Skoolie Tour: Millenials Built Their Off-Grid Dream House in a Transit Bus

[Music] try to concentrate on breathing and let your thoughts [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey guys i'm katie and this is our home come on in we decided to build the bus at the time we're living out west a lot of our friends and family were back on the east coast we were finding ourselves feeling torn between the east and west coast we kind of started talking about where we wanted to be and then sam brought up this idea of you know well when we decide to move somewhere keeping climate change in mind where is it safe basically and most of the places that we want to live aren't super safe at least in terms of natural you know long-term investment and where you wanna you know really put down roots and i used to live in charleston south carolina and every year the hurricanes were getting worse there then we're on the west coast and there's wildfires out there so we're like how can we create like this cozy home for ourselves where we can park it on some land or bring it to a friend's spot in the event that there is a forest fire or a catastrophic hurricane can we just pull our home away and bring it somewhere safe so yeah like why wouldn't we have a home that we could just bring with us while we were living out in seattle our friends justin and val and nova came to visit us in their big school bus spent basically the entire month of august just exploring around the pacific northwest with them so that kind of introduced us to the idea we also began to learn a lot more than we ever thought we would know about buses we knew we wanted something that was less than 35 feet we wanted a rear engine we even knew you know what kind of engines and transmissions we would prefer about three months of searching searching every day crashing refreshing refreshing pages yeah eventually we found this bus which is a bluebird csre 34 foot transit bus including the bumpers which are very big without the bumpers it's kind of like a 32 foot body it was used to transport college kids around san jose state university one thing that was great about that too was it had lived its entire life out west in a very dry climate and so the engine you know just looked so clean and rust free and so it was worth flying out to new mexico to go pick it up in december last year during some snow yeah the build was challenging we also had a ton of help and that most of the build was completed by our good friend justin took us about pretty much exactly a year all in all we're really happy with the outcome yeah we love it we love our house this is the outside of the bus um we spent all you know a lot of effort on the inside and we haven't really been too fussed with the outside we've considered painting it but honestly it's starting to grow on us a little bit but yeah maybe at some point we'll buff out the san jose state university also these windows are quite a bit different than what you typically find on school buses they're just a lot bigger and they slide horizontally they've been great found these storage boxes on facebook marketplace these just give us just a little bit more outdoor storage kind of like a garage we have like you know some camping stuff in here got a surfboard bag so we do have some side view cameras over here we've got a couple in the rear too underneath here we've got the gray tank and we've got the mini split condenser behind there i think blows a lot of hot air we started drilling these holes to try and help some of that hot air get out from under the bus so this is where justin started to drill 10 000 holes and ran out of steam but i think he'll finish it soon and we bought all new tires when we hit the road they're fresh like two months old so those are the panels up top we've got eight 400 watt panels so 3200 altogether back here we've got the engine this is a cummins 8.3 isc we really loved our honda element we weren't ready to get get rid of it we went to hitch world in st pete florida and got this custom hitch installed it's welded onto basically the bottom of that engine bay frame got two rear view cameras um this one just got it pointing down so i just see the hitch setup which is really nice because when you just hook it up you have to make sure that it locks in place and it's really nice to be able to just watch and make sure that that happens when you're taking off and then the top one kind of looks further back as a more like a rear view mirror so this is where we fill the water we've got 100 gallon fresh water tank inside this is our 50 amp plug-in we still haven't used that behind here is the gray tank you can see right here this is where we attach our gray tank hose and we've got a gate thing that i can just pull from right over here so we've got another storage box luckily the person who saw them on facebook marketplace had a pair so we have them symmetric on each side oops so this side is less fun and more just tools and hoses and wires and junk okay so as you come up the steps we have our little uh shoe cubby down here when we're not driving our dashboard is kind of like a catch-all for our sunglasses we've got hand sanitizer reusable bags for the grocery store i have this bird which we got at a yard sale actually for free but this felt like the appropriate place for it since we have a bluebird bus this hanging basket is where we keep our dog leash and dog bags and right here is a little storage box where we keep our field guides i love to cook so we have a bunch of cookbooks down here our binoculars headlamps and so just a nice place to tuck everything away this is our kind of like living room area we really loved the idea of opposing couches underneath we have some storage of course in bus life there's storage everywhere so down here we just have sleeping bags hammocks on the other side this is where sam keeps most of his tools that he uses on a more regular basis we also have some random things down there and this is our little dinette space which is probably my favorite part of the bus above the dinette we have a light fixture that we actually made ourselves with a inflated and then popped balloon there's also inside of there parchment paper an old aluminum can so everything was kind of repurposed even this piece up here is actually a bamboo toothbrush holder so for us it was really important to have a dinette not only because we like sharing meals at a table but also sam and i both work remotely sam has a space for himself in the back but i really wanted somewhere comfortable that i could work with my laptop and so this functions not only as a space where we share meals together and tea in the morning but also for me to work daily sam and i kind of each have a side uh this side i have my art supplies we keep our instant pot down here there's some board games on the other side sam is an avid tea drinker he collects lots of different types of teeth and so down here is sam's tea collection so this is our refrigerator we really wanted to do an under counter fridge we wanted to push back the first wall as far as we could so that when you are entering the bus it feels really spacious and it also it gained us all of this amazing counter space like this is more counter space than i think i've had in any of my houses it's the isotherm cruise 200 it's seven cubic feet of space so this side is the refrigerator we also have a little freezer on this side so this has been working out really really well for us i love to collect ceramic bowls from thrift stores so this is my little collection here we have all of our mugs glasses up here we have our silverware drawer this lower drawer is where we keep most of our appliances so we have a vitamix for smoothies we have a food processor back here and then we have all of our pans and strainers and things like that so we have our drying rack for our dishes we have our berkey water filter underneath our sink we have our trash and recycling along with cleaning supplies and things like that one of the things that i was really excited for uh was our furion electric oven i love to bake i love to bake bread specifically and it was really important to me to have a space where i could bake while we were living on the road and we've been living off grid for almost two months and we've been able to use it almost every day for things like toast and bread and roasting veggies and things like that down here we just have a nice little drawer that's kind of our miscellaneous stuff batteries matches and up here we have all of our bowls and plates one of the things that i have that we love is these bowls that are great on their own but they also double as tupperware this has been a really nice way for us to have chopper without taking up a ton of extra space over here we have our induction cooktop it's a two burner and then underneath here this is kind of our pantry area this is the top one and one of the things that i really like is this little hidden drawer that rolls out and it has all of our spices it's like a really satisfying way to see all of them too and then over here is our nice big cutting board and our tea area where we have all of our little tea cups and our tea tray and our magnetic knife rack i'll let sam talk a little bit more about this so under here is where we have the bulk of the electrical system we have eight line energy batteries they're wired in 24 volt altogether that's about 10 kilowatt hours most of our core important electrical appliances are actually dc so that can run straight from the batteries we also have a 2400 watt inverter that lets us power all the ac appliances like the split and the induction cooktop and the oven it handles all of our needs really well the only issue with it is that they're you know you can't run everything continuous because it's only it's 2400 watts so but that's totally fine for us while we're off the grid which is something we need to be cognizant about up here because you know i like to over complicate things we have uh we have 24 volt distribution here running a few of our appliances or lights and and things off of 24 volt and then i also have this running to a 12 volt step down so i can run some 12 volt appliances like like the max air fans up here too i just kind of geeked out i wanted some gauges and switches so this is our water tank gauge and our gray tank gauge and this is our battery gauge as you can see we have a lot of battery power right now these switches uh control our strip lights so we can flip this down and it's controlled by the remote again because i like to complicate things you can actually control it without the remote too if you just want to blast it in case you lose the remote i figured you know you can switch it on and off this switch goes for a dinette light and this is a sure call cell phone signal booster we're not sure if it really helps yet but we installed it speaking of the max air fans we've got two we've got this one up front these are great you know you can have them do exhaust or intake so you can put it on low typically you have it somewhere in the middle you can put it all the way up and it's kind of like beast mode and it's pretty loud and we have one back here this one we have going pretty much 24 7. just creates some airflow so it doesn't get too stuffy back here and these are our super magic schooly doors this is a dream of justin since before we even got the bus he knew he kind of wanted to do some kind of a cool portal archway doorway with sliding doors and they came out really well we got these heavy-duty drawer slides that lock in because as we found out already from forgetting to lock in one time if these weren't here these would just be sliding all over the place while you were driving and this is our bathroom area so to start we have our hooks here we each have a turkish towel which dries really quickly this is also our laundry bag when it's not too full it hangs here once it starts to really fill up it goes in the shower up here we have an amazing amount of storage so on this side we have all of our linens our washcloths and then on this side is where we have kind of all of our beauty products and i mean honestly it's mostly my stuff up here i think it's actually all my stuff up here so on this side we have our coconut coir which goes into our composting toilet razors wet wipes things like that so this is our composting toilet or separation toilet from kildwick they're a company based out of germany really it's basically just this separator you can buy this separator and then just build a plywood box we happen to get this all assembly from them but yeah basically there's a poop bucket there's a bunch of cocoa core in there to keep the poo dry and not smelly there's a fan here that we just have on all the time and this is a siphon that came from kildwick it kind of serves the purpose of making sure that no gray tank smells come up from your p-line plumbed this p-line straight down to the gray tank so you know you don't have to deal with removing a key jug every once in a while i love our shower area so much for the walls we have this feather finish faux cement which has been holding up really well we were a little bit nervous that it was going to crack while we were driving but it's been great so far it's really beautiful when it's wet and then it dries this nice light gray color and then we have our nebia shower head which is so luxurious it has all of these different settings which just make us feel like we are in a spa inside of our bus down here we clearly have our dog's food and water bowl we found this as a great place because it's tucked out of the way you know it's not in the aisle and if she spills a little bit of water it's just in the shower and this shower has just been really really great so far so this is my office i'm a software engineer i kind of need the sizeable monitor so i just have this little space here i made this chair i don't even really need a desk i just need to be able to use the monitor i added some storage under the chair so this is actually where i keep the laptop and i've just got you know the hdmi cords running underneath to the tv this is a split keyboard it's called the kiria you can get them assembled i actually got mine as a kit and made it myself it was challenging but pretty fun i've got these nice uh clickety clackety uh key switches in here the box jades i've got these rotary knobs in here so i can scroll to hvo max as fast as i want to this is just the review though katie told me from the very start she was not going to tolerate wires all over the place um so there's a bunch of kind of wire chases back here to make sure that things stay hidden i've got just bins and bins of junk and wires all my wires that i could ever want are just in these bins oh god and we also have art from our friend annika at nighttime flip this around and watch tv in bed [Music] this is our closet space it's actually about four and a half feet wide and then below our hanging clothes we have like our jackets and my dresses and shirts and things like that we have these awesome little bins that fit really well these are from hay designs this is where we just have things like socks and bathing suits and underwear and stuff and then sam and i each have a drawer so here's my drawer and then sam has his drawer down here over here is actually where our hot water heater is stored we also have our dyson vacuum which i love so much we have a dog who sheds a lot so we use that every day and then back here is our bedroom space uh we have a queen size bed back here there is about a foot or so of space on either side of the bed so sam and i each have a space where we keep things like our books glasses things like that back here is also where we have our mini split and this provides both cool and hot air it's been really great so far we've experienced in florida in the winter both really hot nights and really chilly nights so far we're able to close the sliding doors and keep all of that cold or hot air back here and it makes it really cozy for sleeping there's actually a dual track back there that has a set of curtains that just keeps out most of the light and then the back set i sewed in some of the leftover havelock wool from our insulation just to add a little extra insulation back there since so much heat or cold air can come in and out through that glass we have our reading lights and they also have a usb plug on the side so we can each use them to plug in and charge our phones and things like that at night and so at night time when it's time to close the blinds we have these roller shades that just pull down like this underneath the bed is where we have our dog's crate she's got her bedding down there we also have a hundred gallon water tank under here along with all of the plumbing a little bit of extra storage down there as well [Music] so you can find us on instagram at our wild caravan and thank you guys so much for watching our tour thanks if you guys enjoyed this video you are not going to want to miss the time lapse it is the next video i'm about to put out about to show up right here click on this watch that next you will absolutely enjoy it you can see me build this bus from the beginning extremely fast super entertaining thank you so much for watching and subscribing and we will see you next time peace [Music] you

Channel: Mobile Dwellings

Views: 478,517

Keywords: skoolie tour, bus conversion tour, coach tour, tiny house tour, vanlife tour, van tour, buslife tour, skoolie layout, diy rv, rv tour, mobile dwellings, tiny living, nomadic living, digital nomads, remote work, adventure, adventuremobile, skoolie conversion, bus conversion, school bus tiny house, tiny house, school bus home, skoolie, transit bus, bluebird bus, living big in a tiny house, living the van life, gilligan phantom, life on the road, school bus

Id: KFqzsbsdlMs

Length: 18min 17sec (1097 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 05 2022