Rocksea - EarthCruiser CORE Total Composites Build

[bgrattan]

This is an awesome build.
I know I'm getting to this a little late, but I'd like to throw in a recommendation regarding the 24x32 wet bath. That being: completely scratch any indoor shower. Keep the toilet, of course, but just get yourself a nice outdoor shower.
Reasons:

• Showering inside a camper always seems to get everything moist.
• When you're at a campground you can use their showers/water.
• When you're boondocking, you can use a nice four-sided pop up privacy curtain and have way more space (get a bamboo "shower mat" to stand on) and let the water just go on the ground instead of a grey tank
• Outdoor showers are, in my opinion, much, much more relaxing than cramped indoor showers.

Anyway, take that for what it's worth. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing how your build progresses.

 

[awheeler]

Also following along! Congrats on your build.

When you did your research on Mastervolt and CZone, how did you determine whether or not you could go with a custom Lithium bank? Mastervolt batteries are incredibly expensive, but I'm worried the other Mastervolt components won't play nicely with non-mastervolt batteries. Being able to go with another brand of battery would be huge as Mastervolt lithium batteries are about 3/4X the going rate.

To be honest I didn't worry much about that I guess we will see how it works in a month or so. But the reason I'm not too worried is the fact that they sell battery temp sensors that are designed to be used with non-Mastervolt batteries. I haven't read anywhere that you must use their batteries.

I think the most important part is to use the Maservolt Shunt which is doing most of the work in terms of relaying charge/draw info to the system. There may be some stats that won't be available like battery cycles but that plus a lot more will be available from the Overkill Bluetooth BMS.

 

[awheeler]

Playing with a different design and moving the dinette from the front to the middle. This will put the bathroom up front near the pass through to cab.

Pros:
1. Moving the bathroom forward eliminates the walls in the middle of camper to help open things up a bit.
2. Solves the problem of building some sort of step to get in and out of bed that will also fold flat so that you can open the fridge.

Cons:
1. We lose the separation of the bed area that the walls would provide. We typically get up and go to bed at the same time so we don't think this will bother us.

Also playing around with some new bathroom/shower ideas. With the bathroom up front we are thinking to enclose the toilette in an enclosure that is the exact size of the toilette. This will give us the smallest footprint possible and keep the hallway nice and open.

To use the toilette you would have to open the door in order to sit down on it since your knees would now be in the hallway. The door when opened would fold out and block the toilette to the rest of the camper.

For the shower we are thinking to build the shower pan into the hallway in front of toilette. There would be a sliding shower door that would block the pass through to cab and then another slider to block the rest of the camper. It will be a little strange showering in front of the fridge and I suppose we could always add some sort of door to block the fridge if needed.

I know a lot of builds have done something similar to this but did it right at the entrance door. Earthcruiser does this in th builds. We don't like it at the entrance because we want the entrance to be kept open and want to be able to get in and out of camper while someone is showering.

Thoughts?

Anyone going to Descend on Bend? Heading that way tomorrow.

 

[Victorian]

Playing with a different design and moving the dinette from the front to the middle. This will put the bathroom up front near the pass through to cab.

Pros:
1. Moving the bathroom forward eliminates the walls in the middle of camper to help open things up a bit.
2. Solves the problem of building some sort of step to get in and out of bed that will also fold flat so that you can open the fridge.

Cons:
1. We lose the separation of the bed area that the walls would provide. We typically get up and go to bed at the same time so we don't think this will bother us.

Also playing around with some new bathroom/shower ideas. With the bathroom up front we are thinking to enclose the toilette in an enclosure that is the exact size of the toilette. This will give us the smallest footprint possible and keep the hallway nice and open.

To use the toilette you would have to open the door in order to sit down on it since your knees would now be in the hallway. The door when opened would fold out and block the toilette to the rest of the camper.

For the shower we are thinking to build the shower pan into the hallway in front of toilette. There would be a sliding shower door that would block the pass through to cab and then another slider to block the rest of the camper. It will be a little strange showering in front of the fridge and I suppose we could always add some sort of door to block the fridge if needed.

I know a lot of builds have done something similar to this but did it right at the entrance door. Earthcruiser does this in th builds. We don't like it at the entrance because we want the entrance to be kept open and want to be able to get in and out of camper while someone is showering.

Thoughts?

Anyone going to Descend on Bend? Heading that way tomorrow.

Bathroom placement is certainly a difficult one. We have ours in the middle and I hate it. It takes away the open feel. Having it in the entry makes the most sense but again, takes a lot of the open space feeling way. Next time, I would push it in the front corner.

 

[gdaut]

Moving the bathroom forward seems like a good idea. I have an XP Camper (now Nimbl) and one thing I really like about it is the open and airy feel of the inside. In the XP and Nimbl this is accomplished by having a fold down shower/toilet compartment. You might consider something like that; when folded down (which is most of the time) it provides a lot of additional counter space. I guess the downside of that may be that if someone (hopefully the passenger, not the driver) wants to use the toilet on the fly it would be a bit cumbersome to put up the compartment while driving. Not too cumbersome unless the road was rough, but if you are on a rough road you are probably in a place where you can easily just pull over for a sec.

 

[simple]

I'm working on a box layout that is a remodel of an existing vehicle. I was stuck on putting the bathroom / closet in the rear corner for a while but recently I moved it up to front corner and I'm liking the layout a lot better. I'm not concerned about it being exposed to the entrance since it will be large enough to have its own door.

 

[RAM5500 CAMPERTHING]

I feel your pain...

Bathroom layout was hands down the hardest part of my design and layout.

1) I wanted everything as open as possible
2) I am a very large human being, and the amount of interior space i would need for an indoor wetbath was substantial.
3) I had to consider the subframe and storage boxes UNDER the camper and subframe for where all the plumbing goes.

I went back and forth with wetbath, no wetbath, for months...

I decided have the bathroom in the very rear drivers side corner of the camper and the door is in the very rear passenger side, so basically the bathroom is the first thing you see when you open the door, and the first thing you see when you enter the camper.

That bothered me for quite awhile, but now that i've spent more and more time in the camper, i absolutely LOVE how open/roomy the layout is and its the perfect solution.

Almost every single person thats been in my camper has commented on how spacious and open it is. This is by design and half the reason i built my own. I am 6'4" fatty and was tired of being cramped in my other campers.

I felt and still feel, the amount of time an indoor shower would be used, didnt warrant using up all that precious space inside, and dealing with all the plumbing and gray water, so instead of an outdoor shower and an indoor shower, i am just sticking with the tried and true outdoor unit, and altering the bathroom to make more room inside the camper. The "bathroom" is now just an airhead compositing toilet, and will stay that way.

My .02

PROTIP: While considering where to put your bathroom, make sure to take the subframe and stuff underneath the camper into account for the plumbing and such!

 

[shutdown_exploded]

I'm still drafting and daydreaming a box almost identical to this.

Large under bed garage for bikes and skis.
Open airy interior.
A workstation.

I felt and still feel, the amount of time an indoor shower would be used, didnt warrant using up all that precious space inside,

I think this is the way to go if this is a recreational vehicle, if you're based in oz or Africa, or generally snowbirding south to escape the cold, but one of my primary use cases is using the rig as a mobile home to visit ski resorts all winter, and not having any indoor bathing option would be pretty annoying.

 

[awheeler]

I think this is the way to go if this is a recreational vehicle, if you're based in oz or Africa, or generally snowbirding south to escape the cold, but one of my primary use cases is using the rig as a mobile home to visit ski resorts all winter, and not having any indoor bathing option would be pretty annoying.

Agreed! This is a full-time home for us, we love stealth camping in cities, and we love chasing snow in the winter. A comfortable shower is going to be a must for us.

 

[waveslider]

Another great example of how these vehicles can be molded to fit so many different use cases. Frankly, we wouldn't dream of having a rig without an indoor shower. So much so that we will often fondly refer to it as our extremely expensive mobile shower unit.

We could easily do without an indoor toilet, but not having an indoor shower? Nope, BTDT.

 

[awheeler]

Quick update:

Things got delayed a bit due to difficulty in getting the shocks for the build. Looking like another month before she will be done. A little bummed but oh well. We had a great time hanging in Southwest Colorado for the past month and now are working our way towards the coast. I'll grab some photos of the conversion when I can.

August

 

[shutdown_exploded]

Quick update:

Things got delayed a bit due to difficulty in getting the shocks for the build. Looking like another month before she will be done. A little bummed but oh well. We had a great time hanging in Southwest Colorado for the past month and now are working our way towards the coast. I'll grab some photos of the conversion when I can.

August

Thanks for the update. Following this closely and eager to hear more about this build.

Did you ever finalize your floor plan?

 

[HAF]

Starting to lay out all the electrical as about 80% of the stuff has arrived. Just need to figure out wire gauge and lengths to get that ordered. For solar we are going with 6 175 watt panels wired in parallel. I was thinking of going series/parallel but after talking with some folks here on the forum I think just parallel will do.

Excited(and a little nervous) to see how this digital switching from Czone works out. Has anyone had any experience with Czone?

You are missing a circuit breaker between shore and Combi.

 

[awheeler]

You are missing a circuit breaker between shore and Combi.

Thanks you're right. I've got so many sketches floating around I must have posted the wrong one. Attached is another version which I am sure will need revisions.

 

[awheeler]

So things are getting delayed once more it looks like. I must say the customer experience with Earthcruiser has not been great. Communication is rather awful if you ask me. We've been promised completion dates about 5 times now and not one has delivered. At this point we're just hoping to have it before new year.

Here's a final plan for the interior unless they delay again and give us more time to think about things

We decided to shorten up one side of the dinette from 44" to 32". That allowed us to get a 24 x 36" bath in the corner. We also have some extra space around the fridge if we need more closet space or something. We may actually slide the fridge up close to the entry door and then put more storage in the corner behind fridge.

The 1200 Ah of lithium has been patiently top balancing and is looking really good. Still researching a mini split AC unit if anyone has a favorite brand let us know.