Trailers RV Trailer Renovation

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patience

Deceased
Being retired, my wife and I plan to set up a trailer on our daughter's VERY rural property in southern Indiana for a getaway place. We bought an old Coachmen 28 ft. trailer that was in fair shape. It had been used hard, but not abused.

So far I have fixed the leaky roof (don't they all leak?), installed all new vents topside, rebuilt the bed and the couch, redone all the 12 volt wiring (it will be off-grid), replaced the fridge with a new one, and replumbed the gas for the kitchen stove with new tanks and all new regulators and hoses.

With only 2 of us in there, we are converting a lot of bunks to storage space, mostly just removing old bedding and finding suitable storage totes to fit. This part is evolving as we slowly stock the trailer with duplicate things from our home.

This will be a permanent installation, so we have a slab poured, 20' x 36' for it to park on. It will get jacked up onto blocks and tied down to rings I weld onto the steel frame. A shelter house style roof will go over the top the size of the slab, making us a 'front porch' about 10 ft. x 36 ft. and facing south.

I have bought a truck 'reefer' box, 8' x 8' x 20' to park behind the trailer on railroad ties for a lockable storage shed and workshop. It will be delivered this summer after I clear more trees from the site.

The idea is to have a combination BOL and retirement place for when we get too old and tired to keep up with the work at home. Here's a shot of the location, when we were clearing trees and burning brush last Fall.




Those trees average about 75 feet tall, and are mostly maples. We are cutting a lot of firewood, since they are too small for sawing lumber. I need to assure there is plenty of cleared area around the trailer because these trees do blow down with some regularity, being too small and too tall. The location is on a hilltop, with 300 ft. deep gorges on both sides, right and left in the photo. Great view!
 
Hfcomms

Hfcomms

EN66iq
Looks good. Welcome to TB2K by the way. Of course if you plan on using it during real cold weather some sort of skirting would be needed and underfloor insulation or perhaps thick foam glued to the inside of the skirting. Also might consider putting in a small wood stove. I've seen it safely done in larger travel trailers before. Usually involved in taking out a chair location or other small area and using a wall thimble and installing the penetration in the side instead of going up through the roof because as you've already indicated that trailer roofs are subject to leaks.
 
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patience

Deceased
Thanks for the welcome!

I removed the old gas furnace that was beyond repair and installed a gas radiant heater for now. Yes, on the skirting and insulation. Definitely will need that. My first thought was to enclose the 'shelter house' first with screens for summer then could cover that with plastic film for cold weather and stop all the wind. The windows are pretty good, but all windows leak heat, so I thought I'd make some Plexiglass storm windows to go on the outside, attached with exterior frames caulked and screwed on. I have already sealed up the original furnace vents and will soon do the original water heater vents. Wood stoves in trailers scare me, but I have thought about it. No decision yet.

I have installed a tankless LP water heater. Next is the plumbing. I am redoing it with PEX and standard size faucets and drains. No more specialty stuff! There is utility water available about 150 yards away, a project of its' own. Septic tank and laterals are installed and stubbed through the slab. There is no utility electric power within half a mile, so this place will be all 12 volts.

I have 800 watts of Evergreen solar panels, an MPPT controller, and 8 Trojan T-105 batteries to take care of that. The fridge is 110volts and will run off a sine wave inverter. I did a trial run with that and used a Kil-A-Watt meter to record usage. The fridge is very efficient at ~600 watt-hours per 24 hour day and runs happily on the inverter. All else will be 12 volts. I'm using Thinlite brand 15 watt fluorescent fixtures for ceiling lights, with some 12 volt CFL's here and there.

There is no cell phone reception at this location, so I am working with a friend of mine who owns the local internet provider system. I have a 60 foot tower we plan to set up out there for TV and radio use. He said if I provide the tower and 12 volt power, he will pay for the electronics to get me telephone and internet there. But not at present. Too many other things to handle for now.
 
Hfcomms

Hfcomms

EN66iq
I have my cabin set up for off grid and I use an internal 12v water pump like with the RV. You really want to run your waterlines and route them inside the trailer as long as your going to redo them. You want them to stay as warm as possible. You can run them right along the wall on the floor and either paint the piping to match the wall or cover the exposed parts with a molding. If you run the piping under the flooring even with an insulated skirt they are going to freeze on you. Also consider 12v led lighting strips with a dimmer switch. They take even less juice then CFL's and you can get them in warm white so the color temperature is a little more pleasing. And also the led lights don't burn out whereas your CLF's will be needing replacement tubes. I have both the CFL fixtures as well as the LED lighting strips and rarely use the florescent fixtures.


Edited to add here is the thread I did on the LED lighting project;

http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/show...ghting-strip-Must-have!&p=3781197#post3781197
 
P

patience

Deceased
I have some LED's but haven't found any yet that don't hurt my eyes. They keep improving, so I am hopeful. I do have some small battery powered ones for backups to the main lighting in case I have the 12 volt system down for work. Have a Honda eu2000i generator for backup power and love it! Quiet, cheap to run, and all I have read says it is very durable. It's a bit small to charge that big a battery bank at only 8 amps, IIRC, but better than nothing. And, it will run the occasional 110 volt item, like small microwave, shop vac, portable power tools, or the fridge if the main system is down for any reason.

The plumbing, yes. I took out all the old plumbing (gray plastic pipes) and will replace it above the floor. In one place I have to run it across the ceiling to get to the kitchen sink, but I have that figured out. The old water connection will be redone and the hookup put in an insulated box. Water will be plumbed from below the freeze line under the slab and up through an opening cast in the concrete with a 5 gallon bucket for a form. The sewer line also comes in there, so all connections will be in one place. I am removing the black water holding tank and will flush directly to the septic system. That gives me more room to make a good insulated water entrance into the floor of the trailer.

I could use some advice on making the connection to the utility water system. That is, the entrance to the trailer. I doubt if even a super insulated box will keep it from freezing in a winter like we just had, and there won't be any heat tapes available here. :( If I had to, I could run the generator for a time and use a blow dryer to thaw something, worst case, but I'd rather design my way around such things. I guess I could run a 4" heat duct into the water entrance box and put a 12 volt muffin fan on it to take heat from the trailer down there.

Ideas?

FWIW, I have a very complete sheet metal shop and can fab up anything I need in that respect for the plumbing entrance or whatever. I just finished making a double baffle vent pass through for that tankless water heater. It needed that because the pipe can get hot. That vent has to exit straight up through the roof, so I am taking some extraordinary measures to assure it is rain tight.

I am still having some trouble navigating the forum. It seems to be really big, and has some complexities I haven't run into before, but I'm getting there. (I'm not an IT person at all.)
 
P

patience

Deceased
Gorgeous Kitchen!

I have to make sure my wife doesn't see that, or I'll be in for another big project... :)

I WILL look into those strip lights. Thanks so much for that.
 
Hfcomms

Hfcomms

EN66iq
patience said:
I am still having some trouble navigating the forum. It seems to be really big, and has some complexities I haven't run into before, but I'm getting there. (I'm not an IT person at all.)
Click to expand...

If you save this link and log into the forum using this every time you will get a list of all new postings since the last time you visited. That way you don't miss anything and can quickly see what has been happening.


http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/search.php?do=getnew


Just copy that link and save it as a bookmark for accessing the forum.
 
P

patience

Deceased
Thanks! Got it.

My headache for the week in getting the roof reframed to allow the water heater vent to be installed. There's a 14" of air vent close by and that makes if hard to come out with a strong structure. I'd have to cut too many rafters to just do a double header for the hole. I'm thinking I may have to do that (cut across 2 rafters), then beef the remaining rafters with steel or something. Not decided that one yet.

No hurry. It's raining cats and dogs here and this project requires dry weather. The wet weather keeps me form cutting trees at the camp site, too, so this project is pretty much on hold for now. I can do some plumbing, but that's about it for now.
 
P

Publius

TB Fanatic
I wish you luck with this project and I know most campers are not designed for cold weather, so anytime you have to pull ceiling or wall panels it may be best to take the time to fir-out the structure so you can add better insulation and every little bit makes a difference, seeing how the compartment is not all that big an area, heating becomes real easy with good insulation.
I had a few campers and I have used them for hunting in the winter where the temps could go down anywhere from +20F to minus-5F and the heater run so much I had to run the generator twice a day and for three hours in the evening to recharge the battery. I also used about 30 pounds of LP gas in three to four days and I found most people that were doing the same had the same experience and the campers always felt cold.

One guy I knew that I hunted with he got himself an older 20 foot camper, picked it up cheep and needed to be redone inside, so he gutted it and fir-out the walls and ceiling and re-insulated the whole thing with R13 and calked all the seams and it only used the 20 pound LP tanks and also had the older convection heater and his luck with it was he used 20 pounds of LP gas every four days not bad.
 
P

patience

Deceased
Yes! Your point is well taken.

In the areas I have worked over, I replaced the thin fiberglass with 1" of Styrofoam and a layer of IR foil/bubble wrap. I don't know the R factor, but it sure works great in my chicken house! With NO heat in the hen house, and a large window area, it has a nominal 25 degree heat gain on most days over outside temps.

The first thing for me to address about heating is to tighten up around the old vents and access ports. I have already blocked off the rear opening that accessed the spare tire compartment. I put silicone caulk around the door seam, screwed it shut with 2 dozen sheet metal screws, and added 1 1/2" of Styrofoam inside. Watertight and no drafts. Another problem was the fridge vents, top and bottom. I have to leave those open, but I did a tight job of blocking air from the living space with foam rubber around the fridge door. That allows the fridge skin to radiate heat like it is supposed to.

Stopping air leaks makes a big difference, so I'm working on that as I go through it. The old water inlet port gets blocked and sealed up, and a new water entrance made that will be heavily insulated. Because the old gas water heater is being removed, that vent will be skinned over and insulated inside. The new water heater is getting its' own air inlet vent piped directly to it from outside. (The tankless models use a lot more air for the bigger burner.)

There are limits to how much is practical to do insulating a trailer, so before we spend an entire winter in there, the shelter building over it will be totally enclosed and a wood stove put out there. It may evolve into a cabin, eventually removing the trailer, or it may not.
 
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