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There’s some potentially interesting solutions out there for side rooms. The thing is they’re designed for other teardrops or vehicles, not the CLC.
The Camp Inn side room tent would probably actually fit the CLC without any mods. It has an apron that secures around the door, and even has a velcro strap to hold the door open. It would make for a nice vestibule and changing room. The problem is it’s only 42″ x 48″, so if you’re looking for a sitting room or a 3rd person to sleep, this won’t cut it. If it were twice the size I’d be all over it.
Paha Que makes a few different side rooms, also designed for other models of trailers. They attach to the trailers they’re designed for using Keder rail. The sizes are perfect for a sitting room and extra sleeping space. Would any of them work with the CLC? It’s difficult to say with the info provided.
Various “SUV Tents:” There are a number of SUV tents out there featuring sleeves that mate up to either a tailgate or a passenger door of a vehicle. They typically have straps that you can wrap around the vehicle and cinch tight. They also tend to be a bit cheaper than the two above options ($200 or so). It seems that one of them would provide a workable solution for a side room.
The ARB awnings and tent room attachments are nice. I like that you mount the awning to a roof rack and just roll it out, so it’s one less thing to pack. The problem there is there doesn’t appear to be a good way to set it up so that you can step out of the trailer and into the tent. The side that butts up against the trailer has a flap that needs to be completely lowered in order to have access to the trailer door. That’s a bit problematic. Maybe a clever modification of some sort to that side would make it a nice solution.
Ez-Up now makes a very nice camping cube for their canopies. EZ-Ups are nice and sturdy, and I like the idea of having a 10′ x 10′ space with that much head room. The obvious problem with that one is it only has one door. If it had two doors I could see setting it up so it butts up agaist the side of the CLC and coming up with some sort of sleeve to connect the two. That, and Ez-Ups are a bit heavy and bulky and usually take 3 people to set up.
Thanks for the feedback, everyone! I likely will end up building the camper at some point. I have a couple other projects I need to put ahead of this, one of them being de-cluttering the garage so I have a place to build and ultimately store the completed camper. In the meantime I’m having fun researching everything and figuring out how I will do certain things.
As for the sleeping solution for my daughter, I’m thinking a separate tent may actually be a better solution than an attached awning with side room. The problem I see with the awning is that in a lot of the campgrounds around here I’d end up in an RV/trailer space where the camper would be parked on an asphalt pad. No biggie there, but that means I’d be pulling the awning out to an area off the pad to stake it down. Also not a problem, except when you consider there will likely be something between the edge of the asphalt and the awning poles to deal with – either a dropoff of a few inches from the edge of the asphalt, or something like a railroad tie that would poke up through the side room floor. I could just see pulling into certain spots where the side room was pretty much completely unusable, and then it would be a case of “oh great, where does the kid sleep?” Most RV spots seem to indicate they can accommodate one RV or trailer plus a tent, but not necessarily right next to each other. As long as we had a tent big enough to stand up in so it can be a changing room and also double as a screened living room if there’s bugs out, it doesn’t necessarily have to butt right up to the camper. The EZ-Up camping cube looks like a great solution. My only beef with that is it only has one door. If it had two doors I could still set it up right up against the camper door and have an almost seamless side room solution when the site constraints permitted it. Maybe a modification is in order at some point. Hmmm, another project to tackle.
Most of the camping we’d be doing would be at places where mosquitoes aren’t a problem (California State Beaches – bugs tend to not like that salty air). I’d still love to play with some sort of screen solution either for the windows or the doors, just so we could take more of a wilderness/National Park trip if we wanted to where bugs can be more of an issue. I’m also somewhat of a tinkerer so the camper will probably never be “done.”
I’m also very interested in the storage box below. CLC’s website says it would be available this spring, but apparently it isn’t ready yet. Maybe it will be by the time I decide to dive into this project. I’m sure the kit will be fairly expensive though. It seems like building your own would just take some fairly basic carpentry skills. I’m kind of anxious to see where CLC prices the kit once they release it. A small issue there is it will probably raise the door above my wife’s comfort level (she’s barely 5 feet), but that’s easily solved with a stool.
I think any “fun” home build project is going to have its frustrating moments. If it was that easy then everyone would do it and it would lose some of the cool factor.
I’ve looked at the ARB awning rooms. They’re pretty nice but I see two problems with them. First of all, they require a roof rack. If you’re only adding the roof rack for the purpose of installing the awning, it becomes a very expensive side room solution – $1000+ between the cost of the rack and the cost of the awning and room. The second issue is that there isn’t a “seamless” interface between the camper and the side room. There’s that sidewall entrance that “sort of” butts up against the trailer and zips down for access. It would be much nicer if that sidewall could somehow be modified to match up exactly with the door. That way you could sleep with the trailer door open and still keep bugs out, and when you wake up in the morning you can step right from your camper into the side room. This isn’t as much of a concern as the first issue because there really is no “seamless” solution for this camper as of yet.
We would probably only camp for 1 or 2 days at a time, and therefore wouldn’t have a ton of gear with us, so spending nearly $500 on a roof rack isn’t a practical option. I could of course use it to mount a solar panel if I choose to have solar on the rig, but I could just as easily build a tongue box and mount a solar panel there and it would be much less expensive.
I did see on the CLC Facebook page that one builder made made his own roof rack out of the trailer bunks that came with the kit. He basically just made four wooden mounting blocks to fit the shell of the trailer and the bunks and glassed them on. It looks really nice and is an almost free option. It’s something I might consider if I get to that point as it would solve the $500 roof rack issue.
I’ve also looked at the EZ Up Camping Cube. For less than $500 you get a 10′ x 10′ space that’s plenty big enough to stand up in, so it could easily be a changing/living/dining room in addition to extra sleeping space. BUT a) EZ Ups are big, heavy, and bulky to travel with, and b) it would also be a completely separate “structure” from the trailer. It’s not an ideal solution, but neither is the ARB.
I can envision a good tailor possibly modifying one of the sidewalls of either the ARB or the EZ Up to create an opening that wraps around the inside of the door and fastens in place with snaps or velcro. That way you would have a true side room where you could keep the camper door open and still keep the bugs and the elements out. I don’t know if it’s practical or cost effective, but something I might eventually look into.
