[MUSIC PLAYING] Hi. I'm Richard. This is our bus Rufus, and
we're in the San Juan Mountains in Southwest Colorado. Part of my motivation
for doing this is my dad. I love my dad. He was just a brilliant man and
very happy and enjoyed life, but he was real
intellectual and smart. And I love technology
like he did. And so I miss him a lot. And he died at 54 years
old of pancreatic cancer. So I'm only 59. If you wait till you're 70, you
could all of a sudden something could happen that's
catastrophic, and you might not
be able to travel. So why not embrace life? If you can go out and see things
and do things and enjoy things, and I think we have to get
our priorities straight. I think quality of life
is a lot more important than just the 9-to-5 grind. I was born in England,
and my parents immigrated to the United
States when I was three, so I have an American accent. And we moved all over
around the states because my dad was
a avionics engineer. And we lived out
in the Southwest, so I kind of have a
drawback to that area. Basically, I became
a paramedic just kind of out of sheer chance. But later on in life, I
became a wedding photographer. So I did that for
about eight years and actually made the most
money I'd ever made in my life as a wedding photographer. And we had a photo
booth business, so I evolved away from that. And I've always had
a love for aviation. So while I was a paramedic,
I learned to fly airplanes. I built the bus in
the airplane hangar. The guys at first thought
I was crazy, I guess, and they thought I was just
going to build like a party bus or something like that. And then when they
saw me building it, they realized it was more
of a serious project. I've been traveling in the bus
since January of this year. The bus is a 2006 International
with a DT466 and an Allison 2500. It's 32 feet long, and
it's a dog-nosed bus. Some of the features I added
to it are a security system. I have four 1080p cameras
that are around the bus-- one on each side, one in the
back, and one in the front-- plus I have a blink
doorbell that's active whenever I activate
it-- a kind of access security if anybody comes to
the door at night or if you're at a grocery
store or whatever. When I went to
Schoolapalooza last year, which is a big bus event
out past courtside, there was a graphic
designer there. He drives a truck and
pulls a trailer behind it with like a printer in it. He showed me some
different options, and he took the old decal
off and put this bear on. I thought this was unique
because a lot of people put trees on, and
I thought it was cool to have the bear and
the trees and the mountains because that's what I like. Walking to the back
here, this is the garage. So I keep my generator in
here, some miscellaneous tools, camping equipment,
a solar stove, so it's just all in
there on a nice shelf, separated from the
rest of the bus. For right now, I opted for
a dual sport bike, which I can take on the street
to run to the store and get maybe some groceries
or do a little touring in. Over here on the
back of the bus, I added a 15,000-pound hitch
so I would be able to pull anything with it, but it is
also holding this hauler that I bought used off Marketplace. So I use this ramp to load the
motorcycle carefully up there, and then it all straps down. It's very secure. The back door here is
accessible for gear. So I have photography
gear back here. This is my 100-gallon
water tank. The advantage to
this is just that I can fill my water
tank here and nobody can access the water tank. And so putting it inside
the door, it's secure. Air for the vents,
only inside air. It's not some pollutant or dust. So I just made it really simple. There's 100 gallons. And that is 800 pounds
when it's full of water, so it's reinforced and strapped
down with 10,000-pound straps. So if the bus tipped over,
the tank would stay there. You can shower every day. Just do short
showers and you can be out for three to four weeks. So it's really handy. Underneath past
that hitch, mounted to the frame rails of the
bus, I custom-welded brackets that hold the air conditioner. I have a 9,000 BTU mini split. On the other side of
the bus, over here we have two custom
racks that I also attached to the frame that
hold four standard grill tanks. I use standard
barbecue grill tanks because if you can't get them
refilled because there isn't a refill station
somewhere, you can just go in and literally
exchange tanks and pop new tanks in there. Power supply is a 30 amp. Right now, it's
connected to my generator because it's been cloudy a lot
and we're in a lot of trees, so the solar doesn't
really work as well. We have another
custom frame that I welded that holds a
46-gallon gray tank. All my plumbing is internal. But when you drain,
obviously, your drain lines go underneath the gray tank. So I actually have
heat tape on there and a drain relief for the
trap underneath the shower. So I can turn that heat tape
on and keep that functioning so I can actually camp down
to like 15 or 20 degrees with no problem at all. On the top of the bus, I have
1800 watts of solar panels. I have a rooftop deck
that holds four adults. I have a 360-degree
security camera. It's on about a 4-foot
pole that's removable. And that is a 20 times optical
zoom night vision camera. So you can use it for
security, but you can also use it for looking
for wildlife at night. Because it has infrared night
vision that's excellent, you can actually pan
around and look for animals all around the bus or
see what's going on. I also have a ham
radio antenna up there. And then on the
other side, there's a Starlink antenna for internet. OK, that's it for the exterior. Let's take a look at the inside. [MUSIC PLAYING] Welcome to our bus Rufus. Starting in the front of the
bus here, this is a 2006, and it has air brakes
and an air system. So the door is actually
operated pneumatically from the steering wheel. So when the bus is off, we just
push the door open and close. But when it's running, you
actually control it that way. This is a security
system I added. So it's a four-camera
security system that's 1080p. That's also
transmitted wirelessly to the internet via Starlink
and by a cell phone. So if Starlink's off, the
cell phone will pick it up and you can log in to
your bus and check it out when you're away. Up here, we have just
some storage compartments. We had a TV in the bedroom,
and then we added this TV later because we realized
we were in the kitchen and it was nice
to watch the news. That was Donna's idea. And then the bus has dual carbon
monoxide and smoke detectors in the front and
rear for safety. This is all storage under here. This opens up. Now, for a brief message
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starts at $49,000. OK, and here in the kitchen,
we wanted a big countertop. So I chose butcher block and
got that from Home Depot. But all the cabinets
are custom-made. So I've never built
cabinets before, so I just figured that out. But all of this is securely
bolted to the floor to make it very strong. We have a pull-out garbage
can, the standard drawers for different kitchen items. Under the sink, we have-- our
on-demand hot water heater is in the back of the sink. So it works excellent. It actually vents out
the back by the window. And then up here, we
have our plates and then other things for cooking. This is a barn sink. It's actually ceramic. It's from IKEA and then
just a single drain. So we wanted something
big and some way to drain dishes
down here easily. And then I wanted a fancy
sprayer for spraying things off and because it looks cool. The stove top, I
actually got for $100 because a guy on
Marketplace had bought it and decided he didn't want it. But it's a $300 stove top. I have a 900-watt microwave. And then below that is a
furnace that exhausts outside. So this heats the entire bus. It's kind of cool because
it heats into here to this main area,
but it also has a separate vent that
goes down the water lines to keep them warm. It goes underneath the shower
to keep the shower pan warm and then goes into the bedroom. So that was kind of
just something I thought of while I was doing it. So, on this side, we have
our dining room table. But this has an
interesting history because when I started
building the bus, I made a couch that pulls
out into a bed out of wood. And then I decided I didn't like
that idea, so I took it out. These are two seats
out of a Ford Transit. I bought those off
Marketplace also. And what's unique about
them is they fold flat. The seats move
forward and backwards, and they adjust and
you can twist them, so it makes for a
really great tool for having company
or eating dinner. And then this seat here, you
can swing it around forward and use it as a passenger seat. And then the
outlets are actually designed so you have
outlets for both people to plug their devices in. And then as you
swivel around, there's an outlet back here
so that person still has an outlet that's
convenient even though you're in driving mode. Then the table actually
unlocks, folds down both of these seats
fold flat, and then the black part, which is part
of the flooring in the Ford van, that actually folds
over the top of each other. And this converts into a couch,
or it could be used for a bed because it's 6-foot
long, and then we have a backrest
that goes there. So this is a couch,
bed, and a dining area. So it works out great. At some point in time,
I bought this Toyota FJ. And I didn't really plan on
necessarily taking it off road when I got it, but my
interest piqued later on from watching YouTube videos. And so I modified the FJ. That started this out. I'd done some tent camping as
a kid, but I came back in my FJ and I made like a
platform bed in the back. I had a water container shower
that went up on the roof, off-road front
bumper, rock rails, skid plates underneath
it to protect it from going over rocks. I'd done a lift on it,
and I couldn't figure out why no one had done
a rear-hitch skid plate that would protect it. So I came up with that
idea, Refined the design, tested it on multiple
vehicles, did research, found out nobody
else had done it. I did the research and did it
provisionally utility patent on it and then
marketed it online. So I bought the bus
for about $7,000. It had 128,000 miles, I
believe, on it when I got it. I looked at many buses,
tried to weigh out what was the most
bang for the buck, like the not having rivets
and having enough headroom and having the
right drive train, and there were buses that
were more expensive and less expensive. But this seemed
like the right fit. The bus took about
a year to build. It's funny because the guy
that I was flying with, Zach, he asked how long
it's going to take, and I said three months. And I was really wrong. It was a ton of work. So the back of this dining
area has a whole bunch of tech that's pretty cool. We've got our refrigerator
here, of course. The refrigerator is unique
because in a lot of builds, they have a wall here
to secure from moving. So we wanted to
make it stand out. So we didn't want
that wall there. So the refrigerator
is actually secured to the wall with these
special pads that hook to it, but there's also a seatbelt
that goes around the fridge when you're driving to make sure
the door doesn't open and add a little bit of extra security. And this is some
of the other tech. This is a quad-band ham radio,
so it's fun for communications and playing around with. This is my status
indicator which tells you how much power is going
into the batteries or out of the batteries
for the solar system. Behind that is the control
for a diesel heater. So even though I have
a propane furnace, I also have a diesel heater
down here that connects directly into my 60-gallon diesel tank. It's very convenient
to fill your tank with diesel, heat
your bus, and then rather than having
to refill propane, all you do is refill
your tank with diesel and you've got more
fuel for your heat also. So that's excellent. And both of these heaters
are mounted center bus intentionally so you get even
heat in the front and rear. So that's something
you have to think about in the design process. This right here is
my Starlink router. The brains for the Starlink
are actually in the dish. And actually the
dish is really cool. It actually has a heater in it. So if it's cold, you can
actually turn that on and it'll melt snow. This right here is
a phone booster, sort of like a weBoost,
which is a big brand name, but this is an off brand. I can put an antenna on
the roof, turn that on, and it will boost
your cell signal outside so that if you have
poor reception from somewhere, you could use that. But what we typically do now
is we put the Starlink up, we turn on Wi-Fi calling,
and we can make phone calls through Wi-Fi through
Starlink, so I don't use that as much anymore. This is a tethered cell phone
that plugs in to another router that I have back there. When the Starlink's offline,
you can use that cell phone for the security system. So it'll provide the
4G LTE to that router, and that router backs
up the security system. So a lot of tech there. This right here is actually the
controls for my mini split air conditioner. And the mini split
air conditioner is actually a heat pump. So it actually is an air
conditioner and a heater, and it also works
as a dehydrator, so you can use it for
all those functions. So you can actually run that
off of the battery for air conditioning for a short time,
or if you have full sunlight, you can keep it going. But when you're plugged
in at a campground or if you were using the
generator continuously, then you can run
that constantly. So that's a nice feature. And then these two are
zoned heating controls. So I actually have heated
floors in the kitchen here, and I have heated
floors in the bedroom, and I have different thermostat
controls for each of those. They actually do not
draw too much current. So in the morning,
you can actually set the timer so the floors
will be warm when you get up. So that's another cool feature. I actually have for
modes of heat in the bus. I have an RV propane furnace,
a diesel heater, a heat pump, and heated floors. So it's kind of
excessive, but my thoughts were if you're boondocking and
it's cold and one system fails, you've got backup. So that's why I did that. Another part of the kitchen is
this pantry that I built in. So I wanted a large pantry. So we have some other
things in there too. But it's great for
keeping the food. These all go in, any of
the heavy things go in, and I have a metal
pin that goes in to hold them shut
when we're driving. We walk back here to the
bedroom and bathroom. So the reason this
is designed like this is because we want
an open concept. So we have this relatively
small space to work with. And I felt like if I put
the shower in its own box and sealed it off, then
I would really eliminate how big the bedroom is. So I decided to go with
this own open concept. Then the shower here is
all real ceramic tile. The wall right here
is the plumbing wall, so all my plumbing comes
up and works off of that. It just worked out great. So if I needed to access
it, I can access it through that wall and the
decorative wall in the kitchen. But the shower pan is
actually sunk in the floor, and the heat goes underneath it. So the advantage of that is
it gives me more headroom since I'm 6 foot 2. So I step down into the
shower versus having the bubble they put in RVs. I actually didn't have
the glass originally. I had just the
curtains going around. But I realized it would
confine the water better, so I had the glass custom made. And it was very strong even
without the support piece, but I went ahead
and ordered that. But it's absolutely no issue,
and it works extremely well. For the bathroom sink, I
just wanted something kind of grand and cool-looking. And then I custom-made
this medicine cabinet that just opens and closes. Something unique
that I did was I made a custom urinal that's
under the cabinet here. So the urinal is a urinal
that you can buy on Amazon, and I basically ran
a braided tube down to below the sink trap. And then I paralleled that
tube with a fresh water tube that goes into
the urinal, and then I put an electric solenoid in. So after you use
the urinal, you just push a button under the
sink and it actually rinses the urine down. Under the bed here
is our toilet. So we try not to use that. Just most of the
time, you're somewhere where you can go
to the bathroom, and we have some other options
to make it so you don't have to mess with dumping. There's actually a negative
pressure fan behind the toilet too that it doesn't
have any odors. But if you did, it would
help remove those odors. Down here, I have
my light switches for the bedroom and the shower. Then I have a 30-minute
timer here for my water pump. And the reason I did
that was so if you leave, you don't forget to turn
your water pump off. So you turn that on. Your water is pressurized for
30 minutes, which typically is plenty of time
to do anything, and then it just
shuts itself off. This is a queen-sized bed
that actually converts into a single bed, though. So there's slats under here, and
you can actually push the bed. And then that way, you can
use this as an access area. But all of this under
here is storage. We have a TV that we can
use from in the bedroom. We can actually turn
the security cameras on up there from here. So if you're laying in
bed, you can actually check all the four
night vision security cameras around the bus. And here, there's actually an
access to my electrical system, so my solar-charged
controller, my lithium ion phosphate batteries. My shut-offs and my fuse
panel are all in that section. On this side, basically, I
wanted closets for him and her. So I have drawers for myself
and drawers for Donna down here. And this other
hatch-up front here has a screen on it for bugs,
and then it just pops open. We actually take a ladder
that extends, goes up, and can access the roof deck there. But what we typically do in
the morning or in the evening, we will cook our
dinner, and we can just reach up there and set our
plates and our food up there. Then we can climb up the ladder
and we can sit on the deck and enjoy the sunset or the
sunrise and eat our breakfast. So it's really cool. I spent about $35,000
building it, give or take. I kept records for a while
and then gave up on that. The reason it probably costs
that much-- you could build one for less-- is because I
have technology in here. So I've added some things that
maybe other people wouldn't do. That cost me a little bit more. If you look at a motor
home, even if it's used, you could spend anywhere from
$40,000 to $200,000 on it. Those motor homes you buy
don't come with solar. Or if they do, they come
with really minimal solar. So you spent less money, and
you got exactly what you wanted. And something that's
really robust and strong-- because it's all steel
versus buying something that's made by somebody else. Maybe it's made
with particleboard instead of plywood. Some of the safety features
might not be as good. If you spend time, you
can build your bus right and make it exactly
what you want. My girlfriend's Donna, and
we also have a dog Rufus. He's a goldendoodle. He's three years old. And the interesting
thing about that is we got Rufus before
we built the bus. And the bus is a dog-nosed bus,
so I called the bus Rufus also. So our Instagram
is @OurBusRufus. So the bus is named
after the dog-- kind of silly but fun. She's in Indiana
now with her mom. And her mom's older,
and she's helping out with things with that. She'll travel with me,
but I'm out here by myself for a little bit. Hopefully, she'll come down
here January and join me. I built the bus with the thought
of maybe retiring in it just because I thought why spend
all your retirement savings or blow your money when
you can really downsize. I realized that life
is about experiences. I mean, I like to
have some nice things, but I don't really need
to have a giant house. I don't need to have a
bunch of fancy things. I'm more interested in traveling
and seeing the country. I mean, this country alone, even
without going out of the United States, has so much to offer. So you can drive
around and experience. And then if you can do that
without paying campground fees, it's even more exciting. The fact that you can go
park in those locations and explore and come
right back to your house and look out the window and not
have to mow your lawn, to me, is very appealing [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for watching our video
and for stopping by "Tiny House Expedition." I'm Alexis. And I'm Christian. Don't forget to like,
comment, and subscribe. And for more tiny home
tours and stories, click the videos
below and join us on Instagram for bonus
content, including face-to-face
conversations with us. We hope to see you there. All right, thanks, guys. Have a good one.
