Building out the Trailer & adding the trailer shell

Now that we have a trailer with a deck built onto it, we have to build our shelter onto that.

As it turned out, my employer tore down a building on their property and this generated a lot of angle iron scrap and 2x4s, which I picked through and pulled out of the dumpsters. This meant I paid nothing for my structural lumber and steel. The door and frame was bought at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore for $8. Door frames are made of thin wood and require support, so it is screwed into a 2x4 rough frame that I glued and screwed to the trailer bed and to the toilet frame on the tongue. This made the entire front end far more rigid.

The trailer is not sitting level for this picture, so the door looks odd, but it is level and solid. Note that the trapeze bolts to both the wood struts on the side of the trailer bed and to the door frame.Using the angle iron to build the corners of our box added a lot of strength without significantly more weight than 2x4s.The top angle iron framework bolts directly to these uprights. Red Loctite remains your friend for this step.

 Once the trapeze was glued and lag screwed to the wood struts of the deck, insulation was glued to the floor of the tongue, and the bin was laid out to hold the cover material that is used with the toilet. I began bolting inexpensive but stiff 11/32" B/C plywood to the trapeze (supports) to enclose the shell. The outer insulating covering will be glued and screwed to the outside of this wood shell, the struts, and the trapeze.

 This is a view of the tongue roof area with a clear view of the top of the trapeze and the plywood going on. The top plywood was made from a full 4x8 sheet of ply biscuit joined to a 1x8 strip of ply, to form a single 5x8 sheet, then it was cut to length as needed and bolted up to the trapeze. The skylight you can just glimpse at the top edge of the roof panel is a triple-pane window (just the sash, no outer frame) that I bought at ReStore for $5. It's sitting in an angle iron frame on a bed of backer rod and silicone caulk, with a slight slope to one corner for drainage and a pipe connected there with caulk.

 Here is a view of the tongue area with the composting toilet bucket in place, the deck and back plywood set in position but unattached, and the exterior plywood bolted on. The back plywood is intended as a bin to hold cover material for the composting bucket- the half circle door or something similar covers the access hole to the bottom of the bin when it's finished. Our next step is skinning the shell to form a monocoque of foil-covered foam, glue, and linen. We will get into the nitty gritty of that in our next post.


Copyright © 2016
Tags: Enclosing trailer, Trailer shell, Building a trailer, DiY trailer shell, Homebuilt trailer, Enclosing a Harbor Freight trailer, Building a tiny house shell, Tiny house, DiY trailer, Stealth camper, Building a stealth camper, Building a boondock trailer, Building a Ninja trailer, Building a tiny house, DiY Wallydocking trailer.

Registering and Tagging a Kit Trailer can be a Pain. Try Maine.

We are going to pause in our build description for a second to discuss the issues with kit trailer registration, because at about this point you will run straight into it.

Kit trailers and Home-build trailers are cheaper than buying a new trailer, but state agencies hate them. The risks of sloppy or poor harbor freight builds worry lawmakers. So they tend to be punitive when you go to register your new trailer. Once such a trailer has been run into the system, it's treated like all of the others and the next renewal will be pretty cheap; it's just the original builder who is punished for trying to save a buck.
In CT it's about $150 to get one titled/tagged for 2yrs.
In PA, it's about $200 for 2 years.

So the solution is to register in a state that isn't being a twit about all this. Maine is popular. Registering and tagging a kit trailer from scratch in Maine costs  $99 for FIVE (5) years. It's legal and can be arranged over the phone, assuming you have:
1) Your purchase receipt
2) The Certificate of Origin that came with the kit.
3) Photographs of the finished trailer, even without a deck on it.

Once the trailer plate arrives, you're good to go.
Next post we will go into hanging the door frame, the angle iron trapeze, and the initial shell.

Copyright © 2016
Tags: State trailer registration, Titling a trailer, Inexpensive trailer registration, Titling a kit trailer, Titling a home-built trailer, Inexpensive trailer plates, Sticking it to the man.

Photographs of the process as described so far

Yes, this was all done indoors, in the dining room.
First we assembled the 4 subunits and the tongue assembly along the floor, and carefully bolted them all together to be straight...

Errors mean unbolting and reassembly. The springs and axle were the worst.
The goal here is for the trailer to roll straight when we are done.
Then it all goes up on  sawbucks for the next step...

 Once everything was bolted together, it was time to clean up and bolt on the axles...

 Then we scrape and/or sand the bearing surfaces of the axles and cover them while cleaning and packing the wheel bearings.

 After cleaning out and packing the bearings, we carried the trailer outside to mount the deck.

 I inserted 2" foil-backed foam into the voids and glued them in. Wood trusses were bolted to the sides and back to add 6" to each side and a foot in back. Eventually a top goes onto this build, using angle iron to frame the shell. The angle iron trapeze bolts to the wood and the shell bolts to the iron.

 After the foam, a 1/4" deck was bolted over the foam to protect it and the steel from road salt.
The wood deck was sealed with under body coating

On top of the tongue a sturdy platform was built to raise the surface level even with the deck.

This platform holds the composting toilet bucket and some storage space, and will be enclosed
as part of the living space. The front trapeze and the door frame will bolt to some 2x4s and to the edge of this structure as well, tying it all together.


Copyright © 2016
Tags: Trailer pictures, Assembly pictures, Tiny house build, Tiny house trailer, Boondocker shell, Stealth house build, Tiny mobile house, Tiny mobile home.

Trailer Frames

A solid tiny house starts with a solid trailer.

If you can locate an inexpensive, high-quality used box or flatbed trailer, it will simplify things. In my previous build I was able to locate a solid 4' x 8' welded steel flatbed for $100, but you can't always get so lucky. A previously owned trailer is a snap to transfer and register tags to.

Many states (like Pennsylvania) have sucked up to the trailer build companies and will punish you for registering a new scratch-built or kit trailer in state – it can cost well over $150.00 to register a roll-your-own. Spending that kind of cash makes a homemade or kit trailer in PA less of a bargain, and means you either pay up like a sucker, or you register them out of state. I registered my trailer in Maine, and I will explain that process after we discuss the actual trailer assembly.

Harbor Freight has several different frames with different weight ratings. Since we are building a permanent enclosed box onto the frame, we need strength. The 4 x 8 super duty trailer kit is rated for nearly a full ton. It retails for $499.00, but you can catch them on sale for as little as 299.00, and if you are a regular customer you may be able to apply a 20% or 25% coupon to that price like I did.

There are two issues with the red trailers that you need to plan for and accept the need to fix.

First off, the factories that build these do NOT pack the bearings.

The HF assembly directions are explicit and state that the hubs must be cleaned and packed before use or the trailer will be out of warranty, and they are not joking; the hubs are NOT road-ready.

I am going to repeat this: THE BEARINGS ARE DRY.

The factories ship the hubs assembled, but with the cheapest Vaseline-colored assembly grease you can possibly imagine holding everything together. Inside that assembly goo you will see metal shavings, welder sputter, dirt and God only knows what else.

You cannot put those hubs onto an axle and just drive it off somewhere.

The forums are full of 30-mile first road trips ending in fires and all kinds of insanity because people did not follow the assembly directions, or do not understand that the hubs MUST be cleaned, and then properly packed with grease. This is not a complex subject, and there is a lot of good YouTube videos out there to explain the technique, but the basic system goes like this:

1) Clean bearings and hubs with laquer thinner and a stiff brush. Repeat. Get every bit of crap out.

2) Take a glob of good quality grease in your off-hand palm and hold the bearing in the other.

3) Press bearing edge into grease with a cutting motion, as if you were scraping the grease off of your hand. This will use a surprising amount of grease up.

4) Repeat this until grease works out the top of the bearing, then rotate bearing slightly and continue. Once the bearing is packed, fit it into the hub. There are two (2) bearings in each hub.

5) Clean the axle spline area carefully. Scrape off all welding sputter, and sand any rough area smooth where the bearing's rubber seal will touch. Dings and sharp edges are bad.

The second problem is much easier to deal with: do not trust the nylon insert lock nuts alone. Buy some Loctite red (permanent use) and use it on every single nut. Most of the frame will be inaccessible or damn hard to reach once the box is on the trailer. Discovering a loose nut halfway into your build will mean taking a lot of work apart. If you have a welder, good for you; weld that shit. But if you don't, Loctite every nut.

By way of example, I personally had one nut work loose on this trailer build.

The main locking nut fell out of the bottom of our coupler the third time I closed it over the tow ball. It hadn't occurred to me to Loctite that one since it was pre-assembled in the kit. 

Do not assume anything with the fasteners.

Next post we'll do some show and tell about the harbor freight deck build.



Copyright © 2016
Tags: HF Trailer, Packing Bearings, Insulating trailer beds, HF Trailers, Tiny house foundations, Trailer assembly, Harbor Freight Trailer,  DiY Trailer build, Tiny House on the cheap, DiY Trailer, Do it yourself trailer build, DiY Tiny House.

Basic Boondocker - be at home everywhere

Tiny house and dry camping websites are everywhere nowadays. The advantages of living small, avoiding debt and simplifying your life are obvious… and yet it's still an anomaly to do so. Wanting to live alone and reject the consumer monoculture somehow makes you a Unibomber, or at least antisocial. The entire subject is a minefield of bad advice and crazy talk. 

 

There are the various businesses getting rich off of the ignorant, selling various scams to those who are looking for a way to avoid debt rather than accrue more of it. 

Websites telling you with a straight face that you need their expert advice to build a box onto a trailer. News people telling you that a proper tiny house must look like a miniature house on wheels even though said trailer is now ticket-bait wherever you go; news articles on houses that are heavy, dangerous to move around and impossible to park anywhere on a lot, backyard, or a street in the US. TV shows that seem to enjoy focusing on $30k-, $40k- and even $60,000 tiny houses and see nothing wrong with the concept of a fifteen-foot long sixty thousand dollar box on wheels that you can't really take anywhere and cannot meet any city's zoning with.

In other words, the mainstream and corporate focus is misplaced onto a smaller version of the existing trap that everyone else is caught in- the trap that tiny house people are trying to get away from: overpriced shelter that you can't build, can't move, can't conceal and can't find any place to legally park.

The 'experts' aren't really helping much, are they?

What a lot of us are looking for is less: less bills, less debt, less problems, less stress and for many of us, less visibility.

This site is NOT going to show you how to build a penthouse apartment on wheels.

What we ARE going to do is demonstrate affordable ways to build a comfortable living space for average people, living in the real world that is stealthy and mobile. You, personally, can build a tiny house for less than $2000 dollars. We have done this more than once and we will show you ways to afford it in small purchases that your paycheck can afford.

Our system isn't perfect. There are compromises and drawbacks to our builds, and as time passes we will try other builds to expand on what we have learned so far. We have made some amazing discoveries as well as a few frustrating mistakes along the way. By sharing those, our sweat equity will save all of you reading this a lot of time and trouble.

Our current trailer is strong, naturally well-lit, solar powered, lightweight and R-27/14 insulated, which means that it is far more comfortable than the houses many of you are living in now. Furthermore, it gives the appearance of a standard high-top work trailer with a ladder rack, which means that it is almost invisible. Anyone who sees a work trailer dismisses it immediately. We have all seen thousands of similar trailers, and one more simply fades into the scenery, especially if you choose your parking locations carefully. 

 

Our story as a couple seeking affordable shelter is like so many others in post-oligarchy America after the housing meltdown; we work for a company that supplies experts to a second company, who does customer support for a third company. Both of our credit unions were unwilling to loan money to us for fear that we be laid off at any time. The fact that I've worked on the same project for four years means nothing; we carry the scarlet letter as “temps” and temps we will remain forever. I tried to purchase several houses and quickly discovered how fast trying to buy a house can burn through several thousand dollars at a time without actually getting you a house.

Both a standard house bid and a assumption were tried; each effort cost us about $2000 for the attempt without actually getting us a house. Inspections, lawyers, etc, etc, etc. When the second attempt blew up in our faces, I had to gather funds to move our belongings, and I started thinking about buying a trailer instead of renting another truck, since the costs were similar. 

 

The cheapest trailer would be either used or bought new from somewhere like Harbor Freight and then assembled by me. As I looked at trailers, I had an epiphany; I could have built a whole damn tiny house on wheels for what I had spent on inspecting just one of these crap houses. I was sure of it. These stupid websites with $20,000+ tiny houses were full of baloney! 

If I kept it simple and stealthy, I could park it anywhere and just dry camp wherever I put the trailer. 

It could be a house or a travel trailer, whatever I needed. Why pay for a campsite or a mobile home park if I could park it in plain sight somewhere for free? Logically, it would need to blend in and belong wherever I put it, to pull this off, but with a little planning I was sure I could do that. 

 

Now, I will admit that my work background is varied and more appropriate for this task than most people; I've done many jobs including auto repair, carpentry, plumbing, electrical work and cable/ telephone installation, so building my own stealth tiny house on a trailer didn't seem like much of a battle to try and do from scratch.

Nevertheless, I believe that anyone can duplicate our effort once you see it done, and I'll walk you through it. Grab a notepad and let's get started.... 

 

Copyright © 2016
Tags:Boondocking, Tiny house, Small house, Gypsy camping, Living simply, Vandwelling, Workamping, Autocaravana, Stealth Trailer, Casa Rodante, Fulltime RVer, Stealth Camping, Dry Camping, Shunpiker, Dispersed Camping, Wallydocking, Allstays, Shunpiking, Wohnwagen, Housetruckers, Fulltiming, Véhicule Récréatif, Travellers, Wild camping, Housecamping, Gypsy faire, Peace convoy, Mobile Eco-communalism, New Age Traveler, Tiny house ninja, On the road, Ninja camping, Christian camping, Small is beautiful, DiY, Do it yourself, Handmade housing, Kiwi Housetrucker, Wallydocker, Handmade trailer, Monocoque construction, Appropriate Technology, Cloth over Foam, Harbor Freight Trailer Build, DiY Camping.