It may be Thomas Heaton
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Camper Conversion - Basic Layout options.
- Thread starter TeeDee
- Start date
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Hey Guest, Early bird pricing on the Summer Moot (29th July - 10th August) available until April 6th, we'd love you to come. PLEASE CLICK HERE to early bird price and get more information.
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Kinda agree - the further down the path of ' making this a house ' the more specialised and heavy it become - I think one needs to keep things light , multi functional , modular and austere - to a point.
As @TeeDee points out, everything inside should be lightweight as possible.
I can always spot a serious vanlifer from a weekend, summer only lifestyle vlogger
......
The serious one has a robust van with mud all over it. They have multiple cooking methods and everything inside is either plastic, aluminium or stainless steel. They have one cutting board and one knife.... they're minimalists for good reason.
The other, weekend type have a spanking clean van, wood paneling everywhere and a surfboard on the roof that never gets used. Soft furnishings abound complete with hanging fruit baskets and a compost toilet for the Gram. Some bigger vans even sport a pallet roof 'terrace'.
If you life in a van for long periods of time, you need to be as stripped back as possible. Water is the biggest weight and people often carry around far too much, along with too many cloths and too much food. It all adds up, especially if you have an after market pop up roof which weighs loads.
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I can always spot a serious vanlifer from a weekend, summer only lifestyle vlogger
......The serious one has a robust van with mud all over it. They have multiple cooking methods and everything inside is either plastic, aluminium or stainless steel. They have one cutting board and one knife.... they're minimalists for good reason.
The other, weekend type have a spanking clean van, wood paneling everywhere and a surfboard on the roof that never gets used. Soft furnishings abound complete with hanging fruit baskets and a compost toilet for the Gram. Some bigger vans even sport a pallet roof 'terrace'.
If you life in a van for long periods of time, you need to be as stripped back as possible. Water is the biggest weight and people often carry around far too much, along with too many cloths and too much food. It all adds up, especially if you have an after market pop up roof which weighs loads.
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Yeah I don't get that either....And, don't forget the string of LED lights around the van or awning
That's true with campers these days as well.
. But then again, when wild camping I'll never go without my Espro Travel Press, so I guess it's horses for courses!Sent from my SM-A528B using Tapatalk
Yeah I don't get that either....
I really didn’t need reminding about the Espro, but it’s a good call for a camper so I think I’ll have to order a couple. We started off using one of the Italian mocha percs, then a bigger French press. Both a faff, especially the Italian one that was prone to falling off the hob at the height of percolation.
We used to bung everything in, fill the 80ltr water tank, cups plates, cutlery etc. Now it’s about half a tank of water, a cup and plate each, two teaspoons, two cutlery sets, one thin plastic board, and an all rounder folding knife (Chinese Boker Magnum copy, the cleaver bladed thing). I’ve always got a knife in my pocket and there’s a Leatherman in the tool bag.
Rather than built in cupboards and clever panelling, we have a mini top bunk (shelf) for chucking stuff in use like coats or jumpers, a pretty small double bed beneath it, and deck level storage beneath that was a bed space with a mattress and loads of coloured LEDs for the previous owners lad. That’s main storage for camp chairs, BBQ firebowl, logs, wellies, spare clothing etc. Most of that is in plastic storage containers so there’s not too much searching about. We get more minimal every time we go, often down to forgetting stuff and cursing, only to realise we didn’t really need it anyway.
We do have a wet room cabinet like on a narrow boat, cassette toilet and shower. The boiler runs on gas or hookup and does about 15 litres of hot. Never had a shower in there, but it’s handy for muddy dogs and keeping the loo clean. The microwave fitted by the previous owner has gone and that space is general stuff like peanut butter, marmalade, dog food, peanuts etc. We used to put those things in a storage container but it was a PITA dragging the thing out to undo the lid.
Vans are pretty tight spaces, so if one is desperate for the loo, while the other is desperate for the Marmite, or a towel, dog lead, glasses, phone, toothbrush etc, it pretty soon works itself out by priority and organisation.
Dustpan and stiff brush essential and used daily for floor and bed, one of the 150m tight wound blue rolls too.
Mike, the dragon, he lives in there too. Not always on the dash if we’re on one of the hookup, top-up, empty bog sites. A lot of them are a bit funny about DIY conversions these days.
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If I did it all again, I'd still go for a VW T5/6 because it's perfect for me in every way. Buuuuuut..... I would go for the following design:
Base van would be a T5/6 LWB with a Hi-Roof and barn doors.
Outside would have winter 3SF tyres on it year round.
Inside I'd put in a permanent rear 'bed shelf', with the whole space under it for storage. Everything would be stored in those plastic laundry buckets. Simple, robust and cheap as chips. Clothes in one, footwear in another, dry food in another one, liquids in another one..... you get my drift.
Mid van I'd have a removable kitchen unit, consisting of storage for water and bits and bobs, cutlery and cooking pots etc, a max of 50ltrs in 2 containers one of which would have a manual pump tap on it, changeable with the other container when it empties. No need for a fixed sink. Fridge wise I'd have a dometic 35ltr on a roller in the storage under the bed, accessible from the inside of the van. I'd have a cassette toilet.
I'd have a bed up in the roof on pneumatic struts, so in the day I'd could have it up out of the way when I'm static. In this way the van is still a four berth.
Awning yes, firepit yes, tool kit yes, first aid kit yes. Shower facility would be a vacuum pump shower. 2 ltrs of cold and one ltr of boiling water does the trick. Pop up shower tent for when privacy is needed.
Cooking would be provided by a maritime liquid fuel stove. The cost of meths or bio fuel is dramatically lower than LPG or diesel and literally available everywhere you find civilisation in the western world. No need for a fixed gas stove.
Every electrical item would be 12v rechargeable.
With regards to gear inside then van, if it's good enough for one man use, it's good enough for a family of 4, you just need a little imagination.
I'll be selling my T6 next year even though its been the travel love of my life for nearly 5 years
. Some amazing memories in it but it will have to go, I've got a luxury motorhome now....(But if I had my way, I'd still own a transporter!
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The youtuber I recommended designs his cupboards around light and structurally. He does some really interesting things with double and triple purposes. It is really interesting to watch the videos in time order as he upgrades which is one of the things he recommends that there will be problems that you need to solve.
That’s my experience with our van, and my parents narrowboat, there’s always something. Most recent in the van is the leisure battery isn’t charging from the alternator. It’s not something I’d noticed as the solar panel on the roof confuses the issue, but we had a couple of nights out recently where I expected the driving between destinations would bung power to the leisure battery, but it didn’t.
Rather than overcomplicate and get hung up on possible alternator or split relay problems I got the starter battery tested. Totally knackered and trying to charge all the time, hence the split relay can’t divert the charge to the leisure.
A really important consideration in a van is to leave everything accessible. Our water pump, most of the pipework, and much of the electrical wiring is behind panelling and a pain to get to.
Like that idea. I have wondered if you could combine a single bed with a double across the back of a van so you have a single most of the time however you can do the pull out thing and get a double. That way I could have a single bed with my bike under it and a sofa which gets covered by the pull out for the double bed.
