HELP! I'm building a custom travel trailer.

gmw photos wrote:
I'm going to throw in a further post here, and kindly take as intended to be constructive. It will probably come off sounding harsh and as though I am bashing....that is certainly not the intent.

First, from a housekeeping standpoint of the forum here, it might be useful if you were to consolidate your responses into one post back. Having endless posts back from you, saying "thanks for feedback" ( we understand....you really do appreciate the feedback )....and then replying to one persons thoughts is making this a very long thread indeed. We have not even laid a keel on this ship yet, and we're up to what...40 or so posts ? Folks are going to lose interest in following along if this gets crazy long.

Now for the part that is going to sound harsh. I don't think "you get it". Folks are coming back with solid suggestions, and your replies are coming back with comments like 15 foot tall RV's and $100,000 dollar sets of tires. And sorry, but when I see a artist rendering of a cargo trailer with six or seven steps up, I'm thinking this is not well thought out yet.
I would strongly recommend you sit down with someone who has an engineering background, and a good CAD program on their computer, and step thru some of this. And I don't mean Bubba down the street that has a buzz box and some scrap steel out behind the shed.... I mean someone who understands design, materials, and how to lay this out in a way that it can be correctly built, on a predicable budget.

Hope this helps, and hopefully you will take it the right way. A project like this could be fun and rewarding done right. Or it could be a lot of wasted time, money and poorly functioning if done wrong.

:E Well, if you don't mind hearing it again... I do thank you for your feedback. I will try to avoid taking up more "cyber paper." I don't think you were being harsh or bashing so you don't need to preface that to your comments. If I knew it all I would not be coming to you and all my new friends for advice and guidance. If I wanted only validation of my ideas I could discuss them with my cat. (actually, she disagrees with me at times too)

First thing you need to know is my renderings are just drawings to convey a concept. They do not represent a mechanical blueprint for building. I could have spent $20k making them mechanically correct, but for $100 some guy in India did them for me and they are sufficient to relate the concept to a professional builder. So whether the final vehicle has 3 steps, 8 steps or an escalator... my rendering of the steps at this point are just conveying where something that gets me inside the trailer will go. I am sure that they're are other technical image errors, but do I really need to spend dollars making the tire look more like a tire when I could use that cash towards a better refrigerator in my vehicle.

I love "solid suggestions", but suggestions are just that... suggestions. It should be okay to debate and challenge them...especially in a forum of ideas. Yes, some times I jest at suggestions which disregard the clearly stated premise of my post. For instance my post is effectively "I'm building an RV and please share your ideas on how I can do that".... so suggestions that I "buy one" instead are not really helpful. But I am always respectful and I defend my decision.

Yes, I am going to have this built by a professional RV builder. I hope to vet them enough to feel confident that no matter how few windows I put in or what I am paying them they wont build me a vehicle too high, too heavy or even with too many steps.

So that being said, I hope my retort will not discourage you from sharing more of your suggestions. Best regards, Darla