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.


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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.