DIY 4x4 Ambulance Tiny House W/ Shower Toilet & Hot Tub - Overlanding Rig

[Music] so we didn't originally pick an ambulance to be our build-out rig we originally bought the ambulance thinking we were going to lift the box off put a naphide box on it for doing electrical work and then we realized this is really cool we could definitely turn it into a camper and after doing some googling and seeing pictures and videos and youtube of other kind of ambulance campers and overland campers we decided to give it a go with this one we've loved the ambulance though because it is such a structure it is you know a totally built out designed for being heavy duty they're safe they're solid aluminum plus this one had pretty low miles on it we had about 50 000 miles when we got it and it's the 7-3 so we were in a good spot to say hey let's put some money into it turn it into a home it'll last us a really long time and then after it got converted you know to 4x4 over this last year basically now we're able to go even further up in the mountains which is nice hi i'm chris and i'm michelle and this is our 2003 e450 ambulance named tanya that started life as an ambulance in skycomish at the fire department and then we bought her and turned her into an overland camper this is our second build in here we went a couple summers in the original build and we had a little bench bed that we would pull out every night and make we had the original ambulance cabinets in here and they were just kind of too bulky so we pulled those out we added a window to add more natural light and then the biggest thing is this bed we wanted a bed we didn't have to put up and down every morning and night and so this was kind of the main motivator between the first build and the second build and we love it it's a queen size bed we mounted it at this height so we had space underneath in the garage but we had plenty of headroom up top underneath it moisture is a big problem in rv beds so we have some wolf mat is what it's called and it basically keeps it up off of the bottom so you don't run into mildew mold moisture issues lets the air circulate underneath this guy is a three burner 17 inch propane stove and oven so we can make pizzas we can make cookies we can make anything we really want to in this little guy as we could in a regular house we decided to go with propane because we already had the water heater that was propane and our heater here which is propane so it's just one system so whenever we run it we want to always vent the moisture that comes from it so we just have the fan that vents it out and we avoid moisture this is our garbage and recycling drawer and cleaning area that's really handy if we're cooking just pop the garbage in there we wanted a big sink so we decided to under mount it it's got great depth we've got our soap dispenser and a nozzle that gets everything all clean for the countertop we did just three quarter inch pine and then we sanded it down after we'd cut it to the size and the shape for the sink and everything and then we sealed it with a poly stain sealer so really sturdy you can get it wet you can cut stuff on it pretty heavy duty it works really well for us being an ambulance and being metal on the outside we wanted to really insulate it well since we spend so much time in the snow so behind this inch and a quarter bead board is two inches of insulation and so we have foam inside of all the walls all the way around in the ceiling as well to keep everything insulated and warm the backsplash is a bronze plastic tile backsplash comes in sheets so you just cut it to the shape and then adhere it to the wall it's plastic so you can wipe it down doesn't crack doesn't expand easy to use and heavy duty in this drawer we've got all of our cutlery and kitchen utensils and we tried to use a lot of the original ambulance things so like these drawer slides they're from the original ambulance down here it's our pantry area we've got all of our pots and pans our plates and here we've got little cubes with our food this is our favorite drawer in the whole ambulance because it is ginormous and it is the catch-all for everything under here's access to the garage it's where we throw all the stuff so for a fridge we have a dometic fridge chest fridge we've got freezer space fridge space it's really nice it's really efficient really like the dometic and it slides in and out and it's got heavy duty rollers underneath so when you pull it all the way out you can seat people there you can see people there these are the original cabinets from the ambulance michelle designed all the interior she did all the woodwork for the cabinetry but we decided to leave these original ones because they were really cool they were handy you can see through them we store books games kind of becomes our liquor cabinet we originally bought the ambulance from the fire department for 8 500 and then put about 15 000 into the second build a couple thousand into the first build and then the 4x4 conversion so we've spent probably forty thousand dollars probably about forty thousand yeah so i was a high school teacher for many years and so had summers off and the first summer we just took off he works remotely so we were able to continue living our lives normally and after that for summer we realized this is what we really like to do travel and enjoy nature so we decided to rent out our house i quit my job he's still working but rent out the house and hit the road for the ceiling we use tongue and groove pine that we just had lying around worked really well for us it was easy to cut for lights we use dimmable leds so you can dim it down there are a lot of them we had quite the argument about how many to put in here i think it's perfect michelle maybe thinks it's a few too many but since they're dimmable we can turn them on in zones if we want to we have three dimmer switches or we can dim them all down and they're super super efficient when it comes to electricity with all of them on right now we're burning like two amps of power and this is a lot of them on for the table we just basically used a pine board it's treated with a beeswax so it's waterproof we can wipe stuff off of it and then this just pushes back in we didn't use slide rails we actually just used angle iron that we welded into shape so it's just friction basically that slides it in and out for us and keeps it from coming out while we're driving this is our flip down television so it's made for cars automotive runs off at 12 volt you can plug it in to hdmi usb and then when we're sitting in bed at night we can watch movies stream them up there which is really nice this is our shower we went with a 27 inch neo angle pan trying to get a full shower space into a small living space and the door we bent out of eighth inch aluminum plate inside we have frp on the walls we have the fan in the top then we have our hot and cold water we use a cassette toilet in it so you can use the toilet and then when it's full we basically just take the cassette out and then right back there is a wet environment paper towel roll holder it's by dometic really cool it rolls it up and down for you so it keeps it all safe and dry this is our screen door so when it's hot out summertime we don't want bugs to come in this screen slides all the way to the bottom and latches and then you can open it both from the inside or the outside when we're not using it rolls up out of the way this is our electrical cabinet here so when we cut out the walk through to give ourselves the open kind of closet space in here we rerouted all the electrical from the original box inside of here so we have basically our shore power charge controller we have our solar charge controller we have the controllers for the electric locks down here we have an inverter so that charges all of our 120 when we want to use it and then this is a big breaker and then we have a bus panel with a bunch of fuses for all of our circuits throughout and then this is kind of the command center for it so we have an amp inside that's bluetooth so we can switch inside music outside music or play it on the inside and the outside and then this is the controller for the amp here's basically just a charge state controller it's a little hall sensor inside that tells us how much power we're using how much power we have remaining and then how many volts we have out of our batteries and then this is the controller for our on-demand hot water heater it's really nice because we can program the exact temperature we want the water to be so when you're showering i like it 105 michelle likes it at 101 so we can just switch between and then this is our thermostat for the propane heater we removed all the original box electrical and kind of redid the front up here we added the swivel seats which are super nice basically gives you a lazy boy that was a front seat so you can look back this way and then originally this cut through wasn't quite as large we enlarged it but first we had just kind of um curtains but what we did was use double cellular blinds they have like an r rating of like 10 or something crazy and so we just pulled the seats up drop it down and when it's cold out that seals our cabin off from everything else so this is our expanded closet area we took an ikea shelf bookshelf and then just drilled holes and added elastic to keep all of our clothes in got backpacks on hooks hung up here on the other side we keep our shoes and then we hang our jackets over here [Music] the first trip we did over a summer we were on the road for three months we went everywhere from canada down through idaho utah arizona colorado california open so it was a really fun trip we realized we probably prefer winter van life over summer hot van life yeah it got especially when we were kind of through colorado arizona when it was like 120 out it was crazy hot and that was our first build and that was part of the impetus for us realizing okay there's some stuff we want to change about the bed and so we did that three kind of three-month tour living out of it another two months in kind of colder climate and then in washington and then decided we're going to do a rebuild so brought it back started stripping it down this is our collapsible hot tub so this whole thing breaks down we can carry it in the back of tonya the sides are just made out of three quarter inch plywood with wooden trailer brackets on the corner so it all snaps apart inside we just have a blue tarp liner that we bought off of ebay and then this is an m67 immersion heater so it's military surplus they're pretty easy to find about 80 90 bucks and you fill this with gasoline and then it just slowly drips to a burner plate down below heats the whole body of water and we can heat the 250 gallons of water in about four hours but even in the snow in a handful hours we can get it up to 100 degrees and when we're done it all collapses back down packs up we can throw it back tonya to go to the next spot by a river or a stream wherever there's a fresh body of water we just use a transfer pump to suck it up pump it into here the ambulances have a ton of outside storage we converted this one to be the back of basically our closet in here we keep our hoses for filling stuff up our shore power long cord and then we have an adapter as well this one we sealed up um fully so this one's actually sealed closed from the inside because it became the back side of our shower down here is our battery box so we have two of the big 8d deep cycle marine batteries here so 230 amp hours 230 amp hours and then they are tied into the solar on the other side that we can move out and then it is also charged by the truck alternator as well being an ambulance we have two high amp 130 amp alternators so we've got a lot of power on board so we can just start it up idle for 10-15 minutes recharge our whole system if we need to these are recovery mats we have two of them that clamp to the side when you're on private forest land in washington you actually have to carry a spaded shovel a pulaski and a five pound fire extinguisher or they'll kick you off and so we mounted ours on the side so they were visible and we didn't get stopped as much so this is our tool box inside we keep our recovery straps our clevises we have a toolbox with bottle jack fix a flat all the stuff we need to repair the inside all the stuff we need to repair the outside we have an awning on this side it unzips and then we have legs that fold out of it and then right beside it and above those are our cellular antennas so that first one is an omnidirectional antenna they're made by weboost and then the long pole on the side there that's a directional antenna so 95 of the time the omnidirectional gets us all the service we need but if we're way out there in the boonies or particularly in like colorado and arizona we'd have to flip that directional antenna up raise the mass like 25 feet and then we can get line of sight on a cellular antenna so we can still work out of it still have internet still be able to do our jobs this used to be i want to say it was storage underneath where the backboards would go for the ambulance we lined the whole thing with rhino liner so that it's all waterproof then it's got a drain hole in the back so we can throw all of our ski gear in here so we throw our skis in they can be covered in snow and then as it warms up it all just runs out of the drain hole which is nice and then this is our garage space down here so inside we have basically this is all storage and then we still store our solar panels on the side over here so we have four of them that fit perfect this way that way we can pull them up pull them out kick the leg out and we can put them out in the sun so we can still park in the shade at first we were going to have them up top but then after spending some time in colorado we were always searching for the shade so we actually made it so our solar panels can unpack get set up in the sun and then we can run 40 feet of cord back to the ambulance to charge everything we added a hitch to the back a receiver here and one to the front for two reasons we wanted to be able to carry our motorcycle in either position plus i'm still trying to talk michelle into getting a motorcycle too so then we can carry two of them this is storage on the side for our fresh water and for our propane tank so 45 pound propane tank inside is the biggest that you can carry still be able to get on ferries then this is a 55 gallon fresh water tank we fill it from this side plums it through all of our water all of our water systems all of our water pumps we have put on the inside of the body rather than running underneath we spend a lot of time where it's really really cold and so everything's inside and then some of the warm air is pulled through the cavities and when it gets really cold we actually have a system where we can set this irrigation timer and so we'll normally open that valve set the timer basically to two minutes open for every two hours what that'll do is open the valve it then pumps the water from basically our entire system through our heater our on-demand hot water heater circulates it through the whole system and pumps it back into here so when we've been in really cold weather where it's like a couple degrees out it actually then pulls that warm water all the way through our system and keeps this water right at about like 55 60 degrees that way even if it's freezing or we leave the ambulance it keeps everything from freezing up this is our on-demand hot water heater it's a gerard really cool the reason we picked it is because it actually has a temperature sensor in it and if it detects the temperature of basically its plate go below 36 degrees it'll kick on the burner so we never actually have to worry about this freezing up and then in here this is the cabinet that kind of becomes the catch-all for the water system and the heat system so we have our pumps on the side and then this is our suburban propane forced air heater and then right here this is basically the automatic door locks so push the button locks the front door locks the back locks the side door locks everything up for us which is really handy and in here we use this as shoe storage normally we also have a mount that holds our outboard motor so we can put our little 15 horse outboard motor inside when we're dragging our dinghy behind us and then grab it out of the side that way it's safe in here so nobody steals it off the boat when we first got tanya she was a rear wheel drive has the 7.3 liter diesel engine in it when we got it had about 50 000 miles we've put around 25 000 more miles on it but after driving in the snow driving in the mud driving on logging roads we decided we wanted to do the conversion we did a five inch lift in the front we did a six inch lift in the back reverse that other way around we're right at about 11 miles per gallon no matter where we go no matter what we're pulling if we have the boat behind us over down a mountain pretty much flat at 11 miles per gallon now my advice for building out an ambulance camper if you have one to just pack up some camping stuff and hit the road for a week see what you need our conversion fits us really well but it may not fit you well so figure out what you need what you want and go from there absolutely the other thing i would say is take it slow we did so much research on forums online just googling a lot watching lots of videos checking out other people's builds you know i mean this is probably a amalgamation of like 50 other things we saw that we kind of liked and tweaked and put in here i'm chris i'm michelle thank you for taking a tour of tonya the ambulance with us we are also on instagram at tonya the ambulance it's a mix of build projects adventures and links to our instagram will be in the description below if you have any questions thoughts needs van stuff reach out hope to see you yeah thanks [Music] bye

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 1,182,038

Rating: 4.9557724 out of 5

Keywords: tiny house, tiny house on wheels, living big in a tiny house, tiny house movement, tiny home, small house, small spaces, small house design, alternative living, architecture, affordable home, off the grid, small space living, tiny house life, diy tiny house, diy home, van life, ambulance conversion, diy camper van, camper van 4x4, ambulance camper, 4x4 ambulance camper conversion, van tour with bathroom, van tour with shower, diy expedition camper build, van life couple

Id: q4PnVKqgqhg

Length: 20min 49sec (1249 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 06 2021