12 Years Living in a $3300 - 1977 Motorhome! TOUR of a 45 Year Old RV!

and i'm right around 11 or 12 000 uh and so that ends up and i've been on the road for 12 years in it so it ends up being less than a thousand dollars a year that i've been able to live in this thing [Music] hey everyone welcome back to my next video we've just been visiting with brian the new co-host on the channel and uh welcome brian thank you very much so happy to be here you know we've had a lot of people wanting to look at what the inside of my rig looks like so today i had to clean it up a little bit we all take a look yeah absolutely so we're gonna go inside and take a look let's do that now come on in guys welcome to my humble abode uh so yeah so this is my home this has been my home for again 12 years uh and i always like to do a real the way i like to do the uh real quick tour is this is my bedroom the couch that's my living room here is my dining room my kitchen and my bathroom in the back well that completes the tour that completes the tour as easy as that uh we'll obviously get into more detail but whenever someone comes in here i always like to give them that real quick tour uh but yeah so um i guess the first thing i'll say we'll just start at the back here so this is the cab over bed i just use a flat sleeping bag this is a coleman sleeping bag that's rated to 20 degrees and this works great as a comforter because it has the uh the cottony feel to it and then i always have an extra sleeping bag there as well as here i use for backpacking but can double if it gets really cold i can just lay it over me on top of this i do know a lot of people in class sees they don't sleep in their cab over they either have another bed in the back or they make something else into the bed but i like the idea of up here sleeping because it gets my bedroom out of the way so that i can have the rest of the motorhome for my own living i have a cooler right here that uses kind of a stepping stone or stepping block but basically just go here here and then just as easy as that i'm up in bed not a ton of room above but still decent well i can assure you that had i done this this would not have been a thing of beauty at all you know you've been horrifying well you never know give yourself some credit uh i will say uh the so the area up here the the cab where i usually drive you can see it is filled with stuff right now and that's because as i when i'm not traveling when i'm sitting for two weeks or so that i put a lot of stuff in this area storage extra food my water containers then when i go to drive i just pull that stuff out put it around the table area or put it up in my bed because there's nothing up here and then i can drive to the next location and then again just transferring it all down it doesn't take very long and it makes a great storage area and garage so to speak you're kind of an adventurer so you have a bunch of toys that you carry with you that take up more space i do absolutely so i have a rocket box up on top that has my skis and snowboard in it uh i have a lot of backpacking equipment uh i also have you know kite boarding equipment uh some of my kites are actually right here we gotta remember stella yes we gotta remember stella so stella was my dog for she was 14 years old she passed away about a year and a half ago and she traveled with me the entire time i i got her when she was in denver and she traveled with me for all those years in the motorhome there's still fur from her sitting around the motorhome and she'll be with me forever for that and so that's the other thing is this little area up here was where she would sleep and also sit while i was driving the vehicle so i could just you know reach over and pet her while i was driving so now like the the kitchen area a lot of people always say like oh you know do you want to get rid of your your table because it is kind of large uh but i still like it i that i can work on my computer here not an issue you can collapse it down uh to make a bed out of this area i've done that two or three times you wanted the orange jack carpet oh yeah yeah i gotta see where is this this is the orange shed carpet it is still above the uh the cab and it used to be all along the floor as well but about six or seven years ago i replaced the flooring with a tile i think it's kind of cool yeah oh i love it i mean it's it's it adds a little bit to it doesn't it yeah a little 70s chic uh so then the couch area again um it has the old original cushions right here uh you know that that motif of the 70s is quite quite interesting look at that orange yep got that orange uh i did build these shelves right here i put one on each side and it's just basically more flat surface that can put a lot of my junk uh and i have my little charging station i created this little plug here so that i can have my cords here and i can put my phone up near my bed in charge i also one of the car magnets uh i basically just kind of retrofitted it so that i can just do the magnet i can just put my phone there to charge as well so this area right here used to be just a shelf where you'd put your tv uh but i don't have a tv i just had my computer so for a number of years i built a bookshelf here uh and i just carried around a bunch of books and that was just really heavy and i have a kindle i use up my kindle for most things so it kind of became uh just not essential for me but i'd really wanted a food pantry and so i built this gray box basically as a food pantry but i also wanted a place where i could um have this fold up and fold down i can see my computer there lay on the couch and i can watch uh my computer or tv or whatever and then the pantry itself uh i just kind of did so it's you know kind of random foods i put my computer up on the top um my only regret with this is i wish i would have put the sliders on it so because this is pretty far back like i'm up to my shoulder so the food back there gets forgotten about for sure right uh the other thing is i actually do not have a hot water heater i the hot water heater was leaking after the first couple years and so but the downside of the water here is it's a six gallon water heater when you need a little hot water you have to heat up the entire six gallons you're wasting a lot of propane i don't need it when you do dishes you are using soap and water you don't need hot water it doesn't sterilize it when you use hot water just to break up the dirt it did come with a you know the four burner stove in the oven um i rarely use my furnace the furnace does indeed work but again it blows through a lot of propane it uses some battery life uh so i'll usually just bundle up a little more i have a lot of scarfs and scarves and i will i have a little body heater that i can use as well so again i can replace those little cylinders but the less i move the more economical it is for me because of gas the gas in the motorhome is crazy expensive because i only get five or six miles per gallon so that's very painful so the less i move the better off i am uh and so i always think about those considerations if i can go a little bit longer without having to go get propane dump tanks get fresh water things like that it is a helpful uh economically for me just your normal it's a nice looking little kitchen yeah it's great it's um it has you know a decent not tons of counter space none of these do but this does have a little pull out area that i do all my chopping and so forth with so i was talking about the fridge earlier again this is just the original fridge uh you know doesn't use any electricity on it it's just all on my propane between the stove and the refrigerator i can usually go about two and a half months on 10 gallons of propane so the bathroom it used to have a sink right here uh and this sink would drain into the black water tank uh and that's always a limiting factor whenever i'm traveling is that i filled the black tank before i fill up the gray water tank because i don't shower in here and so this water was going into the black water tank which would fill it up even faster so i never used it it was just a hole that would put stuff in so eventually i just removed that and put this countertop on it instead and it's been so much better this way the toilet's just you know your normal rv toilet nothing pretty you know still works i do use a black tank and i can go most times i can go about four weeks three or four weeks without dumping my black tanks uh now we're talking about shower the my shower area is now my hang up clothes uh as well as storage so i took the shower years ago it wasn't a comfortable shower i didn't enjoy showering in it it's very narrow it does have you know storage over here in the closets a lot of my backpacking gear uh is back in these are very deep and very uh spacious uh you know you have you have all this food area it's a lot it is yeah so not the best utilization of my space but uh still it it's a lot of storage in here which lets me do all my hobbies and have more stuff and so you don't have your shower correct do you just how do you stay clean then uh so i have two different options um i do have a solar shower especially in the summer i set up a solar shower on the back of my rig on my ladder system a pvc that i put a tarp around uh creates like a framework of sorts and then i hang my solar shower from the ladder so i can just take a shower that way but most of the time i just use a basin of water and soapy water in a washcloth the other thing i use is super low gadget a low tech gadget i just take this water bottle right here and then i drilled holes in the lid right there and so that makes it pseudo like a shower head so i fill up all the water put it in the sun and then when i i want to wash my hair i just lean over and i do the showerhead version and so i get it wet soap do it again and i collect it in a basin and then i can just put it down the gray water tank i don't like wet wipes i'd much rather just use soapy water and a washcloth i think it's better for the environment and just i feel better after that it's more it just does a better job of cleaning i would say uh and one of the big reasons you know kind of going back to the environmental aspect of it that is one of the things i loved about being in the motorhome is that i feel we have a very small carbon footprint even getting five and a half six miles per gallon i only go about two or three thousand miles a year so when you start adding all that stuff up and how little i use and how little water i use uh it's it's phenomenal how environmentally uh you can live and how much you can reduce your impact on the environment so i see you have a you're towing a vehicle i am yep and so yeah this is a geo tracker uh after being on the road for about five or six months and getting a campground job up in the national forest it was a huge ordeal to go and get uh groceries and i didn't want to take the motorhome down to do that it's just not practical so i ended up with a ford festiva i had that for about six years but i felt a little limited on what it could do so i got the geo tracker this thing gets about almost 30 miles per gallon 28 30 miles per gallon so it is huge contrast to the five or six miles per gallon that i get in the motorhome so i'll usually go to a place park the motorhome and then i can run around town go adventure things like that uh in the geo tracker it does have four wheel drive with lockers in the front so that you can get to so many places out in the back country and it's narrow so you can get to places that a lot of jeeps can't even get to i do have solar up on top uh i it went through three different stages i the first panel i put on was just an 80 watt panel uh then bob you guys helped me in prompt that very first uh time i met you guys uh we put on a 135 uh watt kyocera panel and then several years ago i added a third panel 100 watt renergy uh because i was in an area that i needed my motorhome was in the shade but i needed some solar out in the sunny area and so i made it so that i could have that panel out there but then at the end of the season i wanted to put it up on my roof so i did that i can detach it up here and have it still as a remote if i want i have that ability but it's now tied into my system up there uh the other cool thing i did up there something i don't use very often but i put uh most of them on door hinges so that they all have the ability to tilt towards the sun uh and then so you just knock out one of the pins or two of the pins on the door hinges and then it flips up so uh so you can you know aim your solar panels at the sun if you want so let's give folks a contrast of the price of silver back then how much do you think you paid for that 135 watt panel well so the 80 watt panel that i had camping world install for 80 watts uh and they just put in a cheap 30 controller i already had the batteries uh twelve hundred dollars twelve hundred dollars twelve hundred dollars for them just putting a small panel on my roof and putting a little box and running two wires down right two wires to the battery uh that second panel the kyocera 135 watt that was 385 well that was actually cheap for the day it was cheap back then and so that's why i bought it i nabbed it it was you know three bucks a wad and then the renegy one i bought was a hundred dollars for a 100 watt panel so a dollar a watt so and i know now they're even cheaper yes i have three agm 12 volt uh batteries so you know one of the things i'm impressed really impressed with is how little it has cost you to own and operate this you know 45 year old rv tell us the details on that yeah so i bought it very cheaply again this was back in 2009 and so prices were a lot lower back then but i bought the motorhome for 3 300 put probably about 1200 on solar uh you know a couple other things so probably all told like 4 800 for that part of it i did have an engine that went bad on me a couple years down the road i had to pay 4500 for that and then just random other engine and uh maintenance and you know oil changes all that stuff but all told i've kept a record of all those pro those expenses i've had and i'm right around 11 or 12 000 uh and so that ends up and i've been on the road for 12 years in it so it ends up being less than a thousand dollars a year that i've been able to live in this thing it doesn't include yeah it doesn't include gas and gas is a different story but again i'm only putting on about two or three thousand miles a year on the motorhome so that again that's not a whole lot of expensive because i just limit my driving as much as i can well brian thank you so much for sharing your home with us and you're this is just remarkable thousand dollars a year for the last 12 years most people can afford that yeah absolutely so and again with my summer job in the campground i am able to make enough money during the summer is that i can float the entire winter and not work and that's partly because i have low expenses and since the motorhome doesn't cost me that much and i don't move as much as other people do it really helps with that the economy of it so folks i'd really be curious to know how much do you think you're spending to live where you are if you're in a house do you think you get by with a thousand dollars a year in a house or if you're on the road how much are you spending on your vehicle per year and i'd really be curious to do a comparison and a contrast to to uh brian's experience here so please leave a comment down below i'd really like to know and i think we can share with each other how we're living as cheaply as possible absolutely so brian thanks so much for uh for sharing your life and your home with us some some tremendous ideas here some inspiration for people to follow uh folks i hope you got something out of this video if you did like us on youtube subscribe to the channel hit that thumbs up button and we'll talk to you later bye now so long guys if you are brand new to the road or would just like to see everything in one place bob is offering classes on skillshare and udemy.com it's a comprehensive nomad course that has five and a half hours of content spread out in 19 classes with everything you need for your life on the road to make it the best possible experience it can be bob covers all the details from solar and internet options to where to park and how to stay clean working on the road traveling on a budget and so much more so we hope you'll check it out the ultimate crash course to living on the road how you can afford a life of travel and adventure [Music] you

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 223,256

Keywords: car, van, RV, Full-time, nomad, camper, camp, boondock, travel, caravan, tiny, house, RTR, Bob Wells, Nomadland, CheapRVLiving, Cheap RV Living, vanlife, van life, how to live in a van, van dwelling, van tour, van conversion, living in a van, camper van, van build, diy van build, sprinter van, van living, #vanlife, van dweller, campervan, vandwelling, diy camper van, RV Life, Living in an RV, Class B, Class C, Truck Living, Living in a car, boondocking, Living in a RV

Id: miNuJe79L18

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 20 2022