Going Social

Early in the process of looking for a motorhome, I found the Sportsmobile website and soon had prepared a custom plan that I liked quite a lot. However, I continued to research other RVs to make sure I wasn't overlooking a great alternative, or at least to gather ideas. While there wasn't another option that I'd trade my Sportsmobile design for, I did find features that made me reexamine the ways I intended to use my motorhome. This eventually led to a completely new design that was better than the original in almost every way.

For reference, here is that first Sportsmobile design that (I thought ) had everything I needed:

So what's not to like? Well, right away I realized that the galley was cramped for space. Standing in front of the stove or sink, my back would be up against the door to the bathroom. And forget about squeezing past another person standing there. Beyond that, in some other vans I was studying, it was possible to sleep four. I liked the idea of being able to invite along a couple of relatives or friends and maybe their kid on a weekend excursion or a week-long vacation. I couldn't do that with the plan above. Even if I invited just one friend along, one bed would not be the ideal arrangement. Also, other vans had seating up front, just behind the cab, to form a kind of mini living room. Suppose I was in a campground and wanted to invite other people over. With the plan above, I could either have one other person and we'd sit in the cab seats, or I could have two people over and we'd sit side by side on the sofa. Though technically the plan can seat five, if there were that many people at one time, they'd be shouting at each other down a long hallway. The same goes for any extra passengers while traveling down the road.

At the time that these issues were coming to the fore, I was touring some motorhomes at dealerships for the first time. I realized the plans I liked best filled the back of the van with a bed and a bathroom side-by-side - a fact that you see reflected in many of the designs presented in previous posts. However, those designs were in vans that used wider fiberglass bodies on a Sprinter chassis. Could that arrangement be shoehorned into a conventional Sprinter van? To my surprise, it could. The bathroom would be 24" wide, which was the standard width of showers found in many other designs, and the bed would be 44" wide, the width of (narrow) two-person beds offered by Sportsmobile. Moving the bathroom to the back freed up room in the front for a couch that converts into another 44" wide bed. In fact, both beds could be a type of couch that Sportsmobile calls a gaucho that folds down into a bed. A bed that is 44" wide is a tight fit for two people, but you expect a few compromises when you're camping. And the arrangement was ideal for having one friend along. I was surprised to find that I could indeed have a plan that slept four, would seat up to eight, had a "living room" up front for socializing, and opened up the galley space by placing a low couch across from it. All my problems were solved - nearly.

For every gain there's a loss of something else. In this case, the big loss was storage space - the new design had room for only one narrow closet. But, taking a cue from other design-your-own plans on the Sportsmobile website, I realized I could raise the rear bed on a pedestal, creating storage space underneath. About this time, I was also teaching myself SketchUp, the 3d modeling program, and my ability to visualize the new plan took a big step forward. Here's a view from the right front with the cab seats swiveled to face the living space:

And here's a view from above and left showing both beds extended:

The view from the rear shows the storage space available in the pedestal:

The cabinet at the left rear would be completely custom and provide storage space for towels, additional hanging space for coats and jackets, and a cubby to slide the porta-potti into to make more room in the shower. 

Ah yes, the porta-potti. There are entire sections of on-line RV forums devoted to which is better, a porta-potti or a porcelain marine toilet connected to a black-water (waste) tank under the van. In my opinion, the arguments on both sides come out even. The porta-potti provides flexibility in positioning and is easier to empty. The marine toilet has more substantial construction and greater storage capacity. My first design included a marine toilet, for this new design to work, a porta-potti was required. Was that a choice I could live with? After all, it really is just a glorified piece of tupperware. Only one way to know: I bought a porta-potti and took it along on a tent camping trip. It was great! It is very sturdy and stable. I'm a big guy, but I found it to be just as comfortable as toilets at home. There was no smell. In fact, the seal into the waste chamber is so airtight the forums warn that if you go up in altitude, you should equalize the pressure before use or you can get a nasty blast of air when you open the valve to flush. (It's a warning I heeded, and was glad I did.) The model I bought is the Thetford Curve, and I think it's great.

There's another detail concerning the bathroom that I obsessed about, which is shown here:

That box in the upper right corner of the shower pan is covering the wheelwell. I could remove the box, but the wheelwell would still be there. One way or another, the shower pan was going to have a large bite out of the corner. Is this something Sportsmobile could accommodate? I had no idea. There was nothing like it in the examples on their website; they appeared to use a couple standard sizes of prefabricated fiberglass shower pans. If you cut a corner out of one of those, you raise all sorts of possibilities for leaking. Maybe they'd refuse. I tried moving the shower pan to other, unobstructed, locations, but nothing worked as well as having it in the position shown. If it could just be built. I developed a contingency plan: if Sportsmobile wouldn't build it, I'd either commission a fiberglass shop to make a custom pan to fit, or I'd try doing it myself.

Months ahead of time, I began planning a trip to the Sportsmobile factory in June 2013. This would serve two purposes: to actually see some examples of their conversions ( they don't sell through dealerships, so there were no local samples ), and to get their reaction to my plan. I looked forward to the trip with a mixture of excitement and dread. That trip, and how it set in motion a dramatic redesign, are the subjects of my next post.