My VAN LIFE UPGRADES after 2 years of van life

and I didn't do it earlier was just because I was kind of embarrassed actual door actually was hanging off but I didn't realize quite at the time how ingenious this was hello and welcome to the video well I have been living in my self-converted Toyota hiace camper van for two and a half years now and in the last six months I have made Seven upgrades to my van life that I'm going to share with you now some of them were out of necessity and some of them just out of Desire all right let's go [Music] the biggest upgrade I made to my van life and this was out of necessity is I now have a new power station and new solar panels so ecoflow have gifted me both of these and I've had the power station now for a couple of months I've had the solar panels now for about a month and I'm going to run down and give you a quick review on what I think about these and everything I've discovered about the power station I didn't know my last video so let's start by talking about the solar panels so they come in this really great carrying case they're very Slimline and I think they only weigh a couple of kilos really easy to carry let me show you how I set them up laughs we've got a video bomber all right my video bomber's gone so you just open them up like this you can lay them flat on the ground case doubles as a stand so we put soft coat down it goes like this all right it's got little carabiners here that you're hooking and you can hook the carabiners to the bottom one but I don't really bother stands up like that pretty soon [Music] and then we just take the cable and plug it straight into the power station foreign so I just want to mention that the solar panels are 110 watts and if I could get them in full sun it would take three hours to fully charge the power station and you know what it charges I find charges really fast so I think it does up to 80 really quickly as the last 20 that takes longer to charge but they've worked really really well um I love them uh yeah really they seem really durable um they're not they're not like um classy or anything it's a really like sort of plastic coating so I don't feel like I can break them a few other things I want to point out on the power station first of all I can't remember one of my viewers kindly pointed out to me in the comments that when I'm charging and it's charging something else that is called pass through charging so I use pass through Trojan on this all the time I have actually had every single USB plug filled the two 240 volts field plus the plus the fridge plugged into the 12 volt while I'm driving or while I've got it on solar and it handles it brilliantly no problem at all so I'm charging uh Power Banks toothbrushes laptops phone you name it I can charge it while I'm well I'm charging it so it's really good I love the pass-through charging the other thing I didn't realize with this flashing light that is actually Morse code for SOS so if you're out camping and you run into trouble you can use this as a SOS Beacon I didn't know that and thank you to whoever it was that pointed out for me in the comments because that's really valuable I think yeah really good value so if you think you might want to check out the power station and the solar panels there is a link to them in the description box below okay on to the second van life upgrade that I made the last six months the second upgrade that I have made and I didn't do it earlier it was just because I was kind of embarrassed I'll be honest so the next thing I've done is I've got myself a shower tent after being in the van for uh probably a year and a half when I got back to wa end of last year I had a shower tent this whole time and I was too embarrassed to use it didn't think I could put it away and didn't know where I was going to store it and so it was sitting in my girlfriend's uh shed for a year and a half anyway so when I went back I picked it up and I have been using the shower tent and it is a game changer so when there's places where there's no shower I've always got plenty of water and I now have what I call a bucket shower so let you show let me show you my shower tent set up and I got this for twenty dollars on Facebook Marketplace all right here we go here's a shower too so it just comes in a round bag like this and I've been storing it behind my driver's seat let me show you how I set this up now no laughing because it pops out pretty quick it's got a little hook on it here you undo the hook and then step back ready set [Applause] and there we go one shower tent comes with a floor mat thank you also comes with tint pegs and you bring your own Hammer now on the I've used it in areas where I couldn't Hammer into the ground I've just used rocks to hold the edges down it's worked fine foreign [Music] [Music] it up so like I said I just use a bucket and I have my towel I have my body wash I have my body scrubber and I just use a cup to scoop the water over me and in the end I just pick up the bucket and pour it over and I'll just show you some of the pockets I've got here there are three pockets in here and I use one for my towel I can shove my towel all the way in there and I use one for my clothes get in there we'll see it's not gonna do it now and I can use one for my clothes to put that in and I zip it up and I try and leave a crack open because it gets really hot in here this is in full sun at the moment and that just gives you a bit of airflow but there you go there's my little shower tent after I finish my shower and it was shower tents all dry and the mat's dry I have to put it away and this is one of the reasons why I didn't use the shower tent for the first year and a half because I didn't think I could put it away anyway when I went like I said when I went back to wa end of the year I practiced I was house sitting for my sister I practiced inside the house putting it away till I had it down to quite a fine art and I will show you it is not that difficult to put away you probably do need a little bit of upper body like back strength arm strength but it's really not that difficult so I'll show you thank you that's it so it's kind of more of a motion you need to work out once you've worked out the motion then you can do it right the next upgrade I made was not voluntary I had a bit of an accident so um I'll show you what happened so I broke the roller on the door it broke so this roller under here broke you can see right under there is a roller that broke so lucky for me when it broke I was with my dear friend Steph at the time because the actual door actually was hanging off actually I lied it broke about a month beforehand and I decided to ignore it and the universe decided to show me what could happen if I did ignore it so basically I was just using my grunt to close the door anyway um so yeah the dwarf was hanging off so Steph helped me we had to call out a smash repair guys he came and he put the door back on for me so I need to get a new roller if I've got a new roller he'd fit it for me so I got the new roller and let me show you how magical this is watch how easy this door closes now I had done this when I first got the van so it cost me 230 dollars for the roller part and you could change it yourself with some help but I recommend if you have an older model hiace remote older model van with the sliding door replace the roller you won't know yourself oh my goodness it's it's just it's changed so much like it's so much easier to open close the door I can do it quietly now when I'm around other people yeah I love my new normal roller on the door and I do wish I had done that sooner [Music] the next three upgrades I'm going to film in the van which is good because it's getting really warm out there in the sun if you see my cheeks are flush that's because it's really getting warm in the Sun and I'm trying to stay out of the wind to film so you don't get the noise of the wind the next upgrade that I made was so that when I go to Power it's easier for me to charge everything so let me show you what I mean so I got this little charging station so it plugs into your power and it has all of these usb chargers so it has a USBC quick charge so I can charge my phone on there it's got a quick charge USB a um all these other USBS so now when I used to go to a caravan Park I wanted to go to Caravan Park I used to have to take turns charging everything because I didn't have enough USB plugs and now I just plug this one thing in and I can charge all the USB at the same time so it's really quick or if you go to visit a friend or something you can plug this in and charge all your USB things and I have a lot of USB things I have a headlamp I have four power Banks I have my phone I have my fan uh it's probably something else I'm missing so it really makes it nice and quick to charge everything at once [Music] the next upgrade that I made and I made this um I saw that uh coralie had it corally I can't remember I'll put cor release YouTube channel link underneath I'll put it here sorry I forgot in the second one it's called anyway uh corally had one on her fridge and I thought I'll get one anyway this is what I got tada it's a fridge cover so probably not that new to many people but I didn't I did go the first 18 months two years two years without the fridge cover I've only got this middle of December um and I think it makes a difference so I've had it through summer my glasses keep slipping because my nose is very sweaty um I've had this through summer I think it makes a difference I was realizing the other day that my fridge sits out in the open it does not have it's not enclosed in any space so I think it probably does heat up faster than other fridges like I've noticed if I pull out something from under the bed on a hot day it's much cooler under the bed still so maybe when I think about a future van build I will think about maybe having the fridge go into a cupboard so that it's not running all the time it does probably warm up but I do think the covers made a difference it cost me a hundred dollars um yeah so fridge cover I think it's very different just thought we'd say hi to the snoozing Abby she's chilling out in the van staying cool as well oh she's so gorgeous you're a good girl all right on to the next van life upgrade so this is the skin last one and if you're enjoying this video could you please give it a thumbs up that would be great um now this one I'm not sure if you call it an upgrade um but I think it's an upgrade I've upgraded my P jug so I painted my P jug I've mentioned this in a couple of videos but I didn't realize quite the time how ingenious this was so my P jug used to be a clear two liter jug and so if you had to empty the pee everyone could see what was in it you know so you tried to cover I used to put in my backpack and stuff to carry it but now I have a pretty jug with flowers on it and probably people still know what's in there but they can't see it so check out my lovely painted pea jug oh I get lots of questions on how I painted the P jug and I just used these paint markers from Kmart I think it was nine dollars for eight markers you can't go wrong and it actually it actually is paint and I just used this so if you've got a it doesn't have to be a pea joke anything you want to do you can just paint it with these markers I haven't sealed this I probably should have it is chipping off a bit where my nails touch it but yeah you can just paint anything with this with the paint markers and then get a sealing spray and you've got a decorated jug okay the very last the seventh and last van upgrade that I've made and this actually has been almost a year since I made this one and I have shared it before but I want to put it in this video just to show people how easy it is to do this because I went a whole year and a half without it and that is I put a table in my van where's your table Brenna I don't see a table all right let me show you how I put my table together I'm a bit crazy I know my sister laughs at me because she thinks I'm a dork do you think I'm a dork that's right I'm having fun all right let me show you how I put my table together all right I keep the table under the mattress here you just pick it up find it find it there's my table now I can't take credit for making this my good friend Michael did it thank you Michael but he put this together for me I had the piece of plywood but he built the holders in I'll show you what we did I had this existing piece of furniture and he put this support here for me it screwed in and as well on the other side and that's where the table slides into Abby's too adorable [Music] and that summer table goes up ready for dinner if you have any suggestions for any other van upgrades that you think I might be interested in please leave a note in the comments other words I'll see you on the next one bye everyone [Music]

Channel: Brenna Living Joyfully

Views: 94,801

Keywords: van life, van life australia, solo female traveller, van dog, camping, free camping, camping australia, australia

Id: 6SrfB2s_bYY

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 26 2023