Ultimate Minivan Camper Conversion

so let's see if you can camp in a minivan this is Marshall from melanomatic Adventures let's see if he's home hello Marshall how you doing good how are you good this is Marshall and your channel name uh mellow nomadic Adventures very cool so you have a really nice minivan can you tell us a little bit about it absolutely so this is a 2013 Dodge Grand Caravan and I was able to find this van used and I had saved up some money so I was able to just buy the van outright for around a little under seven thousand and that's what I suggest you can do if you can do it if you can swing that is to save up and buy something that might be gently used sure and this is a Dodge that's correct it's a Dodge it's a V6 and I get anywhere on the highway I get anywhere from 24 to 28 miles to the gallon and the city it's in the 16 to 18 range okay and you've had good luck with it so far I've had really good luck with it I love the gas mileage and fuel efficiency um I also just love the tiny footprint of this theater okay and so you can do some stealth camping with this unit you can park different places and put your sunscreens up and no one really knows you're there exactly right and what I do to help kind of regulate the temperature inside the van um because I you know with the hot sun beaming in this is my 12 volt refrigerator right here to the right of me and I I don't want the sun to be constantly on it so I have some blackout curtains and I'll leave these up um all the time just to help regulate some of the temperatures inside the van the hotter it is inside the harder the refrigerator will have to work so I just keep these up these are on tension rods that you would have in your house in your window and I can take these out if I want to have a nice view or I can just leave it in and it's just a pressure fit and I really oh there it goes I really like having those in there oh nice yeah they just so you can pop them out pop them in really exactly okay cool except normally it's closed when I do that yeah yeah but it's fine all right and so you put a floor in uh we talked about that in the last tour that we did on your van and I'll link a description in the description on how you did that but can you give us a brief summary of how you built the floor so with the floor what I did because the reason I really put the floor in because the back of the van is taller and as you go towards the driver's seat it gets um foreign the floor goes lower okay so I want it to have a flat surface okay um also this floor is a composite waterproof floor that uh comes with its own underlayment and they just snap together nice easy to assemble and you get good wear out of it exactly and I think I I think I just bought one box and I still had quite a bit left over from that box okay so because I only did what you can see here right and obviously you took all the seats out yeah and discarded those and put the floor in okay right and you said you had a refrigerator here that's a 12 volt refrigerator yes and this is a 12 volt compressor refrigerator made by iceco it's nice I love this brand I love this refrigerator they send you the case that that's fitted for you the model you're using and one cool thing is it does have a light so at night you can kind of see what's going on or when you pop the lid you have a nice light yeah yeah it's not super bright but it does help sure um and it has a removable basket so this is awesome for when you need to clean inside the fridge you can take this entire thing out oh nice and this fridge is a it's not a dual zone but it could be a refrigerator or a freezer so you can just kind of choose which one you want to do I have mine set as a refrigerator and also at night I use these lights here it's a magnetic uh let me see here it's commercial electric these are rechargeable lights there's three different modes on these a high medium and low brightness level it's got a little bar there that you can hang it from something but it also has this magnet which is super handy and it has also magnets on these two sides but what I've done is I just used a magnet here on an existing bolt that I'm using for the header and my upright piece here and I just keep it there and so it's like my my door light when I come in I can hit the button turn on the light access the fridge if I need to get in there approximately how much did you pay for those I think I got a two pack of these for twenty dollars that's Home Depot okay all right yep okay and you're sitting on your bed so you built your bed um and it looks very comfortable this is just a simple bed build if you look underneath here I have you can see that it's just two by four frame that I've painted green and then on the top it's a half inch piece of plywood and I have additional storage all underneath of the bed the bed measures 30 inches wide by 75 inches long I believe um and it takes up 30 inches so you don't have much left to work with much space but it's a great size I in my opinion because you can Lounge on here you can use it as a couch like during the day if I'm in here I can use the back of my kitchen cabinet as a backrest oh nice I can sit here it's very comfortable I can get my laptop out or if I want to sit over here to the side I also have a way I have a flip down um I call it a desk I don't really know what you would call it but here is where I can have a drink I can use this cell phone holder to have YouTube playing at night as I'm sitting here I got my drink I could have a snack um or I could put my laptop here and work here and so that's really nice I love having this little cubby here and it's and you built this yourself I did and I've used basically one by threes and quarter inch plywood to build this entire thing and um it's got four different levels so on the top level it's a lot of storage with bathroom stuff things that you don't use necessarily all the time but I have hand sanitizer Band-Aids scissors I've tried to think of everything I would have in my house because my my goal is to go full time and so you know I didn't want to be without anything that I would need on the road and then have to re-buy it so I've tried to just use things that I already had at my house and just transfer them over to finding a space for them here in the van um which I highly suggest you do start with everything you already have get your get yourself a list going and then compare that to another list that you can find on my website at nomadic.com that kind of tells you what you need and you can compare the two and see oh I don't have this or that or you know you can kind of see what you need from there okay so you used to give folks advice uh that go to your website melonomatic.com and and you show them a talk about what does it take and what things should you consider if you're thinking about moving into nomadic life and it's not just minivans right it's basically everything in general like you said make a list of what you think you'll need and of course you have to downsize if you're going to sell your house and move out and those things so there's a lot of information on your on your website yes exactly and you know I'm it's a growing website I'm trying to add more info to really help the nomadic community and people who might not know where to start because I know when I was getting into it it's like information overload there's so many different channels and and websites out there that are telling you one thing and another so I found that it was helpful to find a couple key uh channels to follow and they really helped me like inspire me to create my own website so that I could do the same and create a central resource right and and you've been doing this for a little while you can stay out in your van I mean how long have you stayed out in your van at one time so I can stay out in this van I have enough water as long as I have enough water really I have a five gallon container plus I have another gallon water storage container I can stay for about two weeks okay and what's the longest period of time that you have lived out of your van so I have been one time I did a big road trip it was actually in 2022 and it was about four months four months yeah and one time so it was a lot of fun yeah okay I see you have a fan over there is that a 12 volt this is a 12 volt fan and I also have a battery powered fan this fan was gifted to me uh by my aunt hi Aunt Sheila and she gave me this fan they used to use this fan when they went camping down in Patagonia Arizona I believe it's in Arizona yeah it is and um they just didn't have a use for this fan anymore until they gave it to me and I love it because it goes side to side it has oscillating action and uh I just have it I actually have it clipped to where the seat belt it's an existing piece of the van okay I just have it clipped right there so that that fits well yeah okay so I'm looking at your uh your uh modification back here your wood yep cabinet cabinet shelving unit and so you put your jackery in there and the other miscellaneous things and you know I see some YouTube stickers on there as well yes so this is a new this is the probably the newest addition out of things that I've built I needed some additional clothes storage I noticed I had a bunch of space up here that wasn't being used so I built this and I built it in a way so that I could still access my drink holder right here oh I see so that comes already yeah so it comes already in the van so I can put my water there right now I just have like my ketchup stash carbon monoxide detector and I actually added some LED lights under here so this all lights up and I have a strip here that lights up and there's also a strip underneath that step and yeah and I have my little buddha candle holder back here sure very nice so we talked about the last tour we did uh that you installed a bulkhead in here as you call it yep so that's basically separating the front cab from the main living area exactly how is that working out for you I love having this here it gives me not only the ability to hang this blackout thermal curtain which is just attached with oh this will just pop up it's just attached with snaps so I can just unsnap this and these are snaps you can get on Amazon and I installed these snaps myself very easy to do and so if I wanted to I could take this down and have some light in here sure um but most of the time I just keep it up it helps regulate how much dust gets everywhere because we are in the desert it's a lot of dust yeah so a great thing about this bulkhead is it gives you the ability to hang little hooks which I use a lot of my box van D keychain these star lights I use what's called sticky gel packs and I just have little bitty pieces that I've cut every every few inches and that's what actually is holding these lights there these are battery powered lights so I try to get rechargeable items or battery powered items as much as possible but I also with having this bulkhead I was able to add a hook and attach this uh close holder I already had this bar and I thought well how could I attach it so I attach one end here to the bulkhead and the other end to the existing where you would normally hang a shirt or something okay so you use existing uh equipment that comes in the van exactly and this this bar I had from a previous vehicle so I thought why not try to use it and it's a perfect spot to mount my walking stick to store it when I'm not using it and Roy and Becky shout out to Roy and Becky for giving gifting me this walking stick really awesome very nice yep all right okay so let's take a walk around to the back this is my favorite part of this build so that's your living quarters your sleeping quarters living sleeping hang out and look at this it's a so this is this is your Galley is that correct that's correct and when I originally started I had a two burner cook stove and all kinds of cooking gear and then I get out to the desert and I'm like well I'm just one person cooking for myself right now so it was kind of Overkill so I've downsized to a single burner which actually store that underneath of the bed okay it's a gas one dual dual fuel stove but this is a custom built cabinet that flip has a flip down lid gives me lots of storage for my kitchen stuff collapsible sink uh my non-stick pan Which I love this thing the handle comes off and I have another smaller pot that it used that it can go on so that's very nice anytime you can have a double purpose for anything in Van life that's key but I've tried to just have some type of organization to where okay I know that my spatulas are always going to be in this basket it really helps to keep track of your stuff it's not lose things and you know if you're in a time crunch it's going to help you get things prepared faster but it's storage for kitchen stuff basically is what I use it back use this for so everything from cutting boards to um garbage bags a life straw kitchen knife spoon I have my a spatula there my spray this actually goes up into the basket but yeah uh spray here and then at the top you have this really cool little box shell yeah and this uh I found that I've had this extra space so I thought why not do a little tray where I've tried to put kitchen more kitchen stuff so spices my dish soap olive oil and I notice you have a high enough uh sides here to where when you're going down the road if you're going down that bumpy road that everything stays put pretty well yep everything stays put pretty good and I actually what I do is I have some um Koozies um that I don't really use that often so I just stick them in here to help add some uh stability okay to push everything up against it also one of these little dish cleaning pads just have that in there so it reduces rattles and keeps everything secure exactly and I see water here how does your water work so the water is just a simple 12 volt uh or USB powered it's a rechargeable pump I don't know if it's 12 I guess it is 12 volt but it's a rechargeable USB water pump and it I don't have anything to catch the water I usually just pour the water directly into a cup of some sort and I don't ever have any issues with it dripping after I use it the way I have it set up is I have the tube for the pump now this is an aftermarket tube I bought at Home Depot or Lowe's maybe but the tube I just matched the size of what comes with it and got a longer version one trick if you're going to do that you want to boil your tube for like 5-10 minutes in hot water in hot water to get it to straighten out that's going to allow you to form it and uh it goes through all of these shelves and then it's going to go into the very bottom area where I have additional storage and down here this is a magnetic uh lid where I have my five gallons of water down here and this is just overflow storage where I have extra stuff that I accumulate I have my battery a charger here and this is routed through the cabinet underneath and under the bed to the jackery so I can plug it in and have it charging tool stuff just an extra peanut butter container these come in very handy to store things in your van because they're waterproof so it's kind of your garage and kind of garage extra storage your water yep got the folding saw okay which can come in handy if you don't have an ax or a way to cut any wood that's nice then on the side here beside the cabinet I don't think we really talked about this last time but I just have like these are bags I found in stores I'm going to try to incorporate these these bags some way and then I also keep a collapsible bucket back here I have a monopod that hangs here for just in case moments and then the industrial strength velcro roll which comes in very handy to Mount Your remotes and various things in your van all right cool and that's uh stick on stick on and it's uh one what is it two inches you just peel the back off and it's an industrial strength okay nice nice and then a new addition if you've seen the tour of Steve's that Steve did last year I had a these cheap three drawer plastic storage container here and I took that out because I didn't like it and I've replaced it with this um table essentially so this is kind of my coffee station now so I can have like my artificial sweetener uh recently upgraded to this uh odor proof storage container for my coffee I have backup almond milk there got my little Mr mini Mr Coffee Maker that runs off my 1000 watt daiquiri and this is where I can get my coffee going oh nice and so usually before I hit the sack I'll go ahead and get my filter in there get my coffee okay get my water you can do that from inside the van too right yes you have access you don't have to necessarily step out into the cold or exactly and that's one thing I love about the having it with this design is I could just reach over from my bed and hit the switch and it starts and then the whole van fills up with the aroma of coffee right and I see you have uh window coverings on the back yep and this is a five layer window covering I kind of made in a hurry but it's been working it's the original one that I've used when I went to box van D's Meetup it kept falling so I added some tape just to give it a little bit of extra help staying up there now I can't take this down if I want to but I just leave it up yep um and then the side mirrors so you don't really need to view out the back exactly and this uh one reason I want it to get away from the three storage container is because the Jack and the tire iron for the van is stored in this compartment right and so I need to get that if if anything ever happens so I've designed this shelf to be removable so I can empty that shelf off I can take it out and I can actually empty out all the stuff and your spare tires underneath right underneath the van yeah very cool okay and so you also added solar now I noticed that you have these uh portable folding solar panel yeah so this solar panel is 120 watt solar from Togo power and this is perfect for my small jackery the 240 watt hour jackery it's compatible we'll go ahead it's actually compatible with both of the jackeries but it's really I purchased this for the small jackery the 240. so this one charges the small jackery yes and then I see up top you have a larger solar panel and this is a new addition since the last tour this is a 150 watt Rich solar monocrystalline panel that I just did my own DIY brackets out of some straps I found at the hardware store and I replaced the normally you would use these to attach your roof racks and I replaced this I just didn't take them out but I replaced them with uh Allen head okay and a washer so that it would make it a little bit more difficult for someone because with these someone anyone could just twist this yeah and then your whole roof rack would be loose so that's what I did I love having this this is dedicated to the big jackery 1000 years now this was a used panel too right did you buy this new or used this this one I actually bought new because uh the the used one I bought wasn't compatible with the jackery okay so there's like a very specific range of ohms or amps or something there so uh I had bought one from San Tan solar and it just wasn't compatible so I sold the panel okay so somebody else is using it now yeah yeah very good yeah all right and so you have some lighting outside at night that's important especially in the desert yeah you see where you're going you can see this cute little uh trailer I mean uh tent wolfwise tent this is a tent that wolf eye sent to me to do a review on which you can find on my channel but I found it's great to have just to have my little Outhouse so to speak so I got my bucket in there I got my I I don't do the regular kitty litter I do the paper pellets okay that they still use for kitty litter but I like the paper pellets better just it's a personal preference it doesn't really matter right but you were going to talk a little bit about your solar light oh I was just going to say these are awesome to have because they're motion activated and they're solar powered and so at night when you're coming out to get to the tent it's nice to have it here so that you don't trip over the rocks or there's some broken glass from people you know just you never know what could be out here so you want to have something uh like that set up exactly well you have a really nice uh set up here Marshall and I enjoyed very much going through it and thank you for sharing it do you have any uh final thoughts before we conclude uh final thoughts would be that uh you know this lifestyle does have its challenges there are definitely pros and cons to to living this way but I found in doing this for the last two years or a year and a half that uh the pros far outweigh the cons and if you've never heard of this lifestyle I encourage you check it out it's a lot of fun and you don't have to start with the big cargo vans or the RVs that you've seen you can start with something like this that you might already have in your driveway you might already have it which was the case with me so I already had this and I wanted to do van life so I figured out a way to make it work and now um like for example on quartzite I've seen so many more minivans this year it's just people are learning that they don't have to save up and get the big Vans so I encourage you to check out more info check out the links in Steve's video to learn more and look at the melanomatic.com for advice on how to get started thanks Marshall yeah thanks for the tour Steve appreciate it very much we'll see you next time awesome [Music]

Channel: Desert Adventures in Arizona

Views: 23,543

Keywords: #vanlife, minivanconversion, minivancamper

Id: BWMYnJg03DY

Length: 25min 34sec (1534 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 11 2023