Thanks for the feedback, friends!
I think you'd have to be pretty short to be able to SIT up in any cab over bed.
I'm 6'0", so definitely not short by most people's standards! I went ahead and got some rough measurements of myself. Kneeling, I'm about 4'5" tall and sitting I'm about 3'0" as you'd expect. Of course, that's not factoring in a few inches of clearance, the ~6+" of mattress, and the insulation, however thick that needs to be. A lot of the attics I looked at seemed to be about 3 feet tall, from what I remember. (But I could be wrong!)
Legal maximum height is 13' 6" (it may be 14 in some states but I wouldn't suggest going over 13')
I'd definitely want to stick to the most strict legal maximum, that way I can go wherever I want. 13'6" it is!
Are you using a light duty chassis or a class 8? How high is the top of the cab? A class 8 Cab roof is about 9' high, (for comparison that Uhaul truck in your pictures is probably about 9-10' at the top of the box!)
I actually hadn't considered this specifically. I definitely need to learn a lot more before committing to anything, but here are some thoughts I've had:
(Not suggesting any of these are true, and many of them are assumptions!)
- I don't actually know the "technical" difference between light duty and Class 8.
- Light duty trucks might be easier/cheaper to service? If they use "consumer" truck/van parts, those would presumably be easier to find.
- Class 8 or heavier-duty trucks might be more reliable? That seems to be an underlying suggestion in a lot of stuff I've read.
- Fuel economy isn't tremendously important to me, I don't intend to move around constantly. I don't imagine paying premium for the difference between 8MPG and 10MPG is worth it.
Are you going to cut the back of the cab out (leave the top intact), then put your box behind and over the top of the cab roof? In this case you'll want a flexible rubber seal to allow the box to flex differently than the cab.
I'm not 100% I understand what you're asking, but that sounds right. If I had a square box on the back of a truck, I'd like to add an attic over the cab of my vehicle that resembles the box on the Uhaul in my first post. The cutaway between the box and cab would simply be shorter than the lowest point of the attic area, and I don't mind having to duck to move between the cab and the box.
If you use a class 8 truck you won't get much more than 4' max height in your room over the cab. You are also limited by how far over the front of the truck you can go. Your cab will be 4-5 feet long. If you go much further over the cab you will likely have problems with the hood not being able to open properly, (and it'll look strange!)
4' of height sounds like the bare minimum of what I need, it's probably adequate. Depending on how much space insulation takes up, then with a mattress it's probably enough for me to sit up! Having 4-5 feet of length sounds like more than enough for me! I don't mind custom-building a mattress to fit the area and I'm a small enough person to fit on less than a Twin size mattress.
You could gain a few more inches by cutting the top of the cab out but you can only cut down to a couple of inches above the windshield and that brings a whole new set of limitations...and problems involving the way the box moves with the cab as the truck moves and flexes over the road.
If you're planning cutting the roof out of the cab and rigid mounting the box you'll be limited to a fairly short box (aprox 14' or less) and want to use something like air ride/air bags to allow the cab and box to remain rigid while the chassis flexes underneath.
Cutting out the top of the cab sounds a little sketchy to me, I don't even want to think about that unless there's no other way for me to get enough height. Not sure I could build up enough confidence and knowledge to attempt that myself so it sounds pretty costly.
If you are going to use a light duty truck that is lower to the ground you are now limited by the chassis and what size box it will support.
What are your goals for the vehicle and how will the room above the cab work with the rest of it?
Fair enough, I hadn't considered that this might be too much for a light duty truck...
As far as goals for the vehicle, I feel like it's pretty simple. I'm sure my needs and goals will adjust over time and this project is definitely at least a year or two away for me.
Basically, I'm hoping to end up with a custom-build motorhome. I started off looking into van dwelling and decided I personally want to upsize from that. I'm tall, and I'd like to be able to stand up, because I'm a bit of a homebody and I'd get stir crazy and uncomfortable if I couldn't stand up "at home." So, I started looking at busses, I haven't ruled them out but I've got my reservations about them. One is that most busses are too short for people my height to stand comfortably in.
(Like, the inside is usually about 6'0, and after you install insulation and flooring, I'm no longer able to stand up straight!)
So, I like that box trucks have a taller area, but also the square shape seems much easier to work with and build off of!
All that said, I'd like for all of the basic amenities to be available to me while remaining as off-grid as is feasible. I want access to an enclosed bathroom with a hot shower
(which I don't necessarily need to use every day, but I just don't want to live without) and a toilet
(if the bathroom is enclosed and has a vent, I don't mind mostly using a composting toilet). Besides the bathroom, I'd like access to a kitchen with a sink and a stove. I like the idea of
this diesel stove/heater, it apparently is pretty efficient and could technically be tied into the fuel tank but I don't know how safe/practical that actually is.
Besides that, I have considered trying to partition off a "garage/workshop" area towards the back garage door of the box. Here I could keep tools and work on projects or any odd jobs that might come up during nomadic life. Without getting into a whole lot of detail about this partition/separate room, I have some pretty cool ideas that I think will work but these ideas can get ironed out after I figure out if my bedroom solution works!
As far as things I need to store, there's not much. I have a fairly minimal wardrobe that I'm still trying to shrink down to the right size, any place with about 2 feet of a hanging rod and maybe a bin would be enough. I have a bicycle I'd want to bring along with me and have been getting into skateboarding, but that stuff all has pretty space-efficient means of being stored.
We've talked about the sleeping attic area already.
In a ~14-foot Uhaul type truck, there's not enough room for my current vision. Around ~17-foot, I think it'd be a tight fit. This is one of the main reasons I'd like to have the over-cab attic as a sleeping area, saving that floorspace really opens up the rest of the design. It's also just a design quirk that I really like.
