Camping season may not be the time to think of a winter shelter but what you need to make one is currently on the store shelves. I'm posting this now because I'm at that point in posting the chronological history of
Restoring Our 1972 Boler American and hopefully someone who wants to do this can readily get the seasonal components.
We found a place to store our trailer at a friend's cottage up north. They suggested we pull it up as close to the wall and under the roof overhang as possible. We were concerned with three things: Snow,
leaks in the duct taped roof and the potential for the return of the black mold in a "sealed" trailer.
Materials
7 – 8' 2x2
1 – 8' 1x4
4 – 10' 1x4
4 – 4" pieces of pipe hanger
Some cable ties
10' construction fencing
1 Instant shed kit
1 canoe car topper kit
1 tarp and a few extra bungee cords
Essentially this is a peaked roof sitting on rectangular frame that is sitting on foam blocks on the roof of the trailer all wrapped up in a plastic tarp.
We used 5 of these parts:
From the kit that makes a frame like this:
and one of these Canoe Car Topper kits.
To make the peaked roof 5 of the 8' 2x2's were cut in half for rafters and the other 2x2's cut at 4' and 6' to make the 10' ridge. 2 of the 10' 1x4's were used as a fascia which also formed part of the frame work.
The other half of the roof was a rectangle made from the 2 remaining 10' 1x4's , the 8' 1x4 cut in half and some of the 2x2 scraps as corner braces. The two halves were held together using the pipe hanger and screws. The fencing was cable tied to the top of the roof that would be exposed to snow. Everything sat on the 4 foam blocks that came in the canoe topper kit.
A tarp was placed over all of this and tied down using the rope in the canoe kit and a few bungee cords.
The advantages of doing it this way were to keep the elements off the leaking roof while allowing air flow through the slightly opened
windows. The trailer was not tightly bound and the whole thing comes apart into 3 flat sections using 9 screws. It is inexpensive and very easy to dismantle and store till the next
fall when 9 screws puts it all back together again. I've used this two winters now without a leak or return of any mold.
Edited to correct formatting
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