couch dilema

[mannebk]

and an other question that keeps me up at night, literally.

our couch in the slide out can't handle the weight... the springs are stretched and unhook themselves at any given moment.

I'm somewhere around 270 lbs, my father too. so what should we do? recommendations aside from losing some weight? caus thats what ive been doing since 2021, after i fell sick i made it to way past 400, so im kind of pretty proud to where i already made it, but still the couch doesn't like us, and sleeping on it is a misery...

also, when we pull the bed out, it touches the recliner and we cant access the cab area any more... design wise this couch is a nightmare, they wasted 2-3 feet by stupid geometry for the bed. and placing it opposite the recliner is a terrible floor plan

I need some hints, refitting RVs is nothing we do in Europe, but I take it, its common in the US RV world.

thanks Manny

[Beamer2022]

I'm not sure refitting RVs is all that common in the US. There isn't usually much you can do with a bad floor plan.

It sounds like you should take the knowledge you have about what works and what doesn't, what you like and what you don't, and find an RV that suits you better.

Good Luck.

[NLOVNIT]

I'm guessing the OP isn't wanting to get another RV. They want to make this one work so that's the advice they're asking for.

First, CONGRATS! on your weight loss. That is awesome. You SHOULD be proud of you. I am.

My Bounder had the recliner across from the couch. And yes, when the sleeper was deployed, you can't get to the cockpit.

You have 2 options that I see:
1. Get rid of the recliner. If you have a floorplan like was in my Bounder, at least with the bed deployed, there was enough room to get around the end of it & to the cockpit by stepping thru the entry door stepwell. The problem with ditching the recliner is you probably will have to use one of the cockpit seats as your recliner...if it has a footrest. If not, get a footstool for one or both of your cockpit seats.
2. Change out the sleeper sofa for a jackknife sofa. They aren't anywhere near as comfortable as the pullout sofa (which isn't usually very comfortable anyway), but they are much narrower, because they sit north to south instead of east to west, so you'd have a wider aisle to get to the cockpit with the recliner still there. You can always use a foam topper to even out the jackknife to sleep on, if you can find a place to store that. This would also eliminate the issue with the insufficient springs "trampoline" that holds your current mattress. Of course, this only works if the couch is long enough to lay down on.

I'm sure others will come up with even more ideas. Those are just the 2 I considered with our Bounder. Tho', we ended up leaving it as it was because we didn't have guests who needed to use the pullout very often.

[mannebk]

Indeed, I don't want to just replace the RV, as overall I am quite satisfied with the floor plan.


My problem is, that National elected to cheat in the published floor plan; I did draw in the real dimensions.


When ever the pull-out sleeper sofa is in bed configuration, there is no way out of the RV or past the recliner towards the cockpit... The bed touches the recliner and almost touches the kitchen cabinets.


And it's not wide enough to sleep north-south-wise. So a jackknife to sleep the long way is not an option.


I thought maybe someone knows a good jackknife-style bed that's long enough to sleep on east-west style.


That's exactly the problem; the whole bed comes out underneath the backrest, so we are wasting at least 2 feet between the wall of the slide and where you place your pillow. 2 feet we miss dearly at the foot end of the bed...


So I'm basically wanting a sleeper couch that uses the backrests as part of the bed.


I have such a bed, from a German seating furniture manufacturer, but that bed was 25 years ago, like way past €12,000; it was actually sold as a designer couch with guest capacity, it won prizes left and right, and when you did convert it to a bed, it was a fully qualified French / queen-sized bed with a real good mattress and all. And you can store everything for the conversion inside the bed, yet it takes up only 8 in sideways and 4 in lengthwise more than the actual bed size. It's also designed in a way you can't bump your toes cause the feet are too far inside, and all around it's nicely covered so you won't hurt your shins when you bump into it.


Well, I don't want to spend 3 times what I paid for the RV on a couch, but I thought maybe someone copied the metal parts and made a space-saving sleeper couch like it, cause when you need a sleeper couch, it's usually cause you don't have space...

[Dutch Star Don]

You just need to do some searching. The RV sofa bed you're looking for is out there. We're on our eight RV over the years and they've had many sofa bed types.

To start, three of the RV's we had, the bed went across the coach and blocked the cab area. Unless you have opposing slides, these coaches aren't big enough to have a bed with walk around space. The sofa bed is designed to be deployed just for sleeping, not left out all day. If you need to access the cab area crawl or roll over the bed.

You need to look for a sofa bed with a backrest that stays in place and the bed folds out from under the backrest, which only uses about 10" of your space. The one we have now and the one we had in our Diplomat used a thin foam mattress mated to a built-in air mattress. You simply twisted on an inflator and the bed inflated or deflated. It was a VERY comfortable bed.

Another option, install or keep the sofa you have and use a twin or full inflatable mattress on the floor. Some even have legs or are extra thick, so they have some height. Thet inflate/deflate in a couple of minutes.

We used to do a week at Yosemite in our 36' Diplomat during Thanksgiving. On a few occasions we brought out adult daughters and husbands. One couple used the sofa bed and the other used an inflatable mattress on the floor near the dinette. Everyone was comfortable,