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I’m omitting the galley in favor of more interior space. I’ll install the galley flat but eventually remove most of it. After glassing the shell and cutting the hatch, I’ll extend the cut along the side of the bulkhead all the way to the leg, leaving only an arch. I’ll cut the flat similarly, leaving a ledge about three inches wide (same width as the border of the hole in the bulkhead). With the hatch closed, the interior will be a single open space with no galley. With the hatch open, walls of tent material attached to the hatch will create a much larger open space, like a pop-up camper.
http://teardropforum.com/forums/topic/omitting-the-galley-build-log/
I may also make a table top from the part of the galley flat I cut out. This table top will have a folding leg or two and will attach to the ledge with lift-off hinges. The tent material will be removable, so I’ll have either a pop-up camper or a galley (not separated from the interior) when opening the hatch.
I hadn’t stitched the bulkhead when I took the first picture. Now that I have, the legs look even, but I’m still crossing my fingers. An eighth of an inch isn’t much room for error.
The fillets would have covered any gap, but I made the notches large enough for the tape with a rasp and sanding block, and the bulkhead hugs the shell nicely. The rasp chewed up the edge of the plywood a little, but the fillet will cover that too. If had needed a cleaner cut, I’d have used the sanding block with coarse paper exclusively.
To beat the Georgia heat, I’m working in the early morning. I get up around 5:30, 4:30 if I’m feeling motivated, and work until 8:00 on weekdays or noon on weekends. I work from home, but my day job starts at 8:00 a.m. At that hour, my garage is still in the mid-70s. By 2 p.m., it’s approaching 90 degs. I wouldn’t try to do epoxy work in that heat even if I could bear it.
If I were really motivated, I’d work from 2 a.m. ’til 10 a.m. on weekends. For an eight hour day, those hours are optimal, but I’d have a hard time adjusting to my day job hours.
You shouldn’t discharge a deep cycle, lead-acid battery completely. Routinely discharging it more than 50-60% before recharging it decreases its lifespan very substantially, so if you really need 100 amp-hours at 12V (roughly a kilowatt-hour) from the battery each day, you need two of these batteries. If you need 200 amp-hours (to run a small AC all night), you need four of them, which puts the weight over 250 lbs.
Lithium batteries are a lot more expensive up front, but they last a lot longer, even if you routinely discharge them a lot more, and weigh a lot less, so the price is competitive in the long run. That’s what the people selling lithium batteries say, anyway. You could run a small AC at night with two lithium batteries weighing only 60 lbs., and the batteries would last many years longer than AGM batteries.
If I only wanted to power small electronics (phone, small laptop) occasionally, I’d use an AGM battery, but to power a small fridge and multiple laptops that I need for my work all day, a lithium battery seems worth the extra expense.
http://tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=66150&sid=1042cc9fc9833f03a0e1b361b8b64a2f
Further down in this forum, the discussion turns to the 2500 btu AC from climateright, and someone in the forum has used an earlier version of it.
The 2500 btu Climateright AC is new. It doesn’t start shipping until August, so there’s some early adopter risk at this point, but their website has a video from the head of Little Guy campers (the largest maker of teardrop campers), so small campers are part of their target market. They also expect to sell ACs to dog lovers for dog houses, but that almost sounds like a joke to me. Both the size and the fact that it’s ducted and not a “window unit” appeal to me. Window air conditioners can be very loud.
5000 btu/hr is 1465 watts (by definition). Your friend assumes (correctly) that the AC doesn’t run continuously, so his 500 watts is an average.
2500 btu/hr is 733 watts, so 480 watts is also an average. The manufacturer presumably assumes use over 24 hours. At night, the AC would run much less, so an average of 250 watts during the night seems reasonable, but over eight hours, even 250 watts is 2 kilowatt hours, and I expect to have a one kilowatt hour battery. I’ll spend the extra bucks for a lithium battery (around a thousand of them), but even with these batteries, the weight of 2 kw-hrs is around 60 lbs. With lead acid batteries, the weight is hundreds of lbs.
A second battery also requires another 200 watts of solar panels, which is getting large. A 200 watt solar panel only generates about one kw-hr/day. I am seriously considering an AC, but it’s not at the top of my wish list. I want to tour the country with the camper and to work from it frequently during the day, but I’ll avoid hot weather. To sit in it during the day in Georgia in July, AC is an absolute necessity.
5000 btu sounds like overkill. The smallest AC I’ve found is 2500 btu and sits outside with ducts, so you wouldn’t mount it in your bulkhead. I’d like AC, but I also want to be off-grid, and even this 2500 btu unit draws a lot of power.
I probably could have repaired the cracked panel with fiberglass tape, but since CLC was shipping a new bulkhead anyway, I elected to replace both top panels in the same shipment. My taping job on the second panel wasn’t so bad, but being so close to the beginning, I still hope to finish without a flaw.
Because my bulkhead was damaged in transit, CLC only charged me for the panels, a total of $95. If I had paid for the shipping, the cost would have more than doubled. A company called AIT handles the large box shipments from CLC, and their service hasn’t impressed me. Despite scheduling a delivery after the boxes arrived at AIT’s delivery terminal, the first shipment arrived a day late and was damaged, so my wife will take pictures of the boxes before opening this time. My second shipment is due today, but I’m away from home this week and next.
I have cut the damaged bulkhead as illustrated in Figure 1 above. I don’t have a picture, but I was happy with the result, particularly since I had never used a circular saw. The cut removed practically all of the damaged portion, so I could have used the damaged part, but the practice with a circular saw was worthwhile.
Thanks, Boardwalk. Nice to hear from someone in the class. I followed the shop cam, but it wasn’t streaming properly during the second week. In the final group shot, outside of the CLC building, you were at various stages of completion. Some people had a more complete finish while others had doors fitted. Several people in this forum report problems with fitting doors. Cutting the doors and hatch seems particularly perilous. What did you learn about fitting the doors?
I needed to replace a part, and my day job has me away from home for a few weeks, so my build is delayed, but I’ll be working on the camper again soon.
The Intertape product describes itself as permanent. The XFasten tape claims to be removable. So does this carpet tape which is a wider than the XFasten tape:
Add me to the list of builders with this question. I’m also considering Velcro, but the Velcro must be glued to the shell, and I’d like to preserve the beautiful wood on the interior. Double sided tape and “post it” adhesive sound promising. Adding more adhesive occasionally is not a problem. Let us know if you go this way.
I won’t use the headliner kit for two reasons. I’m omitting the galley, so I’ll line all of the shell with foam including the galley hatch. I also prefer a lighter color. The foam is available online in large sheets in several colors. I’ve seen the gray in the kit, white and a few primary colors. The primary colors are loud, but blue is a possibility. I may use white and paint or stain it, but I have lots of time to decide.
On Monday’s agenda, you don’t join panels 1 & 2 at puzzle joints. Are these panels not divided by puzzle joints in the class?
We’re at practically the same point in the build. I had a similar problem when my epoxy thickened too much to saturate the fiberglass tape. My garage is much warmer than yours at peak temperature, though I was working in the evening when the temperature was closer to 80 than 90. The epoxy eventually thickens regardless of the ambient temperature, and I simply waited too long before abandoning the thickened epoxy for a new batch, or I mixed too much. I mixed less than the 8 ozs. the manual suggested, but I presumably also worked more slowly than the manual anticipated.
Three of my joins look good, but one looks at least as glassy as yours, and I have a patch of unsaturated tape about the size of my thumb. I agree with Bob that your join only needs standing, and any cosmetic issue is negligible, since you’ll presumably cover it with foam or other insulation.
I don’t think the extra epoxy increases the chance of a crack. One of my top panels had an apparently flawless join. The other looked more like yours even after sanding. The one with the flawless join cracked when I tried to place it in the mold. Pictures are in the “Omitting the galley” thread. The crack was not near the puzzle joint, so I don’t think the strength of the join had anything to do with it. I’m still waiting for feedback from CRC on how to proceed.
