This spring my husband and I will be switching from a slide in truck camper to a travel trailer, mainly due to difficulties crawling into the bed area as we age. Our truck camper does not have a bathroom other than a small port-a-potty. Can anyone give us some ideas of the pros/cons of having a rear bathroom, or a bathroom in the middle of the trailer? Obviously, ease of access at night is one with a middle bath. Are there others? A couple that we've wondered about in particular are odor and inconvenience of a narrower walkway from one end of the trailer to the other. Thanks!

I've been partner in 2 travel trailers, both with rear bath. We looked at some with mid bath and it didn't seem to be a good use of space. I don't like a split bath, either.Unless you have a very very large trailer, it's not far from one end to the other, LOL.I liked having the dinette table right at the sink/stove so it could be extra work space for food prep.

Hi,I had friends with several 'bad' designs, and they offered tips through the years on good VS painful RV designs. Painful is having so little counter space that you have to use a 12" square fold up counter extension that is in front of the only walk in door, and have to remove that stuff and fold down the table extension every time someone enters to use the RR, or goes back out!Not so helpful is that your stove and kitchen sink face the campground next door - or is mounted on the drivers side. Not a 'bad' plan when you camp in the desert, and never have neighbors to worry about!So their next RV had a drivers side mid-bath that was not walk through, compact! IT had a rear couch facing the dinette, and kitchen was in front of the dinette. Back in 1987, they did not consider slide outs, so none of those. My 1985 class C motorhome had a split bath, while the current 1997 that I bought new also has a split bath with doors. No slides in either. Slides where so new in 96 that I was worried about leaks, and torn up carpet (friend's 96 trailer had both). My split bath has two doors that are about 3' wide, one closes off the front, while the other closes off the bedroom - so the hallway is now in the middle of the bathroom. The shower is drivers side, the closet is passenger side, so is the sink. Toilet is next to the shower. It actually can be used with both doors closed to have about 2' square in front of the toilet, or open both doors and close off the hallway, and you have about 4' square area to get dressed in. My friend's 96 trailer has a rear bath. It takes up the rearmost 3' on the passenger side and extends a little farther forward on the drivers side. There is a forward slide that starts about 7' from the front wall. The queen bed takes up the bedroom in the front 7' long section, for a private bedroom. I think it was a 31' long travel trailer. My 1972 Coachman camper had the forward 3' dedicated to the wet bath! There was a orange plexiglass sliding divider between the bath and cabover section (it was the 70's) and the closet door was 2.5' wide and closed off the hallway toward the kitchen, leaving a large area to get dressed, along with the wet bath about 3' square, and sink on the passenger side with the shower hose attached to it, and the water heater beneath it. I sold that in 1995. Not to many current campers have such a large bathroom! I really liked that layout!Have a great time looking for something, it is a lot of fun!Fred.

My present TT has two baths, so I have one of each. I like the mid bath in the day time. It is much roomier and pleasant to use. At night I use the rear bath. I don't want the smell that close to the bedroom. My DW is very appreciative.If I only had one bath, I would choose a rear bath. There are some TTs that have a pretty big one.BTW... I have really grown to like the two baths. No waiting, and twice the Black water capacity. I hope to have this in all my future TTs.

my Chieftain had what I consider to be the best bath layout. it had a large 46 inch bath tub/shower on one side of the hall and a closed bath on the other side with the stool and vanity. For that 10 minutes a day that you wanted the shower, you could swing the bath door to shut off the area from the front of the rv and slide the bed room door closed to have a large bath area. I would NOT own a unit where you have the toilet and vanity open to the entire rv without closing the front off from the rear. flossing at the sink and flicking globbers into the living room sort of turns me off.bumpy

We have had rear bath and mid-bath tts. We prefer the mid-bath as the rear bath takes up what could be a lot of window room. In a rear bath, there are only windows on the side. In a mid bath, there are windows on both sides and rear. Typically, one backs into a space and the view - of a lake, ocean, mountains - is in the rear.Another advantage of the mid bathroom is it separates the sleeping area from the living area. DH stays up late and I get up early. His noise at night doesn't keep me awake and my noise in the morning doesn't bother him. Also, he snores. If it is really bad, I can just escape to the living room and close the bedroom door. There is a larger 'buffer' area to muffle the sound.We prefer the bathroom to be all in one rather than split. I like my sink and shower together; moving from room to room to get ready in the morning would be a pain. Having the doors block the access to the bedroom means the other person cannot access it when someone is showering or getting ready.We never had a problem with smell with either bathroom. Both had ceiling vent fans with max-air covers and could be opened in the rain if necessary. Wait until after you flush before opening/turning on - it won't suck in the fumes from the black tank. We also used (powdered) laundry detergent each time we flushed the tank.We now have a class A with a mid all in one bathroom and still really prefer that set up.

Travel trailer floor plans-rear bath vs middle-split bath

Briand
Explorer
Dec 16, 2014
John&Betty wrote:
Ours has a rear bath with an entry door so that bathroom is always accessible. The front entry door provides the access to everything else. We love the layout of our trailer and have lots of storage space.

what make and moodel
BurbMan
Explorer II
Dec 09, 2014
Our Sunnybrook had a walk-through bath that separated the bunk area from the main trailer. Convenient in terms of bath access, for all, but you had to be super quiet at night to avoid waking the kids. Plus if one kid was in the bath, the other couldn't get in/out of the bunk area.

Floorplan of the Sunnybrook:

The other thing that bugged us was the lack of counter space in the cooking area. Also note there was no place to plug in phones for charging, etc, which usually mean they wound up by the sink...a disaster waiting to happen!

We bought the Terry on the premise that it would just be the two of us since the kids were away at school. One of big gripes we had about the bedroom in the Sunnybrook was lack of space to stand and get dressed in the bedroom. All of the TTs we saw with slides in the bedroom were bigger than we wanted. So we saw this floor plan with the huge wardrobe in the rear bath and figured that we could just get dressed in the bathroom. Just like at home, you come out of the shower and the walk in closet is right there. We got the optional bath shown below, not the bunks:

Also note the approx 15" of counter space between the stove and fridge. This is HUGE in terms of making the cooking area more functional.

The sofa bed folds out to a queen sleeper with an air bed, and one of things we found out quickly was that the end of the bed comes exactly up to the edge of the counter, making it impossible to walk around and effectively blocking access to the bath from the bedroom when guests are using the sofa sleeper.

We immediately swapped the sofa and table/chairs in the slide, so now the sofa opens up to the narrow part of the counter and you have about 18" or walk-by space. Still a tight squeeze but at least you can get past the bed to the bathroom if you need to. But when there's just two of us, the rear bath is nice! But, seemed like we had somebody in that bed every trip this past summer. I gues it must be comfortable LOL.
myredracer
Explorer II
Dec 09, 2014
With this particular layout, you have to move the slide out 6-12" to be able to get into the bathroom, which hasn't posed any problems for us so far.

For 2014 KZ changed to a large shower stall and am not sure why because the previous neo-angle stall was fine. The larger shower takes up a lot of valuable space and they had to get rid of the linen closet that used to be in the bathroom. The larger shower is nice though...

We really like the fridge in the slide because it gives more counter space. KZ had a short-lived early model year version for 2014 where the fridge was beside the entry door and pantry was in the slide. It cut down counter space quite a bit and the industry reaction was so negative they went back to the fridge in the slide. The large counter space is one of the things that sold us on this TT and you'll need a mid-bath to get it (unless you perhaps have a really big TT with an island counter).

teejaywhy wrote:
These are great threads as we are shopping for our first TT and it is always nice to hear about floorplan likes/dislikes because it helps discover various issues you might never consider otherwise.

myredracer wrote:

Wondering if you can access the bathroom when the slide-out is not deployed ?
Caveman_Charlie
Explorer II
Dec 09, 2014
I've had both and I would never go back to a TT with the bathroom in the middle. It makes the trailer hour glass shaped and uses up too much space. The rear bath design open ups the floor plan and allows you to have a more useable bathroom at the same time.

That being said I do like a shorter trailer. If you are going to purchase a real long one then the bath in the middle might work. But, as you go longer you start to get into other problems like, parking, hitching, turning, towing, and of course you must have a bigger truck to pull a bigger and heavier trailer.

Go to some RV shows walk around in some and get the feel for what you like. You can go to dealers lots and check out models too just be careful not to let the salesman talk you into anything your not ready for. Never buy a TT on the day you go to just look.
stephend
Explorer
Dec 09, 2014
Rear bath is good for us since we downsized from 28ft to 23ft. Also have wardrobe and drawers in the rear bath.
Bumpyroad
Explorer
Dec 07, 2014
Heavy Metal Doctor wrote:
Bathroom size versus other "room" sizes: How much time do you spend in each?

TMI
bumpy
John_Betty
Explorer
Dec 07, 2014
Ours has a rear bath with an entry door so that bathroom is always accessible. The front entry door provides the access to everything else. We love the layout of our trailer and have lots of storage space.
Heavy_Metal_Doc
Explorer
Dec 07, 2014
Bathroom size versus other "room" sizes: How much time do you spend in each?
wannavolunteerF
Explorer
Dec 07, 2014
my Jayco 24rks is very similar to myredracers rk TT. the main difference is the wardrobe and fridge are not part of the slide out, and the slide is not quite so deep. no problems using trailer with slide in... in fact over Thanksgiving, I used it with slide to conserve heat/propane by having less outside surface area on N side during freezing nights.

as to location of bath, I bought my TT because it had the mid-bath. I really disliked having to go past adult son on sofa to bath room in the middle of the night, when he was with me. Wasn't a problem when I was alone, but when I had someone with me, it was something I was uncomfortable with.
teejaywhy
Explorer
Dec 07, 2014
These are great threads as we are shopping for our first TT and it is always nice to hear about floorplan likes/dislikes because it helps discover various issues you might never consider otherwise.

myredracer wrote:

Wondering if you can access the bathroom when the slide-out is not deployed ?