Ultimate DIY 4 Season Truck Bed Camper | My Chevy Silverado Truck Bed Camper with Propane Heater

hey there out fishing in idaho today the river's coming up spring runoff and uh fishing slow so i thought i'd show off my truck camper this is a four season so i can use it in the winter months truck camper to get me out into the wilderness more often so i don't have to set up a tent and i could sleep in comfort and it's even heated that's why four seasons i have a propane heater in there and i'll go over all that just kind of an overview of why i built it and the features of this camper and the topper how i made those decisions and we can go into more if you want to in another video just let me know okay well i usually talk too much in this but i'm going to give you kind of um the inspiration or the uh the purpose the goal for designing this truck what i like to do is to get close to my destination for my adventures the night before i like camping as much as the next guy but i like to camp for a purpose if i'm going to drive an hour to a destination i'd rather sleep in my bed and get up an hour earlier and then drive to the destination i don't want to just camp for the sake of camping i'd rather camp at a mountain lake somewhere a backpack into that's fun to me setting up a tent getting rained on in the night trying to deal with sleeping bags and the dirt and the grime and um how cold it can be doesn't interest me for the sake of doing it i've done enough so this is a mobile mini hotel room for me that is my purpose um that's it's explicit purpose and it works well for that goal um i will still bring my camping stuff but now instead of driving two hours to get to the trailhead in the morning and waking up super early so i can go catch sunrise for photography now i can stay in this at night drive the night before wake up at my destination at the trailhead and save myself some time without having to wrestle a sleeping bag also i live in montana i'm actually in idaho right now i travel around a lot photography fishing hiking hunting whatever and it's nice to have the assurance that you have a place to stay um if you ever get on one of these mountain passes and it's closed or is snowed in or so the blizzard blows in and it's not safe to go anywhere it's nice to have a warm place so i just keep my propane tank filled up for the heater and i'm ready to go so something happens i blow a tire out in the middle of nowhere i'm not gonna freeze to death in fact i'm gonna sleep better than most people would at a cheap hotel it's clean um it's warm it's private and it's free now that i built it um that's my purpose so keep that in mind as you look at this build okay the first thing you will notice about this truck capper um other than my dirty truck is that it's not the same color that was because i bought it used off of gentlemen so this is a 2016 chevy silverado and this is an ar e topper it's one of their high-end toppers i bought it used because these things are stupid expensive new i think this thing was close to three grand brand new and i got it off a guy for eighteen hundred dollars things i was specifically looking for were windows that open up all around and also have a sliding glass window on it so that i can ventilate this and um of course i can't open it from this angle but i can open this and still have a screen so if i want to sleep outside whenever there's bugs in the summer or if i just want some breeze through there i don't have to open the window and let bugs get in and i can open that from the inside but more importantly i can open these from the outside so i can clean it really well both in and out and i don't have to climb in and come all the way up here to access all my stuff i can just do it from outside the truck another important feature is that this window also folds down so notice it's dirty in there and i it's very difficult to clean between this window and the back of the truck there's there's no way to get in between the truck and my capper because i don't have a window that opens the back of the truck which would make this very difficult to clean if this didn't fold down so i'll show you that real quick okay now we're inside here and this window folds down super easy folds inwards and now i can clean here and i can clean there there's also a hatch that can open this window up but no way to get inside the truck so that's neither here there but that was very important to me that i have that feature so i can make sure that i can see safely out of the back of the truck when i'm driving um another note is that it is carpeted on the inside you could do it yourself this one came that way thank goodness so i didn't have to wrestle that but it's carpeted all the way across and uh that deadens a lot of noise in here one it has a tiny tiny little bit of insulation but more importantly it it keeps it quiet in here now i have noticed um that some of this carpets may be pulling away just a little bit i got it for 1800 bucks so i'm not going to complain but all those things can be touched up if you want another thing this capper came with i like all toppers they come with little clamps to hold it onto the bed rails i replaced those clamps i actually drilled through the bed rail in four places with big fender washers and bolted it down so i don't have that big clamp sticking out um yeah you don't have to do that if you don't want to drill through the bed but four holes seemed worth it to me so those are the only holes i drilled in the truck bed to get the capper on or topper on now on the topper you'll notice that i have brackets up here for the rails on top back out to the truck didn't have any type of roof rack on it whenever i bought it i bought these on a discount sale rack from rei i got these mounts from amazon and i bolted them on there myself these are very sturdy i can carry my raft up there and drive highway speeds no problem and on the front of the truck i got these thule clamp on roof racks so i don't have to modify the actual truck itself because i'm unwilling to drill into that so that gives me roof storage if i want it which kind of gets back some of the space that i lost because now this is obviously a lot less bed storage space and you certainly don't want to take this on and off all the time especially when you have it sealed up which i guess i should talk about now as well so this thing is sealed very well to the truck bed i sealed it in numerous ways in fact if you look at the top or the front of it um you can even see some of the foam that i used to seal it right there i'd be happy to explain how i sealed and show some photos if people are interested i think it's sealed very well it's been sitting out all winter and i haven't been camping in a whole lot i did notice a couple things just now i noticed that that's a little bit rusty up there so i need to seal the uh the holes through the top of the topper for the roof rack a little bit better and that may explain why some of that carpet over there is peeling so that's unfortunate didn't do a good job on that but around the rest of the truck all around the rails this is sealed very well no water gets in that way or very very little at least i can't detect it and then around the bed i have seals to seal the bed up along the bottom on the top i replaced the seal on the rei or sorry ar e topper i'm happy to explain any of that if people are interested i don't know if they are but i have seals all over this place so whenever it's tightened up i can drive highway speeds and pouring rain and snow nothing gets in there obviously there's a little bit of dirt and dust in here around the edges i need to redo my seals but notice it's only going back i don't know what is that three or four inches and the wood's still in good shape so everything stays dry in there i stayed in this uh while i was absolutely pouring rain and snow uh in crazy winds and i stay dry and comfortable okay so that's enough about the truck set up talking about the actual camper build in here itself all this is built out of plywood so this is sanded phase plywood it's been stained i built it myself designed it installed it these things are installed super sturdy there are no fasteners through the truck but you cannot move it they do not rattle there is carpet on the bottom of these wooden sections to keep it from rattling but honestly they're clamped in they're so tight uh that i don't have to worry about it i've got these carpeted boards at the bottom there's two sections i'll show you that in a second that is kind of my bed stand up there and this is my floor this can be raised up to expand the bed size which right now is just slightly below twin so i hate twin beds but honestly this is supposed to get me sleeping up off the ground i don't want to be in the tent i just want to be comfy so i have this big foam mattress pad that i bought online had them make a mattress protector for it i've learned some lessons i don't know if i'd do this one exactly again but i also got a second piece that's almost the same size that i can double this i slip this inside another basically an oversized mattress bag right beside the next mattress and it turns this into almost a double bed which is pretty cool um you can sleep two people in here pretty comfy not a lot of headroom but plenty of room to get around in there the way i do that is by picking up these wooden plates um the floor which i will demo okay so like i said these floor plates lift up and expand the surface for the bed so this surface that the bed sits on that crawl inside to show you that wasn't very graceful but so now i've got the back piece up there it's kind of like a nightstand that i can set my stuff on without having to put it on the floor it kind of gives me a little cubby to tuck stuff under behind there now lifting this board up will actually expand the entire bed so i can put the next mattress section and have a whole deck across the top so this board just slips out and sits on these two rails nice and sturdy that actually stays in place while i'm driving too so especially if you have the mattress on it actually keeps weight on there and now i have storage underneath which i have a rug runner this is just a piece that i got from i think it was home depot cut off the roll just to quiet things down you know stuff's not rattling up against my bed liner which is rhino liner and keeps these boards from rattling around in there too but now this board expands the bed size so show you that and we have a whole deck so now if i put another mattress piece beside this this turns into a double and you can sleep two people or just one person in extreme comfort i've actually doubled this up throwing a double bed um sheets on here with a comforter and it's super comfy so come on inside and this is what it looks like inside while i'm sitting here i've got my propane tank here it's a little five pound propane tank my heater vent i'll go through that in a second and the mattress so now the mattress if it's expanded comes out to the edge of this board so i can still get into my little hatch here and get into storage um i can still mess with my thermostat uh it does reduce the head space in here basically i can't sit up in here on top of the mattress so um by expanding the bed you get more bed space you get more room for comfort but you don't get to set up so there's a trade-off you can get toppers that have an extra extended roof height i didn't one find one and two i don't really want one and look at that it's snowing outside it is what is it april 7th and uh yeah it's snowing go figure at least i have a nice warm camper okay perfect example it's snowing now i want to get inside here and i want to be able to sit up and do what i want so i'm just going to drop this floor back down i'm going to leave that nightstand up there and i'm going to get inside so take my shoes off i don't really want to get this all dirty my shoes in here crawl inside grab the bed [Music] grab the lid and now we're inside it's a little dark i do have a light up here um which batteries are entirely dead because i totally left that on while i was driving around but typically this lights up the bed pretty well too that was just built in i want to put in some additional soft lighting in here uh this is pretty bright but um you can light your bed any way you want so this is what it looks like when i'm sitting in here so now i can sit up entirely i have head space um yeah i've got headspace in here and i'm sitting up fully i can lean up against the bed or what i usually do is i take this little nightstand like i said this is just an extra section of the board i'll take it down and i'll sit back here this is where i'll eat um kind of use this as a table set up i can work on my laptop whatever i want around see i got plenty of room to get comfy my socks coming up get comfy in here you could throw somebody in a sleeping bag down here and have plenty of room to sleep i am 5 foot 11 and about 180 to 185 pounds so i'm a fairly small guy but i'm not short um not overly short and i can sleep fully extended in here this is a six and a half foot bed uh sleep caddy corner on there with my toes pointed and stay warm plenty of room okay now i'm up on the mattress note i can't sit up fully in in this position um but i was going to show you what i do i'm sleeping in here so i have some storage space down there i could just throw my stuff through my dirty clothes whatever i want down there for the night and if i want a nightstand because i like to have water beside me or you know if i want to have snacks i'll put my phone there while it's charging let's pull up this section and now i've got a nightstand and i can tuck some junk underneath there this is how it usually stays when it's just me so underneath here is all my storage i have three compartments to cut in around the wheel well see the wheel well back there these are just some uh junk piece of foam padding i put in there it's just a wooden bottom that was loud this storage spot here it's got a step stool in it and plenty of room for extra storage i put some little uh felt stickers there to keep it from closing and rattling too hard keeps it dead and down this is that rail that's on both sides to hold up the floorboards so for the bed extension and then at the front end is where i have my battery so that is a gel cell battery or actually yeah agm battery um sorry um so that's a glass mat battery it's got a little pocket back there for its stand and i've got a charger built in i don't want to take this battery in and out because they're heavy so i just plug in right there to recharge this battery this battery is for the heater i'll get to it in just a second again i have extra storage in here so usually in this spot i have a whole bunch of window shades um which are actually in the truck right now i'll point through the window those window shades in there they are simply reflective bubble wrap type insulation with black fabric on one side i put the black fabric outside so it doesn't look shiny and trashy from the outside it just looks like this is blacked out but i'll velcro those around all the windows so just velcro them around there at night and it blacks it out so it's basically a cave in here there's no light um girlfriend thought that was uh awfully dark that's how i like to sleep i'll block out all four windows so you can change in here if you sleep nude you can sleep newton here whatever now on the other side i have more storage the reason i made this long was so that i can throw my fly rods in there my fly rod cases so that way i got you know fishing gear right with me anytime you notice i'm sitting cross-legged in here right now again plenty of room for a guy my size two people gets cramped but this is primarily for me and then if somebody wants to go along with i just use it as a bed with storage underneath but um there's also a door that opens on the back side of here that kicks out open the bed so this opens this way so from the back of the truck all i have to do to put a fly rod in there is open it up slide it in and you're good to go so that's pretty handy that snow slowed down so i'll leave this open for better light all right turning around again so that's the whole setup um there's one more storage compartment back here and it holds my heater this is kind of the shining star of the entire build notice there is a pvc pipe that runs along the very back corner of the truck that's to get power from the battery that i showed you to the heater and there's a vent back there which is the heater intake so you can't block that but notice you know it's in the back so none of that gets damaged or blocked but that's the heater intake and that's the heater output and by heater i mean it's actually a heat exchanger let me show you that there we go so all i did was unstrap this this is just an old battery strap i screwed these through the bed of the truck i kind of wish i would have found a better way to do that but i was rushed when i was putting this in it was last minute i was going camping the next day and i screwed those through there and i put goopy silicone on it i kind of regret that that's what you get when you're rushed this is just a five pound standard propane tank though a little 90 degree regulator and this flex hose that i had custom cut to size at a local farm store notice this vent for the output is cut around the door so i have plenty of room for it to open and this storage spot is used exclusively only for this heater so this is a heat exchanger which means that the combustion gas so any of the propane and exhaust fumes never touch these ducts air comes in here into the box gets pulled in through this port gets heated and then exhausted back out into the truck this way the exhaust gases come in from the bottom of the truck and back out through the bottom of the truck i drilled two holes in the bottom of the truck for those two i think they're inch and eight holes that went straight through the bottom this is a propex i think it's a hs 2000 heater um they're in high demand they're hard to get i think it's a european built thing this is a u.s standard one it uses standard propane you can hook it up to a 20 pound tank i guess you could hook it up to a five pound tank this five pound tank will run this heater constantly on for approximately i think it's 15 hours and it's controlled with this thermostat so let me show you that turn it on just push one button it's showing me the current temperature right now it's 45 degrees in here and these adjust is set to point temperature which is set at 62. so now you can hear that air coming through and that's just air from here or actually it's open right now coming through this port and it's going to be heated up now in a second this flame is actually going to ignite and it'll change sound a little bit and all that exhaust is coming out the bottom of the truck maybe i'll show you that exhaust here okay i am going to make an attempt to show you where the exhaust for that heater inside is so it's actually still running propane tank exhaust vent which is blowing nice hot air right now thermostat again all this air inside stays inside and the exhaust comes outside underneath the truck so this propex has both an intake for outside air and an exhaust and i'm gonna show you up underneath here [Music] right there is the exhaust you might be able to hear that so intake runs way up here to the front of the truck far away from the exhaust which runs up underneath and i'm happy to show you if you want more information ask me but i route it back there so um the exhaust points backwards so while i'm driving it gets sucked away and the intake points kind of forwards um in a protected place so it doesn't ingest a whole bunch of dust and grit i haven't had any problems with plugs so far and you might be able to hear it it's just a nice little low rumble uh it almost sounds like a small car idling um honestly i can barely hear it when i'm this far away from the truck so anyway intake through the bottom of the truck from up front goes into the heater heats the air through a heat exchanger does not come in contact with the air inside the truck cap and then the exhaust comes back out all that hot exhaust and gets blown away so you could put a mr buddy heater in there an open face propane heater gasoline diesel whatever i would not recommend that in fact don't do that unless you really know what you're doing and you're willing to accept the risk um asphyxiation is a reality is a real possibility that can happen in a setup like this and it's not worth it um even if you don't get harmed like die from it you might get harmed by just breathing the fumes so a setup like this with a heat exchanger is the only way i'm going to heat this without it being electronic and electric heaters i looked into it um that battery in there won't run an electric blanket for very long at all electric blankets are not efficient um no electric heating is terribly efficient when running off of these batteries enough so that i felt like it was going to be enough for me that little propane tank will run me for four or five days and i say four or five days you know six hours seven hours eight hours of sleep for three four five days depending on the temperature outside i can bring two of those tanks and i can get you know seven eight ten or more days depending on the weather and how much this pro this heater actually runs off of the propane and all i have to do is maybe have a backup battery all those like goal zero and yeti and all those other battery packs um they're super expensive and just an agm battery will run longer than most of them um they have all those electronics built in they're super expensive this is a cheap way to do it it's safe and i can still use gas heat versus an electric heater or electric blanket or something like that so i'm going to shut up about that now this is what i recommend to look into it's not super cheap but i'm 100 convinced it was one of the best purchases i've ever made now this thing will get hot and by hot i mean like that 60 degree set point right there because he kind of gets trapped up against this roof while you're sitting up in here it'll be 75 80 degrees when it's 30 degrees outside i actually stayed in here one night it was 20 degrees out and i slept in my underwear underneath a light comforter um obviously the windows blocked out but i was super comfy this mattress pad a blanket over top of me and 80 degree temperatures while the wind was howling outside and it was 20 degrees it's awesome highly recommended this is not a super cheap purchase you can look up propex hs2000 does take some installation you do need a battery battery and the propane will both run for 15 30 hours i have 100 amp hour battery in there 110 amp hour battery i can go through how i sized all that how i decided on this particular unit how i installed it if anybody wants that i have some photos tell me i'll make another video but what i do when i'm going to camp um and it's cold some actually last time i did it was snowing i pulled over on the side of the road about 15 or 20 minutes before i got to my destination i opened up the window i reached in i turned on my propane tank which is clamped right there and i pushed that button to turn it on and i shut the window again and i drove for 15 or 20 minutes i showed up at my destination and it's already hot in here so i did was reach in grab my uh sheets which were right in there threw my sheets on threw a pillow up there i went to bed and i slept like a baby it perfect it's a perfect scenario without this heater this is just like camping anywhere else it's sealed up pretty well from dust and it's really sealed well from moisture but it's drafty um it's a truck bed this is just just standard truck bed steel um it's not insulated this carpet isn't insulated super well either the thing is though this heater works pretty darn efficiently it'll keep this place nice and warm all night in fact if it's about 30 degrees outside i can run this for probably four or five nights on one five pound propane tank if i really want an extra propane tank i can go 10. the limitation is the battery the battery won't run it for i don't think it'll run it for 10 days straight so you might want another battery or a way to charge that would not recommend hooking it up to your truck because if it drains your truck battery then you're stuck there forever so that's why i have a separate battery so if you happen to be like me um who just wants to get out more often and really doesn't want to camp for the sake of camping this is perfect um and when i say camp for the sake of camping i love camping but i like to camp for a purpose if i hike to a mountain lake and i want to wake up the morning beats mountain lake or buy a stream or way out there if i hike out five miles or even two miles and i want to camp that's worth it because i can wake up where i want to be if i'm just going to go to the lake or i'm just going to go to the river where i can pull up and fish and it's an hour away from home i'm way more inclined to drive in our home and stay on my comfy bed rather than set up a tent maybe it'll rain i have to deal with the sleeping bag maybe start a fire maybe the fires aren't allowed at the time sometimes i just want to be close to where i'm at and it'd be awesome if there was just a hotel room or if i had an rv but this now is my little mobile hotel room this is where i stay i still have all my camping gear and i will go camping this summer way out in the middle of nowhere but the thing is i'm gonna stay in this the night before so i'll get off work i'll drive five hours out into the mountains and uh park my truck and then i'm gonna start my hike five hours earlier from a nice comfy start and then on the way back if i get back late that night i could stay in here again so that's why i use this if that's the kind of thing that interests you some setup like this would be good i think it works really well um it's it fits me okay uh so that's the build i know i talked a lot but there's a whole lot more details to go into there's all sorts of uh tweaks and adjustments that you can make to setups like this i can talk about how i determine the height of the bed how i constructed these you know the actual construction the materials i chose the coatings i chose why i chose them the order that i did and how i planned it if anybody's interested in any of this let me know drop a comment um tell me what you want to hear about and i'll make videos um if i just made one video about it it's going to be super long and i'll ramble on guide me to what you want to hear if you want to hear something um topics that i think might be interesting things that i looked up online that i got some inspiration on and i used to make my decisions i could share how i did that things like that are sealing the truck the topper to the bed of the truck how i sealed up the tailgate um those are tricky there's uh i think i came up with some clever ways to do that um but it's particular to every truck how i installed the roof racks if that's interesting and that's super simple but happy to talk about it how i designed this i actually modeled this in 3d software i'm an engineer by trade or degree and i like 3d visualization i'll show you the free software i use and how i did that i can talk about the mattress um i can show you what i bring with me on a normal trip that could be food cookware water clothes i can show you how i prepare for trips like this if you want uh if any of that sounds interesting um i can also go over the limitations of it uh challenges the improvements i want to make i'm rambling on leave me a comment let me know what you want to hear if you want to hear more i'm happy to make another video um until then uh thanks for watching hopefully this inspires you to do something and i'm going to go fishing

Channel: Caleb Plumlee Outdoors

Views: 195,943

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Id: 1zEgbBnrvQI

Length: 30min 13sec (1813 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 10 2022