POD: Homebuilt foam core fiberglass skin pop-up camper build thread

[pods8]

Wow! lots of work being done here! Just thought I would comment on the vent issue, typically air will want to flow "out" of the camper through the roof vent, not in, are you installing a fantastic fan? if so one should do the trick for air flow, just make sure a source of make up air is present ie, window. A fantastic fan does work very well and I recommend one, it can change the air in a camper your size in minutes.
I have 3" wall on my camper, but only at the base so that I can accommadate a hard side pop up, but as far as R value goes, in reality, 2" would be ample, dont forget that air will need to be exchanged constantly to avoid dying and condensation, so you never really want it totally sealed up, going to double pane windows will be in my opinion absolutely necassary to avoid massive amounts of condensation, might be nice outside but raining inside. A human body emites a huge amount of water vapour into the air that needs to get vented outside, so there is no chance of sealing up your camper so much that small amounts of BTU will keep it warm, once the bad air is vented and replaced with fresh (cold) air it will need reheating.

The vent over the stove will definately be a powered unit. The second vent might just be a vent for now but I'll pull wiring so it isn't hard to swap in the guts of a powered unit if desired.

Double pane windows were substantially more expensive than the basic single panes I picked up. They're all clamp in windows these days so I'll run these for now and consider an upgrade later if I need to. I'll have an Atwood 8012 installed in here (sitting in a box on the shelf currently) which will throw plenty of BTUs for this size space and at 1.8amps while running it won't be too harsh on the battery bank.

 

[westyss]

You are not too far away from these guys

http://www.sunviewindustries.ca/

they had better prices compared to Motion windows so it might be worthwhile getting a quote.

As for your heater, I dont think its all that necassary for big BTU's, in my experience, a lower BTU on for a bit longer will give more even heat. When I originally got the box part completed on my rig I tried using a Mr heater 18,000BTU cat heater as a temporary set up, that was not good, I couldnt leave it on for any length of time or I had the sauna affect, I have a small 3,000BTU tent cat heater that works better now, also temporary, with a window open I have more even heat, I am leaning towards a wave 3 cat heater, no power use, I also will have an Hydronic heating system if things get too cold, but then I'll have power draw from that. With the good insulating properties of your rig and the size of it you will probably only need something around 3-6,000 BTU. Keep up the good work!

 

[pods8]

You are not too far away from these guys

http://www.sunviewindustries.ca/

they had better prices compared to Motion windows so it might be worthwhile getting a quote.

As for your heater, I dont think its all that necassary for big BTU's, in my experience, a lower BTU on for a bit longer will give more even heat. When I originally got the box part completed on my rig I tried using a Mr heater 18,000BTU cat heater as a temporary set up, that was not good, I couldnt leave it on for any length of time or I had the sauna affect, I have a small 3,000BTU tent cat heater that works better now, also temporary, with a window open I have more even heat, I am leaning towards a wave 3 cat heater, no power use, I also will have an Hydronic heating system if things get too cold, but then I'll have power draw from that. With the good insulating properties of your rig and the size of it you will probably only need something around 3-6,000 BTU. Keep up the good work!

I got a quote from them a while back after checking with you on where you got yours. Don't know if the exchange rate wasn't favorable then or what but they were right up there with motion. Either way I already have my single panes and have for quite a while, I'll roll with them for now but will be paying attention. If the performance in the winter isn't as desired it's not too hard to change them out, verse getting this build done! I agree on the low/slow BTUs being nice, the atwood is 12k which if fairly large for this size space but about the smallest you're going to get of that nature. I'll see how much cycling and temp swings I get, I've always had in the back of my head to keep a propane line tap available for adding a Wave 3 or 6 if deemed necessary/desirable for my camping needs.

On the road at the moment but looking forward to getting back and chipping away a bit more at it. Been tossing dimensions around in my head for the sides, folding sides, etc.

 

[pods8]

Little bit more progress. I built a bit of a wood frame with tabs on it to support and position the roof pieces in proper alignment to glue them up and keep things from sagging while things are not glassed yet. I glued together all the roof pieces now and used spray foam to fill out the larger gaps (hard to try and exactly fit this geometry on the fly in the garage, so I did a bunch of close enough fitment figuring I'd shape/fill as needed). The extra foam on the top has been rough trimmed now. It'll obviously get sanded/faired/filled in as a whole before moving onto glass work. Ready to start roughing out the sides now.

That's is as far as I got because a back spasm hit me saturday morning and made me a useless lump on the couch most of the weekend.

Here you can see a little bit of that wood frame for positioning:

Here's the roughly completed roof with extra vent in place:

 

[pods8]

As I was pondering out final window placements for the sides of the upper half I noticed an issue. I put the rear window in the lower half down in a position that I'd have sight line from my rear view mirror and these dimensions are based off where I can see out of my current FWC rear window and accounting for the raised bottom of the camper on the flatbed. I mostly use my side mirrors but even having a small sight window directly to the rear of the camper is helpful to know if someone is hanging out right in your blindspot, etc. Anyways I was planning on a 24" lift height and realized this wasn't going to pan out dimensionally how I would like because if I build the upper half in a manner to have the window down low enough to match the bottom of this window then when the top is raised 5" of the window is still below the top of the bottom half which doesn't agree with me at all (the wall is about 4.5" tall above the window so coping it out doesn't solve the issue with a 24" lift either) I could abandon this sight line desire all together I suppose but then I'd rather have that rear picture window higher up.

Where I'm currently leaning though is to go with 30" actuators instead and put external limit stops in place to stop the stroke at 27" instead. With a 27" lift only 2" of the window is below the top of the current rear wall and I could realistically rework that part of the rear camper wall to drop it down in that area, in turn I'd lower part of the upper half rear wall to match with a ~2" overlap (that's how much I was thinking to overlap the halves). If I did this with the 30" actuators then if I ever needed to lift the halves past each other to work on seals or such I'd just need to move the external limit stop and could lift the top ~1" clear of the bottom. Leaving that flexibility is one reason in my head to not just lower the bottom edge of the upper half ~2" all around, also if I lowered it all around it would cover the propane hatch slightly and mean I'd need to lift the top a tad to access it which I wasn't planning on (my water fill hatch will be under the lowered upper half though).

Not sure if that thought process/description is making sense or not. Pictorially (on an old picture) it would mean I'd cut out the red line area and redo the top edge fiberglass. The green lines show were the bottom lip of the top half and window would be in the lowered position and the yellow lines show it in the raised position.

Feel free to comment, I haven't fully made up my mind on this yet.

 

[eugene]

Why not just cut out and put a small window below the other one. You could just make a cover that slides or hinges over it when not driving.

 

[Keithh28]

Rearview Camera?

No offense, but it seems like you're considering doing a ton of extra work to accomplish something that could be achieved simply by adding a back-up camera. They're relatively cheap, can be integrated with your rear-view mirror if you like, and will afford you a much better view to the rear of the vehicle than a direct view through your rear window.

Keith

 

[pods8]

No offense, but it seems like you're considering doing a ton of extra work to accomplish something that could be achieved simply by adding a back-up camera. They're relatively cheap, can be integrated with your rear-view mirror if you like, and will afford you a much better view to the rear of the vehicle than a direct view through your rear window.

Keith

A camera hadn't even crossed my mind, gonna give that one some serious consideration. Thanks, that's why I'm throwing these out there for input.

The lower shell window will be down a little lower than desired and there will be a larger band of solid wall between the two windows right in the ideal viewing zone, I need to sit down and think this one out.

 

[Mrknowitall]

I've been following your build for a little while now (great work so far, btw) and I'm really warming up to the idea myself. I'm thinking slightly more compact and a different layout, but all the same challenges. I'm favoring a layout like the Geocamper.
One thing I haven't anwered for myself: how do you seal the roof to the body in its up and down positions?

 

[pods8]

One thing I haven't anwered for myself: how do you seal the roof to the body in its up and down positions?

Multiple ways and areas to address it. The top of the inside wall and bottom of the roof lips could both have a lip seal of sorts (like a brush seal, foam lip, rubber lip). I haven't scoured too hard for a brush seal yet. The foam side seals for a garage door, for the sides of the door not the bottom is the ones I was eyeing up, could have potential (you can see these at the hardware store). Alaskan campers uses pirelli rubber strips. I'm not really worried about finding a lip seal, lots of stuff, I'll spend more time stewing on how to make it aesthetically the way I want on the interior whether that's a metal/wood/composite trim piece over it or what.

Also you can put a bulb type gasket between the two walls. I've got a 1/2" gap between them to fit the slides in there and they make rubber gaskets of various stiffness that would work. Just need to figure out which one I like best. Or use a piece of UHMW or something if you don't want a softer rubber.

So at the moment I'm thinking a lip seal on the interior and bulb seal between the roof and lower camper near the bottom edge of the roof as my baseline.

 

[pods8]

Mocked up all the upper half walls. Everything is just taped/clamped together for the most part right now so I can shuffle around the window placements that I'm currently stewing on. I put some hooks in the roof and my garage ceiling to use ratchet straps to lift the roof up to the extended height to get the right sense of space. As you might have noticed at the moment I'm pretty sure I'm going to just shift the design to a short door in the lower half which should simplify some things. It'll address the flex in the floor, make working out the door design easier, and in terms of use means you don't have to open one door then the other and vice versa for closing.

 

[Ponyracer]

Looking good man! When you finsh this one you can start on mine lol.

 

[eugene]

I hadn't noticed until now, your roof insulation sits on top of the roof frame and not inside it?
It looks like that cross board near the back in the last picture is sagging in the middle. Why not turn it on its side so its standing up then cut the roof taper in each side so you have some more strength in the center.

 

[pods8]

There is no "frame" in the camper, that's just a temporary structure to center and support the foam roof while it's being built since it's really not self supportive lying out flat like it does on the roof without the structural skins applied. Yes the 2x4's going across will sag in bit in that fashion but it was easier to assemble that way and not really critical if it dips slightly, just needs to make sure the center doesn't sag really far down and/or the sides to get pushed out wider.

 

[Mrknowitall]

Very nice- must feel good to get it all mocked together and be able to really see what you've been doing. Do you have enough room in there to make the door open to the inside? That would solve any interferance problems while you're top-down.