The design of our new house is inspired by the original teardrop camper designs developed back in the 1930's. The basic concept is a fairly small, compact, (somewhat) aerodynamic travel trailer that can be towed by just about any vehicle. I choose to design around a harbor freight 4x8 utility trailer and integrate sleeping quarters, a storage area for our two mountain bikes, and a galley area accessibly from the rear. The design evolved over a month or so with a lot of the basic design influence coming form the Teardrops and Tiny Travel Trailers forum (tnttt.com). I started a thread over at tnttt that goes into lots more details of the design and includes some of the evolution it went through if you want to check it out.
The finalized design looks something like this:
The front compartment gives us enough room to store our two bikes with the front wheels removed as well as some of our other inevitable dirty and smelly outdoor gear. The central area is the cabin which is accessible from both sides and will have a 6" memory foam mattress, 12v led lighting, large windows, and a ceiling vent fan for ventilation and of course a radio and some storage space to make life in the little box a bit more comfortable. At the rear is the galley which is accessible through a flip up rear hatch. The galley has cabinet space to store all the necessary cooking and eating supplies, the camp stove with a built in propane connection, 12v led lighting and a flip up counter for some additional work space. The galley will also be home to a 10 gallon water tank with a counter mounted hand pump and the battery and electrical components. All in all pretty much everything we need to keep ourselves and our bikes warm, dry, and well fed on the road.
We'll be towing our new home behind my '06 awd Toyota Matrix and are hoping to achieve fuel economy ratings in the mid 20's. My estimated total build weight is in the range of 800-1000 pounds and the design attempts to keep the camper drafting the car as much as possible to reduce drag. I've got my fingers crossed that she'll tow well.
Construction is currently in process with a huge boost coming last weekend with the help of my dad and all his tools. We are hoping to have everything wrapped up by sometime in June so we can take the new rig on a trial run to shake things down before we set off for real.
Here's a few pictures of the ongoing construction:
Assembling and modifying the trailer frame. The axle was moved back and mounted lower to work with my design. Shocks were also added to smooth out the ride.
Then the floor went on
Followed by laying out and cutting the wall skins:
Then the walls got assembled as complete panels laying down. Jess did an excellent job running the glue gun:
Next the walls went up and were screwed to the floor subframe and temporarily held in place:
Then my dad showed up and a lot happened in short order without much progress pictures taken
Here's the nearly finished kitchen area
And the inside of the cabin with the terrible to build wheel wells
And the roof skin shortly after we put it on. 1/4" plywood does not like to bend around that tight of a bend
Then we built the rear hatch with it nailed in place on the trailer to make it easier to work on
The moment of truth... Do the bikes actually fit in the space I designed for them...They Do..Wooohoo
And time to put her back into the barn after a solid weekend of work before the rain starts
Overall progress is going well and it's really exciting to see things starting to take shape. I'll make sure to update with more pictures as things progress further.
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