Floor Plan

My 2002 Ford E350 Long Body Camper wasn't really big enough to live in full-time, so I had this travel trailer custom-built by New Horizons RV in Junction City, Kansas. New Horizons has a great reputation among the fulltime 5th-wheel crowd, but I went with a travel trailer because I needed to tow it with the van. I want to use the trailer as a portable home-base, then use the van as an exploration vehicle for short time trips out from my portable home-base. When I moved out of [and sold] my house and moved into the trailer, I found there were still several cabinets that weren't even used, including most of the under-bed and under-sofa storage, so I'll say it has plenty of storage space. I had lots of drawers built in, my preferred means of storage. Even at the expense of more weight and cost, they are worth it to me.

The trailer is 30 feet long from bumper to hitch [26 feet front-to-back at the floorline], and heavier than most, weighing 11,700 pounds with empty tanks but with all my stuff in it. There's no particle board in it though, just lots of 3/4" marine-grade plywood and maple cabinetry. It is designed and constructed to be used 100 percent of the time, not just a couple weeks a year. It has an electric wheelchair lift as well as lots of other electronic goodies such as auto-leveling jacks, electric awning and hitch jack to make my life easier. It has 6 wheels, unusual for a trailer of this size. This makes it tow straighter and is a smoother ride for the contents, and with 6 wheel disc brakes, it stops better too.

Inside and outside are all the comforts of home, and I mean ~everything~ I would want or need to make my life a happy one whether I'm ensconced in a fancy RV park or "roughing it" in the back-country. Note these pictures represent a trailer that's "lived in" so I decided to leave stuff out as it is when I use it. No apologies here!

The living area has a comfy sofa for relaxing while watching the 37" LCD home theatre system that features 5.1 surround sound [built into the trailer during construction so all wiring is in the walls, not tacked into the corners as an afterthought], and can be fed by any of: DVD player, roof-mounted auto-aiming satellite dish, extendable rotateable amplified TV antenna for HDTV off-the-air signals, or cable TV connection if I'm staying in a civilized campground. The DVD player doubles as an audio CD/MP3 player and triples as an AM/FM radio. My entire 400+ audio CD collection is now on a hard disk, ready to play from any one of the computers through a pair of Mackie HR-624 professional studio monitor speakers for truly superb audio quality...thanks for that suggestion, Rick!

I have my own internet programming business and can work wherever I can get on the internet, so also included in this area of the trailer is my "office". I've recently converted to using 100% notebook computers in the "office" and it's amazing how much computing power can be packed into just a couple square feet. I run several versions of Unix, Linux, MacOS and even Windows to be able to support my work. Internet access is via a Sprint Novatel U727 USB Broadband Wireless modem and a Verizon USB727 Broadband Wireless modem, both of which feed a Cradlepoint MBR-1000 WiFi router set up for load balancing and failover. I bought these from 3gStore.com and I'm very pleased with their service and support.

The kitchen has a sink, hot [16 gallon 120VAC or propane] and cold [70 gallon] running water, microwave, refrigerator [8 cubic feet, with frost-free freezer, 120VAC or propane] and a two-burner propane cooktop mounted under a fold-away section of countertop. I opted for a small cooktop...I never used the one in my house, so why bother with that here?

There's a 120VAC 15,000 BTU thermostatically-controlled heat pump air-conditioning/heating system as well as a ducted propane-driven furnace for those really cold nights. For milder times, the two ceiling-mounted bidirectional fans can be set so one blows in and one blows out, creating my own breeze. The propane system consists of 2 40 pound tanks for the furnace and a separate 30 pound tank mounted in the slideout for the fridge and stove.

All the electronics consume a lot of electricity. 4 Trojan 6VDC golf cart batteries on slide-out trays for easy maintenance provide 450 amp-hours of power, and they are charged by the van engine while towing, by 120VAC shore power when plugged in, or by 4 120-watt solar panels on the roof. A Xantrex 2000 watt inverter converts the battery power into 120VAC for those devices that need it. If I did my math correctly, I should be able to run everything [except the air conditioning] without ever running out of power, thanks to the solar charging.

Unlike most travel trailers, this one was designed to be home for one person, namely me. So it doesn't have sleeping facilities for 8 or silly things like that. It does have floorspace where I need it at the expense of some things being more difficult, like making the bed. I'm not a make-the-bed-every-morning kind of guy anyway, and changing the sheets isn't ~that~ big a project. The bathroom has more room than one of my old house bathrooms, which is nice. That's a SeaLand porcelain marine-type toilet, very water-efficient yet as large as the average house pottie. The bathtub is within a few inches of a normal house-sized tub even though it doesn't look it, and includes a fold-down seat and handheld adjustable shower-massage type shower fixture. There is a 70 gallon black water [toilet only] holding tank, a 70 gallon grey water [kitchen and bathroom sinks] holding tank, and both can be pumped out at the push of a button in just a few minutes by the builtin macerator pump.