Great questions!
Why did I buy the barn doors vs the tailgate style?
A) I liked the look of the barn doors over the tailgate style.
B) I liked have the ability to close one half (one side) of the entrance to the Hiatus for quick privacy. My kitchen area on the passenger side generally takes up half that side of my living space. So by quickly closing the drive side door, I have privacy to change quickly if needed, without closing the entire rig up. Having the tail gate style didn‘t offer this same convenience.
C) From what Hiatus told me, the barn door seal much better then the tailgate style. So dust getting into the camper while driving on extended dirt road is less likely then compared to the tailgate version. After long days on dirt roads, I don’t have dust building up on my counter top or other areas, which shows how well its sealed.
D) Security seems better with the double doors. The doors lock in two ways, one at the handle latch and another with a nice dead bolt. This was important to me.
E) Getting in and out. By having the barn doors it allows me to step up from a small stool, to my Wilco swing arm, to my bumper and then into the Hiatus. This process acts as very easy stair case while getting in and out of it. This “stair case” is a big benefit while while opening the Hiatus also. If I had kept my tailgate it would have made the setup down / process of getting in and out of the Hiatus cumbersome. If the tail gate style was in place you would have to be hunched over like a hobbit entrance everytime you wanted to get in and out of it, since the upper part of the tail gate would be hovering over you.
Further on this point, opening the Hiatus with the tailgate system seems less ideal. You would have to open the upper part, dropper the lower part, close the top part, climb on to the open tail gate, pop the Hiatus, re-open the upper part to get in and secure the Hiatus in the open position. With the double doors, they just swing out of the way, simple and easy.
F) I don’t miss the tailgate at all.
Do I think the barn doors can hold an expo table?
This is probably a question to ask
@HiatusCampers themselves, but the doors are incredibly robust and solid, so I think you could do that with ease. I mentioned in one of my previous post how burly the Hiatus camper is. They are almost overbuild for what they are, which I love. The doors are no exception to this. They are so much more rigid, thick, and well built then any other barn door styles Ive seen. When you have a cheap car and you open and close the doors you can feel how crummy it can feel, vs a super nice car. Nice cars generally have doors that have a nice weight, they open and close with a sense of crispness that is so noticeable. The Hiatus doors are the same. Great weight to them, they open and close so perfectly, and are super crips in how the latch and close. The hinges on them are a super beefy aluminum setup. They use multiple individual hinges per door, so if one brakes the whole door is not screwed. Its a good use of “redundancy“ for durability.
With only two windows does it get hot?
No, not at all. The two windows plus the Max Air Fan makes for an super comfortable and controllable environment. Also, keep in mind, the entire driver side of the Hiatus opens completely (see attached picture). So if you are simply hot and the fans and windows are hacking it, pop that huge side of the Hiatus for extra air flow. Now, bugs or bad weather might make that not an option, so keep that in mind.
All that being said, you are able to order you Hiatus with extra windows, having one on all four sides on pop-up section of the Hiatus. So you can have have your cake and eat it too!
Its worth mentioned how tinted the windows are. Great for reducing heat + adding privacy. Love the tint they added on all the windows, its perfect. If someone wanted to look inside your Hiatus, the tint is dark enough they would have to cup their hands and press their head against the windows to see in. This is a great deterrent against thieves that are “shy” and dont want to see seen actually trying to see what’s in your rig. We have suction cup curtains in place on our windows regardless.
Has anything broken or have I needed any warranty work?
I had one of the gas struts give out on the big panel that pops open on the drives side (the panel mentioned above). It wasn’t a big deal, but in windy conditions, without one of the struts working properly, the wind was able to push it closed. I contacted Hiatus to buy a new one, they responded right away, and they simply sent me a new set at no cost right away (which I thought was very nice). The new struts arrived in a few short days.
Hiatus also added new gussets to the corners as a “standard” on all their Hiatus Campers. Since mine was one of the first, it didn’t have these gussets. They reached out to me and said they wanted to drive all the way from Washington to my house in Arizona to add these gussets for me. We scheduled it and they showed up here and did a days worth of work to add these gussets. I thought this was an incredible show of customer service and dedication to their product! They wanted to add these gussets for extra strength and rather then burdening me to come up to them, they came to me (3,500 mile round trip for them). I was in awe of that effort. Was super refreshing to see that level of customer service. I put them up for the night at my house, cooked them dinner, and provide them as many cold IPAs they could handle to show my gratitude! Lovely people.
That is the only warranty work or “repairs” I have done on my Hiatus Camper. Note, I dont baby mine! We hit long dirt road and sustained 4x4 trails almost every trip. No issues at all.
Can you add solar, cargo boxes, ect to the roof rack?
Yes, you can. You will simply need to let Hiatus know what amount of weight you will be expecting to load onto the roof, so they can make sure the struts that assist in popping of the Hiatus up area ideal and tuned for your needs. Keep in mind that if your struts are tuned for heavier weight, it will open much faster when that weight is not loaded. Also if you are popping with Hiatus with struts tuned for heavy weight, but you currently dont have the heavy items loaded on the roof, it will then make it harder to close since the weight isn’t there. Nothing crazy, but a note worth mentioning I think.
Here is a picture pointing out some of the stuff I mentioned above:
View attachment 620772
Do you have 2 vents, the included fixed Fantastic and the powered optional Maxxair? If only the powered one, why did you delete the free fixed one?
