This is How I Power My Van | Full-Time w/ Gaming Setup

[Music] foreign so last night we stayed in a uh Flying J's parking lot that just so happened to be connected I don't know if you guys can see it but right over here on the other side of my van there's a Denny's and I didn't feel like cooking breakfast today so I ran inside there got myself some pancakes and then some eggs benedict and hash browns so as you guys know if you've been watching my channel for a long time of me living out of the back of my van for the last two years I have a lot of things that need to be powered like my lights here my lights up there my TV over there my Xbox down there fridge right there my heater over here and a whole bunch of other small things like my 120 volt plugs my USB ports and all of that kind of stuff and I've had a lot of people ask me how much power do you have in your van and how much power would I need in mine for something similar so today I am going to try to answer those questions as best as I can just based on my experience with living in a van and how much power that I use and how much power that I need and I will try to kind of help you guys figure out how much you need as well so after I finish my breakfast I'm going to drive this thing out in the desert take everything out of the back of the van and open up all the compartments and show you guys exactly what my setup is like and try to give you a little bit of insight into how much that I use all right breakfast is finished let's head out to the desert and tough power all right so I think this spot up here looks pretty good it's like a little off Highway Vehicle Recreation kind of area I'm gonna pull in here find a spot and start taking the van apart all right so I'm not going to pull in too far because it's actually pretty Sandy in this area and I really just don't feel like getting stuck let's pull right here this should be good enough so before I head into the back and show you guys my electrical setup I'm going to start in here and basically just tell you guys everything that I have to give you a little bit of perspective and then I'll go into the back to show you how much power I have to power everything but before I do any of that I am going to get these dishes done real quick because I need to get them done before I fly home tomorrow checking with you guys in like 10 minutes already so I've got the dishes done the van is mostly cleaned up and ready to go and this video is not going to be kind of an in-depth look at how my electrical system is set up and what wire gauges I use and how I connected everything and and go really in depth into all that this video is more so going to be kind of just like a theoretical example of how much power one person really needs on the road based on my experiences and the amount of power that I use in the back of my van and in my opinion I use a ton of power and I'm going to go through all of the things in the back of the van that I use pretty much on a daily basis here in a second so hopefully my goal with this video is to kind of give you guys some perspective if you're looking to build out a van or thinking about doing something like this how much power you need and how much power you realistically are going to use in a single day in terms of things that are powered back here I'm going to start with the lights because that is probably something that I use the most and starting out over here in the kind of what I'll call the family room area I have this LED light strip that comes across here and then it goes like back behind there comes out and then lines all the way down here so typically when it's nighttime out and you can't really see it that well when it's like super bright out like this maybe if I close this door that'll help so typically when it's nighttime out I'll use this light and I won't use my super bright floating ceiling LED lights just because they're a little bit too harsh when it's nighttime out and these lights right here are plenty bright enough to like light up the whole van and realistically One LED strip doesn't use that much power so moving on in this area you have uh 120 volt Outlet right here that I rarely use sometimes I'll use to charge my e-bike batteries or power Banks or stuff like that but I never really use this one and then I have USB USBC which I used to charge my camera batteries right here and then my wireless router I can just plug it I can just take it and plug it directly into that and then I use that but these USBS and usbcs are are very low power and they don't really use much because they're 12 volt and they're super efficient and then this right here is just the light switch for those lights right there and that is pretty much it for my family room area and now I'll move into my kind of heaviest power usage area which is my desk area because I've got my curved gaming monitor right here my Xbox which is velcroed to the wall under my desk right there and then I have a small PC fan here that I installed so when it's really cold out and I have my heater on in the front of the cab I can turn this on and it'll cycle air back in the back of the bed uh heating up my batteries and my water tank and again this is a 12 volt so it basically uses almost no power I mean could probably run it for a year on the battery bank that I have and the reason that I chose the Xbox is because of how little power it uses so again to give a little bit of perspective currently in my battery Bank it is fully charged I have 300 amp hours of lithium batteries and the reason that it's fully charged right now is because it is sunny out and I've solar panels on the top of my van so it's just constantly getting charged in and I didn't really use much yesterday but for some perspective when it's night time and I have my gaming monitor on and I have my Xbox on the maximum that I will draw in power is 10 amps per hour with all of that running so theoretically if I got no charge from the Sun I could play Xbox for 30 hours straight before I drain my battery which I never do and I always get charged from the Sun so it never runs out so also in this area I have another 120 volt outlet that is charging my MacBook right now and then I have an extension cord plugged in right here I don't know if you guys can see it that runs down below the desk and that is where I have my Xbox and stuff plugged into down here just to keep it kind of out of the way and I know my wire management really isn't the best and also something I did mention about these 120 volt outlets in order for those to work and turn in order for my 120 volt gaming Monitor and 120 volt Xbox to be able to work I need to have my inverter on which is this switch right here which I'll get into that a little bit more when I kind of show you my entire power system under my bed so yeah that pretty much sums up my gaming area and pretty much the heaviest power use area that I have in my van and then as I mentioned before I have the lights under here and then back in this cabinet I have another USB port back there I don't know if you guys can see it but I have my Wi-Fi router hooked up to it so it's like hardwired into the van but again that's a USB so it doesn't use a ton of power and then moving over to the left side of the van I have my bed lights so I have this warm LED light kind of tucked behind this thing for when I'm laying in bed and I don't want any of these harsh white lights on in the van um and I'm reading a book or I'm just sitting on my laptop or doing anything else and again it's a 12 volt light strip so it doesn't really use that much power and it's hooked up to a switch down here so I can turn it off and on pretty easily oh also I forgot I have two USB ports down here for charging my phone while I sleep so that's it for the bed area and now the kitchen and I'm going to close this door so you can see better it's also another kind of heavy power use area I have a lot of switches down here that you can probably barely see because they kind of blend into my back backsplash here but I've got my switch right here that I can turn on and off and that is for my 120 volt water heater that I have under my bed over there that I'll show you guys later in the video and then I have another heavy duty outlet here that's 20 amps that I can plug blenders into toasters or any kind of heavier Duty Appliance I can plug it into this plug and that also is connected back to my inverter so I can only use this when the inverter is on and then I have two light switches one for the upper kitchen lights which are just a small LED strip that's back behind there and then my lower cabinet lights which are down here by my feet and I can turn these on and off with this switch right here and also these are touch dimmable so if I hold this down those lights will dim down as dim as I want them to go and then I can brighten the back up if I want and all of these switches are touch dimmable and then finally you have my main light switch so you have on off right here and these control the upper floating LEDs so I can turn them on I can turn them off back on again and then if I use this little slider I can kind of dim them down as low as I want and then brighten them back up and this is kind of what that looks like and when they're super dim they use a ton less power versus when they're bright and this is probably the biggest waste of power in the van because when I have these lights on on full power they are 12 volt but since they're all connected one after the other in series they use a ton of power so when I have these on they draw more amps out of my battery Bank than my entire Xbox setup combined so typically I don't use these lights for an extended period of time just because of how much power they draw like especially if I'm playing Xbox I'll have these lights off one because they're a little bit harsh and two because it's just a waste of power but yeah that's pretty much it for my kitchen area and then one more small thing over here is I have my water pump switch so I can turn my water pump I should be able to turn my water pump off which powers oh and it turned off turn it back on which Powers my sink so I have water pressure in the van and yeah I think that is pretty much it for the kitchen area and then there's only a few more things in here and then I will take you around back take everything out and show you my whole electrical setup so then the final few things that I have in my van that use up power are my 12 volt fridge which which only really draws three or four amps per hour which if you remember what I said about my Xbox you know what that kind of means and that's only when it's on and it's only on about half of the time if that and that's only when the compressor is on and it's actually cooling down and then once it gets to temperature it'll shut off and then when it needs to kick on again it wills and then before I move on to the final kind of small electronic things I also do have two Max Air fans one up here and one back here and these really don't use a ton of power they are also 12 volt DC and when I have them running on like full blast I think I think they use like six or seven amps per hour and I don't know if that's the correct way to describe it but that's the way that I understand it the best so that's the way that I say it and then the final things that I have in my van that use any electricity are one my propane detector because I have a propane stove but that is 12 volt and very negligible it's essentially just that small LED light that it Powers but I do have that hardwired into the van and then I have my heater which the only thing that the electric powers is that small LCD screen up there and then some Motors in the actual heater itself and that's only when it's on so again most of the time that is not using up any power I think I pretty much hit every single thing in the back of the van and now I will take you guys around back clean out the entire back of my van and show you guys my electrical setup and kind of talk about how much power I need versus how much I use versus how much I think the average person would need or use in a van but before I can do that I am going to have to clean this monstrosity of a mess out into here and then I will take you guys in there and show you that so give me like 2.5 seconds and I'll have that cleaned out all right I have got everything mostly cleaned out at least enough to show you guys down here so this is that switch that I was talking about for my inverter it's supposed to be mounted to the wall in the interior of my van but I just haven't gotten around to doing it so I just kind of drape it up on the bed and use it like that but that connects down to my inverter down there so speaking of the fridge first as you can see right now the compressor is not on because the fridge is too temperature and then once it needs to cool down again this will kick on and start taking another three amps from the battery but my major electrical components and everything that powers my entire van is Behind These two kind of sliding walls right here so if I slide this first one back and don't mind the dust I have not been back here in probably a year and a half which I guess is good which means I built it well and I'm going to start kind of over here on the left so this right here is this right here is my 3000 watt inverter charger and what that means is basically all of the 12 volt power from my three batteries up there that I'll show you in a second converts it from 12 volt power to charge stuff like USBS and small appliances up to 120 volt like a regular wall outlet so I can use blenders my water heater charge my laptop and play my Xbox so the purpose of the inverter is to take 12 volt convert it up to 120 volt and it has a max supply of 3000 Watts which is more than enough for any Appliance or Xbox or gaming PC that you'd want to use and then also on that system I also have Shore power plug which essentially means that I can flip this up plug this adapter into there and then I can plug my van into any regular wall outlet or or V Park and charge my batteries through like an extension cord something like that so that is that and I think a 3000 watt inverter is a little bit Overkill um for like daily life stuff unless you're gonna have some crazy type equipment back here you only really need I think 2000 maximum but moving right from there we have my DC to DC charger so this is a 30 amp DC to DC charger by victron and all of my components are by victron because I think they honestly make the highest quality components they're a little bit more expensive but it's worth it if you're going to invest in it for essentially your home so basically what this does is takes the charge from my van's alternator so when I turn my van on and it's running the additional power for my alternator comes back on these two wires which run all the way up to the front of the van and hook up to my van's battery bank and they're also fused off come into here this takes that charge sends it back out and charges my batteries through this thing right here and honestly this is one thing that I would change I would get a way beefier maybe a 60 amp DC to DC charger so my batteries charge a little bit faster while my van's running because this is really slow 30 amps just really isn't that much but it's been good enough for me for two years so maybe I'll upgrade that eventually so then continuing on Down the Line this right here is the battery shunt so this is the negative wire coming off the batteries for my van and this shunt is what controls that little green monitor that I had up there that shows me how much power I have left so this kind of monitors my battery shows how much I'm pulling in so it shows how much I'm pulling out shows how many amps I'm using and just kind of gives me like live Diagnostics of the batteries through that little controller up there so I can check it out and see how much power I have left and then this is the master on off switch so if I turn this off it disconnects pretty much everything from my batteries so if I ever have some catastrophic failure I can turn this off adjust stuff fake stuff and and and do things that way and honestly I know it's not the prettiest setup I've never built an electrical system before so I made it look as pretty as I could but yeah I also have some spare like electric parts and then some spare fuses for my fuse box up here that I have stored behind here so before I go into my DC ac fuse box I'm going to show you guys the rest of my system because it kind of ties into that so if I slide these panels over it kind of reveals the rest of my system so this is directly past that master switch and this is essentially just a super fancy bus bar so I have the positive and negatives coming in for my battery I have the DC to DC wires that come in here and then I have my solar wires that come in here from this is my solar charge controller so basically these two wires go up through that fuse box connect to my solar panels it comes into here goes into my bus bar and then this bus bar feeds into my battery and into my DC fuse box so all of the power is basically sent here and then kind of distributed out to all of the different areas that need to go to so this is kind of like I guess like a management system that is pretty much it I've got the solar I've got the bus bar I've got the on off switch I've got the DC to DC charger and then I've got my inverter and then from here in order to supply power to everything throughout the van so through these wires up to my refrigerator and then to all the USB ports all the 120 volt outlets and everything that is connected to power somehow in my van it all originates from right here so I have them kind of labeled so these right here all of my DC fuses so back vent fan front vent fan kitchen office main light are fused right here individually so if something ever breaks like currently actually my back vent fan doesn't work so I have the fuse pulled on that which is what that red light means means there's either no fuse or the fuses burst so I have the fuse pulled on that because it's not working and then the rest of this stuff if I ever need to work on it I can just come back here pop the fuse out and go work on whatever kind of wiring I need to in the front and then over here are my AC Breakers so this is the main AC breaker so if I turn this off it kind of cuts off all the power to all of my AC appliances and then these are the kind of individual AC plugs that I have so like the one that I had in the family room the one that I had in the kitchen and then the one that I had uh powering my Xbox setup and they're all kind of labeled this is the water heater family room 120 volt kitchen 120 volt and then so on this is the pretty side of my distribution panel and now I'm going to give you guys kind of a top-down view show you the batteries and the absolute disaster of wiring that's behind this wall right here I wanted to make this top part accessible so that if I ever need to do do any maintenance I could but essentially all of those different DC fuses all of these red and black wires they're individually routed from the back of my distribution panel back through this back pillar here all the way up around and then they're kind of fished out to whatever Appliance they're uh they're charging in the van and then these kind of thicker white wires that are coming out of here those go to all my AC plugs to the 120 volt outlets and stuff like that and all of these wires are kind of fished through holes and just kind of ran behind the walls in the van if I did it again I think I would run them in front so I'd have them here so if I ever needed to work on them I didn't I wouldn't have to fish them out from wherever they are Behind the Walls back here and it would make a little bit easier but it's worked fine and haven't had any issues so far and honestly that's pretty much it that is my entire electrical setup the only other thing that's back here are my one two and three I don't know how well you guys can read it but these are 100 amp hour lithium batteries and they're all tied together with all these wires so I have 300 amp hours of battery storage in order to power everything in my van and yeah so all of my charging equipment sends charge into those batteries and then everything that uses power draws power from them and distributes it out I think that I think I covered everything that I have back here my electrical setup um and then the only thing I have over here my water setup that's electrical is this sureflow water pump and that's kind of just hardwired into the fuse box that's up there water system is just a bunch of pipes and accumulators and stuff like that maybe I'll make another video and then also I forgot about it but my 120 volt water heater is right here but yeah these are also Behind these kind of little sliding walls and the walls back here are all beat up from having stuff constantly being pulled in and out of them but with all of that being said and kind of going over all of the different ways I have to charge my batteries ways that things use my batteries I'm going to kind of talk about how much power I realistically use kind of on a daily basis and how much power I think the average person would need in order to really never have to think about turning their lights off or saving power so I'm gonna get the van all cleaned up all of this stuff kind of shoved back in there and then I'll head inside and we'll talk about that so I have lived in the back of this van for just about two years full time and for the first year that I live in the back of the van I worked a full-time job which meant I was sitting at this desk eight hours a day working on my laptop constantly in the van with lights on Wi-Fi running monitor going and I rarely found myself in a place where I was using more than 200 amp hours of battery on any given day and that's only two-thirds of my battery bank and it only happened maybe once or twice when I would work all day play Xbox all night wake up do the same thing and it was super cloudy out and I wasn't driving the van anywhere that I would have any issues with any kind of power usage or running out of power or anything like that so in my opinion especially if you don't have all the bells and whistles and you don't have a super powerful LED roof an Xbox a gaming monitor or a bunch of 120 volt Outlets they have to power you really don't need that much battery power in a van in order to be able to survive or to live kind of comfortably without having to think about it I think in my opinion most people could get by with just one of those simple battery banks that you can buy set in the back hook up to some solar panels on your roof and and just kind of forget about it without having to deal with hooking up that entire electrical setup and just kind of drop it in and be good to go because nowadays those portable power Banks and and solar generators are so powerful that you really don't even need to deal with all that mess if if you really don't want to in my situation I would have been totally fine just putting a heavy duty solo generator back here and just plugging everything into that and being done with it so I think the most important thing other than having enough battery power to supply everything in the van is having sufficient charging and I see it a lot of times in people who are building vans that they'll put like 1200 amp hours of lithium batteries back here and then have like one or two 300 watt solar panels that realistically are going to take four or five sunny days to charge up that entire battery system so it doesn't really matter if you have that large capacity if you don't have the charging to kind of back it up so if you have a super powerful battery system then you need to get a super powerful dc-dc charger you need to have a ton of solar panels you need to have a bunch of different ways that you're going to be able to recharge that up because if you have a big battery bank and you're just draining and draining and draining and your charge isn't really equaling what you're draining it's just going to keep going down keep going down keep going down and then it's going to take you forever to charge it back up so typically on a really sunny day I can get anywhere from 100 to like 150 amp hours of recharge on my batteries which is like half of my battery bank so it's more than enough and sometimes I get even way more than that it kind of just depends on how my solar panels are angled or from if I'm parked under the shade or stuff like that and whatnot but the whole purpose of this video was to kind of give you some perspective on how much power you're really going to use in a little bit more layman's terms and make it hopefully a little bit more understandable for how much each of these things draw and how much power you're really going to use but in my opinion I just think a lot of people really overestimate or overdo their power system and then only really use half of it and if you're going to spend all of that money it makes the most sense to make it as efficient as possible and only really get what you're going to use because that extra will just kind of go to waste and it's just a waste of money yeah I think if you're thinking about building a van for full-time use specifically which is what I'm doing and you kind of want to estimate how much power you're using in a single day I hope this kind of gives you a little bit of perspective I basically live my life normally as I would in a normal house without thinking about how much power I use and I use about half of my system so if you want to use my system as a gauge hopefully this video will be somewhat helpful if anybody has any additional or more specific questions about it I do have a Discord group with a bunch of people who are building out trucks building out Vans and and just people who are generally interested in Van life how to do it and so if you have any questions about power setups or van life or finding parking or Plumbing or anything like that the link to my Discord will be in the description of this video so you can click join in and ask any questions and I pop in there probably I try to get in at least once or twice a day and I will answer as many questions as you guys have so and there are also other people in the Discord who can answer questions as well so but I have got to head into the city now get myself a shower and get myself packed because I am flying home this weekend for Easter to hang out with my family and hang out with my girlfriend so this video is a little bit different than my normal videos typically I do vlogging lifestyle videos so if you have any interest in watching those I have over 100 videos on my channel of daily life living in the van what it's like so if you want to go check those out check those out and as always I truly appreciate you guys watching if you haven't already please think about clicking that subscribe button it really does help out the channel and I will catch you guys next time

Channel: RyanTwomey

Views: 277,080

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Id: IBxjUey1Mzk

Length: 25min 11sec (1511 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 09 2023