This incredible Overlander 4X4 used to be an ambulance!

hey guys jenna here welcome to my channel where  i cover tours of tiny homes and unique spaces   in this week's video we're going to be taking a  look at one couple's converted ambulance turned   overlander tiny home greg and ginger have put a  lot of work into this tiny space to make it seem   more functional and absolutely livable for full  time on the road a couple of the things they've   integrated into this ambulance tiny home is a  convertible bedroom and dinette area creative   hideaway areas for their dish rack microwave and  airfryer as well as several converted compartments   on the outside of the ambulance for storage  electrical and even an outdoor hammock setup   so without further ado let's take a  tour of greg and ginger's ambulance hi i'm ginger bonjour i'm greg and  this is ross our adventure ambulance before we got on the road we were maxing out  on vacation every year and it kind of got to   the point where we were just waiting for more  vacation time so we could travel more ginger   came to me one day and asked me like hey why  do you think about traveling full time and i   was like oh yeah that sounds good i mean once  we got on the road though we found out that   we actually really love going off-road and  that's something that we never did before   we had no idea that we were gonna love off-roading  and as far as the inside of the camper we really   learned what we don't want so that we could build  something that is honestly our dream vehicle   we were spending months looking for  an ambulance this one was perfect   it came up while we were quarantined in  mexico so we had to buy it sight unseen we had a budget of 000 in mind and in the end we  actually spent just over 59 000 that includes the   ambulance and all of the modifications and  the complete build out of our living space   let's head inside so i can give you a tour  right by the door this is our isotherm fridge   and freezer it is a total of seven cubic feet  it is huge by camper over landing standards   we built this raid to do long-term off-grid  travel and having a freezer allows us to   keep a lot of meat frozen and we also have very  important items like ice cream and jagermeister   so this is the inside and it is 112 square feet  we wanted a four season a true four season camper   so we had to have some very serious insulation we  decided to go with closed cell spray foam closed   cell spray foam has one of the highest r values  this is our dinette table it's also i guess our   office and workspace we wanted something that was  a really good size we also wanted to be able to   have at least two other people come in and eat  with us inside or play cards or games we can   actually fit six of us pretty comfortably since  this dinette seat does extend out what we did in   this design is on each side of the dinette right  next to the wall there's actually a little cubby   hole that is padded our laptops slide down there  it's padded so they can stay there even when we're   going off-road and they're actually charging when  they're down there one of the things we really   love is that when we're sitting at the dinette  we have this awesome view out of this huge window   one of the features we really love about these  windows is that they have a built-in screen   and then they also have a built-in shade so  this is what we do you know in the evening or   whenever we want privacy putting up the shade  also keeps the heat in or keeps the coolant   if we're using the air conditioning and it's  really good for staying a little bit stealth   too when we have both of the window shades  up you can't see that there's any light on   inside if you're standing outside so by raising  our dinette about two feet off of the ground   we got a ton of storage underneath so what we did  is cubby holes under the bench seats the bed and   the table right now are in what we call daytime  position this is where we have the ability to have   one person working and one person sleeping or just  relaxing reading a book up here in order for us to   go to sleep at night the first thing we have to  do is drop the table it only takes a few maybe   30 seconds for the table to go all the way  down it is just a full-size bed greg built   this little step that we just pop out and hop up  underneath our mattress we have what is called   a froley system and that is going to raise the  bed up and allow some air to circulate under the   mattress it is actually really common in rv is  for people to put their mattress on a platform   and then for mold to grow on the bottom of the  mattress because of humidity and moisture in   the rv so we absolutely didn't want that  so that's why we have that furley system   greg built this custom headboard for us it was  actually pretty complicated to build because   it actually is not the same depth from front  to back to allow for our mattress to roll up   we do have a charging station for all of our  tablets camera batteries we have our sirocco fan   which moves in every direction one tip we learned  from some of our friends along the way was to   use extra pillowcases to hold things other than  pillows in this case we actually keep an afghan   that my mom crocheted for us and this is a nice  you know sentimental thing to have from home but   we keep it in here and you know no one can really  tell that it's not a pillow we actually use our   small pillows on the dinette to hold all of our  off-season scarves hats gloves so those actually   aren't pillows either we get a lot of questions  about the height in the bed area we obviously   can't sit all the way up but it's a really  comfortable height for us we don't feel like   we're missing out at all by not having entirely  full sitting height up here in the bed area   this is our kitchen we use a lightweight butcher  block which is so far holding up really well   right here we have a two burner induction cooktop  something that we use a lot more is actually our   airfryer oven which is down below the induction  our airfryer oven is actually on a slide out it   has tons of room to vent when we're using it in  order to prevent this from sliding out when we're   driving greg put in a 12 volt electromagnetic lock  and there's actually a button that's hidden up in   here you have to push the button in order to  release the lock and pull it out so we decided   to come up with something that would be a built-in  drying rack that the water automatically went into   the drainage system and our dishes could actually  stay in there permanently so what we've done is   we've created this lift off section in the counter  top and all of our utensils live here permanently   our plates our bowls live here to accomplish  this all we did was create a custom aluminum   pan in the bottom that is tilted towards the  back and drains out into our gray water system   we're not losing counter space by having our  dishes drying up here we have another hidden   appliance we actually have a very small microwave  the microwave is on a locking side just like the   airfryer oven and we have a huge huge pullout  pantry that is behind this chalkboard wall on the pantry here we actually have pictures  of some of our friends and family that we miss   a lot we're on the road being away from them is  probably the biggest challenge that we have so   we keep these pictures up here it's not everyone  but it's really nice to see some faces from home   up here is a speaker for our surround sound  system we actually have six speakers and we have a   logitech surround sound system that is built into  the dinette this is honestly awesome because when   we get in bed pull that tv down watch a movie we  have really really good sound and then we have our   victron color control which is kind of the heart  of our electrical system this allows us to monitor   our system remotely we also have a control for our  heated floor which is really nice in the winter   so we are now in our bathroom area this  area is basically in between the cab of the   truck and the living area i am currently standing  in the shower pan this shower pan is slanted   such a way that when we take a shower and the  truck is not perfectly level water will still go   toward the front of the truck where the  drain is also have here on our left side   the access to the shower head is going basically  on top we have our toilet also right here and   this shower curtain is also used for privacy when  you go to the bathroom our toilet is actually a   composting toilet from airhead this toilet comes  usually with a jug on the front to collect the   urine we plumbed it into a tank below the truck  such a way that we don't have to take that jug and   empty it manually it's done at the same time that  we are empty or grating to me like being able to   take a shower brush my teeth and poop at the same  time is not a feature that i really enjoyed so   you didn't want to sit on the toilet brush your  teeth and hold the shower head at the same time no   i didn't know yeah i mean for some people i'm sure  that they're very like multitasking multi-task and   life like to save time maybe they would  find that it's a great feature but yeah our ambulance comes with a  pass through which means that   we don't have to leave the actual living  space to go into the driving space   so this is our precliner truck it's an fl-60  and it has a cummins 8.3 liter diesel engine   with alison transmission the ambulance is an  over length of about 25 feet and 10.5 feet high   we went with an ambulance because of the safety  point of view it's crash tested and rollover   tested it's hard to get anything better and going  off-road safety is one of our key component that   we wanted to have also in the design we have  all our heavy component on the bottom as low as   possible to keep our center of gravity low which  help a lot when we go off-road we have done some   upgrades on the wheels and tires we have split rim  which means that we can open them allowing us to   mount the tires ourself aluminum wheels in order  to reduce the overall weight of the vehicle and   also it's reducing the weight on the suspension  which is better for going off-road when you're   buying an ambulance the thing that you have to be  careful is the engine hours engine hours are more   important than the miles because ambulance don't  necessarily have to drive far but ambulance stay   idling for many hours and not really moving so you  may have a lot of engine hours with very few miles   in term of fuel efficiency this truck is not great  we are like highway about 10 maybe a little bit   more than 10 miles per gallon one of the major  upgrade also that we've done is fuel tanks   the ambulance came with like a 40 gallon fuel  tank which was really really annoying so i've   added two fuel tanks which now allow us to have  110 gallon of fuel we have i believe 900 miles   wrench on our driver's side we have three  storage compartment that we modified this is our   new electrical panel so when we started with the  ambulance there was a huge electrical panel and it   was a mess when we tear down the full ambulance  they were wired everywhere the ambulance didn't   came with any wiring diagrams so i had to route  every wire to figure out what it was used for   which took me probably two weeks just to do that  and to clean up the wiring basically removing   all the wires that were not used or not going  to be used and repurposing those for features   that we were gonna add into the build on the  lower level of the storage compartment we have   our house batteries that are actually two tesla  batteries 24 volt battery is 433 amp hours which   is equivalent for 12 volt system to 866 amp hours  four solar panel that totals 1200 watt of solar all right this is our water system  in our water system we have a water   heater it's a kuma water heater which  is basically electric water heater   and it's also coolant so as we drive  the vehicle heat up and heat up our   water our drinking water go through three stage  filters and we also have a uv light filter   i designed this back rack for few reasons we  have a pioneer ac that is like a residential ac   this rack also carries the spare tire and  also carries our bicycles we designed this   rack such a way that we can still have access  to the back door this is access to what we   consider the garage area which is under a  bed so in this storage we have mostly tools one of the features that we had to have  was our hammock in our previous rig we   were carrying our amac all the time with  us and it was really difficult to find   trees in some places to be able to hang  our imac so we built our own habakk system i definitely learned that this is not at all  what a lot of people on the internet make it   out to be don't think that all of a sudden if  you go to build a van that is going to be all   perfect and all beautiful it is hard hard work  to do this this was not an easy project people   leave that part out because it's not beautiful  but i think it needs to be talked about more   i like that i also was able to learn new  things and seeing also these crazy things   that we had in our mind in our head to come to  life to come to life and yeah it's it's really   rewarding and i really enjoyed this process  thanks for watching this week's video make   sure to like share and subscribe and i'll see you  next week with another tiny or unique home tour

Channel: Tiny House Giant Journey

Views: 140,900

Keywords: tiny house, tiny homes, tiny house tour, overlander, ambulance, diy ambulance conversion, 4x4 tiny house, off-road tiny house, ambulance conversion, ambulance conversion camper, ambulance conversion tour, ambulance tiny house, tiny houses, tiny home tour, tiny home tours, living big in a tiny house, ambulance tiny home, converted ambulance, 4X4 ambulance conversion, diy tiny house, ambulance camper conversion, ambulance camper build, ambulance camper van, ambulance camper

Id: KdEI4bYj0tI

Length: 16min 24sec (984 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 30 2021