HIDDEN SHOWER | Luxury Modern Tiny Home On Wheels - HUMBLE ROAD Stealth Camper Conversion

hello this is patrick with new jersey's outdoor adventures youtube channel excited to have george morrow with humble road back on the channel he's a channel favorite today he's going to give us a tour of his newest creation a ram promaster camper conversion so join us [Music] hello patrick well we're here again this client's name is sam and sam has been a full-timer for five years he had a class c born free 27 foot he was actually interviewed i think he was his first week out on the road and he was interviewed by bob wells the godfather of nomadic life pretty cool anyway he decided as most rvers do as most full-timers do is you need to downsize downsize so he went from the 27-foot born free to this promaster this is a 159 wheelbase promaster it's the extended chassis and it's a 3500 which is very important in my opinion i would not want to build on a 2500 if i could help it the the gross vehicle weight rating on the 3500 is more conducive to a build uh typically i build in a pretty lightweight manner using 80 20 extruded aluminum so what i'm putting in the van is a lot less than conventional plywood box construction but i'm still put this van we put in 2 800 pounds of material components and appliances that's including a full 45 gallons of water sam took this out and weighed it and he had none of his personal gear in here he just filled up the gas tank he filled up the water fresh water was 45 gallons and he took it and he weighed it and it left him with 800 pounds uh for him to bring in his personal gear so and that's a 3 500 and we're being very judicious with our our weight let me bring you inside uh we could start up front here um on my channel humble road i've done a lot of uh segmented build videos every week and this is not the original uh shower design originally i started with a full bathroom or shower box room and i had my armoires swinging out of that bathroom box and i told sam when we were doing the cardboard build on that i'm not a hundred percent sold on this yet i don't think it's ready for prime time and it would prove to be too much of a claptrap a cumbersome situation especially for a full-timer so this was the the alternative design we came up with and it's primarily because sam is he loves to to stretch out like this and lounge sam is tall i'm not but he wanted this wide open lounge up front so that's what he got and i'll tell you from where i'm sitting now the view is really nice it's wide open i i often say that with my floor plans i build the class a's of class b vance but this one is really very spacious and his wife sharon has her own lagoon table here uh factory swivels both of these are factory swivel seats i highly recommend factory swivels if you can get them do it they are far superior to aftermarket swivels in my humble opinion so my son alex uh works with me and he brings his man ron down with him they've got a nice cabinet shop up in hoboken but they give me a few days a week and alex is responsible for all the woodwork in the van in this particular van it's all walnut and he's got a couple of different styles and basically i designed it i explained to him what it is i wanted to do and he works out all the details he does a very good job for such a young craftsman uh so here's how this bathroom works now you could see that it's a lounge and if they did care to entertain somebody this is now a bench or an ottoman but it's also a toilet as you can see so and there's another thing that happens with full timers uh the longer you go out full time the more in tune with your bodily waste and your your necessities and your resources as you go through life you wake up in the morning and you say do i have enough fresh water to get through the day have you ever done that living in a house no never so when you're in a van or a camper you live in the moment so for him to have his toilet out here in the open is not a big deal and i can attest to that when i traveled in my pleasure way van i did have a bathroom room but i'd never had the door closed why would you bother i left it wide open so when sam needs to use the toilet he just has to take the seat cushion off and here's his toilet this is a composting toilet but again one of the things sam has decided to do is not even compost he just puts everything in a bag with kitty liter and he disposes of the bag when he can to take a shower the first step would be to lift up this little lever here let me move that seat back you lift up that false floor okay and that reveals the shower pan and we made this toilet box as light as we could so sam could lift it out and put it aside now you've got your shower the shower pan actually extends under the armoire so this armoire is literally floating over the shower pan pan's got three drains in it and that helps you know depending on what kind of angle you've got the van parked the water will drain out there's a there's a drain here and there's two more under the armoire and drain location has everything to do with the type of van you're building because you've got to see what's available to you underneath the van to run those pipes so now when sam's ready for a shower he pulls this mirror off and that reveals his shower controls everything is right inside a waterproof box this is made out of pvc it's completely waterproof alex did an incredible job with this and we left all this area wide open there's a little shelf in here he can put all of his shampoos and all the the shower tchotchkes that he needs and you take a military shower 45 gallons of fresh and our hot water is made while you're driving i'll show you that system later on but it's free hot water so he's ready for his shower he pulls the shower curtain around 360 degrees and he takes a shower there is a max air fan right here and so i recommend to him when he's done with his shower and he's getting dressed leave this open put the fan on create some airflow and this will dry out it's a a no mildew no mold curtain it lives back in this cubby this is a u-shaped waterproof cubby and the curtain can live back there and drain off into the shower pan now you know the reason for the shower pan extending under the arm wire because you can put that curtain away without any worry it can drip right into the pan you're done with your shower you put your mirror back and bring your toilet in this mirror is on a french cleat so it's very easy to put back in place bring your toilet back in and this is about as much of a maneuver as i would ever want for somebody to take a shower in a custom van that's about it any more maneuvering and clap trapping it's just not practical one of the things i tell my clients is i feel it's very important to get factory glass i like to order my vans with full glass all around and there's a couple of reasons for that first of all i'm just not a fan of sitting in a windowless van or a van that's got these small windows you feel like you're living in a shoe box the whole van experiences to be outdoors and with all this glass you bring the outdoors in with you the experience you have in the van is just as important and should be as enjoyable as the experience you have outside the van so that's my theory that's one theory about why i put glass and the other is with factory glass you've got an entire service network nationwide to repair a leak if you have windows put in somewhere what's your recourse you got to go back to that guy that installed that glass you could be in montana and he's in hoboken so how's that going to work factory glass the factory glass is fixed you cannot open it uh to get around that issue i put in two max air fans i put one up front and i put one in the back so you'll have one on intake you'll have the other on outtake and you're exchanging the air in this van several times per minute that's proved to be very comfortable i've got one van that lives in southern california i've got another van the vagabonds they're traveling all over the country they've traversed since i gave them that van they've crossed the country six times they're on their way back to florida now no issues that system works just fine so uh the uh the pizza oven as we call it in a promaster van is a shelf that's i believe this is an option uh but i've always had them in the promasters i built uh we basically just put a little trim face fascia on the front of it and we leave it wide open but the one thing that's very important to do is to drop this interior roof liner the ceiling liner and insulate back there it's not insulated and that's how it got its name the pizza oven because it gets so hot up in here you could make pizza i think that's a plus on this side you know this area on every van whether it's a sprinter a ford or a promaster this is always an area of contention when it comes to design and building it out what do you do with it and we have found that it's best to just box the whole thing in we put a strip light in here that aids in entry and galley and this is where we put all of our gauges for the van now this is not breakers these are just our gauges our monitors fresh water this gauge is excellent very accurate for keeping an eye on your freshwater tank this is turning on your battery with assorted gauges that you need to know about turn your inverter on this is the panel for the inverter this is for the webasto heater now this is a gasoline fired furnace that is inside the van it's a german company wabaso is an excellent company and we're sipping gasoline from the main tank there's no propane on any of the vans i build so this is you just set that thermostat and forget about it and leave it and it just comes on and you're toasty warm it's quiet it's safe i put two carbon monoxide smoke detectors in each van i put one up front here i put another one under the bed in the garage that's right over the battery and your inverter which is where you might have a problem god forbid all of my lighting is dimmed i've got these rotary dial dimmer lights and i had these little face plates made up on a cnc machine i've got triples and doubles but i like these little dimmers i get to put them everywhere in this case i've got a puck light as a reading light for sharon i've got another puck light over here for sam and then there's another switch here that takes care of the office uh shower area everything's dimmed down uh i in my past life was a commercial photographer so lighting is important to me so all the lighting in the van is very specific so my my switches i have a fuzzy logic to them the leftmost switch controls my hallway lights then the next switch controls this galley task light and then this one controls this galley task light so there's a fuzzy logic to everything i do the air conditioner in my first van i put in a houghton air conditioner which is offered in this country by advanced rv it's a very very quiet efficient air conditioner my concerns are it's extremely expensive and i don't believe it's serviced anywhere beyond advanced rv i may be wrong about that at this stage but i recommend now uh this coleman ndq and it's important that you get an ndq very quiet air conditioner uh it's half the price of the houghton and i think it's a very very good alternative um it when i have this thing running it looks like i'm pulling about eight nine amps and then if you take it down in its duty cycles for instance you want to get in bed and go to sleep through the night with a mild duty cycle you get through the night without any problem using the 630 amps of lithium and a 3000 watt inverter that i'll show you in the back this being part of the uh shower office area this is this we call the armoire and this is where sam's going to keep all his clothing and doodads that's a computer drawer i see and here's his clothing so he's got four drawers for his clothing this is all alex if you notice it's all grain matched and he grain matches the entire sheet of walnut plywood right up and he takes into account the saw kerfs that he puts in the material we have these flush slam latches so you don't catch your clothes on them i love this that it's one move to pull and open a lot of vans you have to push the button to release it then pull it out that's a two-step process it's not a big deal but little details add up the one thing that we are known for i suppose is that we trim out in 80 20. all of these modules i call these modules this is the armor module i've got a refrigerator module i've got a galley module they are all bones of 80 20 which is extruded aluminum so it's a skeletal system and there's no plywood box construction in other words these doors and drawers are the only wood that's on this module if i took these drawers out you'd see the back of the van you'd see all my wires and pipes that's intentional that way we can service those systems if we ever need to if we have to fix a pipe if we have to run an extra line someday an electrical line all these drawers come out and this entire box becomes an access hatchway into all those components same thing with the fridge pull this fridge out put it on a dolly roll it away the whole brains of the outfit behind this fridge all the wiring everything same thing with this pantry we put in a food pantry down at the end in this case you know i build specifically to client objectives i listen i listen to what they say i listen to what's important to them there's no closet in here sam did not find the need for a closet he's got all his clothes in these drawers so in that space he felt that canned goods and a pantry would be more important so fine no closet a pantry some people want a closet and a pantry so we make room for it but in a van you have to realize you've got you're dealing with a finite amount of space so if you want this we got to take from somewhere else it's a compromise one thing i wanted to mention here it's a it's something that you might overlook you've got a bank of four drawers right don't make them all the same size because if you've got a drawer this high and your stuff doesn't fit in it because it's too big and the drawer is too shallow well now it doesn't fit in any of the drawers so stagger the depth of the drawers as you go down so that you can accommodate all your stuff we all have stuff on this side we've got the galley again all walnut this is a corian what glacier white i think corian is one of the best countertop products that you can put in a van it's flexes it's somewhat lightweight compared to other composite materials don't use granite unless you're really going to lock it down because it'll crack uh corian is a good item to use because it's clean you can keep it clean it's hypo not hypoallergenic it's not like if you did butcher block you could you could pick up germs in there so i like the corian it's easy to work with over here this faucet was something sam wanted you turn the faucet on and then touch it to turn it off and what this does is it maintains temperature because we put a check valve on the bottom of the faucet and i've got check valves throughout my water system so it maintains water in those lines so you're saving water you're not wasting water waiting for it to get to a certain temperature water pump switch is right here one switch right here at the sink and the shower is right there and i like to use a lighted switch for the water pump so that if you forget to turn it off and you went to bed you'll know i'm a big proponent of keeping the water pump off until you need it the design of these galleys i've picked up on this now in two vans and i just love it i've got this one inch break from the top set of drawers all right down to the next set this little one-inch break creates a piece of furniture it's got a much nicer look than if you just did a straight flat galley front it's kind you can almost consider it an extended toe kick because you do get uh we've only got a quarter inch overlap on the countertop but then the one inch down here i just think it adds a little something and we're about details as you can see here again grain matched this way and then grain matched this way and staggered drawers alex makes all these drawers in-house and then we've got two cabinets one on each side and as i'll show you uh if we took out all these pots and pans you've got full access to the plumbing and the water heater if they need service my plumbing system is a four zone system so each of the water zones can be isolated so if you're out on the road if you're on vacation or in someone like sam's case you live full time if one of these systems goes down you spring a leak in one of the zones just shut it off and be go on your way and then you can fix it but it doesn't delay your trip and it doesn't impede the rest of the water system so that's plumbing i'll give you a quick shot of that later uh down here in this cabinet we left this one tall so that sam could put some of his taller items in it and you can see again my plumbing i use uh opener fittings with pex a it's a very very good foolproof system and i've got another set of shutoff valves there the other thing we have here is we've got filtered and uv cleansed water so you can use the water from the freshwater tank for drinking and cooking it passes through a sediment filter it passes across a uv light and it comes out here ready to use the refrigerator is an isotherm this is a wabasto product webasto is the mother company i see these isotherm refrigerators on some of the best biggest yachts on the water i love them this one look at the size of this freezer these are separate freezer fridge components they've got their they each have their own compressor this fridge has two compressors it's an ac dc fridge but with the battery system that we have in place it's so airtight you got to slam it uh with the battery system that's in place on this van 630 amps there's really no need to turn on the ac even if he's plugged in which he will rarely do it sips power on the dc side it's very efficient and what i do is i triple insulate behind this entire module because typically when you park a van and you're going to stay for a few days you typically put the sun over there because your patio side with the awning is where you want to live outside you want to be shaded so if you're putting this side against the sun you're heating up the refrigerator so it's got to work harder so i triple insulate this entire area so the fridge doesn't have to work so hard in this box this is actually an access panel for my solar breakers i've got 600 watts of solar up on the roof i ran those down in two separate strings of 300 and they each have their own solar controller back here in the garage but the main breakers to shut those solar panels off should be as close to the panels as possible that line length should be as short as possible so i put those breakers behind this panel sam's really going to have to get in here but it's a very easy fix to get in just pull the two screws and this panel pops off under the panel or under the pantry rather we had a little bit of space left so we put a little cubby and this goes all the way back the depth of the refrigerator i put my whole arm in there and what would you put in there i suppose you would put maybe rolled up insulation covers for your glass you could put those in there anything you want but basically we try to make use of every inch possible in a van down here is the vent for his wabasto heater and then this area under the fridge there are certain cases where we make a huge laundry drawer in this case we left it open and we sent the floor in there because i don't put finished flooring under the entire van that would be wasteful it's a waste of weight and it's a waste of money so the flooring stops at my modules but in this case we gave him a little shoe cubby and then this is a little step to get in and out of bed and of course this is all made from 80 and some of the things that didn't arrive in time for this video one of them is the the end covers the caps for this but this is an 80 20 step that we made in-house and sam will get into the bed and we we figured when he gets out of bed he's going to put his left foot down here and the next foot goes to the floor and that is the most comfortable safe way to get out of the bed typically you might think you want to put the step all the way across but we and primarily sam because i i work with the client he decided this is how he wanted to do this and there's a night light i put a red night light in all the vans so when you're when it's nighttime this is enough light to get the entire van illuminated and it doesn't steal your night vision it helps you and the switch obviously fuzzy logic right he's in bed if he doesn't want to leave it on all night he's getting out of bed it's right there to turn it on the microwave this thing is i would i call my battery the big mama luke i think this microwave is the second mama luke it's a drawer microwave which i love because it's safe you're gonna take your hot stuff out and put it right on the counter okay typically microwaves are put up high usually over the fridge so you do run the risk of scalding yourself with anything that hot that's coming out you got to bring it right past your face doesn't make sense to me so i said sam if you have to have a microwave let's get a drawer style and we'll put it down here this is a great spot in this type of a floor plan for a dresser you could put several drawers here and the step to get in and out of the bed i did that for the vagabonds but because this microwave was so big and it was so important to see them that's where it takes center stage at the end of the aisle my cabinets these wall cabinets full length these are this is almost nine feet worth of cabinetry and the design was very specific linear linear unobstructed sight lines all the way down the line under here we've got white formica glossy formica we play around with different textures and reflective surfaces the corian is semi-matte i've got padded marine vinyl on my walls and then i've got the glossy formica under here i've got acrylic sliding doors and these cabinets are lighted all the way down the line uh i think it's for aesthetic sam likes the fact that he can see what he's looking at in the cabinet and these cabinets are backed with a flexible plastic shroud that i can remove again for access wires whatever the case may be future if sam's out for a year and he decides he wants another usb plug or a light somewhere i pop those panels down boom i run the wires the other thing behind this panel i have a sub panel electrical fuse box my main breaker panel is over here which you'll see later but i run a line over to this sub panel and this is where i run all my lighting and some usb but primarily the lighting because the lighting in a van with switches and and lights that you could get a real spider web so i put that on a separate breaker panel in here with labeled fuses i love these sliders what i did in this case is i backed these sliders top and bottom with black felt and this tends to mitigate any vibration and when you're accelerating they would have a tendency to slide open the felt helps that prevents it from happening look at these little handles this was a this was one of alex's design moves these are solid walnut and these actually came from leftover wood from van number one and what happened after we got done with van number one is i decided with all that material that was left and the heart and soul that i put into that first build which i did on spec i want to bring a little bit of van number one into every van i build and that's what infuses the soul in a humble road van so these are solid walnut they're from van number one uh thumbelina knows what i'm talking about uh she's the one that owns van number one so i have been able to put a little bit of van number one into every van i've built my stringer system my ceiling system these are marine vinyl padded panels and i actually built an encapsulated panel that's got a half inch of insulation on the top side and these panels are held in place by these stringers or stretchers that run across each of those van beams these are made in-house and we spray them if i were to remove this one stretcher these two ceiling panels will be able to drop down and come out it's that simple again you got a leak you got to find the leak you want to run a wire drop a panel and you can find it a lot of builders put in those wood tongue and groove ceilings and they're beautiful to look at but you've sealed off that area now you can't get up there ceiling height in a promaster is not the highest you go to a ford transit for that or mercedes sprinter made a i think they call it a super super high i'm not sure but they don't they made it intermittently anyway sam's tall we had to make sure we had enough ceiling height in here for sam what that meant was he could not have any insulation under this floor we went with half inch plywood we glued it directly to the van floor and then our finished floor on top these are the trade-offs when you have a van you've got to make some decisions what is most important to you because there was no insulation under the floor i had the whole undercarriage of this van sprayed with lizard skin lizard skin is a ceramic it's going to offer sound proofing it's going to offer rust protection and a little bit of insulation it's a beautiful white it will reflect any heat back down to the ground if you're in the southwest another issue we have with sam's height is the air conditioners if you put were to install this air conditioner in a typical fashion this inner shroud would be at the ceiling height and what that would mean is it'd be hitting sam's head so we had to recess this inner shroud this is only down three quarters of an inch from the van roof and then we framed it off in the solid walnut that came from van number one and so now sam just skims right under this and as i said in one of my videos this is how he knows it's time for a haircut the cooking area is right here you wouldn't know it because i like to keep the countertops wide open and clear it's a nice clean look it adds to that feeling of spaciousness and and linear uh sight line so sam's got a induction cooktop which he can pull right out the plug for the induction cooktop is right here it's a dedicated gfci also have another dedicated plug for the microwave so some people like the vagabond van they wanted their induction cooktop inset into the counter no problem but what i suggested was we'll inset it but i'm not going to fasten it in any way so you can still take it outside if you like and they do and they love that options that's what we're all about options so obviously you make that one drawer big enough for the induction cooktop and that's that slam latch again i love that the windows again i am it's important to have glass all around but there are times where you want privacy and i'm not a fan of these valance boxes and these blinds a lot of them do have issues so what i've done is i had these curtains made up and these are double lined light tight curtains that as you see they just live right down in this little trough that we made there's magnets inside these hems and you basically just let the curtain find its way and you've got your curtain in place and then to take it down you just remove it same way so the curtain stuff's right back down in this trough and you don't see it and i've done that with each of the windows now here in the bedroom again we've got fuzzy logic on the switches the top switch controls that accent light the middle switch controls the pucks and then the bottom switch controls the accent light on that side uh he's got 120 volt outlet he's got a dual usb port we've got usb ports throughout the van this is his breaker panel i've carried this over from the boating world i just think it's a beautiful panel i like the analog feel i like the fact that you can come in here and constantly monitor and adjust your uh your circuits and then down here we put in a remote switch for a baby inverter now where do you see what this does this is pretty cool sam gets up here in the bed and we turn on the baby inverter okay then you get your remote and we have a power bed so now sam can bring this the head of his bed up and i'm going to have a cinema screen right here that he can pull down put his projector on this shelf along with his other tchotchkes and janja deals he needs to sleep and it's movie night and if it's a long movie like you're watching the godfather trilogy for instance and you need to get a little more comfortable well then you just raise your feet as well look at this how comfortable is this it's movie night we're in a van this is a van it's pretty cool sam loves it and this is not a very complex installation at all we put the baby inverter in uh and he can leave that on all night and adjust the bed as he sees fit throughout the night didn't make sense to run this on the 3000 watt inverter all night long there's a lot of phantom draw off that big inverter so we got a little 600 watt inverter that's dedicated to this bed uh again we've got another fan back here right over the bed so there's going to be very little need for air conditioning most of the time and as i mentioned this shelf is in here it's not necessarily a travel shelf but uh he can put all kinds of stuff up here he's got a usb plug in that corner to run his projector or a cpap machine uh same thing the windows have their uh in this case they're gray wool curtains we wanted to butch things up a little bit in the bedroom for sam so we got gray curtains and it's comfortable and then you come right out back down on that step and you're back to real life for additional airflow uh and to keep the bugs out we installed these rolex screens these roll-offs are fantastic very very high quality product the way these work is you zip them down and then to go in and out you just move very nice super high quality and then as i said uh you need to find space and use it in a van this little space here turned out to be an ideal storage spot for our fiama awning crank see that now there's one thing i'll say i don't believe in the power awnings uh the reason is it's just one more thing to break and there have been cases where those awnings are deploying out on the highway while people are driving so we don't need that we're supposed to be relaxing on these trips right and really is this a big problem i think we could do this right if you can't do this maybe you shouldn't be traveling in a van but anyway this is a great spot for this again fuzzy logic that's where you need to use it that's where it's stored very easy to get these back where they belong and they look nice they're these roll ups are just they're fitted perfectly to every van really high quality now these running boards you see how this running board is i am sick and tired of these third-party aftermarket running boards because they're never deep enough and they start under the van so you've got this very little spot that you've got a side step to get out of the van it's not safe so i make my own running boards out of 80 20 and now there's no problem getting in and out and they look good too you're not going to get any dust or dirt collection on them everything is going to fall through i know one one friend of mine he was camping in the winter and he didn't think about it he didn't realize it but the step had iced over and when he stepped out that morning whew right on his ass so anyway that's what i do they're custom running boards i've got them on the driver's side as well along here on the outside of the van patio side i've got a 120 volt outlet and then this is a clip for the awning arm the leg of the awning can go out on the ground or you can clip it here and then this is my house hydrant this is an outdoor washdown and i've got this piped into a mixing valve so it's warm water so basically you can set that temperature to whatever your liking is and then forget it and whenever you put your house hydrant valve in here you've got that hot or warm water so this could be an outdoor shower you're washing the dog washing your bike warm water 45 gallons around the back we have the garage the garage is very important for a full timer everything sam owns is in this van and he carries it with him so it's important that he's got room for it now he's certainly going to reorganize and put more stuff back in here but we were sure to give him as much storage space as possible so leading into the garage this is his freshwater fill this is another one of those house hydrants but in this case it's working in reverse so you put your valve in here with the hose connected to your water source and you're filling your tank through one inch uh pex tubing pex a with opener fittings 45 gallon water tank is right behind that panel and i put in a little switch a little led light and you can see the level of water as you're filling the tank and then the vent for the tank is right here we've got curtains that close this whole area off so from inside it looks real nice looks like you're in a bedroom we've got another roll left screen back here and what we decided is with the double lined curtain and then the air gap and then the rolex screen and then an air gap to the rear doors we didn't need any kind of insulative covers on these rear door windows wasn't necessary the rear doors this is a pvc a sheet of pvc that we cut this one was templated by hand and cut by hand with a jigsaw moving forward we have a cnc machine that's going to be able to cut these out all day long and then plywood down here he can screw into this and drill it and do whatever he wants to hang whatever he wants on here and back here all the way in the rear is my physical plant as i call it this is the utility room over here this is a reservoir that i've got glycol antifreeze and basically it's my system it's a closed loop system i have a water pump when he starts the engine this glycol gets pumped up to a heat exchanger up front it steals the heat from the engine coolant brings it back to my water heater so i got five and a half gallons of water for hot water you're basically making hot water as you drive so you could kind of say it's for free that's how that system works the heat exchanger up front i simply cut a coolant line and put each end on the heat exchanger so i've only extended the travel of the engine coolant by seven inches and if there's a failure in the lines it's a failure in my lines under the van the van is still operational one of the issues i have with this is this glycol gets up to 170 degrees pulling from the engine promasters are running at 215 degrees normal temperature that coolant is hot so in the summer months this can get hot and come through the bed if you've just driven and you're ready to go to bed so we would put an insulated box on that in the winter months you may welcome those warm toes my water pump you can see is front and center and that's no coincidence obviously it's there for you to service and if you needed to replace it it's very easy and i'm putting my water pump on top of the water tank i don't put any holes in the water tank other than through the top so they can't leak that way i have an access hatch in the top and my water line from the water pump goes down into the bottom of the tank there's a check valve down there so when he turns off the water the water doesn't drop out of this side of the pump back into the tank which would cause an air bubble the next time you turn it on so you've always got good continuity of water then the back of the microwave is here and then over here i've got my 3 000 watt inverter let me clear a little room for you so you can see some of these components 3000 watt inverter and next to that is the battery bms from a company called lithionics it's the only battery that i'll put in a van and you can see the back of it right there that's a 630 amp hour battery it's one big box it's the only battery on the market that's ul listed it's safe this is uh lithium phosphate lithium iron phosphate chemistry that's the safer the cobalt is the one that we had problems with in the past here's my little baby inverter little 600 watt inverter i've got my two solar controllers each one of those is pulling down from the 300 watt strings up on the roof and my breakers and my bus bars and shutoffs are around that back wall one of my build philosophies is i like all of this stuff to remain visible at all times so when sam is living in the van day today he's back in here all the time he's subconsciously putting eyes on all these components and if something goes wrong he's going to notice it a lot sooner than later same thing with the plumbing when he goes in to get his crockpot in that cabinet he's got his eyes on the pipes he doesn't know it but he does and when he sees something wrong he'll know it the flooring back here in the garage is actually the stuff they use in gymnasiums and like weight rooms it's a recycled rubber product and i got a thinner version this is only a quarter inch thick and it's perfect it sound proofs it insulates you can take it out and hose it down put it right back in and it prevents things from sliding around sam's got his telescoping ladder you can see some more of the 80 20 back here that i put in so we gave him a little shelf situation on this side and we left this side tall so he could store taller items let me see if i can get this there's another access hatchback here and this again goes to my build philosophy that is our shore power connection so this is the back side of the shore power connection on the outside of the van if there is a problem if you have to change it out if you've ever had to change out your plug on the outside it's a scary endeavor because you don't know what's behind that van wall well here you do and you can put your eyes on those wires i've seen some of these short power plugs that melt so we don't want that happening he's got 120 volt outlet back here gfci and up on the roof beyond the backup camera i have an 80 20 roof rack and that is primarily for his solar panels it's a fully custom roof rack and on this side uh sam has a we boost setup he's got a wi-fi and cellular network in the van but he doesn't need to use this we boost portion this antenna all that often because he's got three carriers that he can rely on so he wanted this to be able to swing up this is kind of like a hybrid uh we got the we boost receiver but we got a trucker antenna and we modified it to fit and work with the wii boost then i made up a uh a pivot system with 80 20 components so he just has to get his ladder out loosen that knob bring the antenna up and it gets a nice tall throw on the antenna and then bring it back down here's that smart plug this is the shore power connection a smart plug it offers far more contact area so you have less heat build up safe plug very smart it's in the name down here is your grey water uh release i don't think he's got any grey water in there but this is a nice rock solid garden hose variety it's that frost free pipe that goes all the way back this is his willbosto exhaust for his heating system he's got 21 gallons of gray water capacity under the van there's very little under this van other than the gray water tank and our plumbing lines i did pvc plumbing and where those pvcs and certain areas of my pvc drain system i cut that pvc and put in a rubber fern co adapter the reason for that is twofold if you were driving along and something came under the van and ripped out your drain work down there well the fern co rubber would give way and you wouldn't have destroyed your entire plumbing system a section would have to be replaced and any time a section would have to be replaced you just undo it at the furnco and it's not like you have to work a whole nother system and here's the other running board for the passenger for the driver this is all 80 20. a little bit of a stagger step on the front for style up top in the front of my 80 20 rack and solar panels we put a little air dam an airfoil to direct the the air up and over so you don't get any harmonics or vibration there's one more thing i wanted to show you inside uh it was a last minute decision we made in this galley area another detail you know you got to try to think beyond conventional right you would put in a countertop with a backsplash and you'd be on your way to another project well we said well wait a minute wait a minute let's make use of that backsplash we've got some depth here so we built this little walnut shelf i guess you'd call it and a little plas acrylic backsplash this is siliconed in so it's waterproof but it gives sam one more place to put stuff all edge banded thank you very much for taking the time today to give us a tour of your beautiful ram promaster camper conversion earlier in the video you mentioned about a cardboard mock-up stage can you tell our audience a little bit about what that involves yeah what i do uh the initial discussions i have with a client are based on me listening to their objectives what it is they want what are their expectations the first step after that is i do a google sketchup rendition not too detailed but enough to get things moving but what's most important is after that stage i build the van out of cardboard i buy four by eight sheets of cardboard i buy two by two pine stick and i build the van to the eighth of an inch detailed i will even put these little drawer boxes in i'll have a working bed but it's all cardboard and stick frame now the clients come in and they walk through their van as it's going to be in the final stages it's at that point that we nip and tuck you want a deeper cabinet well we understand then you need a less a hallway or you know this is where we fit as i say we fit the van to them like a suit of clothing uh the two of them even the choreography of passing in the in the aisle here that's all done at that cardboard stage because it's built exactly to the spec i'm going to build the finished van on one of my past clients we talked about a bathroom box with the door on the left the door on the right and she said i can't picture it with the door on the right i said okay go to lunch when you come back i had two separate bathroom boxes and i put one in she took a look took it out put the other one in she took a look and she was able to choose it's an important step it really is you can look at these drawings and floor plans in google sketchup and you can look at uh you know drawings there's nothing like walking through a three-dimensional van and touching it and seeing what what it's doing to you as you come in there's a tendency to get claustrophobic in these these vans they're small so we make we make sure you can get that done at the cardboard stage the last two videos we did the vagabond band and the first van were extremely popular videos people really enjoyed watching you give the tour and they got hundreds of thousands of views each i know a lot of our audience is going to be wondering how do they follow you and check out your business can you tell them how to get in touch with you humble road on youtube just search out humble road and what i do is all along the build i shoot videos once twice three times a week i'll put a video up and i detail whatever it is we're working on i explain why we did it how we did it uh all of those behind the scenes uh events that occur are on the channel and then we do our final van tour videos i am i'm going to give myself a shameless plug here i'm embarking on a little side product which i call the mini me's and these are micro campers so i've got the promaster city the ram promaster city i'm turning these into solo travelers so this next season i call my build cycle seasons i'm delivering this van today i've got two ford transits big ones and then i'm going to have three of my mini me's so that's what the winter has in store for everybody on the on the youtube world is two four transit build-outs and three mini-me's so it's gonna be a great year and i'll also link to your instagram because there's a lot of great information on there as well your channel is a weekly video i believe it's on sundays yes yeah typically it was always a sunday video i've taken to doing shorter videos two or three times a week i prefer to do the big sunday video it's a it's a story i like to weave you through all the different aspects of the build and then bring you back to where we started you know my future my my future my past job i was a commercial photographer for 35 years so i was in the image making world it's a passion of mine i still have to do it i've got to put a camera in my hand and do a good video story so i'm i'm actually an image maker that builds vans well george thank you very much for taking the time today to give us a tour of your beautiful creation i'm going to let you get back to the shop i know you got a lot going on there well this is patrick with new jersey's outdoor adventures youtube channel i hope you enjoyed this video please like this video comment share and subscribe i love it we'll see you soon

Channel: New Jersey Outdoor Adventures

Views: 833,629

Keywords: vanlife, van life, camper build, camper van, van build, spinter camper, airstreams, van buildout, promaster camper, mercedes camper, camper plumbing, van bed, camper bed, camper electrical, camper battery, rv battery, rv plumbing, rv electrical, humble road, George Mauro, luxury rv, class b, campervan, camper conversion, diy camper, diy van, rv tour, van builder

Id: In97mi0BBss

Length: 55min 22sec (3322 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021