Engineers Design Ultimate 4x4 Van Tiny Home - Mid Build

what's up guys they won't look at me now I with a crew right now I'm gonna spin around here's my van well I am with Stanton I'm with pea I'm with Amanda and I'm with Matt and this is their beautiful gem we got going on six inch lifts six inch left 80/20 aluminum tiny watt solar kit and kaboodle everything geez floor heating volt AC we're gonna go into all that however it's not done yet so you guys get to see the guts of it all and by the way my boys standing right here not even my boy it's actually math boy a aerospace engineer working with another mechanical engineer this thing what happens when you put an aerospace engineer with a mechanical engineer oh wait until we show you everything going on with this Ziggy is your dog Ziggy is your puppy that's not is not a small puppy at all he's about 80 pounds she's a only 80 yeah she was Oh My Jesus she's a big dog all right so a Bernese Mountain Dog Ziggy is awesome and eventually going to be the van dog yes right um we are actually Matt we're actually at your house at you rent that's right and you've got this beast yeah so it's a 2013 we got it used for just shy of 30k and then you can come into the shop what are you doing it's got 100,000 miles okay diesel om 642 motors just broken in yeah it is it has pretty good maintenance history but I am a mechanical engineer not saying I can fix it if we break down yes I can in your pastime you work on your cars yeah so I I'm kind of a grease monkey I do love to just wrench on the car there you go yeah it's really fun I love that you are talking about a system a minute ago before we started rolling what are you doing to the diesel that you say it's more eco-friendly okay there's a company out Toronto called dinosaur Boca cer T stands for carbon emission reduction technology they have a patented design where they take a pink of distilled water and they zap it with electricity okay and from the water forms hydrogen and oxygen gas molecules and they pump that into the intake of the motor and that acts as a catalyst it takes about 200 watts of power to zap the water with electricity and the catalyst action causes a much more complete burn and combustion cycle the gzip diesel motors all the way off yep so you get hopefully 15 to 20% better mpg you go fifty to sixty percent reduction in carbon dioxide nitrogen oxides particulate matter it's kind of a game-changer that needs to be at the forefront now oh yeah because van life is getting so big right now people are saying that we're not saving the environment we're actually polluting it by having the diesel now diesel does burn cleaner than gas it burns cleaner than gas but the issues that it develops more nitrogen oxides which not quite as bad as carbon dioxide but it's just bad for the environment man this old car based fuels well that's carbon footprints I would think yes we could go into this all today no it's true it's true so normal houses I think use about 10 kilowatt hours of energy per day if we look at our bill I think it's like 7 to 12 on average and that energy has to be burned by you know steam turbines and you're using energy yeah you're burning fossil fuels by natural gas at the plants yep primarily now we want to kind of do something because it's 2020 we know we have the epic crisis of humanity's life time yeah we have to do something and we are just trying to do by the way this is the problem when you do videos with engineers they talk in a way that hopefully we can all all right Ziggy is just bird-watching I love this all right guys can we move to your shopping and let's just check out you're all set up dude yes you are Lawrence windows this van was actually used for like beach camping or like a church I bought it from the guy actually followed him he pulled up next to me one day and a man and I were searching for a 4x4 Sprinter and they're freaking unicorns don't exist yeah so we kind of gave up hope but I was coming back from lunch at work and this guy pulls up to me and this thing I basically lost my little creepy dude but hey I'll take it I wave to him he's like it was like white feather commercial conversion 4x4 yeah I was like can I crawl around your van and while I was underneath he said I'm selling it what good for you and now we're in your I guess quote unquote shop of your home yes this is a one car garage that doesn't fit cars anymore no watt solar yeah you do box kit so there's a thousand watts of solar ready to absorb the beautiful people photons of the Sun I will throw up a picture of I believe there's some pictures rolling around with you guys having it but not on the van yeah it's it we have to we have some work to do we've been thinking about some unique ways in which we could actually do that would be the lift how you guys are lifting the box so we would actually have a linear actuator that just says there lifts the whole thing so that we get 360-degree views okay instead of just pop top right so they have an actuator that lifts more like that right yeah an opening on the inside to be able to have access from the intention for storage where you know because of our dog you want to be able to travel in very cold climates because wrote in Diego during the summers she won't even go outside to go to the bathroom okay so the whole point for us is to kind of chase a little bit of winter a little bit of the beach yeah yeah there you go the whole point is to be able to have access to store not inside so that way yeah yeah you can get to it from the inside zactly yeah if you don't want to always have to walk around and go up a ladder to the top through the storm I don't think this is a huge deal but you know having access from the outside to like all your stuff up top yeah just doesn't maybe it's it's not a big deal but we maybe I think that having the interior access would be it's like an extension of your home mmm I was like having a little penthouse suite where you could go to you have dog food up there and we have tables and chairs or if you could make it into a sleep so how high is the actual we're gonna lift that box okay I was like could you almost like camp out up there if you add it in a way weird like with a screen that went around I'd say from the actual sealed position all the way to the top like this edge this edge right here yep I'd say this but probably one half to two times actually can I don't mind I want to see like the this is like I actually I've seen it but I haven't seen it the I so this is the new solar panel so it's monocrystalline military-grade solar panels and Wes always cry out to me about this this is military-grade stuff yeah so it's rugged it's it has a bunch of thermal expansion joints it has a lot of good ways in which it picks up the photovoltaic voltage and sends it to your batteries and so some small part of it shorts out yeah just from overheating the thermal mechanical stress is too much whatever so rest of it will pick up the voltage that's crazy technology a B nobody causes access to this except Wes I think right I think you're right I so far I mean but he's got connections beyond our our reach right now they did a great job oh that's super nice everything it's carbon fiber so it's super light but I stood on one of these we I stood on his prototype of this it was me three other people and a dog and it was totally fine they're they're ribbed 750 pounds are they ready for some fencing and they have I think it's 25 year warranty yeah but they're designed glass is a panel glass what like oh my goodness no I don't know what the finish but you've got you guys have walked on it it's something somewhat there there is some fiberglass but it's mainly carbon fiber and the panels themselves and I'm not sure that that's crazy and then your other front like this is the one pan on the back that's 500 watts and it's a that's a 500 watt panel as well and that's just a panel this will be at near the front so this will be this is like kind of the rear the the rig and this will be in the front so will actually walk on this with I we need to probably adopt a no shoes policy I put shoes on mine I have generation 1 model yeah you have Gen 2 model and the Gen 2 model I want to say is like 4050 pounds lighter yeah mine's like solid glass oh yeah you guys want to see that there's a video of me doing that anyways but right now yeah it's crazy it's super nice though I like it a lot oh this is super nice yeah we're carbon fiber I think stand here saying it's like a stand there's a lot of composite yeah by the way you have computer screen right behind that's me that's a little creepy I'm giving you guys our time they were watching me before I came here it is right research research research yeah so that you don't make mistakes because you know I work 60 hours a week you know doing mechanical engineering I don't have time to make mistakes yeah I don't have time to build it wait a minute you work 60 hours a week we actually need go into what you do for work okay so yeah well you are mechanical engineer but mechanical engineering I work in the semiconductor chip manufacturing industry so making measuring devices to do the inventing to make sure there you go all the chips that are in our phones and cameras yeah you're using right now thanks for the shot of the Sony yeah yeah oh holy crap you make those kind of things and you work 60 hours a week doing it oh when is your time to build the van just pawn it off on Amanda okay and then I mean obviously no once you show them what we have done so far we're still kind of very beginning said yeah yeah the Android the main part is that it's been a lot of computer working which he's done there was one night where I just was like come on man go to bed finally come on so you put about 56 hours a week and do you work but you how many hours a week do you put into research design and the van built itself or week yeah 20 hours a week and it's it's sad because it's it's not enough and I know you know that yeah and you're like I want to put in 40 hours a week yeah and the thing is that you know we're all humans like we want to preserve our relationships with people and friendships and family and it's really hard to balance it and how many months we been at this so far we bought the van December 2018 so we've had it for a little over a year oh right stan was there why yeah why fight and we're humans like you said I mean we're gonna get into with your elbow does that give a 3d design here yeah we have of course it's basically just a roughed-up way in which we could figure out how we want the framing to accommodate all the cabinetry the countertops I have a custom bed that I designed - it's a slat pullout yeah well show that a minute yeah yeah this just really helps you know whether it's Sketchup or SolidWorks it really helps kind of get so this is all it works this is all it works that's the that's the driver side of the van pretty much yes do you have everything else design didn't know okay and that's all part of like you know having the time to really scope things out and figure out you know what are you gonna do for your sink what are you gonna do for right hour if you have minutes it's hard but you know I just had it you just got to do it out all right now we're going to segue into the van it's funny because you have the video up on your screen right now is the floor heating video you went all out you did it all dude yeah like you guys got the floor heating so let's go on inside yeah by the way this stuff is massive yeah but good for you oh yeah you've got the you've got the radiant floor heating you've got a 12 volt AC unit yes which is really hard to come not however come by but so we cannot go to warm climates with a Bernese Mountain Dog from you know so it's Erland and not have cooling yes all the a van actually came with roof-mounted AC unit right it requires that the motor be on because it has an auxilary compressor okay that needs to be on to you know do work on the refrigerant and send it up here is that the same style that like the that are in the side the passenger vans yes okay it's the same model okay but it's like an outdated design okay I have to burn your diesel yeah use solar energy to run cooling and that's what you got here yeah and that's the cruising comfort model and I believe it's just souped-up by van life tech that's right yeah that's right I think he did some performance upgrades it pulls about five to six hundred watts okay so you have to have this big enough power tank that's right so we have 420 a lot hours yeah once we see all this this while we were going into this maybe talk to them what you've done so far as well yeah so an overview is I focus on the bed first oh god I wanted the bed to be like the central sort of thing in the van it's a third of your van it's a third of your van takes up a lot of space yeah big enough to like actually sit on we're gonna have memory foam mattress here order a backrest and this is a full out so it'll come and let me extend all the way to the side of the van it's 76 inches long so it'll be 66 inches wide pick it up for you Amanda and Ziggy yes it needs to have the right load bearing capacity you know Cassidy's a big pop yeah so pretty much it can handle the weight of all of you but so I focus on the bed design first and I wanted to make it big and convertible so I see a lot of people doing that designs in the back which is super awesome some people do the crazy lift systems for Murphy bed or or the Murphy bed but I wanted to have kind of a lounge right near the sliding door and I want to make it deep enough so that you know while we're driving take just hanging out you know we're up here swivel seat action for when we're stopped just make it a lounge yeah of course I like it I like a lot yeah we do it we won't have to make the bed but you know I think you know it's nice to have like a like a immune spot to go to like hang out you work you know just chill I love it I actually I absolutely love it you we're gonna both ago in the electrical ants or Avengers so yeah why don't we show just the amazing electrical system you guys do have so this is all West and Savannah Wes like holy crap dude you did an amazing job well by the way we're also see how with that kind of operates here but there's a step down right now but eventually it'll be pretty flush yeah we have a bunch of little you know design features that help it but yeah so we have a five kilowatt inverter which is what that's a five thousand one inverter that's a five thousand watt inverter so one of the things we want to do we don't want any liquid propane look uh we want to run everything off of solar okay fine in the batteries okay that's the biggest inverter I've seen by the way yeah and so it's oversized for a reason like we are gonna do a lot of you know tech stuff okay and so right now computers go and we have a dual burner induction stove that we want to use microwave I don't know maybe okay in support no microwave in supplies we're doing this what no I don't think so I think that won't I do a lot of grilling and then okay maybe I like the grill yeah I like to do we doing oven or you know there's all propane I don't have to if they make an electric okay oh oh I like your style so we want to run everything off electricity we just don't want like separate fuel tanks took up power our stuff so hence a five kilowatt inverter to run 120 volt loads we got the charge controller yeah we got a really nice West hooked it up with a really nice breaker panel marine grade breaker panel has solar jumpstart Victor on energy is legit by the way this is the full battery management system for 100 amp hour lithium iron phosphate batteries yep so that's four point eight kilowatt hours of just like your boy has okay the same as baby yeah the cool thing with nicktron energy is the fact that it has you're welcome bit wrong yeah free plug yeah right it has this which is you know it's a nice interface but this is not what we're gonna use most of time we're actually gonna use the app yes the app comes in and II think we're gonna do a Raspberry Pi based interface I'll got a touch screen will help link with our phone so we could look at the Lodi Diagnostics and see you know kind of what we're pulling and not really use that that's just like a very you know ad hoc I'm super quick and dirty okay what am i pulling right now one of the most sophisticated and largest systems I've seen battery was not the largest I've seen but like just overall it's a ridiculous system it is and like I said we just over sized it to full obvious reasons yeah just one of our goals with this rig was to build it for many decades okay good want to build a rig in 2035 it's just gonna sit in the driveway somewhere don't you want this thing to be built for the future you're building it to enjoy it you're building it to living in your building its own now you guys getting are you guys not gonna be in the house once this is built oh yeah yeah this is full-time yeah so we spend about three thousand dollars a month renting this place yup it's San Diego and it's you know craftsman two-bed one-bath 800 square foot you're not on the beach that's right I'm yours you say Mike I guess you're not the holy crap you're not no we're about okay neither way i mean it's the san diego city near the beach we're not the whole goal for us is to be able to not have that like you know we're paying $3,000 a month and that we don't even own the place it's an aside buy a house in San Diego yeah the traffic that taxes everything like I love you seem different yeah if you want to have a family we can't afford to live in this place and that's honestly what a lot of people in the van life community starting to realize oh and I was only paying a thousand a month and right we go to the dog park in there's people that are there's a couple that's a lawyer in a neurosurgeon yeah have another beer [Laughter] by their house 20 years ago they would never be able to buy a house now that's crazy and their opposite they have they have crazy careers and they can't buy a house for you and we're not neuroscientist yeah neurosurgeons neuroscience is close enough have another beer yourself there you at this point I'm assuming people have noticed that you're using 80/20 yeah and yeah 80/20 for people along 80/20 aluminum which is this stuff right here and you can kind of go into that like maybe your your thoughts behind it yeah why you went with 80/20 how you're going to attach wood to that because I think a lot of people have questions about how the heck you use 80/20 in this manner yeah because it's great I didn't want to go through the troubles and tribulations of using 80/20 yeah and all those things are super important 80/20 I think is good mainly for the strength to weight ratio yes so you can fold so many things to it super easily and really like build like get a really good foundation right now I'm like this guy just demonstrating for us shaken you need some more beer no okay and sort of drill and install rivet rivet nuts you you really could get always go rattling during your driving it's all right like wood moves its own expansion contraction yeah over time it's gonna kind of wear out why are you telling me to rebuild my bathroom and if you combine it with unique things like 3d printed nylon four brackets and all those yummy those yeah so there's yeah we will I guess we can yeah well I'll show I'll do b-roll of it it's just super strong and we're gonna have like quite a bit of weight being thrown around here whether it's our 16 gallon water tank a 64 pound you know AC system 80 pound fridge 80/20 is great and if you get a shot of this yeah so I buy a lot of my stuff from mcmaster-carr and they actually have a really legit selection of 80/20 and you can see I get the hollow version just okay on wait I'll do it with two by two it's one in half by one 1/2 ok yeah yeah cuz they do I know 80/20 comes in different sizes yes one half exact in the medium you know they do make smaller they do make a one inch by one inch I do yeah but it's hard to attach stuff to that ok it's just super finicky you have a lot more surface area to mount you know by sixteenth inch carriage bolt I'll stop the carriage rolls are important and it's just it's a way to do it it's a it's a one way to do it yeah it's amazing and then you're very eco-friendly what are you using for insulation I'm just out of curiosity now have a little baby are you look I didn't even know that I was just goes oh that's also his Zealand's finest man there's a damn sheeps man you just providing for awesome yeah you know like the board that stuff is good too but all that stuff is kind of synthetic wool is sustainable because I shave it off the sheep the sheep's like whoa that was weird and then it goes back it back to the wall that was weird yeah it is and I I did a tour of their shop and I was just mesmerized by their shop it was amazing it was one of my favorite tours that I've done their dumpster was like not even a doubler was weird they have no like waste that's super weird like I was like everything is Ryu like they reuse it all it's crazy it's amazing what they're doing up and up there and I have luck well I'm not even sponsored by them I don't like them yeah alright dude well I want you to give you can can you explain you have this whole pretty much side worked out you got the whole driver side so what the heck are you doing okay yeah that's a good question I think our sink is gonna go right here okay we're gonna do a countertop system that hides all so this Bosch it's a electric hot Oh actually yeah thank you everybody's gonna say oh you're using electric boss like I know you can't really explain too much we can - yeah but this dock tank is what I have in my van it's not plugged in yeah so this this tank is I think it's a four gallon hot water heater yes let's meet my Bosch it's super popular but we are just using it as a like thermal storage vessel that's what I tell people it's water it's an insulated tank that van like tech uses because it's cheaper for him and for us to put those in our vans extent of him making an insulated one it's super expensive for him to make one yeah so he buys them and then cuts the wire like legit and anybody that has a system will tell you it's the best in the world they already did the engineering if you don't turn the electric resistive heating elements on yeah and you use your small bit of diesel to you know heat up quite cold water mixture yup Troy's right that's how you heat up a space super efficiently with an on by tapping into the chemical energy and that's module which is immense yeah you just sip on diesel fuel burn it and send basically glycol and water through the furnace underneath the rig and that goes into various heat exchangers one being the floor and you dump the hot water into here we don't need it yeah there's your hot water for showers and you're saying everything now here's a weird part like this is towards the end I've got a mechanical engineer right here that you are obviously very intelligent I have a aerospace engineer right here obviously very intelligent could you guys have done or designed your systems reading for heating the electrical system you could have I know you could have but we go back to time we go back to time and you know credit where credit is due Troy and Wes and Savannah and a bunch of other people out there are super intelligent and they have invested their time that they had at some point to develop these sisters years yeah and so we can't we can't do that I I just can't do it I can I can barely like get this framing put together in the tiny little slippers of hours that I have writing so it's it's great easier we're helping these these businesses they don't know flourish and they're doing amazing stuff and it feels great to I think you said it best it's like a DIY assist is what I call biases DIY so we are DIY as you're building all inside of it out when it comes to systems complicated systems I personally did not want to take the weeks to teach myself and and honestly screw something up I knew I was going to yeah and then you have to spend more time fixing your mistake that you made right let's pay somebody a little more money to do it right and get the best yeah I felt that these guys were the best yeah and then you you build everything on top of it but you have our main systems we have our heating we have a cooling we have our electricity and now we have a bed and you just build up from these main systems I think that's what we did yes it is expensive so what is your would you have to say exactly but what is uh what is your estimated budget if you're okay by saying it what is your estimated budget for w named the ban yet Oh so we're thinking of naming it cash cash stands for California affordable starter home what is going to be this is like it's such a pun this is such a double pun but what is going to be the budget for cash then it's is that including the van yeah another cause of it because yeah you brought your shoes yeah so we didn't spend sixty thousand dollars on a brand new 4x4 Mercedes Sprinter right dropped another 70 K and then who did your lift by the way was already late so yeah the lift is a white feather custom 4x4 for conversion up in Red Bluff California wolf Craig Jackson mechanical engineer owner he's done about 4,000 of these rigs for the tires from do you remember uh they're 35 35 s yeah some other their Goodrich the all terrain t/a zero did you get it from the same guy that did the lift no I actually I have a buddy that works Sean he works that for little parts and you wanna get me some tires I need some sorry I I mean honestly this is unfreaking believable it's not even done I'm so like I can't wait to see the the ending result of this and I'm gonna be following you your Instagram so they can follow you yeah I'm sure advanture okay I answered spell it all out there so at dat ya and ya da and T you are gotcha I'm obviously I'll put that you know stuff in there below his an amended stuff will be in the description below dan do you want to like give yourself a shot out are you absolutely dude we're gonna do a tour when he's done we didn't even talk about the rest of this stuff like I mean what guy I mean we can we can what you didn't talk about the hatch access to the cargo alright let's get into it let's get into no I want to actually do a telescoping ladder pull down and jump up into our penthouse suite right you did talk about a little bit but I do you are this is your design of it up here that's what you're gonna do yeah I think I'm gonna cut this section here it's already cut out from the old pro air AC system okay and we're in how like a telescoping ladder so we could access the the actual storage compartment and I you know made up by the carbon fiber box yes view of the room and well yeah it's so no big linear actuators I want to actually have a go up but it may have to just do pop top okay but I do want to have 360 degree views you know they're kind of cool people if you go sleep up there and you hope it's sleep down here yep and then have access to the solar roof deck so get really nice views oh yeah yeah because you just access it through this hatch up and then it tucks in look when you're not using it and a couple lazyboy beanbag chairs up there you know something yeah that would be super awesome are you doing upper cabinets yeah so my brother John he's a master craftsman okay him builds guitars like classical guitars Gadlin Luthi area yeah he'd routed all I'm assuming that one's your last name yeah okay yeah he routed all all of this maple Baltic that's not cnc'd no it's not C&C wow that's impressive you made the templates to do it it's actually maple apple pie maple look gorgeous feels great it's super strong its half-inch today yeah you Gro have some super nice anti-saloon hinges but anyways john is gonna help me with all the upper cabinetry and the countertops and we're thinking about going oh I like that yeah bamboo finishing I do too and then your floors are you're thinking vinyl you anything to handle a Bernese Mountain Dog yeah anything really I love vinyl but there's obviously a bunch of materials that are out there definitely definitely dude I just invited you to an epic fourth of July party we're going to do I think so I'm really hoping you're gonna come in stat you're obviously invited as well and I hope you come as well I'm gonna give more details on this fourth of July thing later and yeah as the year progresses but it's going to be I'm begging you maybe we'll do an update that you want to do an update then yeah let's do it up to it I mean this is like a multi-stage rod it is we'll do a finish video later because it's going to be a long process let's get you out of that 3000 month rent house and let's get you into this bad Larry adventure van and live life and enjoy it experiences and yeah you'll have insurance you'll have diesel fuel you have food but you know I think we're you know yeah the freedom I think yeah exploration aspect of life is important this is so awesome guys thank you so much thank you stat and thank you buddy for just being there for support a man is no longer with us I don't know where she went and I think she her and pay her hanging out so let them hang out well we have awesome cool guy time dude thank you buddy all right guys we will see you guys next time Louie dough [Music]

Channel: Jarrod Tocci

Views: 111,375

Keywords: van life, lithium battery, van conversion, van dwelling, van build, van tour, promaster van, murphy bed van conversion, luxury van, living in a van, van murphy bed, heated floors vanlife, diy van conversion, diy van build, van conversion ideas, how to convert a van, sprinter van, sprinter van conversion, how to build a van, van life tech radiant floor heating, tiny watts solar, tiny home on wheels, how to do a diy van build, full van build, how to, ghost van tours

Id: hTxxPOsEL1Y

Length: 32min 2sec (1922 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020