5x8 Cargo Trailer DIY Camper Conversion Build ( Tiny House )

hello this is patrick with new jersey's outdoor adventures youtube channel here at high rock park in staten island new york met up with vince and vince has a really cool cargo trailer camper conversion that he built himself and he's going to give us a tour of it today so join us [Music] hi my name is vince we're up here in the woods of staten island and i've come to show you my trailer this is a five by eight cargo trailer six foot height inside it's basically the trailer that every landscaper uses they're built to last they're built for someone to be working out of them so as far as longevity on a camper it should last quite a lot while we're gonna go to the back first and you'll notice the two awnings one on the side the one on the back side awning comes out eight feet rear awning comes out six feet we have a regular door on the back with a bar lock in the rear is the kitchen area which is also accessible from the inside i have a latch so that the door doesn't get blown around in the wind and you have a small kitchen area everything's done in hardwoods and birch plywood for strength and lightness we have a under mounted sink here in this butcher block countertop sink is pressurized water just like your house you just open it up it would come out you have two pantries in here one on either side [Applause] a little bit of mess but that's okay volt outlet here 12 volt outlet here you have the business end of it here's the pressurized water pump you have your bottom your sink your drain vent your fill going down to the 16 gallon fresh water tank this is i use just a one pound propane so this is the fitting for it that fitting can come out and go straight to a 20 pounder or a five pounder if need be you have a single burner propane stove because i've never had the need to cook with two pots when i'm camping 53 quart compressor driven refrigerator on a drawer so it's out of the way when you're not using it more than enough for two people for a week this will show you when we get inside but this partition folds up so that you can access all this from the inside if you want to make your coffee when it's raining you can still get to it without coming out of the trailer up above also more storage you can see keep my pots and pans up here and there's also room to put your spices small items your cutlery led lighting all around the trailer inside and out again here another storage area for your canned goods dry goods i used a craig jacob made my door frames ratted out the back and dropped in a piece of birch plywood or flush panel doors these locks open and close when they're in the out position you push them in though and they lock so they can't open up while you're driving you have a solid butcher block countertop makes for a nice cutting area in the middle nice and strong stiffens up the trailer i have removable stabilizers so these slide in and out when you get to the campsite just tap on them they'll drop down and that'll keep the trailer from rocking back and forth while you're going in and out just makes it a little more comfortable this is a lockable door for the water fill don't want anybody messing with your water you have 15 inch radial tires it's one of the reasons i like these trailers because you can tell them at highway speeds all day long all led lighting on the trailer 15 by 30 windows with screens on all four sides i installed led motion lights that are solar charged so there's no switches no nothing all you need to do is turn them on if you set them to the last it'll go off now because now it's a motion light that'll come on only when it's dark this is a 030 aluminum side versus the o24 which is the thinner this is a little stronger the whole trailer weighs in just under 1500 pounds which for most purposes will be towed with anything with a v6 or larger usually a smaller suv will work i tow with my ford f-150 that i have set up for off-road and will get me out of any predicament that i need because going down these forest roads sometimes there's large areas of mud i have a standard two-inch wall which is what most of these trailers come with it's got a tongue jack and i also put a spare tire carrier on it so it was nice and easy to access now let me close this to get it out of the way okay going into the front your living quarters this is a standard rv door it was a little big for this application so it had to be cut down it's got it the double rv lock deadbolt and a regular handle lock obscure glass you see i had to make a bracket so that this could be held open so you don't have to worry about the wind this is the standard 15 amp service that you can hook into your garage to keep the batteries charged if you had a cover over it or it was under a carport and this is a accessory solar so you could put a solar panel out into the sun if you needed to okay on the door we also have screen door you won't see this in some of these smaller trailers especially but it allows you to keep the bugs out before you go to bed i usually put a little mosquito trapper in there before i go to sleep and that way everything stays nice and cozy we have a regular the waterproof vinyl flooring that you find at all the big box stores for a floor beneath that is a sub flooring and a half inch of foil back foam and the base on that is three quarter inch wax plywood so it's impervious to water again everything is done in here with birch cabinet grade plywood and poplar hardwoods take it inside and we'll start in the frontier a little more modern but 24 inch smart tv over on the side here is your 20 amp mppt solar charger this is a bluetooth model so you can also check it from your phone below that is your switch to turn on the pure sine wave 1500 wide inverter after the power gets to the batteries it comes up to a main battery switch which will disconnect everything in case of an emergency plus it keeps any drain from the battery when you're not using it that goes from there through a 30 amp waterproof breaker and then up to distribution you have a switch panel with circuit breakers a voltage gauge four usb ports uh and inside is anything out on the panel goes through a regular fuse box just like a boat would have jack for the 12 volt tv back there there's two bus bars and a 110 volt charger for the batteries and if you can see up on top there's one inch foam insulation which is also throughout the trailer all the wiring is done with marine wiring which is a tinned copper wire all these panels here are completely removable with one screw so that you can do any work on them or change a switch or a fuse or add things nice little desk area here which comes in handy with for your toiletries while you're camping we have stereo speaker a little weather station tells me how cold it is inside and outside dvd player because a lot of times you have no signal at least you can watch tv just some pictures on the walls under here besides storage are the 200 amp hour batteries agm sealed lead acid and if you can see in the corner here is the 1500 watt pure sine wave inverter this little blue switch here is your when you come in from the outside you can turn your light on or you can dim it for a night light all led takes very little power on the ceiling here we have a max fan four-speed max fan which will make this a wind tunnel basically and the best part is on low it's dead quiet makes no sound again led lighting this one is out of a boat either white or red so you don't lose your night vision if you're coming in and out and for you ladies especially here we have a thetford porta potty and in order to use it or to dump it easy access the front panel comes out everything's on lifts so you don't have to hold things up and the rest of the bench here is your two water tanks the 16 gallon fresh water and a 13 gallon gray water you also have storage because they only take about half the space okay also on the interior you can see these two little bump outs one on either side these little chases this was all the original trailer wiring for the brake lights turn lights etc and in here is all my wiring that i put in for everything that's in the back the ceiling fan the lights goes through here and then up underneath the insulation into the plywood the sofa is a four inch memory foam mattress it's a futon style that pulls out and fills this bed into a full-size bed on the back wall here you can see the hinge this is a partition that opens up to the back so that you can use your galley if the weather is not great it also gives a lot of airflow through here once the back door is open the sofa has two panels underneath that pull out and there's storage underneath the whole back of the sofa please pull forward i would pull right to the frontier the mattress once open is a full-size mattress it's 78 by 55 one side's shorter than a queen which is 60 by 80. it's a four inch memory foam very comfortable i woke up on it and not knowing i was here thought i was in my own home and it as you can see it only takes a minute to deploy and only a minute to get it back up it's just a matter of sliding it back into place closing up your support here and in the middle of this one and the other one because it's not supported it's split we have a support bar that just goes in nice and easy and now no problems nice and solid simple if you ever lost them you could use a stick from the woods it's not a big deal vince thank you very much for taking the time today to give us a tour of your beautiful creation can you tell our viewers a little bit about why you decided to build your own cargo trailer camper conversion well throughout the years i used to go camping a lot with my son and boy scouts and i retired a few years ago and decided i wanted to get back to the woods i'm an avid wildlife photographer so i spent a lot of time in the woods and this gives me a little flexibility as to where i'm going to be and where i can stay because a lot of times it's pretty far from the nearest hotel i like the cargo trailers because of their durability this one is a five by eight again six foot inside so you can stand i wanted certain things in it that i wanted plus i put things in it that i thought other people would want because i knew eventually i would sell it and it is for sale now it's basically a new trailer it's pretty much got everything in it i built it uh at my own home my i'm a diy i have a little shop in my one car garage enough to to do all the cabinetry the electrical and the plumbing i do a lot of boats for my son so i'm constantly rebuilding something i also own my own boat i started with building the back of my truck and getting that ready for off-road and since i've uh finished this one i've spent a few times in the woods and usually the only person i'll see is a forest ranger because i'm in the middle of nowhere is there anything that our viewers if they were interested in building or buying a cargo trailer conversion is there anything about the actual trailer that you start with that's important well you have to worry about what you're going to use for a tow vehicle first and then you can set your size you can't take a a small car and expect to tow a 20-foot trailer that would be basically just a truck of some type a trailer like this you can still do a small suv if it had a v6 in it you can go online and find out capabilities of towing on your own vehicle uh other things that i wanted i wanted it to be self-sustaining i wanted to have water to have cooking facilities to have electric that would sustain itself day-to-day this trailer will sit by itself and will do all its functions without any hookups so the solar on the roof is enough to power everything in this trailer on a day-to-day basis is there a certain like uh frame structure axle system that is more preferred for this type of build well the frame structure is going to be pretty standard on all of these trailers they're all 3 000 pound gvw with the single axle this is a dexter axle which is probably the most common in the us you can get parts in any auto parts store if you needed to do a replacement 10 years from now on a wheel bearing or something this has easy lube hubs which makes it easy to keep the grease in there and caps so it stays waterproof the thickness of the skin there's two different thicknesses basically there's the 0.024 and the 0.030 the 3l being the thicker and it just gives a little more rigidity and is the front nose being like a v-nose better for aerodynamics better for additional storage is it free space when you buy a trailer like this this is called the 5x8 trailer the 5x8 part is the rectangle the v-nose is an add-on kind of a freebie at this point they haven't figured that they could make it a 10-foot trailer and sell it as a 10-foot trailer like they do boats when a boat has a two-foot bow sprint that adds to the length of the boat so it's a 26 not a 24 foot boat but this works out great because it keeps stuff out of your living area and makes this living area a little more usable i'll make sure i link to your ad so people that are interested in possibly buying this or checking it out will get to be able to get through some from additional information you build it you're selling it what's next well when this one goes i have some ideas and plans for another one it's gonna be a little different than this i may go up one step in the size to a six by ten uh that'll be a little more flexible going from a five by eight to six by ten doesn't sound that big but when you figure interior space it's huge i know when we're looking at your tow vehicle before you utilize your tow vehicle a lot for additional storage a lot of people don't connect with that they believe that a lot of the stuff has to stay in the trailer can you show us a little bit about what you have in the back your truck well i originally set this up to have a rooftop tent which i sold but now i just use it for basically bringing everything else to the campsite i have extra firewood because sometimes you'll get to a place that's been pretty much used out no downed trees in the woods or anything i have my leveling blocks so that you can level out the trailer so you're not rolling into one corner all the time i have my two fire extinguishers just safety they're out here because if anything inside of a caught fire i can still get to them i have a little stool so i can get up onto my roof if i need to in the back of the truck i have a second little refrigerator and when i use it with a trailer i set this one to freeze so i have a little freezer and the one in the trailer stays a refrigerator i have drawers behind both of these here these drawers go all the way to the front for storage then i have bins of different things according to what i'm doing whether i'm working on a boat or i'm just going camping over here i have my electrical panel and battery battery's a 90 amp hour deep cycle marine you have a 1000 watt inverter here so i can plug in a router or jigsaw if i'm working on something up on the roof i have a 100 watt solar panel which charges the rear battery and that'll keep that going day to day because it's only the little refrigerator back there basically my antennas i have three different radios in the truck ham radio gmrs and cb so that if i'm off grid i can usually get to someone because i'm not getting as young as i used to be and cell phone service is not cell phone available yeah very rarely is their cell phone so cell phone service available a lot of overlanders i see have all the different cb radios and ham radio and then i have a 10 000 pound winch on the front because where i go you're not going to be able to call a tow truck well vince thank you very much for taking the time to give us a tour of your beautiful creation this is patrick with new jersey's outdoor adventures youtube channel hope you enjoyed this video please like this video comment share and subscribe 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Channel: New Jersey Outdoor Adventures

Views: 574,926

Keywords: camper build, Diy camper, Tiny house, Camper tour, Cargo trailer, Cargo trailer camper, Off grid camper, Cargo camper, Container camper, Trailer camper

Id: W8hnPOnq4rg

Length: 23min 26sec (1406 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 12 2021