Today: Putting her to bed for the winter.
Here the other day, I finally took a shot of the trailer from a window up above. Obviously, sometime in the past - roof failure. Water came in, and of course, fix attempts. This looks to me like perhaps a long runner (board or something) was laid lengthwise and then patched over the new ridge and over the seams, with some sort of asphalt roofing material.
I don't know - maybe it worked - at first. It doesn't now, and hasn't for a long time. On the inside, they covered the water damaged ceiling with new ceiling (that soundboard stuff I described before), which probably soaked up intruding water to an extent that kept drips into the interior under control. But then all that water just sat there and "hung out", like we intend to do - but in the dining booth.
I don't really want to go in and stand under it, while we pull it down, but we might do some of that. Rather, once we start onto it (next Spring?), I think it best to first pull the asphalt roofing material and see what we have under it.
Then start removing metal, probably straightening and forming the edge molding as we go - put both into some sort of storage method to protect it.
Only then will we see the condition of the current structure underneath. Now there's a possibility, some (much) of the walls will be fine! If so, and salvageable, we may repair damaged areas and leave much original, do a new roof, etc.
But I suspect we'll find enough overall structure needing attention, that we'll probably salvage what we can as "parts and materials", and then just demo the whole thing, from outward in - with a respirator, in the Wyoming wind. That wind - if you stay upwind - acts like "suction to a surgeon".
The family came by yesterday; DSIL - our metal guy - was looking over the frame and mentioned some things I had already noticed, like for instance, the damage at one end of the rear frame where somebody had messed it up with a torch while welding on the heavy "drill-pipe" bumper sometime back ago.
In closer inspection, we think the trailer's overall length of 20.5' is modification (bumper) whereas from the factory, it may have not had a bumper (like perhaps their mobile homes didn't?), just a heavier angle iron at the rear wall/floor corner. If that's an accurate assessment, the trailer would have been a factory 20' travel trailer - no bumper, thus the tire storage compartment?
Also, to lighten frame work, every other (I think) cross-member has a sort of truss crosspiece with little wires welded in zig-zag fashion between an upper and lower smaller steel piece, in essence, turning those normally full piece cross-members into obvious truss style lighter weight members - that whole single axle thing. DSIL said we'll inspect each weld.
This sort of "frame work" is planned for inside the garage shop. And so are the structure builds, such as the floor assembly, then the walls, and finally roof. Built inside, carried out to the trailer for assembly. That sort of build. If it works. If we can make it happen.
Once again, the ideas fluttering around in the head right now are of course, retention of vintage character, while conducting significant modification behind the scenes, with an eye toward adding more interior comforts than came original, while using perhaps lighter weight materials and/or build style - if possible. The challenge is a great part of the interest on this baby.
For example, Leisurehomes marketed these as "the extreme weather" mobile home (trailer) right? And as I said before, that's probably the 2x2 construction with 1.5" of insulation.
But this little lady is called "Fairweather", and done right, we might lighten her quite a bit by building in 1x2 construction with 3/4" poly-cyan insulation, wrapped in reflectix, like we've done with Lil' Queeny, ending up with more overall R value than 1.5" of the fiberglass of yesteryear, better air infiltration sealing - a tighter, more cozy and warm unit over all, while saving on weight!
This Spring, Tow-Mater's arrival into our family interrupted our Spring and Summer chores and projects plans - but we got to them eventually.
This Fall it was Fairweather June's turn, and her arrival has slowed us a little on some of our last outdoor chores to complete before snow flies.
We're also working on one of those "camping spots" in the field for Tow-Mater. It's really coming along cool and we'll share its end result in the Tow-Mater thread before too many more days go by.
But we played trailer Dominoes yesterday as part of this process, and got June parked in her winter spot, a section of field we're calling the "staging area" or a place for new acquisitions and the resulting demo and/or salvage work.
This is a low spot, but the wind really rips through here, from the left side, and will hit the trailer at the left rear corner, while keeping snow blown clear of the roof. I think we're battened down pretty good. And at least to us, and others LIKE us, she looks pretty cool from the road!
See you back here sometime in the future, this thread will be around for awhile.
