acdii

Same is said for all trailers, difference being that the round shape is less likely to have water leaks than square shapes. On traditional trailers, the walls and roof rot out from water leaks, delamination of side walls, etc. All trailers have a wood subfloor, and a good majority have rotted ones. Check out a used trailer lot and you will find at least half with soft floors, or delam on the walls, or spots on the ceiling.

i2oadi2unnei2

If you are considering an AS you obviously can afford it and I highly recommend it. Note that ALL brands has their good and bad and AS is no exception. Ours is a 2016 and thus far has found no issues other than small DIY fixes that I was able to fix myself. This past summer our AC wasn't working properly and troubleshooting that was out of my league so I brought it back to dealer and they found found a coolant leak and had to replace the entire unit under warranty. IMHO, AS QA has been declining because RV has been trending and they are trying to build as fast as they can. They are now providing 3yr warranty instead of two when we bought our in 2016. Since you're looking at the smaller FC model you should be fine. We have a 23' and maybe one day will move up to a 25' and that is the biggest I'll get for the truck I have now, any bigger I'd move up to a 250. This is our first trailer and I can not compare with any other brands. It wouldn't be fair to say which is better or worst but I like them all equally because when folks post pics of their trailer, all I can think of is "good times and memories" Best of luck and safe travels!

bisjoe

As long as you can afford an Airstream, they are very high quality but beware of a couple of things with all of the smaller trailers, Airstream and others.

1. Wet bath - where the shower and toilet occupy the same space, so when showering water gets all over the toilet (16' Sport)
2. Bedroom - Either one side or the head and foot of the bed touch the walls - so one person has to crawl over the other to get in and out. (16' Sport, 22' Sport, 19' Flying Cloud)

77Ranger460

Livin Lite campers have no wood, including the subfloor.

It is true that it seems like more used campers have water damage than not, though. One of the reasons I have an Airstream is because the floor is the only wood you have to worry about, but round or not they still leak and have serious problems from it if left unaddressed. You can go to Airforums and read all kinds of leaky trailer tales. The roof is full of intrusions. My trailer has an AC, 5 vents, and a TV antenna. All of them water prone. Then, the roof has at least a coffee can full of rivets on a nearly flat surface. The rivets create simple where water puddles. One leaky rivet can let in a lot of water. Water running down the side can find it's way in a loose rivet...been there done that.

Not all Airstreams have plywood. Some years have OSB. I wouldn't buy one of those. A leak or two on OSB and it swells up and starts falling apart.

old_programmer

My wife and I went with an entry level trailer for our first one. We owned it just shy of 5 years but learned an awful lot about how to maintain a trailer and what features were important to us in a trailer. Yes we took a bath on the trade-in losing about 2/3 of the original price but had we not liked the idea of trailer camping/living any loss would have been less than a more expensive trailer. My opinion for the first trailer is to buy a low cost trailer to learn about them. Then once you have some experience start looking at a trailer that better fits your needs. As an example we stick to the ultra light type of trailers. Most of these are 7 to 7.5 ft wide and can make for some tight work areas if one is working and the other wants to use the restroom. As has been mentioned many smaller trailers have beds with multiple walls on their perimeter. Not only does it mean climbing over people but we found them hard to make up since you have to be on the mattress to put sheets on the backside. When we bought out current trailer we were able to balance must haves like a slide, full bath and three side bed access against would be nice to have and ended up with our current trailer that fits us well.

The Beatles

I had NO idea how expensive Airstreams were. Some are more than my first house! This is a very interesting thread, thanks for sharing all input.

i2oadi2unnei2

You can get ~15% to 20% below MSRP if you go to the right dealer. Not that it helps much but some is better than nothing