floor construction

[Tintin]

Excuse me, my english is not very good... I'm building a travel trailer that is 14 feet long by 78 inches wide. I'm thinking of building the floor with two 5/8'' spruce plywood glued and screw one over the other. this give me a very sturdy base to receive the walls and all other components. For practical reasons i will have the trailer chassis after the box will be made. This floor will give me a very stiff structure so i will be able to lift it with my forklift and put in place on the trailer chassis. What do you think of that.

Thamks in advance for your advice

[Juneaudave]

Tintin...we recently had a dicussion on floors...check out this thread...http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?t=25571

My reaction is that you can get by much cheaper and lighter with a framed and insulated floor, or just a single layer of 3/4 ply. Two 5/8 sheets of ply screwed together will be very heavy, and you won't get alot of extra strength over a composite floor or a single sheet of 3/4 ply. Just my thoughts...Juneaudave

[grant whipp]

In another life, I used to build enclosed motorcycle/ATV/equipment trailers, 12' to 24' long, and we used 1-1/8" plywood for the floors. Yeah, a little heavy, but solid as a rock, and could really take a beating both inside & out ... ...! With today's substandard wood sizing, two layers of 5/8" ply will be real close to 1-1/8" actual.

I've been building my teardrop bodies separate from the frame/chassis for coming up on 25 years ... works great for me!

Good Luck with your project! In the meantime ...

CHEERS!

Grant

[Tintin]

The weight of the floor is 240 pounds. 1 sqare foot of 1 1/4 thick plywood is 2.81 pounds. For a 78 by 168 floor i dont think its very heavy. The weight of a framed type floor (2x4 and and 5/8 plywood) can not be very much lighter. With the floor i'm planing to build i can also eliminate a couple of cross member from the chassis without any flex in the floor i think. the isolation issue is not an important factor for me since i will not use my trailer in winter. 1 1/4 think plywood must provide a good isolation anyway. Thanks for your comments and i will give you some news about my project in the next weeks.