or survive a journey of much length. How far are this events from your home? If they aren't that far, then this would probably be no big deal. Your new roof design would help dramatically.
Tom

[lthomas987]

In addition to the slanted roof, what if I added a removable canvas wind deflector, something like this?

Capture.JPG

I don't think the canvas peice would have a meaningful impact ( or survive a journey of much length. How far are this events from your home? If they aren't that far, then this would probably be no big deal. Your new roof design would help dramatically.
Tom

I agree with Tom about the new roof design. Also plenty of people tow things taller than their roofline. Anyone with a car instead of a truck for starters. I think that design would probably work fine.


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[joyofweaving]

I really loved my slanted roof (I even found a picture of an actual Tudor house that looks just like that...slanted on one end and straight on the other). We're already talking about making another one to put in the yard and let guests use it if they need to stay over.

To make the old man happy, however, I'm going to go with a folded design. We did much brainstorming last night and came up with something that will work for us. The end walls area where the roof meets the peak will be removable and the roof will come straight down and join in the middle and end up laying flat so it ends up like a big box. We're thinking that when the roof is raised, the resulting gap at the peak spanning the roof will be covered with canvas painted to match the rest of the roof and stuck on with velcro. I'll have to make some models to see how it will all work (this is all preliminary still).

We don't go to many events. The main one we go to every year isn't too far from our house (about 45 minutes). We could, technically, day-trip the event, but It's always fun to be immersed in the atmosphere. That's why I like to do over-nighters whenever I get the chance. With this foamie, we could probably do one or 2 more events during the year that we normally wouldn't be able to do since we simply can't pitch tents anymore.

I'm not too worried about how well it's sealed. We don't do events if rain is even hinted at in the forecast or if it's going to be too hot. While it's stored on our property it will be covered with a tarp.

We went to Home Depot and Lowes today to compare the blue stuff to the pink stuff and HD's pink stuff is a few bucks cheaper so we'll be using that. Neither store had the Gorilla Glue in the tube. We haven't tried Ace Hardware. I'll be calling around to different hardware stores to see who has what. If I can't get it locally, what's a good substitute?

tiny-tudor-house-folded.jpg (23.23 KiB) Viewed 2485 times

[joyofweaving]

tiny-tudor-house-unfolded.jpg (28.17 KiB) Viewed 2498 times

This is the "house" when it's unfolded. The triangles will be popped into place from the inside and the gap in the roof will be covered (somehow). There will be a pull out kitchen box going over the tongue.

[Don L.]

I like your idea of a tudor trailer and can relate to not wanting to set up tents. I can build a lot of things and since I made my foam camper , a standie, just want to say it is difficult to attach things to , like hinges, latches , weather strips. A folding door? My head hurts imagining anything like that.
For a 45 minute drive may I suggest making life easy and just build what you want, like your original picture. It will be plenty strong. There are enough things to bother with setting up camp with a trailer like leveling, hitching, unhitching, jacks supports to keep it from tipping, loading and unloading , it adds up.
Maybe a hipped gable roof similar to this? Hip a small section at the top of the gable?


https://www.google.com/search?q=dutch+h ... 3AhiX_gOmM:

These are my suggestions for what they are worth, I don't want to be a party pooper.
There is nothing like just opening a door and stepping inside and enjoying your handiwork!

[KCStudly]

If you stagger the heights of your walls by the thickness of the roof halves (plus a little fudge factor) you could make the top roof flaps overlap when folded and join in the center when raised. The gable end walls could be slightly lower so that they can fold down first once the roof halves are lifted a tad (so that the gaskets don't drag). The end walls would have to be slightly irregular at the bottoms to make up for the differences in side wall heights, but the overall effect would not be very noticeable, and it would be far easier to get everything erected and sealed if it is all properly hinged. (With full standy height inside I have visions of you not being able to reach to install the velcro flap from the outside.)

Here's the thing about not being too worried about water coming in; it really sucks when it does. Sometimes the weather forecast is not so "cut and dried". Sometimes the weather forecast is wrong. It rains even when you aren't camping and you don't want to get all excited to go to an event, go out to put your cooler in the camper only to find out that it is full of water and mold and leaves and varmints. When was the last time you had a tarp that actual was worth a damn? There have been many reports of people having water damage where they laid a tarp directly on their camper; tarps hold moisture against the surface and cause problems. You don't want to have to haul your mattress and bedding out every time you store the camper, so plan on making it water tight both up and down.

If this is just a novelty and you don't really care about longevity, then who cares? But I think what you will find once you get started in earnest, is that you will end up having more of your creative time and more money than you may first expect tied up in this, and by then it will be too late to "fix" the things that didn't seem important enough to do right from the beginning. Your time and money is valuable and the project will only gain in value with the effort that you put into it. Not necessarily financial value, either, but your hard earned labors.

It's easy at this point to make changes and spend a little extra time researching what has worked for others; do a design revision or six. Right now it is only paper and electrons. In six months or a year (or more) is not the time to throw in the towel (literally). Water intrusion is the single most significant killer of campers.

I don't mean to be so harsh as to be discouraging, it's just that some of us have been around here a long time; we see people come in all enthusiastic (which is a great thing!), but so often they are in such a rush to have fun that they don't end up having a good experience because of a few simple mistakes. (... The pot calling the kettle black... my problem is just the opposite, I get analysis paralysis and spend over 4 yrs not getting it done! So take my comments for what they are worth... $0.02 worth of advice.)

Here's a completely different idea. With the vardo style you could make the whole upper wall section and roof as a single sealed unit and have it lower over the lower tub section during transport and storage. The ginger bread wall brackets could be faux and easily removable, or maybe fold in flat against the lower section with the upper section capturing then on the way down. Pool noodles or similar seals stuffed between the walls to keep what little moisture that might want to come in due to windage, but the majority would shed naturally. It might not be enough to lower completely behind the TV, but I bet you could cut that massive 3ft in half, at least.

Edit: ...or just build a stub wall above the bench area in the tub and lower the upper walls past the brackets.

[lthomas987]

KC's last suggestion is possibly the best yet! Take this design, minus the tarp of course



Build it as a hard sided popup, something like this buildhttp://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=66816 You could have your upper outer wall drop down over your gingerbread and the bottom 18" of your trailer. Given that and the sloped front you'd definitely be in good shape for towing. Like only a bit over 4 feet tall, and nobody thinks that's too tall!


What happens next to your vehicle height if you try taking that down from above the flare to the bottom?

Recycling the lift systems from salvaged popup campers has been done so many times on TNTTT that I am sure you can find good documentation.

[KCStudly]

Build lightly with no upper cabinets and it would probably be easy enough to lift by hand, if not one end at a time. Simple prop rods or pins through the inner wall could really simplify (eliminate) the lifting mechanism.

[lthomas987]

One person on each end outside could probably lift it in tandem and slip in pins at full height. That seems really promising to me anyhow.

[tac422]

I think your slanted roof design would be fine, with the slant starting at the roofline of the tow vehicle...

[joyofweaving]

Wow thank you, you guys are amazing!

Me, discouraged? Never. No, I'm not letting go of this idea. I'm like a dog with a bone when it comes to projects and I've been dreaming about this one for 20 years. Don't worry about hurting my feelings. I'm taking every bit of your sage suggestions very seriously because I know you've "been there/done that". I'm very willing to learn and you have no idea how much I appreciate everything you're throwing at me.

We've had regular commercial trailers (24' and 40' currently rotting on our property) and we lived in the 40' camper for a few years so we're familiar with RV's. Husband wants to strip the 24' down to the frame and build up again but I'm like...um, no. Maybe some other time we'll do that and make either a cathedral or a castle and head out to Pennsic, but not now.

I told him that we don't need another RV! We just need a hard sided tent that's already pitched, somewhere to store the stuff when we're not using it and to keep it simple. He started going on about adding lights to the inside and a water tank with a pump and I'm like OMG! No, no, no, no, no! (He likes to over complicate stuff and it's hard to rein him in sometimes). >:[

We thought about the top half going up and down, but that makes it wider than the trailer and it takes 2 people. I have to be able to work this by myself if I ever had to for some reason. Not that I couldn't get someone at the event to help me, I just like the idea that if it ever came to it, I could do this myself. The corbels can't be removable since they're structurally integral to the interior (like in a vardo or sheep wagon).

Water tight. Got it. Will do.

So, back to the slanted roof idea. You have no idea how glad I am to hear that most of you think it will work. Yes, it will be slanted at the point where it's almost the same height as the back of the Bronco. We're figuring in a wind deflector on the flat part that can be later used as a privacy wall around the kitchen box (a useful prop). A friend of ours, who is retired from Boeing and flew a small private plane for a few years, will be visiting tomorrow and we'll bounce some of these ideas off him.

The only reason husband is fighting me on the slanted roof idea is because he doesn't like the way it looks. Ugh. I don't want it to fold. "The more that something does, the more that can go wrong."

[joyofweaving]

...

[joyofweaving]

Oh, one more thing. When it comes to planning, it's my middle name. I have so many sketch-up files of different ideas that I'm getting confused and here's a box of foam core board piece from past models. LOL I don't even move a stick of furniture in my house without using a floor planner software first.