This is a new series of posts detailing a personal project of mine. It is not to be taken as professional advice. Far from it. I will not be releasing any plans or files, unless there is a great desire for it. Mistakes will be great and plentiful, so follow along at your own peril.
Now that some resemblance of normality has returned to life, I decided it was finally time to start a larger project; one that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time.
A small amount of space to call home-away-from-home. And I wanted to build it myself. At least, most of it.
I’m happy to build and decorate the living quarters, but in order to make sure this thing was going to be roadworthy no matter how badly I did the interior decoration, I elected to purchase a pre-made trailer bed and then construct a simple canopy that would attach to it.
A matter of mass
My car has a towing limit of 650 kg un-braked/750 kg braked, so I knew I needed to keep it small. An 8′ x 4′ braked trailer from Indespension would do nicely. 10/10, would recommend these guys over in Leeds, they also handled fitting my tow-bar and were perfectly professional and asked only that I send pictures of the completed trailer.
Now that the footprint dimensions were set, I started thinking about the amount of headroom I wanted in this thing. At 5’3″, I didn’t need to it to be exceptionally tall. Not that I would be trying to stand up in it anyway. I also didn’t fancy the hassle of making my own doors/windows and struggling to make them waterproof and secure; I do want to go away in this thing at least once this year. A nice door and window from Hartford Commercial Windows near Manchester then. Again 10/10, would recommend. A quick drive over to collect them, and I’m super stoked to have supported local businesses.
With the trailer bed being 363 mm, trailer wall being 390 mm and the outermost height of the door being 943 mm, that leaves me a pinch under 1.7m. Lovely; 10 cm of play to keep it under 1.8 m and also well under increasingly popular height restrictions in the UK.
A matter of curves
Now, as much as the trailer pictured at the top of this article is a very nice looking trailer, it has one aspect that I would rather avoid for the sake of simplicity. In the interest of aerodynamics and having the trailer not end up looking like a cereal box on it’s side, I will add a couple of angled sections at either end.
Below is a quick render I made in OpenSCAD. What I’ve done is evenly divided the spade either side of the door and made those surfaces 45 degrees. No expense spared here.
A matter of experience
I’m a software developer by trade, and just about scraped by in A-Level Product Design, so this project will be somewhat stretching my skills. The overall plan is to construct a sturdy frame out of aluminium box section and then cover it with an aluminium shell. All this will be done with basic tools, as that is all I have access to.
The interior will then be insulated with some kind of material which has yet to be decided, and then covered with a thin shell of hardwood to make it look pretty. A nice coat of automotive paint will be the final touch so make it look somewhat professional.
Storage will be designed after initial construction has been completed, so I can get a feel for how much space can be given up. The current rough idea is to have several hatches under the bedding with access to large areas close to the base of the trailer, then a few small cupboards above the feet area, and a few more to round out the area behind our heads.
That’s all for now, as the trailer hasn’t actually arrived at time of writing. The next post will be made hopefully between the time that the trailer arrives and before any major construction has started.
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