Short Bus Build - Skoolie Conversion Tour @skooliana

[Music] so [Music] big [Music] [Music] what's up everybody i'm isaac and this is my 2003 ford 7.3 power stroke short bus five window wheelchair door the unicorn in person ladies and gentlemen uh let's hop into a tour and i'll show you what this beast has got all up in it all right so the first thing we have on the bus is this tree line uh this was an idea i had when i first painted it and it was white it just looked like a church bus and just didn't have any character um and then in my head i was like i just really want a tree line i see it in my head i started reaching out to people to try and figure it out this is actually a vehicle wrap a lot of people think this is painted but it's actually a vehicle wrap i love the tree line i'm glad i did it i think it just sets the bus apart and just really gives it a defining character and i will put a link below of the guy who actually did the vehicle wrap so if you're in oregon he's done a lot of my friends trailers and things like that so that's the tree line on both sides of the bus ap graphics lab shout out i have this cvt awning it's manual there's a lot of different uh awning options out there i like this one because number one it's an organ company and i like supporting oregon local brands um but i like manual things just because there's less things to break so it just unzips it pulls out and in this even got a cool little led strip in there i haven't used it that much if i'm gonna be honest but i do like having it because it gets hot out here and a little bit of shade out in front of your bust can be nice to have i do have dooleys and these are bfgoodrich ko2's these things are beasts so when i first bought this bus with the highway tread it had on it from the school district i went over to bend and was on some snow like a little tiny mound like this and literally got stuck and it scared me because this is a big old heavy vehicle and it snows a lot here in oregon and like that wasn't gonna work so my buddy is a professional snowboarder has the exact same bus a five window and he's always on snowboarding in the mountains i asked him like what he recommends and he said dude put these tires on your bus i've never even put chains on and i and it's true i put these tires on and went snowboarding and took it into the snow just to test it and i couldn't lose grip so it's like these things are heavy nobody's going to save me these tires have made a huge difference i have no fear for snow with the weight of the vehicle and these tires on so if you're if you're thinking about getting a big heavy bus they're expensive but they make it a lot safer one thing i really want to kind of touch base on is i see people spend eight hundred dollars or more on inverter chargers so that they can have shore power that's a lot of money and i'm going to show you kind of how i got around it so i just got this little noco little you know extension cord plug it in type of deal that's like 20 and i'd literally just have that routed through the bus into a lithium charger that's mounted right here that's attached to the battery so the lithium charger is only 100 so all together it's like 120 dollars and i can plug an extension cord into it and it'll charge my battery and maintain it so like that system compared to a cheaper inverter i've spent half of what an inverter charger costs normally i don't know that's what i do i don't know if it's right or wrong but it might be a way to save you guys some money and then in here this is just storage underneath the bed right now there's just a couple paddle boards in there my dirty laundry baskets in there um and then back in there is my uh thermostat controlled heater which that's another thing in oregon when it gets cold like that was the big difference from like being miserable in a vehicle to like kind of house status because literally i can just set the thermostat to a temperature and it just kicks on and off automatically just to maintain it game changer so the electrical system i have 100 amp hour lithium battery and it charges from my 300 watt grape solar panel up top it charges from my 40 amp dc to dc charger that so it's like if i don't have solar which i don't have a lot of in the pacific northwest even though right now like you know i can just kick the vehicle on for 15 minutes and charge my battery bank so it's like i don't depend on anything i could charge it for my solar i could charge it by the vehicle being on and i can charge it through 110 which i've used maybe twice in that little 300 watt panel i get five minutes of sunlight on it and my stuff is topped off um and then you know it's just a normal 12 volt distribution system that's pretty much the heart of the electrical it doesn't seem that crazy but it works just fine for me and i've been in here two years so this isn't in theory i have a back deck that hangs out off the back of my bus and i have a deck up there so the back deck it's i think it's like i don't even remember i think it's like three feet long i have these little straps i strap all kinds of stuff down on here firewood whatever the original idea behind this though was to put a motorcycle on here so i could have a second point with transportation which i had and sold but i'm gonna get another one i also put a hitch on here so it's like if i ever wanted to try and tow something i have the option because when we were putting this together it wasn't that hard to throw it in real quick i haven't used it ever once just so you know i will say this though i've i like having this but if i could do it again this would be half as long and it would be with the height of the bumper because this thing drags so much this is welded to the chassis underneath and it was easier easy just to bring the supports out but it's like after having this on for two years i would have this half the size and it would be up so it doesn't drag or i would just put a hitch and then have one of these that would just disconnect and connect so i could take it on and off if i wanted to because this has been a problem for parking and things like that and it drags like crazy that's my advice on that so this is my ladder i guess i'm the type of dude who always just has like an idea in my head and then i got to make it real i don't know what that is but it's a thing right so with this ladder you know everybody just does the square tubing standard or they do whatever they do but like i really wanted to have like this the cedar board uh i think it was a two by four yeah two by four and i wanted to have it like cradled in this little metal ink basically i don't know i've seen this whole idea in my head and i don't do any of the metal fabrication full disclosure my friends uh lm welding i'll put a link to the my friends who do all my metal work in the description as well i had this idea i literally like did an instagram video of like hey this is my idea this is what i want to do i drew it up and then they fab this for me and it's awesome because you know when i had the deck up there my friends like i had this like collapsing ladder thing and it was really sketchy and i have a lot of friends that like go up and down and i didn't want anybody to get hurt so i wanted something fixed and this thing is solid and i love it i love the style of it and lm welding solutions y'all slayed so yeah hit them up if you're in oregon if you need metal work that's the latter let's go up there and i'll show you what's going on welcome to the top of my deck it's juliana deck this was one of those things that i wanted from the day i got this bus and i it took a while for it to happen and it happened in stages so like i wanted originally i was just gonna do a deck from the hatchback and then i was like well if i'm gonna do it i might as well just do the whole thing so i ended up having my same metal fab friends make this frame for me um and then i did all the wood and i used cedar which was kind of expensive but it's light it has um properties that make it really good for a deck board and it just looks really pretty and i used a lot of cedar inside my my build too so it just it kind of tied it all together and then that's my 300 watt grape solar panel over there and then the the cedar boards are just inset in the frame and then so another thing like when i was late building this out i was originally just gonna keep decking it through these little holes um but i was like you know it might be really cool to have some kind of like wood art or something in there and i reached out to my friend the webmaker and i was like hey bro like would you want to like make some art to like drop in my deck and he was like yeah no problem so i was like so i gave him the dimensions he made these for me i'll put a description to him down below as well and it it's got mountains and trees i kind of like the forest as you can tell by the tree line on the side and i don't know it just it just makes it i want my whole life to basically be art you know my boss everything i do so it's like i don't know it was an idea i had and he slayed so i couldn't do what i do without my friends and the people around me and the creators that inspire me so this is just a way for me to help bring these people into this journey the skylight my friend dory i didn't even know my friend marie had a short bus with a skylight and it changed my life so i'm a photographer videographer and like natural light is prime and the amount of light she had in her bus because of that one skylight blew my mind and i was like i have to have one so i'm building another bus now i put a skylight in that and i had some extra plexiglass and i didn't want to do a whole thing so i was just like you know what i'm just going to cut a hole in this put some plexi on it and just put some like rv tape around it and see if it works out it ain't leaked yet but the just the light coming in from the sun it's magical and then if you're on the fence about doing it this will change your mind one night i had all my blackout curtains up all the way around my bus and it was a clear night and i looked up and i could see the stars from inside my bus and everything felt alright so if you're thinking about a skylight just think about looking up at the stars in your schooly i think that's it for the outside of the bus you guys want to go in and check out the interior okay let's go bye welcome to the inside of sculiana so as you first come in this is like what i call the entryway um and i took the bus foam off right here and just put some cedar because i just love wood just gives it a different feel you know and then this broom everybody gives me so much crap for this broom but it's like a little mini broom it's handmade by this woman from oregon country fair i think it's super freaking cool um and it's like perfect for in here it's a small space and it just fits the vibe super super cool um i didn't do much to this area of the bus this is all kind of the same thing i did add a backup camera which i think is absolutely mandatory in a bus trying to back this thing up especially when you start building it out and you're just taking your view out and and i kind of keep you know i got my my wood axe barebones my boots i kind of my hot spring backpack my hot spring shorts that i dry right here and this is kind of just a catch-all for all kinds of stuff and then over here is my shoe rack so when i built the couch i didn't want to just have wasted space with an arm i wanted to do something with it so i built this little shoe rack and there's shoes in there that i've had in there for too long i should probably get rid of but it's also a catch-all for storage and things like that and a bus like this storage is super prime you know you only have so much space so you try and build it into any part of the bus that you can get it into so that's it for the uh the entryway of the bus i got here by a series of unfortunate events my name is isaac i'm 35 years old i never in a million years thought i would be living in a school bus turned it into my business and just would be where i'm at in my life right now um basically i don't even know how many years ago it was now you know i had the regular life i was working i was working at guitar center for five years at that point i had a home loan i was living with my mom because i was saving up for a down payment on a house like all the normal things i guess you could say and one day and i got comfortable so i only moved in with my mom so that i could like save my food and then you know that turned into a year or two it's like you know it was easy i wasn't i got too comfortable and i think that's a virus is being too comfortable because like i wasn't progressing as a person at all and one day uh my stepdad comes home and he has a job in vegas out of state so i'm in oregon born and raised here and we were all living in oregon and they have to move in like 30 days and he starts this job um so it's like i had to shift into high gear originally i was thinking i was going to go with him and last minute i was like i i can't leave i love oregon too much and i had like maybe three weeks to figure something out so i called my real estate agent like okay we need to actually buy a house now how fast anyways he was like bro you won't even have a i decided buying a house was a bad move in like 33 weeks or whatever so i was like okay i'll just try and rent something just a whole bunch of stress hold i wanted to get too far into that but basically like i was just stressing out i had nowhere to go didn't know what i was gonna do and all my comfortable walls just crumbled around me and i've always seen like van life on instagram and one day i had a realization that like this is the perfect opportunity to do it i i got nowhere to go i don't know what the future holds i don't want to be trapped in an apartment i don't i don't want to be trapped anywhere um and i was like okay well if i'm ever going to do it this is the time and i started looking at vans and i bought a van and i two weeks till my parents have the new owners took possession of the house i got a van with two weeks to build i always have these crazy deadlines i had a van with two weeks to build it didn't own a power tool didn't know what i was doing and was just like everybody else i was online watching youtube videos i was googling how to do things and somehow and my boss was really understanding at my job because he knew i had nowhere to go and he gave me two weeks off to build the van and somehow a couple of my friends came over and helped me build this van in two weeks it was very basic it had a bed and didn't even have a heater had the manual plumbing system very simple um and then from there i just fell in love with the lifestyle um it's literal freedom like so as soon as i had the van everything changed i didn't have to worry about where i was going to get an apartment at it was my house was with me like even if i was it just changed everything and it changed my mindset and that's a whole other story but that's how i got here and i'm super happy with with where i ended up in the road that kind of led the road i was brought down from that moment this is my couch um and this is just upholstery foam i got off amazon i built this to the size of the upholstery foam because it was so cheap because if you buy a mattress and try and cut it it's like 100 200 and i think i paid 20 bucks for this piece of foam so i kind of built it off of that so a lot of people get really crazy about how to like upholster foam like i had no idea how to do it so my little trick is we just have some plywood that we cut a little bit shorter than the foam and i just wrapped the fabric around it and literally just stapled it it made it like i don't know a two minute job versus like buying a sewing machine and figuring all that out uh the other thing i will say is i built this to pull out into a guest bed but here's my thing on this i see a lot of people do this scissor system where it like pushes in and pulls out it's so much work and so difficult i've pulled it out maybe twice and i'd rather just sleep on it like this and the other thing i will say is too is everybody's talking about their guests and everything like that including me when i built it but what i didn't realize is most of my friends have their own built out rigs they're not gonna sleep on my couch i've slept on this couch more than anybody else so that's a little nugget if you guys are thinking about doing this i will never do this scissor system again personal choice but underneath so this just hinges up building it again i would hinge it down you know when i did it i built this two years ago i've learned a lot by living in here this long and there's a lot of things i would change so i think i'm gonna give you guys that too because you're watching this because you're maybe thinking about building i would have it hinged down so it's easier to get in and out of underneath there this is kind of my camera storage i keep my gimbals drones things like that in here and then on the other side of the couch this is actually my shower you may be like what are you going to shower underneath your couch no so check it out so i have a shower curtain so i have a shower pan that pulls out like this and you can see where the drain is and it's a little dusty you can tell i haven't showered much so it has a drain that connects to the gray tank underneath and this pan will catch the water and it will drain out underneath the bus and then i put it underneath the hatch and then i have this curtain that we just made out of piping and with these hooks it just hangs up i do my thing the water hits hits the walls of this hits the pan goes the gray tank underneath because i didn't originally build this bus with a shower in mind and then coveted hit and planted fitness is closed down and i got real dirty after about a week of baby wipes and i didn't feel clean no more so i had to figure something out so if you guys are in a smaller bus or a van literally my shower is underneath my couch so that might be a really cool idea for you guys who don't necessarily have a space to build something permanent fixed in it is a pain in the butt oh yeah and i have a camping a mister heater i'll put a link below too it's a mr heater camping shower completely self-contained heats the water and i usually just sit it on the ground with a bucket fill it up with water take my shower and dry off but it is work i will say that the curtain system is just half inch industrial copper piping from home depot with like all the fittings and we just put you know this stuff up and then i got blackout curtain from walmart that was like kind of the right dimension and then we cut it re-hemmed it and then just hung it on the copper out here all the way around so it just slides shut at night when i want to shut it super easy super simple and then lighting i've gone through a whole bunch of different lighting situations in here and i haven't necessarily been happy until recently so i originally had these led strips that were on top of these rails and then they just didn't last very long like after a while they just literally stopped working and then i had these really cool little twinkly lights calling my vibe lights in the bedroom area and i really really loved the warm light and like the atmosphere created in the bus and then i found these it's like a 30 foot string and i wrapped these all around the front of the bus and i was worried about driving having it rattle and it really doesn't it's really cool for vibe lights but it's not like actual good usable light so what i've done now i i wired in this little 12-volt silicone light and it's warm light and not one strand at night you can't really tell now we'll over light this whole area this is the best lighting situation i found they're waterproof i haven't had it in here that long but i love them and i'm putting it in another bus i'm building now and i might put those in every bus i build from here on out i love that little silicone light again i'll put it i'll put a link description too if you want to check that out so what i'm doing now and how i got here basically i was i was traveling around a bit when i had my my old girlfriend and when we split up i had a crossroads i was like well i can just continue doing whatever i'm doing or i could like settle down a bit put some roots down and try and build a business in a future to sustain me forever and i decided to pull back so i don't traditional bus life in the sense anymore i live here in this bus full time but like you know at my shop so i went got a shop lease and i decided that i wanted to build buses for a living you know because this this i actually do really enjoy building and it's art like i want to experiment i want to try i want to progress i want to try different things and i got to shop in oregon because i love it here i wanted to do some routes um and the idea with the business is is to make a couple buses a year make my annual income in about half the year and then take the rest of that time and go live so i'm gonna work hard for six months and then i'm going to enjoy life for six months is kind of the idea and and and the thing about it is that's right now like i don't have to do it forever i'm doing it right now and i don't know what the future holds i know i want to do another event um so i hosted like a van life bus life event in 2020 and i want to do another one of those because seeing the community come together and like the relationships that were formed from that and the things that a lot of these people did because of these events is is truly magical like we are people and we are a community and we're better together so i want to help bring the people together so that's kind of a two-year goal i'm going to do another event but really i just want to live and be happy and not be trapped that's what this whole story comes down to that's what bus life is for me is it's a vehicle for me to change my mind if i don't want to be in oregon tomorrow i can just drive to california if i decide i don't like this business like it's just i'm not trapped and i can choose to live how i want to live and to me that's what bus life is about having choice it gives me choice i'm not trapped with a job i'm not trapped with a mortgage i can literally just live and choose however i want to live whenever i want to this is my kitchen area and i'm going to talk you through it i got this sink i don't remember what size it is it was on amazon everybody knows what a sink is but my water system is literally a whale gusher foot pump and it's attached to a 14 gallon holding tank inside of here that i just fill with whatever water i get and then it drops to a gray tank underneath the bus this plumbing system is so simple i've put it in so many vans it's literally just one hose at one end of that one of that foot pump that goes into your holding tank and the other end of the hose literally just goes to the faucet no wiring simple and i did that on purpose um because like things break things go down and i didn't want everything in this bus to depend on my 12 volt electric system because it's broke on me multiple times over the years and if that happens i don't want my whole bus to be down so like you know so it's like if my if my electrical goes out i still have running water and vice versa you know if my something happens here like it's not gonna affect my electrical system so i i did that by design in this bus i wanted everything very simple manual as possible and not dependent on other systems so if one system goes down it doesn't affect the other as far as the vibe here i don't know it's just you know paneling and wainscoting which i would never use wayne scotting again it's not that much better than cardboard and it's just really cheap material any water gets on it it just bubbles up and i see it in a lot of rigs and every rig i've seen it in i've seen problems so knowing what i know now i do not recommend wayne scott beadboard or whatever they call it ever this is an epoxy counter so i got this this countertop off the side of the road for 35 dollars we were driving down the road and we seen a sign that said slabs and we stopped and just talked to the guy and i was quoted 300 in the city at a hardwood store for a piece of wood half this size so when i asked him how much he wanted for this board he said 35 i bought it immediately and i love it i love the look alive edge and then putting the epoxy on it i'll do this type of countertop it's as far as i can see love it and in there it's just a trash can the holding tank in in the foot pump system it's nothing special and then i have one drawer with this flip-flop so if you look that holds that holds the drawer in because this has came out and blown up so many times over the years and i've tried so many different types of locks and i really like this system because i can just flip it up it opens up and then i can look at it and see it's not latched i just push it and it locks it um it's just a little flip latch thing they're not that expensive and then this drawer you know it's just a regular old drawer and it's really messy right now because it's it's came out and blown up so many times i quit organizing it but i should probably organize it again since i haven't organized it since the last time it broke and i put this in so i have one drawer and then i've got this fridge this is 12-volt fridge on a slider and you latch it um when you're not using it and it just pulls out you open it up you get your kombucha yeah no and then you slide her back in and then i always try and be in the habit of just latching everything when i'm done because i'll forget about it i'll start the rig start driving down the road and next thing i know my fridge is shooting out across the bus and stuff's going everywhere and then i'm just really sad so that's a little trick is i try to always be in the habit of latching everything as soon as i'm done with it because it's real easy to forget and then your drawer blows up and then you're on the road and you don't got your drill and you see where the story goes pretty quick that's a trick i have this camp chef outdoor camp oven i see it in so many builds all the time i guess i'll just show you what it is so it has two burners it has a little tiny oven and it's propane doesn't depend on 12 volt i wouldn't buy this ever again let me tell you why when i first bought it this burner quit igniting within a week two years later this burner i have to have um a lighter so it's like it's just slowly falling apart like very quick it's not built well they're they're pretty cheap i will never buy this again i'll never recommend this stove the two stoves i do recommend is if storage uh if space is an issue i like the flame king they're like 60 dollars i have personal experience with them i think they're great little units if you're gonna do an oven burner combo i actually really like the rec pro unit they're about 500 this i think was like around two something so it's like i don't recommend this it just literally fell apart and it's a matter of time till it just stops working so that's it oh wait and then i have storage under there um and i just keep like my laundry detergent and stuff in there we don't need to show you that so that's it for the whole kitchen area these are the dividers in the bus i thought it was a really good idea when i did it i don't know but this is basically my pantry it's all pots pans food storage all kinds of stuff this is like my closet slash humongous junk drawer there's so much stuff in there i haven't i don't even know what's in there it's too much space but let me let me start by saying this i said i don't like them i will never put these in another build i ever do um i hear a lot of people say like oh i wanted to separate the space from the bedroom and that's all fine everybody's different i thought the same thing but the thing is is like once you're in here for a really long time all together this is a very small space literally i've cut like six to eight i don't even know like half my bus is cut in half so it's like my living area where i spend most of my spa time is cut in half like i'm only in my bed when i'm asleep i don't spend time back there so i'm losing half my bus for to go to sleep it's not worth it and and i don't care about separate because i don't the people that have come and stayed in my bus is less than one hand like people haven't really come into state so it's like i've been in here a long time i'll be in here for a lot longer after this and i would never do this again i it's a small space and i want it to feel like it's a big as much space and as open as i can possibly make it that's my opinion on these and i am going to rebuild this bus like once i get a few projects done this layout was fine for when i built it but i can't stand it now and i'm going to take everything out of here and redo it and these dividers are going to be long gone so if you've been thinking about dividers that's my two cents after living in it i i want this small space to be as big as possible i'm back there when i go to bed it's it's i'm losing half my bus just for that it's not worth it to me so that's the dividers and that's my take on them i forgot to mention my changing room so obviously there's a lot of windows in a school bus and there's been times i want to change my clothes and all that and trying to close up all the curtains or hide on the floor to change my clothes was kind of a pain in the butt so i came up with this little system between the dividers and literally i can just pull this curtain across i can change my clothes it it just made life so much easier so how did i get into bus life when i started in a van well i went to a hot spring and i met a girl and she moved into the van now the van for me was plenty of room but as soon as another person was in there it was not enough room we were like laying on each we're laying on each other trying to change our clothes it was just so when things got serious between the two of us i knew i wanted something bigger that was more comfortable for two people and i originally was looking at the old school sprinter vans the old t1 ends i think they're called and it's just something i could stand in and have a little more room and my buddy kept telling me about short buses and at that time um i was all stealth blah blah blah blah blah blah blah which one i started seeing 40 foot buses in the planet fitness parking lot having parties i realized stealth doesn't matter so i was against the windows i was against the bus because of all that like stigma or whatever you call that and he was like bro just trust me go check one out and i was like okay i'll check one out and i walked in a school bus instantly knew this was what i wanted as soon as i walked in and i've i seen the windows that i thought i hated and it felt so open you know like i don't feel enclosed this is a small space like i love the feel of it i love the width of it it literally it the universe it just was right and i knew it and i knew in that moment that i was going to get a bus so i started doing research on the best bus to get the motor blah blah blah blah blah but i knew the bus that i wanted to get and then every night i would get off of work i'd get up in the morning and i checked craigslist before i went to bed i would check craigslist and as soon as this bus right here sculiana popped up on facebook marketplace i messaged the guy and i said if this bus is what you say it is i'll be there tomorrow morning with the cash what time can i meet you and he was like what and in the market is so hot you have to do that i showed up and he was like he could tell i was serious and i really wanted it i show up and he said dude i had six other people say the same thing to me blew my mind and that's how i got this bus i literally just hocked it that's how i got into bus life i had a girlfriend she's gone now but i just wanted more room but i love a bus i'll never go back to a van no offense i just love the feel of it i love the vibe of it i love that it had another life and that it's hard to get them it's hard to create them the best things in life aren't easy and like i don't know i love schoolies this is the bed area uh it's a full-size mattress in a short bus you have this much room left after you put a full-size mattress in it and i made a little headboard and i got more clothes and literal junk just thrown in there and again it's cedar i really like cedar i have it all over this bus and i wanted to like give this some like i don't know some like swag to it so we i made these little like cedar panels that i put up around the windows and everything and the the blinds are a little bit different of a system back here up there i didn't really care about light leakage but like back here i didn't necessarily want people like peek through and see me sleeping and stuff so i have stuff on this snap button system so it doesn't just hang i can snap it against the window so there's there's no light leakage at all so it's like you can't you can't peek in the bedroom area which is the one place i really wanted to make to where that's not a thing up there didn't care and then so it's a little different to roll them back up i just roll it up like this and then snap it back into place also in the back i have my control panels so over here on this side i have my remote for my vibe lights which isn't what i actually call them but i'm gonna put that on youtube you know what i would say my remote controls my dangly lights up there and back here and it's just attached with velcro i also have my thermostat for my heater i just you turn it on and then you set the temperature and it has the sensor back here that'll kick on and off to maintain it and then on this side i have the charge controller so i can see my battery's storage uh where it's at where the charge is at how much solar i'm getting charge controllers there and then i have my switch for my inverter can turn it on and off this is my garage door it's a cedar garage door it's pretty right um this is how i get to the storage underneath my bed and it hinges up another rookie mistake uh i will always close the area underneath the bed just because i think it looks cleaner but i would do it differently i would either have this hinged down i probably wouldn't have this hinge down because you need to be crawling on it putting pressure on the hinges but i would have it open like this so the doors would open up and i can get in and out easy um like i said i built this two years ago when i didn't quite know what i know now and you know once that's one thing i always say too is like once you're in one of these rigs like you really know what you did wrong or didn't so most people i know that are living full-time in vehicles they're on their second or third vehicle because they figured out a lot on the first one they figured more out on the second one this is my second and i really know what i want and don't want now so that's how i get to the garage the thing that makes this place a home what makes your bus a home is the heater this little guy will cook you out of here so this is a pro packs hs 2800 propane thermostat control heater it was like 800 bucks years ago i absolutely love it i will always have a heater in any vehicle i build or live in but i wouldn't buy this one again this thing works great i have no complaints about this heater at all but it's expensive they make chinese diesel heaters now that i've installed in a few different rigs they work just as good and they cost and fifty dollars so that's my advice put thermostat controlled heat in your vehicle um but get the diesel heater version of this this works great if you if you want to spend the money but i i wasted like what seven hundred six hundred dollars when i cut about the hundred fifty dollar version hooks up just the same that's propane the other one's diesel obviously but it's just a fuel source i'll put a link to that because i have installed some of those kits and they're missing half the stuff and i'm spending three days trying to find it running around town so i found one kit that i install and will only install in vehicles i do has everything you need in it 150 link is below let's move on this is going to be a controversial subject but we're going to talk about it everybody i see most people i see are pulling the roof skins off of their bus they're pulling the walls out they're re-insulating the whole bus and i think one of the main misconceptions is these aren't insulated i've built a lot of buses and you pull that skin off there's insulation in there this bus was not re-insulated this is the stock installation from the school district with that heater i i've been in here two years i'm alive i'm not freezing to death like it's fine it's perfectly fine and then with the deck up there the sun's not directly beating on the roof like it's going through cedar first so it's like my opinion is you do not need to re-insulate your bus at all unless you're gonna go live in antarctica but most people that live in these buses you know they're chasing warmer weather like i do not think it's necessary a hundred percent i will stand behind that you guys can hate on me all you want for that but i have lived in a bus that was spray foamed completely and i've lived in this bus for years i'm comfortable in here the bus that was spray foamed i literally felt zero difference and this isn't just in theory i've lived in both of these buses and i felt zero difference the main reason is all these windows over half your bus is a window and they're single pane windows so my opinion unless you're gonna change out all the single pane windows then when you insulate it'll make a difference if you don't do that i don't think it makes as much of a difference as people think that's my opinion that's why i don't redo it you know so and i have experience from both sides of it i've been in a bus that was insulated and i've been in here a long time and i did not feel a difference so that's my opinion maybe i am wrong i will say this the insulation that is in these buses is not a high r value but it is an r value so is it worth all the work to pull all this down all the money and then keep the single pane windows in my opinion no in my opinion get a good heater you won't even know the difference and obviously cover your windows at night as well that makes a huge difference controversial subject over next again my name is isaac this is my bus sculiana it's a 2003 7.3 power stroke five window handicap door short bus and if you want to follow the journey uh i have obviously this youtube channel and you can follow on instagram you can follow on tiktok and if you want to see what's going on with the business and the builds you can follow on instagram at dream reality studios and i'm going to have links for all of the stuff in here that i recommend that i stand behind and if you guys have any questions at all please don't hesitate drop a comment below if you have questions and yeah maybe i'll see you out there one of these days thanks for watching the tour hope you guys have a good day bye

Channel: A Bus Life Story

Views: 127,092

Keywords: skooliana bus tour, short bus conversion, short bus conversion build, skoolie conversion, skoolie tour, skoolie bus conversion, skoolie build, bus tour, bus tour house, self converted school bus, school bus conversion, school bus conversion tour, school bus conversion to rv, school bus tiny home conversion, school bus tiny home tour, short bus, skoolie, short bus conversion tour, bus conversion, bus conversion tour, mini skoolie, mini school bus conversion

Id: vLlxhtiEMTM

Length: 44min 34sec (2674 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 28 2021