COURNTEY
We spent two and a half months building the camper of our
dreams. We had never built a camper before, and one of the most common questions we get
is what would we do differently next time. RILEY
Today is our six month anniversary of living in the camper, and we feel
like we have a good idea of what we would change. COURNTEY
It's not actually five things we hate about the camper,
because there's nothing that I really strongly dislike about the camper. So we're gonna go with
five things we would do differently next time. RILEY
All right, Courtney. So what's number one? COURNTEY
If you guys watched our build series, you saw that our original
idea was to put the porch light right here. Seemed like a good idea until we turned it on at
night. And then when you walked up the stairs, it would blind you and you couldn't
see to get in the camper. So then take two, we moved it up there, which seemed like
a great spot for it until we moved to Idaho and there were bugs. If we leave the porch light on
at night, it fills with bugs. And then you open the door and all the bugs go in your house. Not
ideal. We still want a porch light on this side of the camper. But I think next time we would put it
over here, where it's still giving light to camp, but it's not right by the door. That way, it
doesn't matter when it attracts a ton of books. RILEY
One of our most talked about topics around this camper is our
poop. Everyone wants to know how we do it. COURNTEY
They don't want to know how we poop. They want to know how we get rid of it. Just
making sure we're on the same topic here. RILEY
So we have a cassette toilet, and it's awesome. There's just this little cassette that slides out. This one's kind of full right now. We can dump
this in porta potties, gas station bathrooms, pit toilets. It's very convenient. However,
if you asked us in winter, we never smelled it a single time. But when it hit 110 degrees
up here, this toilet started really stinking and stinking up the inside of the camper to the
point where we didn't really want to be in there. We still love the toilet and the functionality
it gives us but we needed to fix the smell. We've tried different tablets and additives.
And they help but they don't get rid of it. We have a really simple solution that fixed
the problem. We added a little tiny 12 volt fan right to the bottom here that just runs 24
hours a day and pulls air through the toilet. We no longer smell it inside at all. Now one problem that we were anticipating that
a lot of other people on our channel called us out on was that the toilet was going to freeze
in the winter. Turns out that wasn't a problem at all. Even at negative 12F for multiple days
in a row, we did not have a single problem with the toilet freezing or the waterline feeding the
toilet freezing. We think that's because our water heater is right here on the other side of the wall
from the toilet, and it puts off a lot of heat. So we think that the water heater kept the toilet
and the water lines from being able to freeze. So that was just dumb luck that our toilet doesn't
freeze but it worked out pretty well for us. We love having the cassette toilet and we're
definitely adding one to our next camper. COURNTEY
We have a love hate relationship with our windows for the price point and the insulation value they
are amazing, but they do scratch very easily. So now that we're up in Idaho, and our road is
a bit overgrown, things like tree branches, I mean even just the little pine needles, if
they brush the window, they will scratch them. So that's something that I do not like but they
are very easy to buff out. And so every few weeks I'll just buff the scratches out and then they're
good until we drive on a overgrown road again. RILEY
We actually use the inside shower way more than we ever expected to. However, there is a problem.
If we can find a level parking slot everything is great, but a level parking spot is hard to
come by. So we usually try to park with our heads uphill. The problem is when we park with our
heads uphill, the shower drain doesn't work right. It's dirty under there, that dirt came off of me. So the floor of the shower pan slopes this
direction, and the area that the toilet sits on slopes this direction. But when
we're parked with our heads uphill, the back where the toilet is ends up
flat, and water pools in the back corners. So I've talked to some other people that have
built their own campers and they've actually added two drains so that it doesn't matter how
they're parked their shower always drains I think that's an idea that we'll use next time. The
shower is also a great place to put the dog bowl. COURNTEY Now we're to the fifth and final thing that we
would change about our camper if we were to build another one. When we designed the camper and the
outer shell we wanted the front nose cone to do a nice taper for a lot of reasons. It helps
with aerodynamics when you're driving. And also it looks cool. However, it meant
that we don't have quite enough headspace when we're in the bed. Every morning when I
sit up, I whack my head, and so does Riley. RILEY
Now if you haven't gathered, whacking my head is something that I do on a regular basis.
So for some reason, it doesn't really bother me. COURNTEY
I don't normally go around whacking my head into things and so it is kind
of a downside. Another option would be to just flip around and sleep with our heads here. But
then your pillow falls off. And that's annoying. Another option would be to do an East West bed
instead of a north south bed. But then one of us would have to crawl over the other to go to the
bathroom in the middle of the night. So I think this is still our ideal setup, I think we would
just give ourselves another inch of headroom. RILEY
Ah, I didn't actually expect to hit my head that time. COURNTEY
It's like it's just, it's right there. See if there
was one more inch, we wouldn't hit our heads. Alright, now we're done being negative, and we're going to tell you the five
things about our camper that we love. Whacking my head might be one of my
least favorite things about the camper, but my king size bed is my number one favorite
thing about the camper. We have never had a camper with a king sized bed and it means
that we sleep so well every single night. My other favorite part about the
camper is cooking all electric, it means that we don't have to carry propane, we
don't have to get propane refilled and we can cook so quickly. Most of the time, we're
just using the little instant pot. This thing is amazing and it cooks so
efficiently. There's not a lot of heat loss, so it's a great way to cook with electricity. The
other way we cook is with this portable cooktop. I love the portable cooktop because it means when
I'm not cooking my counter makes a great desk. I don't have anything in the way of working. And
it means we can also take it inside or outside for cooking depending on the weather. Between
these two things we can cook almost any meal. The only thing we miss having is a barbecue. I've
also come to enjoy Instant Pot cooking with Riley, you never know what's gonna happen and it
might explode. But it is always entertaining. RILEY
Living in a small space with two large dogs is very challenging at times,
especially dogs with as much energy as ours have. But we love traveling with our dogs and
they add a lot of joy to our daily life. Adding this small pass through and
making this custom dog platform in the backseat for them was one of
the best things we could have done in this build. It allows them to
easily hop back and forth as they want. The platform we built for the dogs to sit
on in the backseat also opened up a lot of room underneath for us to store bulky and
awkward stuff like our camp chairs, the tools, Courtney's bike tires, dog food. And
if we hadn't taken that backseat out, we would have nowhere to put all that
stuff. This build was really about maximizing the space we had so that we could
have everything we needed in this tiny package and adding the pass through feature, it made a
big difference in how we use this tiny camper. I love this bike storage. Having the bikes
inside locked up has been awesome. We've had camper setups in the past where the bikes run
a bike rack outside, and it's just really hard sleeping well at night in a public area knowing
that your bikes could be gone in the morning. Having the bikes Inside Out of sight and locked up
is a great peace of mind. Taking the bikes apart and putting them back together. It's a little
bit of a pain. But I think that in the end, it's worth it. When we built this compartment with
the swing down table also allows us to have a nice place to be able to cook our meals outside.
Now hopefully if we ever upgrade our bikes in the future, they still fit just like these ones,
because it's a tight squeeze to get them in there. COURNTEY
The fifth and final thing we love about our camper might sound kind
of silly, and shallow, but it's the way it looks. RILEY
Every time we park and walk somewhere and we then we come back and we see the camper
that we both go, Whoa, that thing is awesome. COURNTEY
It's hard sometimes when you're imagining something you don't
know how it's actually going to turn out. But our goal was to make a camper that was
tiny, offroad capable and really rugged looking. RILEY
And I think we succeeded. COURNTEY
We've had quite a few people ask us if we're going to be building
another camper and the answer is we have no idea. RILEY
I would love to build another camper someday. But there are a lot
of things that we're looking forward to building. COURNTEY
We've been living in the camper for six months
now and it has been amazing. I would live in it forever but I am missing having
a shop and somewhere to work and make things so our biggest priority right now is getting
our Idaho shop apartment done before winter. RILEY
If you haven't checked out that playlist, make sure to click on
our channel and check out our off grid shop bill. Drop in the comments what you think
the first thing we should build in our shop is. COURNTEY
I'm voting for something on tracks. RILEY
I want something we can take to the lake. COURNTEY
House boat. And thank you for supporting
the channel. Make sure to like subscribe, and stay tuned for our next episode. Transcribed by https://otter.ai
