VAN TOUR | Convertible Bed | Outdoor Shower | Cat Bathroom | Ford Transit Converted Camper | S3E2

hi we're val and sadie and this is our van [Music] these are really bad out there so i'll do introductions in here so i'm valerie and this is my cat sadie and we live in this van together this is a 2015 ford transit van my friend and former partner nuri and i converted it together back in 2019 it took us about a year to do everything ourselves so i'm super proud of our work we didn't know anything about building anything really before we started but we were very determined and we watched a lot of youtube videos lots of trial and error but we we did it about a million trips to home depot within a year we finally hit the road we left atlanta and traveled around florida and then that's when the pandemic struck so we decided to stay put for a little while in alabama um the summer of 2020 and then we got the travel bug again and we headed west for the first time i fell in love with it we really wanted to go to the grand canyon so we went there and we just traveled all around the southwest and decided to split ways he decided to continue traveling with his own van and i kept this ban and i decided to spend winters in arizona and summers further north um last summer i went to the pacific northwest so i traveled through california oregon washington montana idaho in utah it was amazing and then i've spent the winter in arizona working and just enjoying the beauty here i like the mild winters i do not like the cold i like being warm i just love the desert i love the dryness of it i love the plant life here there's not much plant life but what is here i do love i love the cacti and all the little bushes i don't know there's just something about the desert i love i feel like when i go out into the desert i feel like i can recharge i could just be here for days and days and not get bored enough about that let's get into the van tour finally after two years of living in the van i'm finally doing an official van tour i don't have a cameraman so hopefully this works out well with the tripod and just myself so here's the entry to the van i usually don't use this like if i'm in town i come through the front door and this stays closed normally i have a bunch of stuff hanging on the hooks here but when i'm out in the desert out in the wilderness i love being able to slide the door open and have this as my like front porch i have just my little rug here and when i'm not using it i keep it folded up and it just sits right here on this step we have this nice bug screen that goes all around the door and it magnetizes in the middle so that's super nice to just have the door open you don't have to worry about bugs coming in and out i'll talk about the kitchen so we do have running water in here this is the kitchen sink here whether it's just a trickle which i usually use or full blast but of course we want to conserve water because it's not that easy to find water when you live in a van there is a 40 gallon water tank that is under the bed i'll show you where it is later but that is where the water comes there's a water pump attached to it and when we turn the faucet on it comes through comes out the faucet we've got a lot of stuff on amazon but this this is from amazon and it's worked really well the last two years it also has like a spray nozzle so that's nice as well i personally love it i haven't had no trouble with it it moves around like so there is a hot and cold on here but it is kind of a pain to do hot water in here like it's a hassle it kind of takes a while so i just use the cold water and it's just fine this is the soap dispenser and it just comes out you just fill it down there and stick it back right back in and just push it for the soap i use it for a hand soap as well but it's dish soap this guy was supposed to be when we first started living in the van we thought we were gonna do a reverse osmosis system and we did have one under the sink um it was this giant tank like five gallons or something once we started using it we realized it was wasting too much water the water it would filter was so small compared to the water it would filter out and waste and we realized that was just not gonna work we just got rid of that all together but we still have the little spigot sitting here i might take it out one day and put a different kind of water filter here like a berkey got the farmhouse ceramics ink i really like it like it's really nice got the subway tile this is real tile i learned how to tile to make this backsplash and i love it this was like an after thing we felt like something was missing up here so we decided to create this rack like a year after we were living in the van we made it specially for these jars to fit in they have like quinoa and a lot of different dried goods lentil and they stay in place really well and it freed up a lot of space up here and i just have a fake plant right here that i recently put i really like i really like how it looks there this is a storage for like pots and my colander this kind of thing is really great in the van the pop-out's tough so it's a pop-out colander saves a lot of space got cups and plates here so we started out using ceramic bowls and plates that we had in our apartment and within a year or so they all broke some way or another so either plastic or stainless steel i try not to use plastic as much as possible because even if you reuse it when you wash plastic or use plastic little tiny micro plastics come off and wash down the drain and get into our water supply so that's why i try not to use any kind of plastic as much as possible right now it's not possible for me to completely cut plastic out but if i can i try to so these are stainless steel plates they work just fine they're nice and lightweight they don't break and they're not plastic and we got cups here these are cool these are stainless steel mugs and they're thermal mugs as well so they'll keep your coffee hot pretty much all day and they come with a lid mars i have to show you this mug that my mom got me for christmas this year it's so adorable it's me and sadie going camping we're sitting on the log by the fire it's so cute and these are just held up by these gas struts and held closed by magnets i keep like salt and pepper in here we have these retractable little bars that keep everything from falling out because before we had these anytime we'd open the cabinets and everything would just fall out after after it was moving around in the van a lot while it was driving yeah we got like sesame seed oil and just some like dry food goods and stuff in there and in here just some more food i don't think you all need to see all that in here um it's just a small little cabinet we got some bungee cords holding everything in place and it's just like my pharmacy and then we have another storage here we pretty much made use of any space we could turn into storage we pretty much did nuri did a great job of designing very functional but also aesthetic and this is just like a shelf to stick like things that i use on a regular basis or snacks basically and then we added this later it's been really nice to help keep things off of the countertops just have like the water boiler which i use for tea and the coffee maker it's like the aeropress one and the honey and just some other stuff i keep my chip clips clipped back here so they're just ready to go because your girl likes a snack and then we have our dish towel i just use this to like wipe up water or wipe my hands after i wash them i use this a lot this is my george foreman grill it does use ac power so i use the inverter to use it but i use it to toast bread or heat things up i learned that i can heat pizza up by putting two slices face down together and putting it on the girl so that the cheese doesn't get stuck on the grill i've gotten pretty creative with this unique space this is the induction stove it's completely electric it runs off of the batteries that are charged by the solar panels it's nice that it's just kind of part of the countertop i don't like the idea of using propane but what i don't like about this is it's not very strong and it's kind of like it's either like too low or too high it's hard to find a medium some things i can't cook like i don't i don't cook a lot in the van just because of that really i just stick to like scrambling eggs or boiling things or heating up soup or something it's good for those kind of simple things but cooking a full meal i would not recommend the way it works is turn the inverter on and the plug is already plugged in underneath so first step for the induction stove you have to put something on here for it to work the pan or pot has to be induction still friendly so certain materials certain pans will not work on the induction stove it took us a while to find this one it's called green pan but it works and i don't want to use aluminum so it's stainless steel and this stuff seems to be it's pretty safe it's not i don't think it's teflon but that's just what we came up with so you put that on the burner you push the power button i do temp and then it comes on and i usually go all the way it goes from 150 degrees and it can go all the way up to 450 but i usually don't use that much so just to scramble eggs it's either 150 or 180. you turn it off and it cools off really quickly as well so the countertops we made ourselves we wanted like a butcher block style but it was kind of hard to find a butcher block that we liked and also they're kind of pricey and we wanted to stay on budget with this man build as much as possible so anytime we could kind of do it ourselves we did we just took planks of wood and kind of affixed them together to make it look solid but it's actually individual pieces of wood stained it you know sand it stained it and then we put polyurethane on top of it to protect it and then put these boards all around kind of as a border or backsplash so far they've held up pretty good this is the light switch for the kitchen you can either turn it on and off with a button or you can also dim it i like how we decided to go with dimmers for the lights i really like that because at night sometimes i just want a little light just some low lighting to set the mood and it's just really nice not having like bright lights on you all the time i think this was an afterthought or like we we were gonna use this for something but we ended up not using it for anything so it's a switch to nothing and then we have our dc outlet plug it in it kind of shows you like the amps it's using you can like charge your phone and do the dc things here i usually have a fan here when it's hot i'll have a fan right here actually i'll show you so i just clip the fan on like this and put it around and plug it in like that we have the kitchen window to look out at the sunset and mr cactus right there hi he's so friendly and i like this window it's adorable and also you can open and close it so you can let um the air pass through the screen there we got these curtains along with all the other curtains in the van are thermal fabrics so it helps regulate the temperature whether it's cold or hot it helps keep things insulated and regulated so down here we have the refrigerator it's just an isotherm fridge it's plenty of space for two people one person it's even too much for me honestly but also i don't cook that much right now there's a tiny freezer it needs to be defrosted right now you can see it is completely filled with ice because i need to defrost it i don't use it that much anyway and then we have a couple shelves and a drawer for fruit and vegetables and then you got some condiment shelves here as well uh so far i've had no trouble with it it's been great i love this fridge we did have to replace this cover because it got really warped and kind of scratched and so we bought a piece of plastic cut it out the right size and spray painted it black and it's been a lot better than the original one so under here excuse me sadie we just have the under sink storage you got the trash can and cleaning supplies and some extra trash bags and here we got a lot of things i don't use much but only thing i really use regularly is the the dish pan i love this because it's retractable and it just pops out like that for the dishes to dry pop it right back in i got my vitamix blender and uh this is my mixer that i used to make bath bombs just got some other things in here probably things i should throw away and then this is the kitchen drawer i've had a lot of trouble keeping it together it keeps wanting to pop off i mean it works great most of the time it's been great these have had to be been replaced these little hooks that keep them in place but yeah i use this drawer a lot um but overall it's great it works great got my cutting board that i use a lot and then of course just all my utensils that i need for food but this uses the tongue and groove hooks to keep it closed while the van is moving i've had trouble with these because they move around and sometimes when i close it it doesn't line up all the way but right now it works right now it works fingers crossed stay so up here is just overhead storage just kind of a catch-all it goes back pretty far back here big items here this is storage for things i don't use that much like hoodies and bulky things that don't really fit in my other drawers i keep the tripod here we have two smoke detectors it's a smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector i just had to replace the batteries yesterday after two years this was also something we added later we just felt like this space could be used better so we built this shelf and made sure that i can fit under it standing up straight and we just have this jar that this belongs to my grandma is from the 70s i just really like the aesthetic of it i just keep rocks and things that i find small things that i want to keep in here i use these hemp dryer balls instead of dryer sheets because they're just better for the environment they don't have toxic chemicals and they work they work really well too as dryer instead of dryer sheets they get the static out and the lint and everything and of course i have my yoga mat up here it's a perfect place to keep that and i have my only real plants in the van right here and i have a book here the idea was to have this as like a bookshelf but um to like pick up books along the way out as i travel so far i found one that i like here honestly it's not a good book but i like the way it looks and i just want to show you it's from the 70s and i like the typography of it i like the way it looks so it stays and i added these hooks about a year ago and they've come in handy like quite a bit because i just hang all my crap here when i'm in the van there's always stuff hanging here coats and clothes it's like a catch-all my purse all my bags like everything just hangs there which is good because it kind of gets everything out of the way so i'm not like setting stuff everywhere on the countertops so this is where i keep sadie's long leash it gets really long i just tie it here and attach her harness to this part and she can just like walk all over around but especially in the desert when there's not that many trees and stuff i just keep her off the leash and she mostly just hangs around she doesn't go very far so we haven't used that in a long time but we did when we were first living in the van to like kind of get sadie used to everything knowing that this is her home and all that i gave up having a real plant here so i have a fake plant here got a nice hook here usually all this stuff is here but i moved it for the sake of the tour i have this curtain it's kind of like a blackout curtain this separates the front from the back you know it's also a thermal curtain i just pull it back in order to get from the front to the back so my shoes are here i used to have my shoes in what's now sadie's bathroom i realized i didn't use that that much i don't use these shoes that much i have like three pairs of shoes that i wear all the time and i just keep them in the floor in the front but this is where i decided to store my shoes for now so yeah these are the shoes i don't wear that much hanging on the back of the chair so far it's working out really well this is a swivel seat which i'll show you later it turns around under the seat is where the heater is this is a robusto heater and the heat comes out of this vents right here and it heats the whole van within minutes the heater is like all up in there um we have insulation on top of it and then the cord runs here and all the way up this wall and this is the control panel for it so it just turns on and you can adjust the temperature like so but i'm going to keep it off because it's not cold right now so the front's kind of a mess right now because i'm doing the band tour i had to put things somewhere the front is pretty basic i have the heat shield wind window covers to help with the temperature it really helps especially like in the summer or when it's hot the windows like it keeps the van a lot cooler when i use these so it's really nice when they're not in use then i usually keep them up here with these bungee cords it holds them in place up here i have some storage back here there's a shelf here that i keep like some tools i have like a screwdriver tape measure there i have some hooks back here i'm hanging my purse there at the moment and i have a full mirror back here a full-length mirror that kind of hangs out here it's right here down here is where i keep my broom and vacuum so when i have to keep the doors closed like in the city i use the vacuum to clean and then when i'm like out here in the desert and i can have the door open i use the broom to just sweep everything out the door look how beautiful it is right now god i love the desert it's so beautiful the sunsets are amazing i might have to film the rest of this tomorrow because of sun setting and we're losing daylight it's okay we'll we'll do it we can the key hook um we just like i keep my keys here so i always know where they are and then i have sadie's harness and leash and i keep her collar here when she's not using it as well got my calendar here it's covering up a big hole because that's where nuri's computer was i just use a calendar to cover it up and this is of course the inverter it's where we turn it on and off i'm gonna turn it off because we're not using it now and these are the lights that are for like the rest of the van two under here and one two three here that's what that panel controls and it's also dimmer so that's super nice so moving into this area this is the office slash closet here is where i have some office supplies i have a small printer and printer paper and tape and i keep wash cloths here because it's um really easily accessible this i just finished this project it this is where my shoes were before and i turned it into sadie's litter box because i did have sadie's litter box right here in the open and it was just such an eyesore i got sick of looking at it so i finally moved it into here so we have our litter box down here i cut a hole out so she can get in and out and then i moved the shelf that was here up here so we have two smaller shelves i have like all city stuff here it's all consolidated this is her little space we got her [Music] we got her clippers when we shave her for the summer we got her toys her brush we got her food up here this little guy is perfect for if you have pets especially one that sheds like sadie um instead of using a lint roller all the time this thing works really well you just like roll it on fabric like i use it on the rug a lot and pillows and it does a really good job of getting all the lints and fur and it gathers it here you just open it up and you just pull all the lint out to clean it out and clean it again so it's reusable you're not using a bunch of lint roller paper i still have a lint roller for certain things but this is good for furniture so here we use the structure of the van to create some shelving instead of making it like just flat across we just um decided to use this for our advantage so yeah i just have little trinkets and things i have my great-grandmother's pot here that i have a fake plan in i have like my tape a nail polish nail file and over here i just have like my pens and scissors ready readily available my hair brush lint roller and then i have like camera stuff here and cords this is where i keep my jewelry on this hook here this hook used to be for nuri's screen when the van was moving he would um attach the screen to this hook to keep it from swaying back and forth because it was on a swivel arm in this compartment i have a bucket with like my toothbrush toothpaste and eye makeup remover mouthwash things like that toiletries hair dryer i don't use it much but it's there and some storage for towels and this one i don't use it as much but i have like some hair stuff q-tips like hair rollers and things like that up here is some storage for small things it's got the bungee to keep things from falling out we got like some pillowcases extra pillowcases i keep some clothes up here that i don't wear that much and here i have like towels and just some extra bedding and cloths this is where i keep all my clothes this is my closet i do like underwear and bathing suits here tops here and bottoms here so they're just in drawers like this and i keep everything rolled up real tight moving along here we have the bathroom this is our full bathroom this is the nautilus retractable self-cleaning door of course i don't use it much just being alone in here and i don't use the shower right now it just opens and closes like so and it's so nice i really love it i like how it looks and functions the switch for the bathroom light is here it just clicks on like that and we have a rainfall shower head and the handheld one so it's super fancy this can be a shower we just take all this stuff out we do have a water heater it's a small one under the bed so there is hot water it lasts for about maybe five minutes it takes probably 10 minutes to heat up all the way it takes some time and some effort but it is possible um i don't use the shower right now because one i have a gym membership to planet fitness and i just use the showers there and they're a lot around town two the floor crack i took the floor out and i just haven't gotten around to replacing it yet i don't want to use water when i don't have a shower floor because it might mess up the subfloor this is a nature's head composting toilet poo and pea part is separate and that's what keeps it from smelling because when you mix those two together that's when you get the gross sewer smell i love it because it doesn't smell and it just honestly it's in the name nature's head like it feels very natural using it instead of using a regular toilet you just flush it all away you don't even know where it goes like you feel so connected to your body and nature when you have to actually handle what comes out of your body i'll show you how it works there is a fan that exhausts the water out it exhausts what it needs to exhaust out and the pipe goes out of the van so it exhausts out of the van this is a wire that connects to the electricity in order to run the fan and it just runs constantly from the batteries this is the p part and the poo part is separate in the back so the p is caught in this container and i have two so when this one starts getting full i take it out and i switch it with this one i just take the lid put it on that one and we just switch them out and i put it in this bag so it's nice and concealed if i need to take it to planet fitness or some place to dump it in the toilet so when you use it you just open the lid girls and guys have to sit while peeing fyi otherwise it's going to go everywhere and it's going to be gross so you make sure your pee goes through those two holes so that it goes down to the p tank and then to use number two you just flip this lever to open it and you do your business you close it and then you turn this crank to mix it all together with the media in there yeah when it's all mixed well and sometimes it can be a little hard when it's mixed well and a good amount of moisture in there it's not too dry it's not too moist then it's gonna work perfectly and it's not gonna smell it doesn't smell like poo unless you just pooed but like after it like mixes together it smells like the forest when it's just rained i love it personally i emptied the pee tank probably once a week and then the poo it can go like six months with just me you just put the toilet paper in a trash can i use this little guy with the foot thingy it's nice and the shower floor we made it comes out it's just pvc with these wooden planks going across and we stained it and polyurethaned it we just have these shelves for you know toilet paper toiletries oh and to flush the toilet the pee this is a this is half vinegar half water solution and you just use this spray bottle give it a few spritzes and that helps keep the odor down it kind of cleans the bowl a little bit and this is all just plexiglass i would recommend using something else because it breaks very easily it works okay except for yeah like the floor cracks and has to be replaced of course we have the mirror here and i just use double-sided sticky tape to keep it on so this used to come all the way across the countertop and there was a cabinet underneath but we decided to turn it into a seat to the seat now and to fully use it we just pull it out a little bit and sit down as a desk and write here or eat i like this because if i have a guest over they have somewhere to sit and just chat yeah it's kind of an awkward spot for a seat but i like it and of course we use it for storage this comes out and i have all of my sewing stuff here so my sewing machine is down there and all my sewing stuff and a lot of other supplies that go with my business my business is garden goat in case you don't know already i'll show you garden goat and then here it opens like this and i made this pouch to keep like the laptop safe in here while we're moving around more dc plugs and you know just storing things like memory cards and stuff here here i just hang my gym bag this is where i have all my shampoo and stuff to take to the gym to shower and i just hang my towel up to dry here that's what that's used for so moving into the bedroom so we have a step that goes up um into the bedroom and of course we use that as storage so open it up we got storage under there we got storage under here this leads into the back like under bed storage i use this as my laundry hamper dirty clothes in there and under storage access normally this is in bed mode but of course for the sake of the video we are gonna have it in seat mode so this is a u-shape just get up here like this you can see probably at least five people maybe even six the table is on a lagoon arm so it moves around so it's easy to like get in and out it's also adjustable it can be lowered or raised the seat cushions i made them i just purchased a memory foam double mattress and cut it to size and just cut the individual pieces out then i made covers for them that are made out of waterproof material and covered the entire cushion and then i made the slipcover gray fabric i made this cover to go over it there's a zipper on it so it can be taken off and washed so that's nice and so far i really like them this was the first time i learned how to use a sewing machine quite a learning curve but when it's in bed mode i just use this under part as storage so this foot part normally there's a bunch of crap under here so here you can see the lagoon arm swivels and moves like so got a mirror there it's just stuck on by double sided tape once again we made use of the skeleton of the van and made these little cubbies i don't use them much because they're really shallow there's not much you can put in there so i just turn them into plant holders and these are fake from michaels i thought they looked really cute that way and i made these curtains and it started off with just the thermal ones but i thought it needed a little bit of color and brightness so i got this peacock fabric and i absolutely love it this is my little genie bottle all my wishes come true it's dark now but you can pull it back and see outside as well in the back doors we got windows back there this is our max air fan it stopped working about a year ago and i haven't gotten it fixed yet so i don't use it as a fan anymore but it's okay because i just use other fans as the fans to help pull air through but i can open and close it so it's nice to help circulate the air all right i think that's about it for seat mode so i know you want to see how he turned this into a bed so i'll do my best to show you that we do have another smoke detector right here by the bed and of course we have the dimmer lights so we can set the mood in here brown chica wow [Music] and we're all ready for bed so this van tour is taking a lot longer than i thought it would and i got a little bit of a late start so i'm gonna finish it in the morning so we have some daylight to work with and you can see everything better good morning it is the morning this is what it looks like when the doors closed i usually keep this heat shield on all the time just because i'm usually in the city where i went privacy and this is a huge window as you can see i'll take it off just for the sake of the video though yeah so i'll show you how we use the swivel seat [Music] oh that's nice it's been a while since i've done this okay i also wanted to show you the skylight we have the skylight up here it's by the kitchen you can close it all the way to completely block the sun out there's like a reflective on the other side of this to kind of reflect the light out helps keep it cool it's already starting to there's a little hole here but you can slide this to have full sun and see the sky i can lift my hands up all the way with the skylight it adds a little bit more height this is how we open it just push this there are different levels but i'm going to open it all the way so we let some fresh air and stretch up to the sky and to keep the bugs out we have a bug screen here can pull it like that and voila and you can do halfway you can like if you just want a little bit of sun you can do that so it's perfect i absolutely love it [Music] so now i'll show you the back of the van this is storage for things i don't use very much it's like the garage and this is also how we fill up the water tank we have the ladder on the back of the door to go up to the roof to check on the solar panels and roof access and of course the spare tire we put on the ladder because once we put the gray water tank underneath there wasn't any more room for the tire so we had to put it back here so this is the freshwater tank it's a 40 gallon tank goes all the way back but this is how we fill it up open this lever here i attach this filter i probably need a new one because this is like two years old first we attach it to the hose this is a 50 foot hose and i found that i don't need that long of a hose usually usually i can pull up right next to the spigot where i'm filling up so i got a 10 10-foot hose and that helps a lot better and even if i do um have to park really far away and i need a 60-foot hose i can attach these together and make a really long one so we just attach it here and then attach it here and then hook this part up to the spigot wherever i'm getting water and just turn it on water just goes straight into the freshwater tank and the way to know that it's full is we can't actually see it it's covered up that was probably not a good idea i don't remember why we decided to do that but that's just what we did and this hose is attached to the top of the tank so when it's full the water starts coming out the bottom and that's when i know to turn the water off and it also lets air escape the storage goes back pretty far it goes all the way to the end of the bed but i just have like a fold out table composting stuff i have my big vinegar here that i use to refill all the bottles inside just some other big items back there my backpack we do have some outlets here and a light so i have some tools here this is like the control panel for all the electrical we got the batteries back there and the inverter is there mppt 150 smart solar charge controller victron energy we have one big battery back there it's a 12 volt 120 amp um victron energy battery inverter i thought we had two but i guess there's just one back there that's all i see so that's what supplies all our energy for like running the refrigerator and the fan for the toilet those run constantly and it just runs off of the batteries back here and i've never had a problem with it so far also i have an app on my phone that lets me know how much solar i have left i usually always have 100 because i never use enough just by myself i have some holes cut out here to access the underbed storage just in case this pulls down this is an extra charger just in case the solar is not working we can plug it up to like a grid system in an rv park or something to charge the batteries up i haven't personally ever had to use it but it's in just in case of course we have our spark plugs and then this is our outdoor shower nozzle and i love this for certain things this is our outdoor shower we just hook it up right here turn it on there's different settings there's shower and mist this is nice if i need to like clean sadie's litter box or clean something outside and you can shower outdoors all you have to do is put like a big towel or blanket right here and you have privacy all around i love this feature another cool thing about the back of the van is that we have built a table underneath that's why we have the bed built kind of like on a lifted platform so it pulls out like so i use it as a table if i'm doing a project i need to spread out and stuff you can sit on it it's supposed to take up to like 500 pounds but i'm not so sure about that it supports me at least and maybe another small friend i think there's something underneath making it get stuck it does pull out a lot further i think it goes all the way to the end of the doors but there's something stuck underneath there i have to get out i think that's pretty much it okay so we have two 300 watt solar panels so 600 watts total you can see the fan here it's not open right now i'll show you a little bit under the van see what we got going on there there's a pipe that's always leaking but that's just how it is so there's our gas tank we hooked up the heater from to pull gas from the gas tank so we had to lower it we made a video about it i'll post it in the corner up there but we had to lower the gas tank and install the heating elements the pump and everything in there and then pulled put the gas tank back up and that's how the heater works it pulls a little bit of gas from the gas tank to generate heat so this is the gray water tank this is where the water collects when i run the water like when i wash my hands i wash the dishes the water comes all the way back here and collects here it's 30 gallons i think it's only been full once and it kind of backed up into the shower it was not pretty but that's the valve that releases the water i'll show you where that is so i don't have to come back here and do it myself it's really nice and clean and i just release the water wherever i think is a good place to release it it's not anything toxic it's just i use like biodegradable soap and food waste so in the parking lots or just on the road or out here honestly i don't i don't see a problem with it some people might have a problem but i don't i think it's fine okay so this is the driver's seat this is where the water release valve is for the grey water so i just reached back even while i'm driving i can reach back and just pull it up for a few seconds to let it open and i can already hear the water pouring out come back here it needed to be drained anyway so we're just going to let that drain we have the fire extinguisher here in case of emergencies this is my bear spray for when i was in montana thankfully i never had to use it but yeah it is the longest tallest for transit that they make i don't have a lot of trouble navigating around the city i mean it is more challenging than a car of course i have to take turns really slow i can't go super fast on the highway getting up and going takes a while people get frustrated when they're driving behind me but i've learned not to care but yeah overall i'm really happy with it it's nice to save money on rent but gas prices are kind of making that a little obsolete right now but i can always just stay put it's a weird lifestyle but it seems to suit me pretty well check out this cactus it's cute this one's probably well over 100 years old [Music] but i think that pretty much wraps up the van tour thank you so much for watching if you have any questions please leave them in the comments below and i will do my best to answer if you have any comments anything nice to say i love to hear it and of course give it a thumbs up and if you haven't already click that subscribe button and we'll see y'all on the next adventure [Music] you

Channel: Valerie + Justin

Views: 404,367

Keywords: vanlife, arizona, cactus, saguaro cactus, rv, desert, diy, van conversion, self converted van, tiny home, tiny home on wheels, camper, camper van, vlog, travel, nature, campsite, off grid, solar panels, southwest, fun, sunset, cestlavie, solo female vanlife, van tour, ford transit van, composting toilet, van shower, van bed, swivel seat, custom van build, functional van, self converted camper van, cat bathroom, convertible bed, living in a van, overlanding, van life with a cat, beautiful

Id: Q0aIqowVP4A

Length: 45min 53sec (2753 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 03 2022