Hi Jean and Erwin
I had a Fiamma zip and privacy room as they call it on a previous camper.
I honestly found it a bit of a faff. The side panels were very heavy/bulky and there seemed to be excessive tension in the zips , i.e. you might get the front panel and one side on relatively easily but then a lot of strain zipping on the last side panel. Needed one person to hold the mating zips together and another to zip it up with a lot of grunting from both parties!
Looked good when completely assembled but then needed more bulk, i.e. another groundsheet on the floor and I had a custom skirt like you see around the base of some caravans as the wind would otherwise whip under the van making it a much draftier affair than something with everything sewn in.
Another issue with Fiamma awnings is if you get heavy rain in the night if you don’t either drop one side of the awning or park your van somewhat inclined you’ll get a big pool of water in the middle of the awning which just sits there, stretching the awning fabric which can cause permanent damage. You can get a separate awning tensioning pole to offset that a bit but really doesn’t work with heavy rain.
So you attempt to drop one side of the awning via the adjustable leg and find there’s so much tension in the privacy panels it’s virtually impossible to get a good run off.
I saw a nice looking awning when flicking through the Little Exis Facebook Group posts but it looked like the fibreglass pole type.
I think, personally I’d be looking at an airbeam type if I could get one that wasn’t too bulky.
Not sure about the bed situation as I’m 6ft which is partly why I love the bed My wife can’t really reach to push the bed up but she probably could manage if she was tall enough.
I have a couple of Milenco XL wheel ramps which are 6 inch high at the highest point and very grippy. Maybe standing on two of those end to end or a really strong folding step? I’d probably fashion something you could fold flat out of plywood and hinges to extend the existing step up, but that’s just me! Gonna make some magnetic frames with proper midge netting to go around the upper windows as had about 50 midges in our van in the Galloway forest, all well fed!
Cheers
Gary & Debs