The most basic design of the travel trailer has not changed significantly in decades. By that, I mean that common trailers are still built with wood framing, and their roofs are topped with rubberized material. This construction method works pretty well and keeps costs down, but it isn’t the best for longevity. One new company thinks it has the solution. This is the Adventure Series RV No Wood Komposite Camper, and it does away with the old-school way of building campers with a unitized body made out of composite and structural foam.
While the most basic campers are still built with wood framing, have bonded fiberglass siding, and are capped with rubberized roofs, the RV industry hasn’t been entirely stuck in the past. Today, you can buy campers from big name brands that use Azdel composite panels in places where plywood would be used in the past. The big brands also build campers out of aluminum and fiberglass. Some companies, like Jayco, are even playing around with designs that offer fewer places for water to enter. Remember, Airstream, the purveyor of durable aluminum monocoque trailers, isn’t just any Thor Industries brand, but the very first Thor brand!
Independent brands have taken the idea of the durable trailer even further. Oliver builds trailers out of ridiculously thick fiberglass hulls while inTech builds all-metal campers that look like spaceships. Then you have LIV, which makes its campers out of a unique plastic honeycomb structure. Now, Adventure Series RV wants in on the action with the No Wood Komposite Camper. Like a LIV, it tosses wood entirely out of the design for a camper that promises to be more watertight for longer than a typical trailer.
Adventure Series RV
If Adventure Series RV sounds familiar to you, it’s because I wrote about the brand when it launched the Epik Ranger early last year. Adventure Series RV is the Ohio-based brand of Xtreme Outdoors of Pennsylvania, and it’s been around since 2023. Its first trailers, the Epik Ranger and the Epik Scout, are spinoffs of the Overkill Campers S.O.510.
Yeah, there was a whole rollercoaster of a ride associated with this pair, as I wrote in my story last year:
Overkill Campers was founded in 2018 by David Poe. The company was run by the Poe family, including Jennifer and Henry, plus Brandon Pink as the firm’s production manager.
As for their story, the Poes say they’ve been overlanding since before that term was even created. They explain that in the 1990s, the Poes and their friends would pull out topographical maps and choose destinations at random. They’d then hop in their vehicles and go. The concept behind Overkill Campers was that you would be able to buy a camper built and designed by people who loved off-road adventures. Overkill had two models with the compact T.K.4.7. and the larger S.O.5.10.
Overkill Campers began taking large deposits for future trailers. Some people have claimed to pay $8,000, $37,000, and other honestly insane amounts of money to secure their spot in line for a future trailer. These people then either waited for a couple of years to get their trailer or, just never received their units. Others never received refunds after deciding to pull out of their deposits.
Sadly, it would appear that those refunds may take a while. In March 2023, David Poe announced that Overkill Campers was partnering with Adventure Series RV, a subsidiary of Xtreme Outdoors, a known producer of small travel trailers and teardrop trailers. The announcement was allegedly contradicted by emails sent by Overkill Campers, which stated that the action was a merger, not a partnership.
If you want to read all about that huge headache, click here to read my original story. The reason why I truncated the story about Overkill Campers is that Adventure Series RV has more or less stopped directly marketing the Epik line of campers. If you go to Adventure Series RV’s social media page, its links now direct you to a new site: No Wood Camper.
Epik RV’s website is still up, but it was last updated on April 29, 2024. Back in June 2024, I reached out to Adventure Series RV and the company told me that it closed its Somerset, Pennsylvania, factory in spring 2024. However, the company said that it was still producing trailers in Somerset, albeit at a much slower pace than before. An Autopian reader, James, scouted out the area and informed me that Adventure Series RV was indeed working on a pile of partially completed units. While Adventure Series RV did manage to put its campers into production and sold some to customers, it’s unclear how many have been sold. It’s also unclear what the status of the Ranger and Scout is today.
What is clear is that Adventure Series RV now has a new and spiffy unit to sell, and it’s called the No Wood Komposite Camper.
Just Composites
So far as I can tell, the No Wood Composite Camper is not a reheated design from a recently deceased brand, so that’s automatically a great start. Also great to hear is what it’s built out of. Adventure Series RV says that this new camper is built out of 1-inch-thick marine-grade laminate composite panels with a solid foam core. These panels are bonded with epoxy to create a unibody. This sounds somewhat similar to how LIV makes its campers, and in those campers, this construction method has been proving to be pretty durable.
Adventure Series RV says that using the composite panels fused with insulation means that the trailer holds air-conditioning and heat from the outside very well. It also means that, even though Adventure Series RV is using composite, light doesn’t shine through the walls, as you’d sometimes get in vintage fiberglass campers with thin structures.
The trailer stretches 22.9 feet in total and features a steel frame, a basic hand crank jack, and four stabilizers. In terms of exterior design, there aren’t many frills. You get a diamond plate rock guard, a Fogatti outdoor shower, an awning, fold-down steps, pass-through storage, and LED lights. Don’t expect to find any outdoor kitchens, slides, speakers, or anything like that. Shoot, you can even order a trailer as a plain white box without any graphics. While there aren’t any bombastic features, to my eyes, that just means fewer things to have to futz around with when this trailer becomes 10 years old.
Adventure Series RV’s dedication to eliminating wood continues inside, where wood doesn’t even make an appearance in the furniture.
Instead, the furniture, the cabinets, and the other furniture is made out of the same composites that the rest of the camper is made out of. Otherwise, the NWKC – yes, that’s the camper’s official abbreviation – doesn’t reinvent the wheel and sticks with standard camper accoutrements. It has a pair of 20-pound propane tanks, which fuel the Fogatti furnace, tankless water heater, and two-burner stove. There’s also a standard camper sink, refrigerator, wet bath, dual-pane windows, and a Fogatti Instacool air-conditioner.
The camper’s spec sheet gives some pathetic numbers for holding tanks. The original design called for a fresh-water capacity of 25 gallons, 30 gallons for gray water, and only 9 gallons for waste. I could not use this rig for EAA AirVenture unless I called in the pump truck every other day. Thankfully, Adventure Series RV says that what you’re looking at here is still the prototype, and it’s taking public suggestions for design improvements before the production examples begin shipping in four to six months. Hopefully, that puny black tank gets enlarged.
Tiny tanks aside, the NWKC doesn’t seem to shoot for the stars on other specs. Adventure Series says that it has a queen bed, plus a dinette that turns into another bed for a total sleeping capacity of four. The trailer also comes in at a light 2,375 pounds with a tongue weight of just 250 pounds, which means that there’s a plethora of midsize vehicles that can tow this thing. Also good is the interior height of 6’7″.
The options list is short, and includes a 100W solar panel and controller, the choice of removing the camper’s decals, and an option to order the No Wood Komposite Camper without an interior, electricity, lights, cabinetry, or furniture, so you can build out your own camper inside.
Not Crazy Expensive
Adventure Series RV says that you get all of this for $30,000, or $17,000 if you get the blank slate version. That seems to be a pretty fair price for this neat, but seemingly imperfect camper.
With that being said, given Adventure Series RV’s outrageously rocky start, given its prior relation to Overkill and production facility closure last year, I personally would not put any money down on one of these units until you can physically see and touch one for yourself. Honestly, this should be the case with every camper by a startup company that you come across. You have no idea if the camper you put money down on will reach reality, and you have no idea if the company will be able to pay you back if it fails. The safest bet to make is to wait until you can touch the unit that you can buy that day.
I love a lot of what I see here. I adore campers that dare to go with a completely different build material. Will this still be on the roads decades from now? I have no idea, but composites do have a good track record in that regard.
However, the NWKC, er, No Wood Composite Camper, loses me with that 9-gallon black tank. I’m also not a fan of the lack of how plain the camper looks. It’s all white on white on gray. The great thing about composites is that you should be able to have some fun. I’d love to see some real color here, or maybe a snazzy wallpaper or something. I suppose the owner could spice up the look themselves.
I would have also loved to see either larger or more numerous windows and more than just 100 watts for solar. Add the weak solar to the tiny waste tank, and this camper is not great for off-grid adventures, even though the addition of the solar kit is said to be for that purpose.
These issues could be rectified if you’re determined enough. You could set up more solar on your own and dump the trailer’s tiny waste tank into a larger caddy. RV owners find hacks and fixes all of the time. So, I will say that I like this one, but with the caveat that this trailer is best for setting down at campgrounds with sewer connections. I think someone buying a NWKC for that purpose will probably like it. Either way, I love that experimentation isn’t dead in the RV industry and can’t wait to see more of it.
This can be overcome. Crap caddies exist and get used regularly at the campgrounds I frequent. 100 watts of solar can do a fair bit. That’s about 30 amp-hours a day on a cloud-free midsummer day. 20 if there’s wildfire smoke or some clouds. Keeping electricity use light, that’s enough to cover a week off grid with a fully charged 100 amp-hour LiFePO4 battery. And a reserve for a cloudy day.
Azdel is great stuff. My little camper is made out of it. Light and stiff makes for a good camper. It’s easy to keep water out when the stuff doesn’t flex much. The sealant lasts a lot better when its flexibility is not constantly being tested.
surely it should be spelled “…Komposite Kamper”?
LMAO @ the people calling this or even the blank slate option a good deal. Trailers are, and have been built like shit for decades. But the prices keep going up like clockwork.
Crack pipe.
The reason for the fresh water tank being smaller than the grey water tank is easy. It’s easier to find a hose and refill the fresh than it is to find a spot to (legally) dump. So generally two fresh water fills before you need to dump grey and black.
The blank box version appeals to me. By the time I could afford one, we’ll know if the company succeeds and is still in business, or not.
Nine gallons seems like a fair amount of black waste to me. Granted, not if you are using a 1.6GPF toilet, but I assume they use something less water intensive.
100 watts indeed isn’t much, but solar stuff is usually fairly heavy and I also assume they didn’t want to jack up the curb weight too much. FYI, a 280AH 12.8V LifePO4 weighs about 60lbs and a 100w panel with some wires about 20lbs.
It’s kinda disappointing to see what 30k gets you from these guys. Considering if you look at Scamp’s “available now” page, you can get fully kitted brand new fiberglass trailers for that 30k.
No Wood Camper – Brought to you by Hims.
I mean, sure it looks like shit and has almost no features or capacity, but at least it’s expensive?
To me, I can’t help but think this just means they can’t properly seal a trailer. While wood isn’t perfect, it’s fine in this application. Properly seal it, and water damage isn’t an issue.
Why we need to go with plastics for everything is beyond me.
I think it’s a problem of the cheapest materials assembled by the cheapest labor.
This way you can still use the cheapest labor, but changing the materials gives you a better end product and a point you can use in marketing. (Paying labor more for doing better work isn’t as marketable)
These things flex like all getout. Once sealants and glues start to harden, a trailer becomes a little less sealed with every mile it’s towed – even if it was perfectly sealed at the factory.
After reading this article yesterday, it did not sit well me. The problem? Why are you promoting a company that was unable to build and deliver two earlier trailers? They burned through deposit money instead of actually making the product.
Yeah, the company name has changed, but it is still the same people. I personally would not put any deposit down for this trailer. If is sitting in a dealer lot waiting the be purchased then the brave can go for it. But needing to order with a deposit? It would be a had pass.
It is my understanding that Adventure Series RV either partnered with or merged with Overkill after the latter business failed to deliver units. Adventure Series then took Overkill’s designs and modified them before putting them into production.
Adventure Series RV was originally formed as a subsidiary of Xtreme Outdoors, the now former producer of Little Guy Trailers. Xtreme is technically still around, but it stopped production and customer service last summer when its factory closed down.
Based on what some readers local to the facility have told me in 2024, Adventure Series RV has actually built some customer examples of those earlier designs, achieving something that Overkill did not. However, Adventure Series is off to a very rocky start because Overkill brought the baggage of not actually delivering trailers and not refunding customers after it failed.
That being said, thank you for pointing this out! In the past, I usually added a note about never buying a camper from a startup or any company with a sketchy history unless you can actually touch it with your hands. I’m not sure why I forgot to do that here. I’ll have it added.
Slow to reply here. First off, thanks for the reply!
I still have a bad feeling about this whole arrangement. The fact that you are getting conflicting information with whether they partnered or merged or were bought out is a big red flag for me. This should be very clear to understand the situation yet no effort is apparently being made by the new company.
All I see if a long list of company names in succession where the old ones no longer exist. I worry that the old companies failed to avoid paying off obligations like leases/loans/etc.
If the new company was stupid enough to assume the obligations of the Overkill (read deposits) they have dug themselves a big hole with a lot of liabilities that will likely sink the new company.
The exterior doesn’t scream fun, but the pricing for this, assuming it holds up, is genuinely decent. I know that the interior sort of screams purgatory, but I see an easy to light and easy to clean space that’s going to hold up better than the particle board nonsense that seems to blight most campers.
I hope that they manage to get this off the ground at that price point, because this seems like a pretty decent value and compares well to horrifically bad quality stick builds. It being towable via minivan makes it even more appealing.
No wood construction has been a thing for a long time. My Living Lite Truck camper from 2017 is all aluminum and composite, (pictures here) and they made regular RV’s that can (for obvious reasons) still be found all over today for reasonable prices. The Living Lite story is an interesting one – maybe worth an article. They were purchased by Thor and killed off – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livin_Lite_RV. I love mine, and it’s served me well for many years and thousands of miles.
Guurrrrllll, you be reading my mind? How did you know I needed a RV article fix today? Mercedes delivers again. Btw, I Had a departed RV/Vintage mobile home friend and freak like me make us CD disc back in the late 90s with thousands upon thousands of vintage ads, broshures, floorplans, decor options etc, ranging from the late 40’s to the mid 1980s of RV’s and trailer houses. They are not copyrighted and I literally have thousands of them on disc. It was a project we collaborated on for about 20 years. Sadly he passed about 15 years ago due to old age and diabetes complications. Oh, about the camper in the article, cute, looks easy to clean, but ooooo , not cheap and out of my budget. I live and look foward to your awesome RV articles. One thing you and I have in common is our love for anything with wheels. I swear, Mercedes, If you did an article on shopping carts I would be glued to the article that I know would have an amazing history and back ground story included LOL. keep these articles coming luv
All white shiny surfaces…nice and easy to clean. Add your own colors with towels, pillows, throw rugs, whatever. Those inexpensive peel-and-stick backsplashes would be just fine for a camper and look like tile. All of these things are easy to change when you get bored. This thing seems really nice for a decent price, let’s see if the company makes it for awhile.
I was about to comment about how now we know why all other campers put those dumb graphics on the outside of all their units, and how the insides all have the same beige wallpaper, but your comment enlightened me to the upsides of the above design.
FINALLY!!
I don’t know anything about campers beyond what I’ve read here, but have been wondering why the builders insist on using heavy wood (especially particle board) instead of lightweight composites. It looks like at least one company had a similar idea.
It would be really interesting to see something like this built out of 100% carbon fiber. Of course it would also be hideously expensive so it will never happen, and it might not even be that comfortable, but imagine how much it wouldn’t weigh!
Maybe you can get some cheap expired carbon fiber from Boeing. It should hold up well enough if you can resist the urge to visit the ocean floor.
9 gallons is a lot of poop – how much tank do you need??
I love the that the interior of this doesn’t look like Grandma’s ’70s den. But I agree some color inside would be nice. Make those drawers and doors pop.
More than that. Don’t forget you also have liquid waste and the water you flush with.
But there is a separate grey water tank. Doesn’t that take the shower and sink while a black water tank is for the toilet? I don’t know shit about these things, but it does seem that if there are separate systems for grey and black, then 9gal is a lot of toilet capacity. What struck me was the grey water tank being bigger than the freshwater tank. Seems like it could be the same or even a tad smaller if you use the water for cooking/drinking.
That’s about six gut dumps or three days if you’re just one person camping in it. That goes down to one day if there’s two people in it. It takes one and a half gallons each time to flush for the average camp toilet.
I don’t pee that much. My current toilets are .5/1gal per flush (selectable), and I sure hope a camper toilet is also super low water use for obvious reasons. And you don’t actually have to flush EVERY time you pee, if you are peeing all the time. “If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down”. ROFL.
I’m not a camper/trailer person, so not my lane. I do approve of progress, but there seems to be a lack of romance here. I mean, Morgans leak. Would you stay away from one of those?
Good god, I so hope the white or grey for every wall and floor goes away soon. Warm colors are actually quite nice. Every house that gets flipped gets grey everything…..its just revolting.
Easy enough to get some vinyl decals to add some colour and customize it for yourself. Either solid colours, patterns, or art. Have some fun, make it your own. Not much time or effort.
Much easier to just buy a different brand of camper with more choices and bigger water tanks. This company will be out of business in two years anyway.
I mean sure, the chance this succeeds is low. But they need to sell some of these if there’s going to be other options. Right now this is a lower cost alternative to the typical garbage the RV industry craps out. Maybe if they can break through (big if) they’ll be able to offer better options for color.
I do agree that white/gray sucks and would prefer better color options. Though I am confused as to what other campers are out there at this price point that aren’t made from garbage and that offer interesting colors/design.
https://youtu.be/kQ_JIen4vV8?si=vWPoiaWV_J3tloMJ This a cool video on why everything is grey and beige.
I always just figured it was because the insane garbage 1990s HGTV told our parents to do to their houses triggered a backlash that pushed millennials to do the polar opposite. But it went too far in the opposite direction and eliminated all color and warmth instead of just doing them more tastefully
HGTV are the biggest offenders for destroying colourful houses nowadays. Nice mid-century modern house with pastel colours and a wood kitchen? Knock down all the walls, paint the resulting rectangular existence space white, and replace all the cabinetry and kitchenware with white plastic and brushed aluminum.
The number of times I’ve got seriously angry over them destroying a house on the National Register Of Historic Buildings has been enough that it should’ve earned me a coupon for a free therapy session. They ironically put that shit on in the doctor’s office when it just makes people’s health worse from the anger and anxiety.
Its a wild contrast when you watch old This Old House episodes from the 80s, where they get all excited about keeping 1950s solid birch kitchens and repaint old appliances to save money, now everything is gut to the studs renovation
It’s because a lot of HGTV’s money nowadays comes from brand deals and construction firm partnerships. A lot of those shows are just thinly veiled advertising for the two or three hollow smiling husks who rip into homes like a dog into a stuffed sock monkey. HGTV uses the cheapness and swiftness of the reality television format to get a nation-wide advertising campaign for these “firms”, and in return they get some connections and cheap future contracts for construction along with rights to the merchandising.
If you’ve ever wondered why houses on the network sell for damn near (or even over) eleven digit figures it’s because they have to factor in the cost of the show’s production and the network’s cut. The actual materials and labour are done cheapo, and every time those houses go up for sale the price is slashed to like half or even a third of what it first sold for after the modifications because the work is so low quality that it doesn’t last long.
As for the merchandising, next time you go into a Hallmark (if there’s even one still around you), Lowe’s, or Rural King look at how much stuff has the HGTV logo on it. After a while you’ll feel like there’s some kind of conspiracy with how often that little white triangle shows up.
It’s fair. I did paint my townhouse in very neutral colors when I sold it, when it was painted in bold colors while I lived there.
Buyers do not have any imagination. I’ve been at open houses where people walked out complaining about the wall colors in a particular room like it was a deal breaker. If you’re spending close to a million on a home, you’d think that the cost of an interior painter or (Goddess forbid!) a bucket of interior paint wouldn’t ruin your life. Of course, at that price you also want the thing to be just as you want it so I kind of get it.
My wife and I watch those home shopping shows oh hgtv/max and wow people are clueless.
I was a realtor briefly. Home buyers are the WORST. They will give you a list of absolute inflexible requirements and abandon them all when they find a place near a coffee shop they like (or any other silly reason).
After a long time in B2B sales where buyers know exactly what they want (or at least the basic requirements they cannot flex), I did not have the patience for retail customers.
Sadly it’s just ‘safe’ and inoffensive – just like how nearly all cars are a shade of gray these days, especially as they get more expensive.
Whenever a dated or slightly run-down home is sold around here, it pops up for sale again within a year for triple the last price with gray flooring and white cabinets.
At some point people are going to turn on gray flooring. I assume when the kids who grew up on gray flooring start to shop for homes.
matte finish please.
The tank sizes are odd, but what I don’t understand is having a smaller fresh water tank than grey water tank. I would be concerned with running out of fresh water.
My trailer has 30 gallons of fresh, 21 of grey, and 18 of black. The 18 gallon black tank is stupidly huge, and if I’m boondocking, I’m usually dumping grey water in there from washing dishes or the wasted water from waiting for hot water from the shower (which can be saved in a container and used to fill the toilet before #2’s).
It’s the grey tank that fills up for me before anything else, but boondocking is all about minimizing water use. Showers are a wet down, shut off, soap up, rinse off process and I’d be surprised if I use more than 3-4 gallons. A good showerhead is key. I have an Oxygenics which is 1.8gpm and a shutoff valve to stop the flow to a trickle, but doesn’t feel like a low-flow.
We’ve gone 4 days without filling the tanks with good water conservation for 2 people and I feel like I could go longer with some more extreme measures, but I usually find a park with full hook-ups if I’m going to be there longer than 3-4 days.
Yeah, all of the tank sizes are a bit bizarre to me. You’ll run out of fresh water before you even fill the grey tank. The black tank is a concern of mine since my wife tends to use the bathroom a lot. We’ve never completely filled the black tank in the family camper, but we’d definitely surpass 9 gallons spending a week at Oshkosh.
We can usually get the 46-gallon fresh tank in the Adirondack to last about 6 days. I tend to turbo shower while Sheryl takes longer, and I think the shower head is a 2.5 gpm unit, whatever Thor had in the factory on that run. 🙂 Granted, we also don’t use the water tank for cooking, only showers and cleaning the interior of the trailer.
Random question – how many gallons/flush is an RV toilet? Like 0.5?
In mine you fill up the bowl to whatever level you want before you go by holding the pedal halfway down. So for #1, you don’t really need much water. For #2 you fill it up more. That’s probably more like 1/2 a gallon. It’s certainly much less than a home toilet. It is good to use more water generally though, especially if you have hookups.
Isn’t RV life glamorous? We haven’t even talked about the poop pyramid yet, but that’s the reason to use more water and clean your tank well when you can.
We haven’t even talked about the poop pyramid yet
I’m old school, I still go by the four poop groups.
In all of the RVs I’ve slept in, how much you flush is almost entirely up to you, as the bowl-filling mechanism can be manually operated. For #1s you basically don’t need any water, but #2s will command more depending on severity. It seems the usual #2 takes about a half gallon or so.
Get yourself an Oxygenics shower head. You’ll thank me later.