crawl-through design, and housetrucks in earthquakes

[kouka]

Hey

Anyone got some good resources on designs and solutions for a crawl-through between a cab and house?

Also, is there much knowledge about housetruck construction and earthquakes (being in that part of the world right now)?

tia,
kouka

[Bob]

I don't know about the crawl through but earthquakes I do know about from living in vehicles in L.A. They are made to go down roads that are much worse than earthquakes! As long as you aren't parked next to buildings or overhead wires. Rudy and I used to wake each other up in LA by shaking the others house to simulate an earthquake lol! Sometimes shouting "Earthquacke" while doing it. It was actually a very peaceful feeling inside our campers.

[kouka]

Do you mean that if the construction can handle travelling then it will be fine in an earthquake? I'm talking about a steel and wood framed house on the back of a truck (not an RV).

I would assume it would be ok too, I was just curious if anyone has actually looked at this, or had experience.

[Jones'n4chrome]

They are no safer than the flattened vehicles you see in the streets around you. The advantage you have (as Bob noted) is you can choose where you park a housetruck.

In 1994 when we had the last big quake here in LA. my friend Steve and I were in my garage, Steve looking at my welding equipment said "Hey, lets make roll cage beds and sell them" After thinking about it, I decided it wasn't practical to put them in peoples houses unless you fabricated them at the location where they need to be. Just not practical for profit.

I told Steve that nobody will buy one anyway, people want to forget about tragedy as soon as they can. They don't want an earthquake to be the last thing they think about when the go to sleep or the first thing when they wake up. About a week after the quake they were advertised on TV.

But in a housetruck that you are building, aside from the added weight and expense, it would be more practical.We always like to park in the shade of a tree. Trees flatten vehicles more than anything I think.

The date on this is just before the 1994 quake.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/09/22/news/ ... cs_46.html

The date on this is about a month after the quake.
http://articles.latimes.com/1994-02-15/ ... quake-beds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake

[dburt]

After going thru a 5.0 quake in LA in about 1979 or '80, I had the same idea of building an earthquake bed with a full roll cage structure. Even tho the quake did no real damage, it scared me!

But chromedJones is quite right- a week later it is all in the past and you forget all about it. So it might have been a hard sell to get folks to buy an earthquake proof bed to protect them if thier house collapsed around them in the middle of the night.

I would guess that a good steel cage and wood construction on a house truck would do very well in an earthquake as long as you were not parked next to an old brick or concrete constructed building that would collapse on you. Or power lines for that matter either. The trucks suspension would soak up most of the motion.

I did see one picture from NZ that showed what appeared to be a fuel tanker truck on a highway, with a huge truck-sized boulder in front of him, and the same size boulder in back of him on a small two lane highway that went along a very steep hill. If the timing had been different then what it was, and he had been going a little bit faster, he would not have made it thru the quake. So the lesson from that is not to park on the side or bottom of a hill where there are large rocks that could roll down hill on top of you!

[Sharkey]

Back in 1974, when I was just starting construction on my Housetruck, I was sitting around watching a TV documentary with some friends. The coverage was about the Nicaraguan earthquake which had devastated that country two years before. I remarked to those around me that I was building an earthquake-proof home. About that time, the camera panned along a street to show a moving van laying on it's side.

The practical side of this discussion is that because a vehicle is built to withstand a certain amount of motion, it will tend to be more earthquake-resistant than a permanent structure. In any case, you'd have to be better off in a truck or bus than in an unreinforced brick building. Those seem to crumble like damp crackers at the first tremor.

Natural disasters are no picnic no matter what your habitation, but not having the roof come tumbling down on you is a big plus on the survival scale in my opinion.

[kouka]

Cheers everyone. The house has a 50 x 50 and 50 x 75 steel frame and 40 x 40 at ceiling level, so there's a bit of protection.

I've thought too about the worst scenario being if it tipped over (I don't park in places very often where a building would fall on it), another good reason for safety glass instead of shutters. I assume trying to get out of the truck is a bad idea. There's debate in NZ now about whether one should leave a building in a quake - some people survived this one because they did and others died because they did, and vice versa.

Not sure about the trees, more trees come down here from heavy rain and wind than quakes and I still park under them (essential in the summer)

Any thoughts on crawl-throughs?

[dburt]

On some large over the road semi-trucks they use an accordian type rubber seal between the cab and the sleeper unit. This allows the cab to flex differently then the sleeper, if you had a rigid cover around your pass thru, then it could crack as the vehicle went over uneven road surfaces or bumps and the cab and rear unit flexed in different directions. (I would assume they use the same thing on large over the road trucks down in NZ as well.)

I always wanted to build a house truck on the back of a US Army surplus 5-ton 6X6 truck. But I have also had the same question for myself, what to do for a pass thru from the cab to the rear living quarters? I would have to cut a hole in the back of the cab of the truck and a hole in the front of the living area in the back, and then how would I seal it from the weather, rain, cold, etc.? The only thing that comes to mind is to use the same type of accordian or pleated type heavy rubber seal that the big over the road trucks use between thier cabs and the sleeper units behind the cab.

Or- If you are on a restricted budget like most of us, you could use a large inner tube from an agricultrual type tractor tire and fit it between the cab and the house part, and inflate it so that it would be stuck in place. You could always use large plastic ties, or even baling twine to also help hold it in place! The tire would seal between the cab and the house part, and keep out the weather, rain, dust, etc. Not pretty, but quite functional!

[Sharkey]

you could use a large inner tube from an agricultrual type tractor tire

This is, or at least was, a method used for connecting camper units in the bed of pickup trucks to the open rear window of the truck cab, although the shape was more rectangular and it was made of a much thinner material, vinyl if I recall correctly. It really wouldn't have to hold a lot of pressure, just enough to press on both surfaces to prevent wind and water leaks. This also would have the advantage of providing a minimal amount of "insulation" between the exterior and the crawl-through, making it less of a heat loss.

When I had the canopy put on my truck, I asked about some sort of a seal-up between the two and was told that the nearly always "squeak, leak, and scratch up your paint". I didn't get any weatherproofing, but then both my truck and canopy, and the window between them are too small to do much crawling through, anyway.

[kouka]

Yep, low income so looking for home-made solutions

I've been experimenting with cutting up some truck tyre inner tubes. It's the sealing that's the tricky bit, on the side that has to detach (the truck has a tilting cab).

My builder suggested the blow up tube option as well. Problem is, the back of the cab is on an angle, not vertical, so not sure if that would work. It's not much of a gap between cab and house though, so maybe it will be ok.

The back of the cab has a very handy window in it, so I don't have to alter the structure of the cab.

I thought there was a truck in Rolling Homes that had a truck tyre crawl-through, but I can't find it now. Might have been in Turtles. Does anyone have a copy to look up, and then I can get an interloan from the library again?

[ezrablu]

My dad got something like that for his truck and attached camper. He called it a "rubber boot". It was placed between the back truck window and the camper which sat on the truck bed then inflated. It was the shape of a rectangle and sealed all outside air/weather out between the truck and the camper. We used to climb through it while going down the road ) It allowed the air conditioning and heat to pass through to the camper, too.


http://www.pickupspecialties.com/Camper_shell_parts.htm

http://atruckaccessories.com/Truck_Boot.html


WOW this is crazy...I just did a search and found one for $8 in a town near mine. http://muskegon.craigslist.org/rvs/2164957651.html

[kouka]

Cool. They're talking about a 3" or less gap. Mine's more like 30cm, but the truck boot has given me some ideas.

[Jones'n4chrome]

Cool. They're talking about a 3" or less gap. Mine's more like 30cm, but the truck boot has given me some ideas.

30CM, so that is just under a foot.
That should give you some space to make a angled mount to hold tube at the same angle as the truck cab.

[kouka]

It will be whether the inner tube can accommodate the difference between the gap at the top of the crawlthrough and the gap at the bottom. I need the tube to be completely vertical on the house side, and on an angle on the cab side. So the bottom of the tube will be squashed compared to the top.

I've been assuming that the tube will be quite tight in that that space to stop it moving when driving.