I’m so excited! I’m not one to be easily excited, as most people that know me will tell you, but I’m throughly happy and excited about recent events. After years of passively planning and many months of actively planning, I’m finally about to commit to purchasing a customized enclosed trailer that will fit my needs.
Sure, committing to buying something doesn’t seem like a life-changing event, you might even call it a “small step”, but in this case it represents a huge leap for me in my quest to dramatically change my life and live a much happier and more fulfilling life.
A little about why this is so important to me: my motivations are really quite simple. I’d like to go out, see the world, explore, and live as much as possible before my body gives out and gets old on me. And the idea of sitting at a desk, working full time for the next 30 or so years is not my idea of living. So before I get too old to go out and enjoy life, I’m going to get started.
A little about my enclosed trailer, aka, RV: After spending enough time in other RVs, and knowing a decent amount about myself, I knew that I would not be able to simply purchase an “off-the-shelf” RV and be happy with it. I’m an introvert, which for me means that noise from sources that I am not controlling cause me stress and general anxiety. Since RVs generally give zero consideration to noise insulation, they would simply not work. Plus, in the other negatives of a typical RV, they have terribly uncomfortable furniture, tiny batteries and water tanks, and are generally poorly built. So poorly in fact that an experienced RV’er will suggest that you buy an RV that is one year old; old enough that the original owner has already had all of the manufacturer defects corrected.
I enjoy building things in the real world. After being a software engineer for the past 20 years or so, doing things in the real world has significant appeal to me. When working in software, you can put in 8 hours at your desk, “accomplish” all sorts of things, but when you walk away, nothing in the real world has changed. It’s like you haven’t done anything.
So with commercially-available RVs generally being of poor quality and not meeting my needs, plus my desire to build stuff in the real world, the dream of building my RV has been shaping up for a long time now.
Of course life rears its ugly head and throws curve balls, almost all the time, so this all takes time. Other than having the pesky Minnesota winter approaching quickly, the timing for me to order this trailer is basically perfect.
I’m anticipating placing my commitment on the trailer tomorrow and taking delivery sometime in January, 2017. I’m ordering an enclosed trailer with:
- Aluminum Frame with 16″ on-center rails in the floor, walls, and ceiling
- 6,000lb axles (with brakes, of course) and approximately a 6″ rise above standard
- ST235/80R16/LRE tires (trying to avoid blowouts by having some nice tires)
- 20′ main box length plus 4′ V-Nose
- 8′ interior height
- .040 exterior aluminum sheet thickness
- Full walk-on roof with 2000# max capacity
- 4 large (48″x30″) windows, one small egress window
- 2 of the large windows are in the V-nose and will have concession-stand type doors to protect them while in travel
- Ceiling insulation and vinyl
- Plus various other bits of trim, DOT lighting, etc.
It occurred to me the other day that I’m building this RV much like my current townhouse. I bought a shell which was engineered and constructed by experts which looks great and won’t have any problems, then I can do whatever I want with the inside. In this case with the RV, I wanted something that was structurally solid and would support just about anything I could throw at it, and be safe. Once that was obtained, then I could build out any kind of crazy dreams I had for the inside.
This is going to be fantastic! I can’t wait!