It should go without saying that the selection of a motorhome (hereinafter called MH) is critical if you are intending to use it literally as your home, especially if the intention is to live in it for an extended period, as those known as “Grey Nomads” tend to do. More on that later.
There are some items I’d like as a minimum to enhance the quality of use. I’m pretty much ignoring the mechanical side of things currently because I could investigate for weeks and still have no clue, so my focus, such as it is, is on utility… what features will make it a ‘home’. One of the important, but possibly paradoxical, requirements is *space*. For quite obvious reasons, the amount of living space in an MH will be limited, and even the largest are quite cramped compared to even the meanest bed-sit. Again, for obvious reasons, a large chunk of space is taken up by a bed. In most MHs, this usually consists of an ‘island’ poking out into the middle of the floor. Some MH’s make space by having a motorised ‘slide-out’ section at the head of the bed to allow ingress and egress when the bed is in use. The mattress is comparable to any found on a normal domestic frame, tho the underside of the frame is used for storage to give it more utility. The shape and positioning of these beds depend on the type of MH and vary with styles supplied by the manufacturers
However, a relatively new development has been the introduction of the so-called electric bed. These work by raising the bedframe and mattress up to the ceiling using a small but effective motor. In the MH’s that use these, the end result is a much larger living space since the space usually filled by the bed is now vacated. In theory, this is a great advantage to people using the MH literally as their home. As usual, there are ‘issues’ and trade-offs to be made, as there are with any compromise. In this case, the potential for the motor to fail and the bed to be unusable until a repair can be made. Some have a hand-operated system to be used as a backup, just in case something goes wrong. This, perhaps, isn’t the most difficult issue to confront. The main one would be the quality of the mattress. I’ll explain.
In order to maximise the utility of the raised bed, it needs to be as close to the ceiling as possible in order to give maximum headroom. Of necessity, this means the mattress needs to be thinner in order to make additional space. Even centimetres/inches matter! The consequence of that is a reduction in comfort. How great that discomfort would be is questionable and can’t really be assessed without testing… and I doubt any supplier would be willing to let a potential customer test sleep, so to speak. There would also be a reduction in usable storage space, as the under-bed space has become the ‘lounge’.
The question we’ve not answered yet is which do we want to forgo? Comfort and storage space, or living space? Currently, I’m leaning towards living space and hoping we can manage with less storage.
Clearly, this topic beats all others in importance, but there are other items that are important, tho less critical to the day-to-day and week-to-week use of the MH.
