Floor Pan Beginnings

Zach and I both woke up around 6:45 am yesterday, ready to dive into the TH build! First, a shot of the trailer without any of the decking. The lower part in the foreground is our detachable porch - 2' deep, and we can do a simple install of Ipe decking and call it a porch! When it comes time to move the house, we can just slide the porch out of the two rails, stow it in the house, and roll down the highway with a slightly shorter load.

First order of business was to lay out and rivet together the strips of aluminum flashing. This provides a mostly structural barrier against any debris that could fly under the house during towing, or any animals that might want to get up ins once it's in place.

All the flashing riveted in - shiny!

Rosie the Riveter: intimidating, or crazyface?

6mil poly sheeting goes down next, to act as an impermeable vapor barrier (except for where I dropped a floor joist and poked a hole, oops).

Floor joists are 2x6" Timbersil: a great, green product! Instead of being treated with toxic rot, insect, or fire retardants, Timbersil is impregnated with glass, making it extremely stable and wonderfully non-toxic! Ours were b-grade, meaning they were a little warpy, but totally useable, and also totally affordable.

All joints are reinforced with Simpson Strong-Ties, to make sure that when we go rattling down the highway, the house doesn't come rattling apart at the seams.

Upon cutting members for the floor box, I discovered that the trailer was not the requested 8'x24', but is actually 6" wider! The Department of Transportation doesn't allow anything wider than 8'6" to travel down the highway without special permits ($), so this thing is built to our absolute max width. It's not what was planned for, but I'm not going to argue with an extra 6" of width - that's an extra 12sqft of interior space!

After completing half the floor boxes, energy was flagging, but much was accomplished today!