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RE: 9 Things I’ve Learned From a Year of Van Life
Some sound advice and insights! Reminds me of the sunscreen song from the 90s, remember that one?
It was pretty grounded of you guys to acknowledge when your dream wasn't actually your dream (farming). Sometimes I think people doggedly stick with it out of a sort of pride or fear to be seen as failures.
I'm thinking of saving up for vanlife (to in turn probably save up for a bit of land to hang a hat), a lot of what you say resonates and makes sense to me. I've been planning my ideal van conversio - it has two dedicated computer desk areas!! No working off dogs backs for me!
Thanks for the thoughtful and well-written post.
I totally remember the sunscreen song! Ha! Im glad you liked the post! Can't wait to see what you do with your own conversion, I will be pretty jelly of a desk!
I've thankfully never gotten down on myself about failures, you learn so damn much when you decide to let go of what you thought you knew (:
No-one ever did it perfect the first time!!!! It's so gratifying and fun to always be learning more about the realities of vehicles and camper vanning (every time I'm stuck at the side of the road due to car failure I learn something!). I think that's even more so the case with camper vans (and vehicles in general to be honest), especially when there's tight budgets and compromises to be made. Although it's really cool with the internet that we can delve into vanlife communities and learn from other people's mistakes or opinions. I also always love asking for van tours when I meet people with campers, I love it! Love that youtube eternalises the van tour experience!
I was thinking to live at my parents for a while, buy a little Berlingo van to facilitate working and rough campervan camping for festivals and short trips away (these tiny little vans have quite a following in the UK, I've seen some ingenius campervan set ups with them), and of course for retrieving useful scavenged things for a proper conversion build, and allow myself to save up properly, and also recruit my father into helping with a conversion. He renovated his own house so he's quite handy. I'm lucky that I often have quite lucrative summer seasonal work available to me in Ireland as I'm a trained and experienced ecologist, it's very seasonal work cos the growing period is really only between April and September (for identifying plants). Although it' still a good way away I started dreaming about how I'd go about the conversion and recently made a very rough around the edges diagram so i could show a friend - what do you think?
My idea is to make it tiny home style and to foresee living in it full-time for a good while, plan to allow for sharing with a partner and maybe even an ickle baby if things went that way without having to start from the beginning again to accomodate such a scenario. Maybe strap a small motorbike to the front/back so if travelling can park up and then have more local nippy mobility with the bike.
It would be a Fiat Ducato LWB High top van (they are squared right up to the ceiling as opposed to the tapering Mercedes), if I were plush with money I'd get a nearly new one and convert it to be 4x4 (a company called Dangel in France do this for Fiat vans less than two years old), maybe even convert to a double tank waste veg oil system (those two options would be so awesome but probably won't happen that way!).
I got inspired by plush posh campers that have van lift beds, and after some research saw that you can fairly cheaply do a DIY equivalent using either an electric winch or an electric garage storage lift....so instead of having the bed permanently down across the back you can lift it up with the electric lift so it is pulled flush against the ceiling and opens up opposite facing benches with a table between them for daytime use. I'll be excited to share that as I only came across three people on the internet that had done their own DIY camper builds of this. Whilst researching about drop down beds I also saw that several people had beds pushed up against the cabin ceiling in some vans, that you unclip and it sort of hangs down to create a suspended double bed, so that would be another aspirational feature. Whilst it could be complicated with gas struts and so on, if the mattress weren't a really heavy one it could just be a very simple manual mechanism for clipping it back up (ultimately if needed that bed there'd obviously be someone there to help stick it back up again!). I don't like the idea of having to fold up and down and basically do origami with the sitting room furniture every time you want to sleep (hence why so many people opt for permanent beds) so I liked the idea of these sort of drop down beds that you don't even have to make up, just hide them away until needed at night with the press of a button (I'm a real messy pup).
A lot of people with there vans put in swivel seats in the front, but I think I'd actually maintain three seat belted seats in front (which is standard with these commercial vans) and then put in two, preferably even three, seat-belted seats against those looking back. That way could have 5 or 6 people travelling legally in the van, so cool for a holiday or going to a festival! Cos the bed lift allows there to be a seating area in the rear that space behind the cabin would be more a quiet spot for computer work away from the main living area.
Other exciting features would be about heating, I decided that a mini wood stove (like the cubic mini cub) would be awesome for heating as it dries out the van as opposed to creating condensation like propane and so on, and also is way more affordable than diesel heaters (which would be another cool option but very expensive), and totally comfy and also you can wild camp easily as can get wood for free (obviously depending where you are), can even cook on top of it. Ideally I'd combine that with underfloor heating (madly enough it's really not an expensive option) that runs off battery (bit of solar would be nice) - so that could be turned on when the van is driving to keep the heat level up, and also timed to come on in the morning to heat things up before a stove can be lit or if there's driving to be done and don't want to light stove in that case. I've been also trying to get my head around DIY solar water heaters (coiled copper wires painted black kind of thing)....something like that would be cool to supplement a more traditional water heater (I'd be between places like the dull crappy winters [or anytime of year really] of Ireland and the scorching climate of southern Portugal so wouldn't be able to rely on solar all the time for hot water).
This is all blatant procrastination to distract from my PhD work that I should be concentrating on! And I'm a whole load of money away from here and there, but sure aim for the stars and you might actually make it over the garden fence. Any constructive comments or ideas welcome!
Wow! You've got it all planned out! Can't wait to see you do it! Show us all the process of your conversion and the final results when you get around to it. We had a lot of plans for ours but it was nice that it was pretty simply already made to work. Not too much to change. But it'd be wonderful to start from scratch and design it all yourself.
lol - after all the planning who knows, I might just buy one already done!! I like the idea of learning new skills though.
My biggest tip would be whatever you buy, know how to repair it. Learn how the engine works, what the parts are that make it up, and what are common problems with that engine. Then always have the basic supplies with you for fixing normal problems, things like jumper cables, a jack ... This is a crucial part of it all. We learned ours better than any mechanic would. Especially since she's got some weird one of a kind engine!
oil! and oil changes! Don't forget those! Make sure you can do them yourself.
Good tips!!!! I love learning about engines little by little.... maybe will need to properly dive in!
You'll be thanking yourself forever after