Bio,
...unless you are already PAST PACKAGING - you might have a look at this guy's build:
http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...traveles-Europe-and-Turkey-International-7500
.....on page 1 he is already talking about "underfloor, ROOMY bedroomS!" - he really is stacking SPACE!!
Cheers,
thjakits
Hi
thjakits, dwh, safas, egn,
Yes, very familiar with
Shachagra. If you go back to post #460, you'll see that I wrote a bit about it there -- see
http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page46 . Doug Cuthbert's design solution was very particular to his operational requirement: a motorhome that could transport his family of five in comfort. This reveals something important about RVs: even the very biggest ones are not designed for families of 4 or 5 to travel for months together full-time. Even the biggest Class A motorhomes are designed mostly for couples, with perhaps one grown adult kid occasionally visiting.
If one's kids are still small, they can share a fold-down or fold-out bed. But older kids need separate bedrooms, and no standard RVs have 4 discreet bedrooms, to accommodate a family of 5. So Cuthbert had to borrow a naval idea to get his kids their separate bedrooms, and the "motorhome" that resulted is mega-sized, with not much ground clearance:
And see
https://www.youtube.com/user/shachagra ,
https://www.youtube.com/user/shachagra/videos , and
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpjndyHo_VnsY9D--X63g9h7d6Swi0lPh .
Shachagra is not an expedition motorhome at all, but rather, was designed to travel the good paved roads in Europe and some Asian countries. In short,
Shachagra is completely different in intent and format from the TerraLiner.
The only aspect of
Shachagra that is somewhat relevant, is the Japanese-style bathing tub. This too was motivated by the large size of Cuthbert's family, and the need to conserve water. The theory was that he would convince all his kids to take super-quick "navy showers" beforehand, and then they could soak in the warm water of the hot-tub as long as they liked. In theory his family would then use
less water. They would use less water than if instead everyone took a series of "normal" showers that typically consume 32 - 40 liters each. But Cuthbert's oldest daughter sort of mutinied. She's a runner, and when she finished a run and was soaked with sweat, she wanted a proper shower.
Honestly, I still have not completely made up my mind about how the TerraLiner's bathtub will work, and I have three or four different ideas still in play. I will probably present all of them as "options". At first I didn't like Cuthbert's Japanese-Furo idea, because one can't combine it with a shower in
exactly the same location, as per the standard "shower/tub" that most of our homes now have. That would defeat the whole purpose of a
"Furo". The shower area has to be one thing, and the hot-tub another, as per
Shachagra. So one ends up using even more space than was used, for instance, by the combined bath-tub/shower area of
Mañana -- see post #206 at
http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page21 , and post #212 at
http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page22 :
In
Mañana the hot-tub is actually a Western-style jacuzzi, filled up completely and then drained with each use. Whereas the central idea behind the Japanese style
"Furo" in
Shachagra, is that the water stays put and gets filtered, much like a swimming pool. And one enters a
"Furo" only
after one has cleaned oneself with a navy shower. A
"Furo" is
only for soaking, not cleaning.
Now recall that even though
Mañana is a fully capable "bad road" expedition motorhome,
Mañana is on the large end of things, over 10 m, so it has space for a bathtub. Furthemore Mr. Thompson's wife
insisted on the jacuzzi/bathtub.
More on this important aspect of motorhome design -- what
egn calls the "
WAF" or "
Wife Acceptance Factor" -- in a later post, when I address bathtubs again in greater detail. For now suffice it to say that it's a bit too easy for a bunch of guys exchanging ideas on a web forum such as ExPo to forget that large, expensive motorhomes are typically bought by well-established, long-married, and wealthy
couples. As such, American Class-A or German "Liner" motorhomes will sell to couples only if the wife's needs are met every bit as much as the husband's..... It's easy to forget this fundamental point on a male-dominated forum such as this. However, as a designer I
never forget it, and I learnt how to become very "gender sensitive" in my design choices way back as an undergrad in my first year. It's basic design 101. If one designs only for men, one fails the course, period. One will not be a successful design student, and one will not become a successful designer.
In any case, many months ago I began working through different ideas for a combination "walk-in-tub + shower", sort of like what Mr. Thompson had in
Mañana, only more compact, vertical, and integrated as a single design enclosure. Here's the initial idea that inspired me, and for a number of months I worked on a version that is more circular, transparent, even more vertical, etc.
But having a bathtub is all about the experience, not just sitting in a more vertical kind of tub and getting wet. And for many people, the "bathtub experience" is all about
reclining horizontally. Hence all the more recent design experiments I went through, thinking about the most mechanically efficient and space-economical way to create a "retractable" bathtub, as per the medical tubs illustrated earlier in the thread.
However, in just the last last few weeks it has struck me that Doug Cuthbert may have had the right idea after all, even for a TerraLiner that will be used only by a retired couple. An expedition motorhome like the TerraLiner, a motorhome whose design specification includes boondocking for at least a month without resupply, probably does need a solution like
Shachagra . Other kinds of motorhome, used for just short 1 or 2 week vacations, in which the vehicle is typically hooked up to services at an RV park, may still benefit from some of my "retractable" bathtub experiments. But not the TerraLiner.
The particular design problematic for the TerraLiner is this: a bath typically consumes 80 liters, and so if one does the math, one quickly realizes that one won't be able to have many baths unless the vehicle is hooked up to shore power, water, etc. at an RV park. Just five baths, and one has consumed a whopping 400 liters. Mr. Thompson wrote to me that he and his wife used
Mañana's bathtub only when parked at serviced campsites. But otherwise, for most of the time during their roughly 10 years spent traveling around Australia with
Mañana, they did not use the bathtub that much. So the space occupied by the bathtub really became just a super-fancy shower area. But it still had to be there, because his wife had insisted on it.....
Now compare
Mañana's bathtub to the "permanent" supply of water that always sits readily available for a good, hot soak in
Shachagra.
Shachagra's hot-tub is
not small, at least by the standards of bathtubs: it holds 70 gallons, or approximately 265 liters. Whereas again, the average bath consumes only 80 liters. So
Shachagra's bathtub really
is a hot-tub, the kind where your whole body floats around in a massive, deep volume of water.
That sounds very appealing, much more appealing than a walk-in sit-down tub.
Water consumption could be reduced even more by combining such a
"Furo" with
dwh's idea for a
"steam shower", to take the place of a shower, . One would sit in the steam shower first, sweating out the dirt; then take a
very quick shower to clean off, consuming less than 10 liters, and perhaps as few as 5 liters; and then settle in for a good long soak in the 265-liter
"Furo". With a system like that, one could "take a bath" (of a kind) every day for a month, in the middle of the Sahara or the Tibetan plateau, and never have to worry about running out of water. A couple might be consuming just 10 - 20 liters maximum per day for its showers, or 600 liters per month. The toilet will also be a vacuum-flush incinerating
Ecojohn, as already discussed in post #451 at
http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...pedition-RV-w-Rigid-Torsion-Free-Frame/page46 . So that just leaves cooking and cleaning, i.e. the dishwasher and washing machine.
In theory, it seems possible that a couple might get away with consuming less than 1000 liters a month. And much less than that, if they were to "shower" as described above only every second day, instead of every day. And yet they would enjoy the luxury of a hot-tub always available in the middle of nowhere.
Recall that 1000 liters is the freshwater tank-size of the largest vehicle made recently by UniCat, an 8x8 -- see
http://www.unicat.net/pdf/MXXL24AH-MAN8x8-sh-en.pdf and
http://www.unicat.com/en/info/MXXL24AH-MAN8x8-sh.php :
Or the Doleoni 6x6 MAN-KAT carries 900 liters in 3 tanks, and is more comparable to the TerraLiner in size, measuring about 10.5 m long, -- see
http://www.doleoni.com/wp/en/man-kat-1-a1/ ,
http://www.doleoni.com/wp/en/#prettyPhoto[3425-3 Man, TECHNICAL DESIGN]/0/ , and
http://www.expedition-trucks.com/brokers/man-kat-6x6-expedition-truck . While
egn's
Blue Thunder seems to carry a total of 620 liters of freshwater -- see
http://www.enfatec.de/index.php?id=54.
The operational objective, it seems to me, is for the Terraliner to be able to boondock for at least a month without needing to resupply with anything. Various water-conservation measures will help, as well as recycling washing-machine "grey water" to flush the toilet. But the mathematics of shower-use are the most daunting by far. A "short" minimal shower is still thought to require 32 liters. Multiply that by two, and a couple will go through more than 600 liters in 10 days, if they shower every day. Whereas Cuthbert may have hit upon a solution that would allow an expedition vehicle to boondock in real style, with users able to soak for long hours in a huge
"Furo" every day, and yet as a couple consume less than 20 liters per day for their bathing needs. That' somes pretty formidable math, and has me returning to
Shachagra with new eyes.
Put it this way. Doug Cuthbert's idea of locating his kids' bedrooms underfloor, accessible from above by hatches as per navy vessels, is certainly interesting. But it's a solution to a problem that most customers for expensive expedition motorhome do not need solved. Whereas Cuthbert's Japanese
"Furo" idea seems like a terrific solution to the problem of long-term water usage, when boondocking for a month or longer in the middle of nowhere.
**************************************************
Now back to Chinese Sixes, where my own view is that the debate is not even remotely resolved, despite
egn's most recent posting of a Russian cold-war 6x6 equipped with evenly spaced tires.....:sombrero:
... Will explain more anon; just need a few more days to collect all the material required to make the argument.
All best wishes,
Biotect
