newbie intro and questions

[Stillphil]

Hello,
I'm new here and may not exactly fit in, but you can tell me. I am planning on starting a mobile house project in about a year. I really don't like the looks of RVs so I figure I'll make my own. We want a vehicle to use when the house is parked, so I'm thinking of a fifth wheel. I have a plan from Glen-L for a 17 footer. I'll modify it a lot to get what we want. I love the looks of the old housetrucks but I feel like for me they would be an authority magnet. I want to have our exterior fairly plain and do nice things for the interior. Also with fuel prices what they are I want something fairly small and light. I'm thinking of using SIPs. I'll have the trailer fabricated locally and build the habitation.

Anybody have any suggestions for roofing, siding, or coating for the fifthwheel? Do you think 17 feet long is enough? I plan to use solar for 12 v but want most of the rest to be fairly low tech. I'm pretty good with construction but I'm not much of a tech nerd (no judgement intended. What would we do without you?).

Any discussion of or questions about our plans welcome. Thanks for any input!

Stillphil

[Sharkey]

Hi Phil, glad to see you dropped by for a visit. Today was a cold and rainy one, so I dug into the drawer of old backup discs looking for the photos of the trailer that we discussed in our earlier email message. I couldn't find the photos, but I did manage to find the original email messages that the photos were attached to. I'll quote a bit here, in case it helps:

My husband John, a cabinetmaker, has been building our 5th wheel trailer for what will be five years in December, which is also when we hope to have it finished. We've been modeling it after turn-of-the-century train carriages - in a similar style to "The Old Chowder Line" of Iain and Carol Forp. We had lost contact with Iain and Carol when we both moved. Them to the South Island for a time, and us to Washington. My husband is a New Zealander, and we fell in love with both the housetrucks and the lifestyle while living over there in '94 & '95.

Our housetruck has "mollycroft" windows running along the top, but our (semi-completed)upstairs center section (the girls room) raises up on 4 hydraulic rams. We also have 2 large slide-outs in the main living area (opposite each other) that will help make it bearable with our large family. We have a crib slide-out in the master bedroom, and our sons room (at the very back) slides back to give them extra floor space, and eventually a fold-down N-scale trainset. We'd like to get it painted this summer while the weather is good, So John is trying to finish up the fiberglass and fairing compound of seams and screwholes (the bondo ones popped), and putting on trim.

The construction is welded-steel chassis, and the walls are marine-plywood with styrofoam sandwiched between. John made up a vacuum-press to bond the walls and roof panels. We brought back alot of native New Zealand timbers which make up the interior wainscoting and cabinetry. We plan to have lead-light and stained-glass windows made up, all as we can afford it. John will make the doors. He also needs to build and install the kitchen cabinets, as well as benchseats around the long antique drafting table which we bought at a garage sale.

A bit about the construction:

Now the trailer starts to get some walls. This did not go as fast as conventional walls, as John had to make up a vacuum press to form the walls. They are each made out of two 3/16th inch 3-ply marine grade plywood (from Fiji, purchased in N.Z.) with polystyrene sandwiched between. We should have taken stock in Elmers glue as we have used more than you would ever believe. In this photograph you can see to the right one of the center slide-outs which really make for alot of room. The other center slide-out is opposite this one.

I'd really like to find the images that were attached to these emails. Looks like there were 24 of them, and there is a description of each in the email text. Unfortunately, these emails are from September of 2000, and I have evidence of a hard disc crash on my computer in February of 2001. None of the backup discs has copies of the attachments directories of my email client, so they may be lost forever. I tried.

[Stillphil]

Sharkey,

Thanks for trying!

Anyone else? Anyone? Anyone?

Phil