Skipping to the end

Well I'm embarrassed to see that it's been more than a year since my last post.  The good news is that the camper project is nearly done. It's usable and legal to pull on the road with license plates and title. The stuff left to do is mostly cosmetic. Since my last post I was able to get the trailer out of the garage and then attached the roof panels and installed the axle. Many other miscellaneous items were finished in time for a short weekend trip to a local state park last fall. Overall my wife and I both felt that the new trailer worked quite nicely and we look forward to more trips this year.  

Here are a few pictures and comments on the things that happened since the last posting.

The picture below is when I was rolling the camper assembly out of the garage.  I had about 6 inches of head room to spare.  Believe me, I was glad to see it finally out of the garage.  I know I lost sleep a few nights thinking about how this would work and in the end it rolled out very easy.  Notice that I have the SUV parked sideways in the driveway, just in case the whole camper would get away from me and roll down the driveway, which is pretty steep.  I could imagine the surprise on my neighbors faces as the camper rolled across the street and slammed into the curb.  Thankfully no such thing happened and all went real smooth.

 Below you see the first roof panel going up.  It was right about at this point that it did decide to rain a few drops.  Fortunately it ended quickly and there was nothing to mop up.

Below you see the axle going underneath. As it turns out I had to upgrade from the axle you see in this shot to a heavier one.  The reason is that the trailer ended up heavier than my non-engineer mind had intended it to be......about 600 pounds heavier. This bumped it over the safe load range of the axle you see in the picture, so I ended up buying a new axle online of a much heavier load rating.  I of course needed heavier duty tires too. Fortunately I already had the wheels and tires so the main expense was the new axle.

What a relief to finally have it all outside.  Also what a joy to get both stalls of the two car garage back again.

Below is the finished project (or nearly finished).  I'm pretty sure it's one of the ugliest campers you will ever see, but hey, it's clean and dry on the inside as well as warm and cozy on the cold nights and sports all the comforts of home.

 Here's a rear view. The hole above the window is where the window AC unit slides in.

Shown below is a top view where you can see the vents and skylights as well as all the roof panel seams.  Somewhere else in this blog I mentioned that there would be four skylights.  Not sure how I came up with that number, but three was what I actually installed. If I had to do it over again I think I'd have used a rubber roof instead of the aluminum.  I'm just nervous about all the seams and screws up there that only increase the potential of a leak some day. Oh well, it's too late now.  In the end if it does start to leak I suppose I can always rip off all the aluminum and install rubber but till then this will have to do. 

I discovered half way into the roofing project that butyl rubber caulk works much better than silicone for grabbing and sticking to the aluminum.  I used silicone for the seams on the side of the camper and now I wish I had used butyl on the whole thing.  

                                  

 

Here's a couple shots of the trailer on it's maiden voyage last fall to the local state park.

There are a few things left to do which includes...

• Installing an awning
• Install two external compartment hatch doors
• Installing a bathroom power vent
• Installing shades to cover the skylights
• Inventing and installing a better dinette table leg system.  We are currently using two steel pedestals and I hate the darn things. What a pain they are to set up and take down when converting from bed to table.  My hope is to devise some sort of scissor lift system using a charged cylinder (like you have in your office chair to raise and lower the height).
• There is also all the cosmetic stuff left to do on the inside, like trim and hole patching.  

As long as it's usable all of the above items can be put on the back burner for now.  So at this point I think I'm going to declare this blog finished. 

I hope you enjoyed reading along and perhaps I even inspired one or two of you to take on their own camper building project.  I'd love to hear from anyone who found this blog useful.

Blessings to you all!

Chris Raway

Putting it Together VII

Time flies and here we are, many months have past since my last post.  The main events since my last post include

• Wiring
• Insulation
• Sheathing
• Sheet Metal Bender Construction
• Roof Panel Construction

Lots of time was spent sorting through the wire salvaged from the junk campers to figure out what I could use and what I could recycle.  Then I spent a long time planning out where the outlets, lights, switches, the power panel and battery compartment should go.  Since I have the battery compartment indoors I had to create a special vent system to remove gases from the charging process that are combustible.  Next comes all the drilling and pulling of the wires.  Below is just one shot of the wires as seen from the outside of the camper before insulating and sheathing.

 Here is a shot of the installed insulation which was all salvaged from the junk campers.

 I think I mentioned somewhere along the line that the camper won't fit out the garage door if I install the roof.  It would end up being higher than the garage door will allow.  To work around this I came up with the idea of building four roof panels that I can install after wheeling the camper outside.  The four panels are made using the salvaged roof trusses from the junk campers.  I have the trusses rather close together.  This is because I'm using very light sheathing which is only about 3/16" plywood (thanks Chris) which will be covered with 24" wide aluminum coil.  Somehow I'm hoping this combination will work out to be a lighter roof than what the original campers had.  I'm no engineer so none of this has actually been calculated.....just taking a guess at it.  The picture below shows one of the roof panels on the camper walls prior to getting insulation and sheathing.  As I built them I placed them on the walls to make sure I had a close fit.  Notice that the side wall of the camper now has sheathing on it.  Again, this is 3/16" plywood (yep, thanks again Chris) to keep down on the weight.  One note for the pure camper junkies, the wall sheathing idea is a deviation from what I found when I tore apart the junk campers.  They did not have sheathing at all. Instead they had the aluminum siding on the outside and that's it.  The difference is that they used siding that was in narrow strips and it had stiffness to it because of bends and lips on the edges.  I will be using flat 24" wide PVC coated aluminum coil for my siding, so I wanted something solid to back it up.  In the end this wall is going to be heavier than the junk campers had, but hopefully not too much.

 Below you can see two views of one of the roof panels down on a set of saw horses as I am installing the aluminum coil.  This is the rear panel which is evidenced by the five clearance lights which are installed along the rear edge. The seams are sealed with silicone caulk and barn screws.  Barn screws are the type with rubber washers under the head and are typically used to install metal roofing and siding material on a pole shed.

This next shot shows one of the roof panels upside down.  I had framed out sky lights in between the roof trusses and then used my router to cut out the paneling which produced a nice effect.  I used a 1/2" straight carbide bit which is a pattern following style, which simply means it has a ball bearing on the shaft that is exactly the same size as the cutting bit.  All together there will be four skylights.  Each is about 12" wide and about 30" long.  These will be one of the last things I install after the camper is outside and all sealed up and nearly completed.  The reason is that I only want to go on the roof once since it is rather light construction and once I seal up the skylights I didn't want to be lifting and moving the roof panels around which would only increase the chance of messing up the seal.  The skylights are simply made out of 1/8" thick clear polycarbonate sheet.

Below is a shot of all four roof panels sitting on top of the camper walls.  You can kind of see how the total height is a little higher the the top of the garage door in the background.  I'll pull these off when ready to roll outside. It's tough to see in the pictures but the aluminum actually extends 2" below the top of the wall. This overlap is designed to make sure all water goes straight down and doesn't have a chance to linger near the joint between the roof panel and wall.

To accomplish all the bending of the 24" wide aluminum coil I needed something a bit more substantial than a chunk of angle iron and a set of C clamps, so I ended up building my own sheet metal bender (also know as a box and pan brake). These things are pretty spendy to buy so building my own was really the only option.  Actually it turned out pretty cool.  Here's a shot of the bender which can handle a sheet up to 40" wide.  The shoes are removable to allow bending inside of a box. 

So next on the list is to start installing the siding.  It's hard to see in these pictures, but at this point none of the window openings are cut out yet.  I nailed the sheathing right over the windows and other openings (except the door).  The theory is that I'll run the siding over the windows too and then once it is nailed, caulked and screwed in place I'll use my router with the pattern following bit to cut the window openings.  

That's all for now.  No promises on posting again soon.  Life is full and unfortunately blogging isn't one of my top priorities, but rest assured that sooner or later I'll have an end to this project (and blog).

See ya,

Chris

Putting it Together VI

Hi Everyone,
My last post was about four months ago in February.  I've done a few things on the weekends since then but nothing major so I didn't think it was worth blogging about.  It's tough to work on this project weekdays since it takes so dang long to drag all the tools out and then clean up afterwards making it easier to just skip it until some other time.  Well the "other time" happened this past weekend/week.  I've spent 4-1/2 days out in the garage now and here's what I have to show for all the effort......keep in mind that I am very slow and meticulous about this stuff.

The kitchen area is now pretty much finished.  The sink and stove are hooked up and working.  The cupboard drawers and doors are installed.  The microwave area above the stove is ready and operational. That's an electric heater mounted below the two drawers.  The open space to the left of the kitchen area is where the fridge goes and below that is the space for the gas heater.

In the back of the camper I finished mounting the bin rack....it's on the left hand side of the picture. We use blue plastic bins for our clothes (that's one in the picture).  They're easy to haul into the house when packing and then you chuck them onto the rack in the camper. The same rack was used in our ancient motor home and we loved it, especially with handling the kids clothes.  To the left of the bin rack (but not shown in the picture) is the closet which is also finished now.



Above the dinette is where I spent a ton of time these past few days building out the overhead cabinets.  As you can see the center area is also where the window AC unit goes.  The doors aren't attached yet, so in the picture all you see is the face frame where the doors will be hung.

The pictures never quite capture what's going on so maybe I'll post a video one of these times.

Overall, a lot of progress has been made but there is still lots to do.  I'll probably schedule another extended working weekend sometime before fall.  Till then, keep cool.

Chris

Putting it Together V

People have been asking me why I haven't been updating my camper blog....well, the answer is pretty simple, I haven't been working on the camper.....that is, not until this past weekend.  So generally life is busy and once in a while I have time to keep this project moving forward.  This past weekend the progress was pretty small.  I started building out the kitchen cabinet. I admit that the cabinet is tiny, but sometimes smallness creates it's own difficulties in that you need to make sure to include everything you want without stuff bumping into one another.  So take a look at the next couple of photos where you'll see the layout of the counter top and the beginnings of the cabinet underneath.

As you can see, the sink and single burner stove (that's the stainless piece on the left) take up almost all of the counter space. Geriann was sure that she wanted the double sink rather than a single, so it does look awfully crowded.  However, I can make a custom cutting board to fit over the right hand sink so that most of the time it will double as counter space and only need to be a sink when doing the dishes. The same sort of thing is going on with the stove.  It has a flip up lid that is flush with the counter top when closed, so that means most of the time it can be counter space, since we really hardly ever use the stove.

The picture above is the face frame for the cabinet which will have two drawers on the left and a built in electric heater underneath those and then a couple of cupboard doors to the right.  The drawers, doors and heater aren't in the picture, so you'll have to use your imagination to picture where those go.The white box like thing in the background is the gas water heater. 

Yep, that's me with a tape measure....mostly thinking and pondering what the heck to do next....or....how in the blazes am I going to fix that last goof up.

That's all I've got for now, so till next time, stay warm and cozy....spring's on it's way.

Putting it Together IV

Merry Christmas everyone,

Well the weather around here in Wisconsin is amazingly warm for Christmas. It's the day after Christmas and I think it got up to 47 degrees.  So that means I was able to heat the garage enough to work on the camper today and will likely do the same tomorrow.  Anyway, the goal today was to start putting up the interior paneling on the outside walls.  That probably sounds confusing, doesn't it.  If so, take a look at the pictures and maybe that will help. The theory here is that I will finish the inside walls so that I can start building the interior cabinets and fixtures.  After those are ready I can still run the wires where needed and install the insulation because the outside aluminum skin has not been attached yet.

Above is a picture taken from the inside. The openings are for the fridge, furnace water heater and the window which will end up being over the sink.

Above is a picture taken from the outside showing the same wall.

 

Above I have attached the refrigerator enclosure and have temporarily installed the "kitchen" window.  I needed the window installed so that I can calculate the exact height for the Formica counter top that will be installed below the window.

In the back of the camper I have started to calculate the exact location of the dinette which will also convert into a full size bed.

Not sure if I'll get any more done this year, but will post again if more progress is made.

Happy New Year everyone!

Putting it Together III

Over the past few weekends I've been able to finish building the outside stud walls and framed in the bathroom area and shower and even started some of the plumbing. 

It's winter up here now and the garage has heat but is not insulated so when the mercury dips down below 15 or 20 it gets difficult to heat the garage enough to be comfortable.  This will only slow down the progress on the project.  On a couple of the colder days I spent some time indoors testing out the wiring for the tank level meter system that I salvaged out of one of the crashed campers.  I am using the fresh water and gray water tanks from one of the crashed campers and the black water tank from the other crashed camper.  The black water tank did not have a tank level meter system, so I need to find a way to install probes in the black water tank so that I can attach the wiring from the other camper.  I was able to locate on the internet a service manual for the brand of tank meter system that I've got, so the positioning of the probes will be easy to figure out.

There are a few other things I can do indoors such as retrofit a single burner stove for the camper.  We only want one burner since we rarely use an indoor stove when we go camping and also because we have very limited counter space in the new camper.  I cannibalized the side burner off of our stainless steel propane barbeque grill.  It will work wonderfully because it has a hinged lid that fits flush so when we are not using the stove it will double as extra counter space.  The trouble is that the knob to control the flame is at a weird angle, so I'll need to modify this to fit a standard Formica counter top form factor.

Christmas is just around the corner and I'm planning to take a few days off to spend time with the family, but also might squeeze in a day to work on the camper.  It will mostly depend on how cold it gets. So till next time, Merry Christmas!

Putting it together II

Finally the walls are starting to go up.  I've been storing the salvaged wall materials in my garage for over a year now and over the past few days I've sorted through all the parts and started piecing them together on the recently finished deck.  It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle because the layout in the new trailer is quite different from the junk campers that the parts came from.  The biggest challenge is to figure out where the openings for the various appliances will go in relation to everything else.  I'm pretty much making it up as I go but also sticking pretty closely to the plan that Geriann and I developed on paper last winter.

The first picture is before any of the walls were attached.....just trying to figure out where stuff goes.  The second picture shows the stud walls for about 1/2 of the outside are now attached.

You might have noticed that the wheels and axle are not under the trailer. This is for two reasons.  First, if I left the axle under the trailer and then constructed it in my garage, I'd never be able to get it out again without knocking a hole in the wall.  In other words it would end up higher than my 8 foot garage door would allow to pass under.  Secondly, I don't know yet where the axle should go to get the desired tongue weight.  I figure I'll get it mostly built and then calculate the best location for the axle so that I end up with about 10% to 12% of the total weight on the hitch.