Using the toilet in a Trident or Trooper

I am considering downsizing to a T5 Trident and one concern I have is using the toilet at night, is there enough space and how do people find having a toilet that is not in a separate 'room' ?

Many thanks for all advice given, and any great things anyone can tell me about owning a Trident in general.

Our only experience was when we had a trailer tent with a Porta Potti.

All I can say with any delicacy is that I've never regarded sitting on the throne as a spectator sport!!

I'm sure you get the message! 

It is a porta potty in a cupboard which you have to get out before the bed is made. personally I wouldn`t consider one, i

f you want to downsize there are other models that do have a proper loo compartment, like my Topaz, Duetto Symbol, etc. and there are others.

You will notice the difference more than others ,who have had only camper vans, after all a dedicated loo area is a luxury.

Good luck
Best regards,
Margaret

I would think it's going to depend on your personal circumstances more than anything else, isn't it? I'm not suggesting that many families of four or five people are likely to go away in a Trident but, if they did, a Porta Potti would probably be inconvenient. A sole camper might not find it inconvenient at all.

As Margaret has observed, the toilet facilities can only be extracted with the bed folded up, so you need to know if you want to go before you go to bed, as it were. The other thing to note is that by necessity these Porta Pottis are quite low - they have to be to fit into the cupboard. If your mobility is good, that's not likely to be a problem, but it could be as an owner gets older.

In my opinion, there are better layouts if that's a concern to you - for example smaller vans that have a cubicle but are not coachbuilt (e.g. Duetto) or even smaller vans that don't have a cubicle but have a toilet at the back and a partition that can be slid across to separate it from the rest of the van. I owned a Flair, for example, which implemented that very nicely with a plumbed in flushing cassette toilet, and that was just a SWB van.

The nearest VW equivalent would be the Talent, though sadly I don't think they ever made any on the T5 - most VW owners seem to prefer a rock & roll bed, even though it does place limits on the toilet facilities.

I should add that other manufacturers take a slightly different approach. Bilbos, for example, place the Porta Potti in most of their models in one of the cupboards underneath the bed/rear seat and that can be accessed with the bed down - though it's certainly not an easy operation! They also make a T5-based high-top with a fixed toilet at the rear, which I suppose is rather like the Topaz - though not nearly as up-market.

Thanks for all your thoughts on this, just to update, we have decided on a Topaz, this seems to be the best compromise for our 'incontinent' needs. Not really, we're not there just yet, I think we just drink too much tea before bedtime !!

My van isn't an A/S (shock horror) but it has two belted rear seats. All the kitchen and other furniture is behind the rear seats, accessed by a central aisle. On the nearside, behind the rear seat is a toilet 'room' that has a proper Thetford swivel loo that is rotated for use and then rotated back so that the cabinet door can be closed. 

A sort of halfway house between a full motorhome facility and the Campervans porta potti. It has the usual electronic flush, using water from the van's fresh tank. The toilet waste cassette is withdrawn via the rear garage/boot.

A bit late to the party on this. I’ve owned a T5 Trident since 2008 from new. Getting the PortaPotti out before pulling the bed out is part of our nightly routine. There is enough room for it between the foot of the bed and the front seats.

It's very interesting finding out everyone's toilet routines !! 

We decided on the T5 Topaz in the end and are very happy with it so far, a bit smaller than what we've been used to, but that compactness has its advantages also.