VAN TOUR | Complete OFF GRID Self Converted Mercedes Sprinter Van

hi we're Olivia and Vian and in our last video we spoke about all of the difficulties of buying and converting a van and today we're going to give you the full tour of our self-converted Mercedes Sprinter van I'm going to be honest and say we regret not filming this sooner so we have now been living in the van almost three months and I feel like usually when I watch a van tour it's before someone's moved in and it's nice and clean and everything's fresh it's beautiful we're currently at a pat campsite and there's been a lot of sand in advance we've given it a quick clean we're going to give you a full tour but at least this will give you really the honest look at Van life because we've lived in it for three months we can tell you what we love what we don't like what we change let's go [Music] thank you so when you first come into the van you will see this fly screen and honestly it's been a game changer I can't imagine living in this van without it that's been amazing you might be wondering where can I get one I actually bought these from Bunnings and on the packaging it says that the width is adjustable but the height isn't the height had to be adjusted to fit in this spot and it took me probably two three days engineered the whole thing like change the pulleys like cut it to size it was not easy a mammoth effort but beyond being able to customize it was a game changer and we've loved it so Lydia really wanted a full-length mirror and you might be wondering whoa how can you fit a full-length mirror in event the only way you can do it is probably a behind the shower door sliding door which there's our uh and what having the sliding door besides the benefit of a mirror it also allows us to access the front if for some reason we need to access it in the night and drive off it's just a safety thing really there was a big priority for us big enough for me it just squeezes a little bit come through again to show see it's not too bad just a little duck to be honest like when we first did it we thought that it would just be like a emergency kind of situation like not really having worry about the size but I don't think we've ever gone through the slide no we use it all the time yeah it's pretty comfortable so good but especially when you wake up at like 2 A.M for a hike yeah you don't want to get out and get bitten by mozzies but behind vian's seat here you can see we fit the recovery tracks on a lot of other things as well yeah there's some other things like behind mine we've got the window shades we've got camping chairs we've really been able to fit a lot behind our seats yeah and you'll see when we go in there later we have an overhead cupboard which is why there's a lower head height here another thing I want to mention as well is that we had a two-seater bench in the front oh yeah so it's actually a three seater before I won't go into too much detail but if it's a factory option you don't have to get the seats engineered so I got a seat from a previous generation Sprinter because that's the only thing I could find for about 500 bucks and I had to put resistors in to trick this system into thinking that there's a third seat because if you have a three-seater there will be an airbag in the middle seat so I had to trick the system into thinking that the airbag was still there when it's not and yeah it's completely legal now I just say that we did actually get it approved and registered as a two-seater from a three-seater so good job van Legend it's ridiculous how many cup holders sorry there's literally one two three four five six seven eight and then there's like bottles on the sides yeah we put our bottles done here which is a really great storage spot for them when we're driving but um yeah we got book from my dad we've got all of our Rego papers just some extra things here because when you have a converted van you need to bring your papers with because we don't have a mod plate or anything so that's literally our papers yeah that's our papers to say that this is completely legal coming back out from the cargo area you'll see we have this overhead storage area now this is another game changer it has so much space in here and you won't be able to use it you seriously won't be able to tell yeah it goes so big it literally goes the entire way over the um front what do you call it the front driving area yeah yeah what we've got in here which you can't see but it's massive we have both of our hiking bags like huge big hiking bags we have all of our collapsible range like our laundry stuff our bucket our dish thing we've got laundry stuff like Peg basket we got extra toilet paper we've got extra like composting blocks for our toilet we've got bags we have some clothes in here one thing I also want to mention is you might think that's crooked you would be completely right I'm so glad that I used concealed hinges because obviously with like moving things like a van you will have like some settlement and we've driven on a lot of concealed roads so corrugated roads oh yeah corrugated roads not concealed oh both both um so I just need to go through and readjust all the cabinet fronts um to line them up perfectly but yeah more important things to do than uh adjust your cabinet front exactly once you've come out of this big storage era we've got like this is what we call the pantry I don't know why we call it that but we do yeah it's nothing like a pantry at all extra work top if we need but we don't really use this often maybe we'll have like batteries charging up here or whatever but it's a pantry area so we have all the manuals for anything that's in our van yeah we have our hiking boots we have our trainers we have Med like Med staff sunscreen bugs zappers like all miscellaneous Health kind of things and then right at the bottom we have an off-road first aid kit and a torch yeah his fingers crossed we never have to use the first aid kit or the fire blanket but um good to have just in case yeah we should probably say as well as you walk in the fire extinguisher is right there now where the fire extinguisher is traumatizes the arm because it ruins the whole aesthetic for him yeah but that is where it needed to be for us to pass the inspection to get this registered as a motorhome needed to be easy to access um it's not in a Cupboard easily visible near a door et cetera Etc you have got a little bit of Decor so we've got these little plants in this little Nichi area yeah they're stuck on with velcro so they have never fallen I love them they are they're so cute they're forever they're cute we wanted to add like a painting or a picture here but we kind of just like moved in and didn't get to do all the homely stuff oh now we're traveling we're on the road now it's one of those things we've also got a little area that has then we get to our shower now we were debating going with a shower screen but we went with a solid door just because we like the aesthetical and more also the shower screens are ridiculously expensive super exciting and hard to get in Australia like you can't get the Nautilus one in Australia it's like a Glide away or something it's called yeah and it's not as good as the Nautilus one so we end up just going over the door and we do love the way it looks so if you come on in we've got our first thing you're looking at is the shower Niche now again these bottles are velcroed in so they have not moved now I was so scared like any time we're driving and heard a bang I was like that's it the bottles are gone like it happened but they have stayed rigid this entire time so fingers crossed it stays like that the whole lap there are also really big bottles so they hold I think it was like one and a half liters one and a half liters I think it was now we haven't had to refill those yet now I don't know if that's a sign of the bottles being really big and great or us not showering enough it could be the ladder I mean as long as you guys won't be able to tell yeah tell how smelly we are and the second thing you may notice in the shower area is the toilet and I promise I'm not pooping right now so what we have is a Nature's head toilet so in the front section is where the p goes and then the back it goes into a bottle and it goes into a bottle which we replace probably not replace um empty every couple of days yeah about that and then the back is where the poo poo goes which We're Not Gonna open because they've been pooping exactly um and that I feel like a lot of people say that they do that change that like once a month but I feel like it's more realistically about to three or three weeks maybe we just poop a lot maybe anyway so the toilet does have a vent you can see it's pulling in air there and it comes out this side which so it doesn't smell no it doesn't at all which we've loved the toilet it's been great it is there is a toilet roll holder now we have to remember to take the toilet paper out but it's only shot once where we've forgotten to take this water only once we learn after so yeah so then we've got the shower which I did not take my time to untwist this pipe and I know I can fix it in a couple of minutes but I really really really love this caroma Luna yeah it's really nice it's actually not a much more expensive than like your regular ones and I do also have to say a lot of people might question the water flow um and say oh well like you know like what's the water pressure like because there's a lot of like shower heads for Caravan specifics um we have a big water pump that has a like an extreme flow rate purely because of our water filtration system but we'll get into that later so it's not an issue at all with this shower head um but it's quite adjustable on this rail setting as well different um low yeah yeah you may notice these little stickers and that's purely because I wanted everything to be serviceable and accessible so this whole section here is actually like one panel that I made that is actually removable just in case we needed to like um access Supply Access the plumbing for the shower now the coffee machine which was a hot topic of debate for us because this came from our house and I do also have to say if you watched our previous video you would have seen in the renderings that I did for the design of the van you would have seen the coffee machine and that's because I was dead set that we're taking the coffee machine with us we had this in our house it's been trusty we've had probably for like three years now yeah I wasn't so sure I just thought it'd take up a lot of space and would be messy but I'm so glad we brought it honestly so yeah I guess we should show that that's actually quite a deep section A worktop once again to show you how deep it is as well we've made a little drawer yeah well we didn't make it to show you how deep it was but we have a little drawer here which pretty much goes like 80 of the way where we have utensils utensils utensils and Brianna all built this custom to what we wanted in here so we've got like Alpha he's put these little like dividers in these are custom built into the drawer just so we had everything we wanted in here and it would fit perfectly we have a bushman's DC 130x I believe it is um so that means it's 100 130 liter fridge which has been plenty for us yeah it's been really good we can fit a lot in there and it's a pretty efficient fridge as well every single cabinet was built with a purpose this one it's a mess right right now and we don't have the towels here but normally we have towels here yes we usually have beach towels and face towels up there and a squeegee for the shower yeah and then the bottom section we have coffee beans cereals coffee mugs sugars flowers Staples we turn some more of the lights on so it may look a little different but coming off from this coffee Nook area I guess I'll go through the overhead cabinets first we've got this little niche decorative area just to break up all the white and add some more plants again they're velcroed in so they stay there then we've got our first overhead cabinet which is all our like toiletries it's got all our toothbrushes our face washer toilet spray earbuds like Listerine everything in there and next one we've got more kind of beauty stuff I've got a waxing kit because we're at the beach all the time I needed my waxing kit good waxing here we've got Shavers hair dryer which I have not used at all get a microfiber hair wrap thing it's been a game changer I'll link whatever it is on the video I never dry my hair with a hairdryer so two finding kits things like that then we've got the first one of the clothes so this one is my clothes yeah it's mostly like tops and like I've got some dresses in there and everything Lydia has two sections for clothes we have the same map sections I think of like 10 of one of them thanks for this you ready so this is mine shirts dresses things like that yeah this one is underwear bathers sports bras bras things like that yep um and again we shared this section this section's mine and the back one is mine the back one is it looks the same exactly the same and then we've got this one which is miscellaneous it's your pants only one bedroom he's got one bag here but it's still a bag that takes up space okay ten percent and I guess we should add that we've used packing cubes for all of these it's really just helped us keep the space organized and keep them like categorized as well like I'll be like okay this is dresses this is short sleeve shirts it just keeps it nice and handy I guess I'll continue for the rest of the overheads so this is now like the kitchen sort of overheads so this one is like spreads oils um we've got pills protein powders things like that and then the final overhead is [Music] it's kind of a bit of a mess there is a little lip I want every single one of the overheads just so when something comes running forward it doesn't open the door this is these doors are literally just held in by the strut and my gravity like it's they're not moving they're amazing we have no issues of this they always stay in place next is probably one of the biggest showcases in how overly designed and thought out this whole build is and that is the spicejaw these are all designed to fit perfectly in here with a little bit of room in the back for another row yes if we need if we need if we expand our uh recipes we actually went through all of our recipes and we were like all right what spices do we use how many spice jars are we gonna need and Brian made sure it fit in here so very grateful for that I love having these and underneath that is is our dishes now what you don't see right now is usually we have our towels in here but we've currently got them out on the washing line but usually we have our kitchen towels just either side of all of these we've got four of them just so that when we're driving they're not like flying about but we haven't had any issues of them at all oh another exciting bit another exciting bit it took me forever to find a bin that was perfectly sized oh look at that look at that site for a week now so we are due I've been empty right at the back you can see a little storage area that is the like little turkey area you know we pull it out we empty the bin and now we're just grabbing your bags from back there it's a nice place to store them exactly [Music] yes they're on soft clothes and not think about it all right so in our next section what we've got at the top is we've got like jars and sauces and things this shelf is also removable as you can see here just in case we wanted to fit something bigger in Yeah in our pantry and it's the same for this one yeah so we've got that as removable if we need but we like having it with this divide the bottom section well the middle section we've then got pastas Rices dried fruits sesame seeds chia seeds things like that they're all in their own nice little containers down there and also fit perfectly yes they fit perfectly you can see that we have two kicks here so that's purely for your toes when you're working at the kitchen so that you're nice and ergonomic whatever um but I didn't want to waste that space and also um if you can see we have an airfryer in here slash oven and that would not have fit in here unless we make these sections smaller so I just went in instead of having the toe kick and then like a ball over it it's just a dip like a right angle with wood so it's about extra space perfectly and we've also got like cutting boards and and things like that yeah so just next to that is our next kitchen cupboard and it's a bit of a mess in here at the moment but it's all like our metal balls uh saucepan air pans our Wok we've randomly got some sugar in there too at the moment which shouldn't be in there but it is measuring cups and again removable shelf if we need yep and right at the bottom we've got our two induction cooktops we've got like nachos nachos we've got um a sieve we've got a slow cooker we've got um what are those measuring scales yeah um there's quite a lot down there you also will see this little bit which we'll explain later so this is a boring one it's cleaning so we've got all the cleaning items here obviously the sink as well taking up some of that space and then at the bottom the kitchen the KitchenAid perfectly now we use the KitchenAid quite a bit for making doughs and cooking things from scratch behind it there is the wheel well John is showing yeah oh yeah perfect yeah like that thing is not moving which if you have a KitchenAid you know how heavy it is so it's good to not have it moving while we're in here I'll just explain a little bit of the utility control panels um so we have water pump switch here and we have an aircon remote here and then we have the water heater control panel here and then we have the little max air fan remote so we can just turn it on can you see where the exhaust fan is you may have noticed it earlier it's by the coffee Nook section it is filthy it always gets real filthy like so so dirty so quickly so we have to clean this thing constantly but we love it like for ventilation getting airflow in the van it's been amazing it's unreal actually like when we had the little teaser but when we had the uh Skylight open and like literally just turn this on like very very low you can feel the air like really like coming yeah it's amazing so love that but it's filthy all the time and you may have noticed above the shower area there's a little Gap there that's because it also exhausts out all the elevation yeah and also when we cook with induction flip-flops yeah and also comes with a little remote so uh when we're lazing in the bed we can just grab through it turn it on or turn it off so usually it's pretty noisy turning it on but that's because like pushing a little rain Hood up you might be thinking rain Hood well that's because you can have it running while it's raining it's got like a little cover on it with like a little Bend so it's actually bringing air up underneath that plug so yeah so I literally have ventilation even on rainy days which beautiful so putting away the exhaust fan remote what else do we have in here that we need to talk about so we have I love truma they have a beautiful reverse cycle or ducted air conditioner which we have um it's actually it runs pretty efficiently when you have a running on like a 35 to 4 degree celsius day and you'd have the temperature set about 21 degrees Celsius it probably pulls about 800 watts 700 Watts which is it's pretty good so we have a diesel heater it's a truma D6 so not only does that heat the space like with the vents again vented it also Heats our water um so one of the things that I really wanted to do in the van build was simplify while keeping like the luxuries so I didn't want to have a gas bottle and having to worry about filling up the gas or having to get a plumber to legally do it if you have a diesel heater you can just plummet yourself and that's it you don't need any certification from a qualified person I opted to drop the diesel tank which was a pain in the butt for the Sprinter um and then put my own fuel line in and then had that go to the diesel zero and it's been worth it it makes the water so hot yeah like instantly oh not instantly but like 10 15 minutes water is boiling hot I mean currently we haven't used it that much because we're in peak of Summer at the moment so we've been enjoying the cold showers but the times we have had hot showers have been really nice it's also designed to continuously run but we really shower that often so hey you're pulling this out there's no point in having it run continuity for us at least we just turn it on like 30 minutes before we know we're gonna use it but I'm sure when we go into like snowy regions like Tasmania we will use the space heater continuously so we might as well have the water running as well which also I do have to say if you have a running continuously it doesn't use that much diesel I think it's like 500 milliliters power so I mean the whole day for two liters well that's also it only runs continuously for four hours a day to keep the water tank full if you're not using it so between 500 and 2 liters of diesel a day which yeah that's pretty pretty cheap they're both trim up products and you can buy a little computer and they can talk to each other and you can set a temperature I have temperature approach throughout the van um you can set temperature and they will work together but like I like control so I just control myself but you will notice the same looking Vents and that's because that's that's why they're both tumor products um so we have a aircon vent here the easel heater vent here and then down here we have a diesel heater event as well which you can't really see I really try to keep all the heater vents slowed down because obviously your hot air rises and then all the air con vents I ideally would have put one here like blowing onto that window because if you don't know when on hot days it's not the air or whatever light that makes the van hot or whatever it's actually just the windows baking in the Sun so if you cool down the windows the van will be called so yeah that's why we didn't have like an overhead aircon because yes it will keep the van cool while you run the air con but not when the aircons are off like it'll instantly go hard whereas if you call the windows and they're really cool and they all stay cool for a little while when you turn the air con off it'll sort of set cold it's more effective more efficient yeah so we've got the heater AC heater down there and then another heater here another heater down there then our aircon here icon here we've got an aircon at the back which maybe we'll show when we properly get back there we haven't shown in the sink oh the sink all right I'm just going to point out what this is really how well designed it was like it's right up to the edge of this cabinet here so we've got the sink which we've got this cover for it um Hydra dishes but also if you want more cutting uh like counter space which we haven't actually used recently but we would keep it covered because it looks a bit tidier we can pull that up open it up and as I say the sink itself is an Ikea sink it's actually really impressive it's I think like some sort of I'll I'll double check what it's made out of but they're notorious for scratching um so we were actually looking at sinks that were like double or triple the price but then we opted for the Ikea one because it's perfectly sized and I was like 200 bucks or something like it's actually really cheap it was actually ridiculous pretty sure we'll double check this but they have like a 30-year warranty on it yeah like that where it's meant to be scratch resistant if it scratches you're covered under warranty so much cheaper than all the other sinks out there um and it's been perfect and we've got the caroma again for the tap which we like yeah it's good it's same same same as the shower also I guess we should say we have electrical outlets oh yes swim plugs everywhere so we've got plugs here plugs uh behind the coffee machine plugged down so we've got plugs everywhere as well but now for the seating area I guess you guys would know that in our last video we said that one thing that was really important to us was a comfy bed so we wanted a bed that wasn't convertible but we still wanted a seating area to be able to sit eat have dinner work on our laptops whatever and this is what we've done here and we love this area so we've got these little seats and we have a little right next to the window it's elevated at my feet but it's a great spot to work the Ann set it up so it was like perfect height for our laptops and everything got a little bit of Headroom as well so we're not too close there also that AC vents if it's really hot we're working at the desk and we've got the AC blasting which is this they've also got what are these called cigarette charger sockets whatever yes with a cigarette charger socket things here as well so we can charge our laptops our phones which everything just for that so the amount of times that I've seen people with Vans and let's say MacBooks or something that is compatible with like a USB C type charger or just a normal charger turn the inverter on and then plug their MacBook charger into the wall is like honestly it's ridiculous these charges are fantastic they're actually approved and certified by Apple they're scite techy or however you pronounce that and it's a 72 watt charger which it's 12 volt watts in the normal charger and then 60 watts in the other one it charges a MacBook Pro pretty quickly and even a MacBook Air as well quickly it's it's honestly a game changer and we don't have to have the inverter on you may see we've also got this little window air which is little that's a huge window a big window air which van has framed out and it just looks so beautiful like I love this when you're at your desk working and it's like it's just beautiful anyway but beyond throughout the whole van the main door the back doors and this door has built-in blinds which here's an absolute Legend there was such a pain it was a pain but so worth it it is so nice just being able to pull the blind down and once again they also do cool down the windows like it is it doesn't get hot with the blinds down yes really nice and I feel like it matches as well like having the gray yeah it was the gray with the gray hey we were planning on putting some personality into the van but uh we were just wait till you get to start traveling so that's one thing you'll notice is we've gone with very white for the van and I know a lot of people do that but it keeps it very neutral keeps it bright makes it feel bigger and we wanted to oomph it up with color in like decor and extra things like that now we have barely decorated our van and added that homely touch because when we finished our van and got it approved I was like we're the type of people who could spend forever on this let's just go and travel yeah and now that we're traveling I'm like I don't really care about those things I kind of just love the van how it is So eventually we'll add homely things but for now it's um great so now with the cushions we grabbed Ikea outdoor shout out ideas and then my mom's friend Ali actually custom cut these for us for a bottle of wine and exchange what a Legend um so she cut these and they are perfect we love them they are great so underneath we actually have storage area in the chair yeah so this one's just for like towels and spare blankets blankets whatever now the other section I'm gonna be very embarrassed to show because it's a laundry bin which we've been at this campsite for a week now and haven't done any laundry because look at that view yeah why would you I should say as well this isn't just a week of laundry like we've been wearing things a lot we have not done laundry in ages our fault I'm embarrassed but this is our laundry bin basically I also just wanted to say with the cushions um there's actually a lot of benefits with it being from Ikea because we were able to select different cushion inserts so we have like a harder on the bottom sit on it and have it quite a firm and then we've got like a really soft kind of backseat but not only that they're actually outdoor cushions as well so they're like yes somewhat somewhat waterproof and like you can clean them so easily yeah why don't you just remove the cover and give them a wash if we need not only that do you know how expensive getting custom cushions made yes we looked into getting custom cushions made and they were so expensive so next is the bed section we have a little step to get onto the bed I feel like because Lydia has little legs hey um but yeah you can step on that to climb in which I can't lie on it because of these flying pillows yeah so we usually move the decorative pillows when we go to bed well so I can lie down really comfortably yeah and sleep so van is a side an angle sleeper so he has a slight Bend and he can fit fully in there I can lay down fully yeah which I'm we should put our Heights on the screen I think I'm like 186 187. this is more comfortable bed than the bed that we had in our house yeah we love it we brought the mattress from was it making mattresses yeah you can see it's pretty thick mattress and it's made it's actually a normal mattress that they just make to size yeah so we got that custom made pretty cheap actually and it's so comfy we love it yes it's actually a double size and I believe it's eight centimeters shorter than a normal double size mattress so it's pretty big and like when I wake up in the morning bounds I'm like the opposite side and I'm on the opposite side there's still a lot of room for it and we we were pretty comfortable with sleeping on a double because we stepped on a double bed when we were building the van that Lydia's mom's house shout out also I guess we should say that we didn't put overhead cabinets over the side where our head is yeah to make it feel more spacious because what we do as well is sometimes if we want to sit separately or if we don't want to sit on this area and want to be lazy we actually sit and work on the bed and you can sit fully upright yeah there and cover something still even here for my head but while we're in the bed area I might as well show you guys everything in the bed area so we have a little fan there which is Sirocco Elite two whatever ladder on this yeah it's the fan that literally everyone uses but we don't only have one we have another one right here it's dirty it's dirty but they always are they get dirty it's another thing that we have to clean periodically in the design I wanted I wanted a little space to Lydia's phone um to charge and also there's like a little light switch here um but she can just plug the charger in there the phone goes I can plug put my phone on here every night so it's nice and close to us and it gets charged to match the aesthetic I put a little fake cabin up front with the same size border around the edge and then on my side excuse the blanket but I put my phone here and it charges on that Port there which will show better from the garage area and here was the air Convent and the aircon thing and onto the Skylight it's a Dometic I think it's a midi we wanted to go with a bigger Skylight but this is the biggest one we could fit in between the the structural beams that go across the top of the van without having to remove those and then get that re-engineered by an improved engineer from the the permanent transport and as well I think that it's the perfect size like I don't feel more it brings a ton of light into the van and it leaves room for the overhead cabinets true it's got lights on there like little blue lights no more lights it's got a blackout line and then also flat screen um and it's also you are able to open it and lock it into place not only did Lydia pessimi with uh getting the van done there's also little things that she got me to redo multiple times it's a good reason for good reason last thing I pointed out to Vianney I was like Beyond I think that could be better and then after he did it he's like you're right well van showing is really just the framing around the edges I can't remember what we did previously it was like a really skinny one it was quite baggy it was like a flexible plywood that I used before yeah but now it's removable and it's nice it frames it out it makes it look a little more finished so I actually just put two nuts in oh not two nuts two bolts because there was already rib nuts in there and literally this one and this one you undo them and this whole thing just pops out yeah um so the whole area is still serviceable if we need to do something with the wiring in the van or whatever we're over here we have a Servo touch GX and that's connected to our serbo GX um so pretty much what this does is the touchscreen where we can manage and check our tank level sensors for example so it shows a fresh a waste our battery status the DC power that we're using our solar charger what it puts in uh as well as our AC loads and we can literally control anything and everything in the whole system for this display like uh for example it's an inverter on you can send inverter all the charger on um it's really good honestly you can't say anything bad about the victron system it's really amazing you may have noticed uh battery is a little bit low that's because we're at a very beautiful campsite but we are under trees yeah so we decided to just stay under the trees and appreciate the scenery you rather than worry about keeping the batteries topped up so we do actually have two DC to DC charges and that's because the alternator in this Sprinter is quite capable I think it's a 220 amp alternator but I also didn't want to con constantly Hammer the alternator because I know that's bad for it so instead of using fuses I opted to use two circuit breakers so we can independently control whether we wanted them on or off and I put that under Lydia's seat the passenger seat so that she can turn it on and off when we need it's like part of our routine easy charges and I can just lean down and get them before I open the door it might look like a mess it is a mess but I promise it's an organized mess yes it is all right I guess I should show this as well the back doors oh yeah we framed those out also it's got scratches on it but that's it wipes off with the beach wipes and they also have lines in the back we put a lot of Utilities in the back of the van which really opened throughout the van so we've got loads of storage space actually in the van so this area has really become things we don't need to access often now we can access these from lifting up the mattress and moving the bed slats but the best way is coming to the garage so we've got the suitcases and this gray storage container which I'll go through later we've got inflatable kayak our charging cable our hose laundry line air compressor tools spare water and one thing I wanted to share with these suitcases and the gray storage container we've stored like long life Foods backup water things that we might need when we're off-grid and remote but one way we manage that and know exactly what we have in there it's probably a bit crazy but in my notes section we have fully listed what is in every single one of these so basically we can be in the van and I'll go down we're out of spaghetti and what I'll do is I'll open up the notes search in the note for spaghetti so here I can see that we have three packs of spaghetti and it's in suitcase number one which probably makes us seem crazy but it's a really good way to know what's in the back without having to come and look we'll pull everything out to show you what's behind in the garage only really when you pull everything out that you realize how much space is in there yeah it's truly amazing you also have to say with all that storage and whatever banging about it does come with scratches but it's only surface scratches and it's so easy to fix so but we never really look exactly as much as it traumatizes me before you show the back of the garage but we should shoot oh yes as well yeah so it's actually also shiplap and it lines up with the rest of the shiplap and also here is one of the other aircon vents as well as the IR receiver for the aircon there is the diesel heater it's got an exhaust and also an intake that goes to the outside of the van um that just ensures that no fumes or anything obviously come into the main area of the van and also fresh air for the uh motor that runs in there then we have another vent here just to keep this area warm as well let's say we go in a snowy area which will get to with the batteries in a second but batteries don't like being cold so then we control the temperatures of the battery as well under here well under here we have a lot of ducting and whatever for the air con as well as the theater as you can see and a lot of pipes and then down here is our reverse cycle ducted air conditioner which I I cannot say enough at how amazing it is and we put a nice cover over that it still gives it some ventilation but it allows us to keep that as usable space so we can still put things on top of that exactly right so you put like lighter things like our kayak seats and like paddles like lots of Life jackers everything goes on top of it so probably the more exciting part for a lot of people for you before I get into it I just wanted to say that into today's like in terms of prices and what is available I probably would have gone for something a little different purely because we when we bought everything for the setup for the electrical system victron prices were 40 percent lower than that so this whole system probably would cost about twenty thousand dollars and it probably costs about ten thousand which is still a lot but in terms of what we're getting at it in the quality and the reliability as well the longevity of all these components I think also we should note that we don't have any gas in our bills so really it's all electrical for cooking and everything as well so having this more full-on setup has been good for us yeah it has and like you've seen before we're at like 20 something percent because we were under a tree for a whole and haven't driven but we can go completely off-grid for long periods of time which we have done let's get started so uh when we opened the store our Inlet or the charger for the inverter is through the floor and while this inverter can do a 32 amp Inlet I only opted to use a 15 amp Inlet because no caravan Park in Australia isn't going to have anything more than 50 amps so what's the point in spending 300 for an inlet when I can spend 20 dollars for an inlet and just get the same result um so we have a 3000 volt amp inverter which Peak usage for an hour can go up to 5.5 kilowatts if any of you are interested but not only that if it's connected to the inlet it has something called power assist with and what that means is when it's plugged in you can have literally the 15 amps or the 32 amps depending on how much you use plus the 5.5 kilowatts for I think like an hour an hour and a half running so we could probably have nine kilowatts running free our whole AC circuit which is really impressive next up is the little computer um it's just a Servo GX you don't need one but once again when I bought all this stuff it was a pretty cheap solution for like a water tank level sensors and also being able to turn this on and off and also manage and look at the stats of the electrical system we also do have a master isolator for the batteries it's it wasn't necessary because the battery monitoring system we have I can't show it because it's behind this panel um it is a smart BMS the victron smart BMX and that actually has a built-in 400 amp commutator um so you can turn it off and on and isolate everything in using the app or the display in there but I wanted to have one just because you know safety I can just go done like it's it's a lot simpler to look at this and go oh yeah off switch if someone's not familiar with the setup under here we have two 200 amp hour victron smart batteries I would just say this again these batteries are amazing but I probably would not go for these batteries but depending on what other batteries you can get in the market yeah at the time that you build um purely because they're so expensive now I think one of these batteries was two thousand four hundred dollars and now I'm looking at prices in there like 3 800. it's so much more expensive but they're really really amazing thing about them is that they have built-in cell balancing they have like all these little safety precautions they have built-in temperature sensing one of the greatest Parts about them is that they have a huge huge huge constant um power drawer capability so what that means they can literally pull close to 400 amps of continuous load for like an hour so we can actually use the 5.5 kilowatts safely which with the cheaper batteries sure you can have the inverter pull three kilowatts or four kilowatts but it's not entirely safe to do it constantly and as well like batteries are expensive so you don't want to hammer them and these batteries are built to be hammered they're honestly just amazing I won't bore you guys too much with the complete explanation of the electrical setup um I'll just run through the basics so we have two DC to DC charges they're the Orion TR smart isolated had I done this again I would have gotten the non-isolated ones purely because you know don't need the uh to the the van chassis um in in the Batman this van in particular but there were none available so I went for the non-isolated ones and just ran the extra ground table um what that means is we can get pretty much when I do have it running it's like 900 between 800 and 900 watts charging just from the alternator of the van and it it does it fine the band batteries happy the van is happy and I've checked with Mercedes and they said it's all good and then we have a mppt charger and it's a 150 35 solar charger and it's also a victron one what that means is that we can have our I think 450 watt solar panel we went with mono panels purely because they would perform better in most scenarios in campsites um compared to poly typically in ideal conditions we don't really need to use the DC to DC charges we are fine just running off of solar in most cases it's only like a rarity that we need to use the dctdc charges happy with the solar then another like amazing amazing component that I think more people should use in their builds is the victron links distributor and what that is it's pretty much a positive and a negative bus bar as well as like a fuse holder but not only that with our smart BMS tell us if the fuse is blown and I can tell a cycle pretty much anything we need to know and you will not be able to well it'll be very difficult to be able to have a positive bus bar a negative bus bar as well as how many ever many fuse holders you need for for instance for us um for the same price as a Linux distributor another really really good component that I think more people should use is a victron smart battery protect um so pretty much what this little thing does is between well you can use it anywhere but on the positive line from the battery or whatever bus bar to your DC box literally anything there's a you put a little component in and what you can do with that one is you can control it through the Bluetooth and that will monitor the voltage of the battery and you can set different parameters on this snap smart battery protect just like any other component of this whole system where you can set okay cool if my voltage drops below 12.4 volts just disconnect this whole circle so that would just turn off the whole EC fuse box section as well as the AC section it's really good for protecting your batteries so let's say you leave your van for like two months for example or a week or something and you're not getting that much solar and your fridge is constantly running and you have your exhaust fans running don't want to kill your batteries it'll just turn it off and it's pretty much just like isolating your batteries and it's like 100 bucks why would you not another cool thing about it is in the next video you'll see a little something go wrong um really I didn't have to come at the back and isolate the batteries or anything I could just open my phone and go DC circuit off on my phone and that would allow me to do any maintenance work or fix anything on the DC circuit safely because there's no power going to it I think that's pretty much it oh yes a water pump we have a really really high flow rate water pump just because of our filtration system that we have because we have a bore waterfall filter as well as a sediment filter oh I forgot so the sediment filter the one that we have is a thirsty Nomad well the whole system is the first genomic and the sediment filter is pretty pretty expensive and like they explain it is it's the Ferrari of water filtration systems but because of that you need a high pressure and a high flow rate to go through that filter so we opted for a bigger water pump now for the water tanks we have two of them they're both Atlas tanks and they're flush mounted underneath the van um so one I think is a 50 liter tank for our gray and the other is a 120 liter tank for our fresh and you might be wondering well why don't you have any guards on it and that's because it is made from a food safe material that is at least one centimeter thick that container is not going to get destroyed by any rocks or anything one thing that's special about the van as well is that we use the same flooring that we have our house in the van we have multiple different light circuits so obviously one for the shower yes but then also what is amazing about the van is that it has undercarb lights so when you're doing cooking or whatever it's well lit and it's not a big Shadow on your food or prep area under floor lighting I only really did this as an aesthetic thing and to like make it like more balanced the lights but uh I recently learned from one of Max's videos um that it actually doesn't like light up outside like you can't really see in when the undercarb lights are on so there's a extra benefit yeah extra benefit from it I guess we should say that with these lights they're all on separate circuits and different switches as well initially I was going to use normal house light switches but then after doing research I noticed that those ones aren't as hearty or durable as the DC ones and over time can be potentially dangerous um so it just went with simple like um booting light switches like DC light switches but what's nice about the men's nib I actually got a tier and they have a look at it they have like little lights on so you know when when's the lights on yeah and they're also waterproof so yes I mean not that imagine getting that wet but uh yeah so this is cool it's great having them all on separate circuits because depending on what we're doing we can have everything off apart from the kitchen lights if we're cooking something or if you want to conserve electricity then we can just them all off and leave this one on because this is the only one that's on a separate light circuit so there's one here one in the shower one for the undercabs obviously there's one right under there as well um that was a huge pain to do across both uh on the cap here Main to here as well and then at the back here I didn't want to be one of those people that had to get out of bed to turn the lights off so I put one here but we don't really use this one that often yeah I only used to Skylight one which I wasn't initially gonna hook up but Lydia was like yeah you might as well hook it up the switch is there the lights are there grateful that she did that because uh they're super handy it's and the blue light is quite nice easy on your eyes as well at night so yeah like if we're laying bad on our phone or like on our laptops or whatever then it's actually really nice having the blue light yeah it is which I thought it was going to be horrible but yeah I thought it's like oh yeah disco disco but no it's actually really nice I nearly forgot to say what material all the cabinets were made out of it was all made out of marine plywood um we found a supplier local to us and it was actually pretty like pretty decently priced so I thought it was probably one of the best materials to use because it's durable um won't just degrade like a chipboard or MDF and it's a lot lighter in weight than a lot of the woods so yeah yeah and like literally I used it even for like the cabinet fronts um so just use different thicknesses of plywood and just cut the strips and I guess that's one negative these fronts are beautiful but having this feature collects stuff collects so much dust oh this is so annoying but um I mean they're beautiful they really add like something to the cabinets and make them look really nice but they just get Dusty I really wanted to add like more definition like because you have a lot of like flat surfaces especially with so much white as well yeah so that's the only reason why I did this but uh probably if I was to do it again I'll probably do it a little different that is that is for van band really a van build is so involved I would not be surprised if we did we definitely have if you have any questions if you think we've missed anything if you want to know more details on something please just let us know in the comments and we will answer we're also going to put together like like a post on our website that just lists everything we use in detail yeah and if you think of miss anything there just let us know we'll add them thanks so much for watching guys and uh we'll see you in the next one in our next video we it's our trial trip yeah yeah so you'll get to see us figuring out van life first time yeah bye guys

Channel: Lydia and Wehan

Views: 166,316

Keywords: van tour, van life, van conversion, tiny house, off grid, camper van, sprinter van conversion, van life conversion, van build, camper van conversion, tiny home, van life build, van life tour, tiny house on wheels, living in a van, vanlife, off grid living, off grid van, off grid tiny home, van with shower, van with bathroom, travel, travel couple, lydia and wehan, travel vlog, australia, travel australia, sprinter van conversion 170

Id: 3hqZYdgUL0o

Length: 57min 35sec (3455 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 26 2023