Fenderfour
Active member
Is there a specific point to this? Do you want the forum to agree with you?I've been on the net since 2004 give or take a year. Since before this forum existed. I don't limit my literacy skills just because others don't have any. It's a print media forum, this is what print media does among the adults who grew up with it.
Lets expand the Queen mattress disfunction mathematically: A scientific fact named the Square Cube Law says that as surface area doubles, the volume goes up by cube. It's seen in nature, and it's a significant issue with our material possessions. A known object cannot simply be scaled up into a larger size because of this law, it creates significant issues leading directly to failure. That can be catastrophic. In the case of an airplane, making something bigger will cause the wings to have less lift for the new size of the structure, which will also weigh more. At a certain point, it just won't even take off.
Look at RV's, you double the square feet in the floor plan, you triple the cubic feet inside. That affects what materials you make it from, it's aerodynamic profile, it's weight, etc. Same with mattresses, going from a "double" sized mattress in the early '50s - ah, nostalgia - to the modern Queen with box spring, we have now made what is essentially a sleeping platform into a intrusive, oversized, and gynormous feature of a RV which is principally a shelter from bad weather, pushing aside the other necessary functions until they are deleted.
Move from a 24' to 17' to 9' floor plan and insist on the Queen mattress as the only option, we see things priortized, and sequentially deleted as the floor plan gets smaller, while the Queen mattress becomes larger and less productive. In no particular order, the day space becomes more limited as the mattress remains obstrusively hogging up floorplan, then a shower has to go, forcing the toilet to hide with no privacy of it's own, then the storage space is cut back, the kitchen becomes radically limited, until it's shoved into a large pullout drawer, and you wind up with a tiny upholstered cube for the ever present Queen while the rest of it all can go stand out in the rain.
Anyone who has traveled outdoors on foot for days at a time knows you can sleep on the ground, no mattress at all. It's nice to have a bit of padding tho, so we roll up some resilient foam. My issue sleeping mat, however, got cut down it was too wide to put up with hauling it thru brush, and far too long. When you carry it on your back, ounces matter, and those photo op pics of soldiers with a huge field pack deplaning in the sand are just that, staged publicity. In real life, carrying a knife with a blade over 4" is seriously questioned, because of all the other mandated gear that someone "what iffing" a situation demands be present. Square Cube law kicks in and the people who run with bare minimum gear are much faster, quicker, and also less fatigued.
Hauling around a lot of gear in a small RV means justifying each and every piece of it - that lack of surface area on the floor plan means stuffing in all the "what if" simply doesn't work. Load limits, actual physical space, and need intrude. We need to dispose of our body waste in an ethical and socially acceptable manner - we aren't bears - we need to remain clean over the long run, we need to eat food made safely absent contamination and disease. Do we need a Queen mattress with box spring to eliminate other features all because "it's always the way it's been done?" Its NOT always the way it's been done, and plenty are doing without in other outdoor activities.
When we build a DIY camper, we aren't normally putting together glampmobiles with extensive fittings, slide outs, etc. A pop up is a stretch - therefore, when we create a floor plan for habitation, considering it's the worst case weather where we are actually stuffed in it for long periods of time, then the worst case accoutrements become much more important. This "camp in the desert" attitude that has recently infused the hobby doesn't work for most of us, we aren't a desert nation. We are a temperate climate from the east coast right up to and thru the Rockies, inclement weather is common, and shelter from it has more priority. That means 16 hours of the day needs the priority - not the 8 hours we are racked out snoring. Queen mattresses aren't everybody's best answer, if anything for the two week a year user, they modify their schedule to take advantage of not being in the camper in daylight hours enjoying dry scenic weather. It's a crutch, tho, and when it comes down to arriving on location and making the best of what is thrown at us, can be distinctly difficult when the only furniture you have indoors is a plushy flat surface taking up a majority of the floor space. That was fine when we were toddlers, not so much as adults.
Applying the Square Cube Law, the smaller you make the floorplan, the less space you have, and more quickly. It demands a much closer attention to the ratio of needs and their layout. Insisting that one feature can't change at the expense of the others isn't creating an intelligent, efficient use of space - it's demanding we shoehorn in a feature that could and should be reduced. Seems all the other needs have to be sacrificed on the altar of the Queen first, and that kind of royal intrusion isn't what Americans are known to put up with historically. Like a safety nozzle on a gas can - it's gotten so safe many won't buy one at all, they buy cans of fuel premixed (with no nozzle) or go electric. What we are seeing in the RV industry is a lack of affordable campers or the desire to buy one. We DIY them, or, at least, those of us who can.
We need to trim down the Queen mattress to its essential size to meet its proportional share of the limited space in a DIY trailer. As I pointed out, some van campers use hammocks - no mattress at all - and they stealth camp year round. If we can invent dinettes that become a sleeping platform, why then shove in a mattress which isn't useful for anything else?
Square–cube law - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Sure, a queen size mattress takes up more space than a twin. They are in production RVs because they sell RVs. They are in home-built campers because that's what folks wanted to build. If you don't want a queen size in your build, that's fine by me. Your choice isn't 'wrong' because most folks have a queen mattress. You have different priorities.
Is any of this explicitly necessary? Hell no. All of these things are toys. We don't even 'need' to go camping. It's all a faff to have some fun and spend some time doing what we want. Just be kind and don't leave your trash behind.
