Texas.Yankee, you are right, the tongue weight is only 1,065 lbs. But, that is dry weight.
In the Grand Design owner's forum, as well as on their Facebook page, there are lots of folks who own these trailers and have posted their CAT Scale results. Since all of the storage in this trailer is in front of the axles, as well as the water tanks, the vast majority of folks are coming in between 1,600 - 1,700 lbs. So, i'm just being ultra conservative as I plan for the worst case scenarios.
Not exactly, but conceptually you are correct. Simplistically, if the trailer has a tongue weight of 1,065 with a corresponding dry weight (UVW) of 8,995, then the tongue weight percentage is 11.8%. Applying that percentage to the max GVWR of 10,995 results in a tongue weight of 1,302. If that were the real world case, then all would probably be okay. But, since virtually all of the incremental 2,000 lbs. of goodies goes in front of the axles, then the tongue weight is going to be much greater than 11.8%, which is what folks are experiencing in the real world.
Exactly!
We'll start small (i.e. don't upgrade the mattress to a residential Sleep Number model, don't install a washer/dryer, etc.) before going nuts. We'll definitely measure the actual weights at our local truck stop to see where are when we (1) pickup the trailer, (2) add our normal camping gear, and (3) add food and water to the load. Then we'll know how much weight we have left for any of life's luxuries we may want to add later.