VAN TOUR | DIY Sprinter Van Conversion with Full Bathroom | Gorgeous Tiny Home For Off Grid Living

all right people how's it going i'm james this is sarah and we're also known as the whole world or nothing welcome to [Music] arvantor [Music] when we bought the van it was just a bog standard panel van and we added a couple of windows this one that goes through to the kitchen area and this one that goes through into the bedroom area that opens as well and it has a little fly screen on it another thing that we added is these security locks some deadlocks so it just gives us a bit of extra security they are separate to the normal locks on the van and we have them on these backbone doors the sliding door at the side and the passenger and driver's side in the cab this is our kitchen come have a closer [Music] look we made the decision that we were going to separate off our living area from the cab area so we put in this insulated bulkhead wall it means that the living area is a lot warmer because obviously there's a lot of glass in the front that lets a lot of heat in and out it also feels i don't know quite a bit cozy in here like it's not like a van as much um and also it meant that we could use this whole wall to build our furniture and our bathroom on up here we've got a big storage compartment so this is where we partitioned off the top area of the cab area and we keep in here things that we don't use so much on a day-to-day basis so we've got our summer clothes stored up there we've got our backpacks stored up there and then just at the front here we keep jay's guitar and the lines that we have for the windows in the living area but we didn't want to completely close off the cab area so we put in this hatch so that if we are in the back and we need to get into the front to drive off in any kind of emergency we can do and we can both fit through this by the way we do double check that [Music] we're going to take you through the kitchen now which is my domain i do pretty much all of the cooking and this was probably the most important part of the van for me so i'm going to run you through it one of the most popular ways to design a kitchen is in a triangular layout and that's what we've gone for here what it means is that you've got a cooker your sink and your fridge that are all kind of in the triangle which means that when you're cooking everything's within reach and you're not spinning around and wandering off to different parts not that you really couldn't have found anyway but as well as it being practical we wanted it to look good as well so we went for these stick on subway tiles they are not real tiles and the reason behind that is because real tiles are pretty heavy and we were concerned that they might fall off we also decided to go with a solid oak worktop which might sound strange considering i was just talking about the weight but it's only 22 mil thick so it's not actually that heavy it's about the same as a normal worktop that's made out of mdf or a material like that and as sarah mentioned before one of the reasons that we blocked off this bulkhead was that we could use the full width of this wall and that means that we've got loads and loads of space for actually preparing our food on this counter is really really lovely to do that [Music] we designed and custom built every single cabinet in the kitchen area exactly to fit the space that we've got and we'll just run you through what we've got in our drawers and our cupboards this first draws our utensil drawer and it's got pretty much everything that we need to cook up a storm in the kitchen this middle one's our cutlery drawer and this end drawer that's next to the bathroom has got all of our toiletries and stuff in we've fitted all of the drawers in the cupboards with ball catchers so they don't move and open when we're actually in transit in this cupboard we've got all of our dried foods we use containers like this just to make it super easy to grab everything that we need up so we've got all of our sauces in here and then in the back of this cupboard we've got all of our dried staples like rice porridge oats pasta flour beans that kind of thing [Music] this cupboard here is where we keep all of our plates bowls cups glasses and dropping boards stuff like that we've lined each of the shells of this non-slip matting just to make sure that nothing moves around whilst we're actually driving and so far it's worked perfectly we haven't had any breakages at all it took us a while to figure out exactly where everything should go but now everything's got its own place and it fits together like a jigsaw the fridge that we went for is a dometic crx-80 and it was really important to me that it wasn't a chest fridge i wanted one that was as close to a fridge that you'd find in a house as possible it holds roughly 80 liters and it's also got a little ice box so you can stick a bit of ice cream or some ice cubes in there as well a good feature about this fridge is that it's got a double lock as well to stop it coming open whilst you're actually moving [Music] the fridge holds about 80 litres which for us we find is plenty for a whole week's worth of food [Music] at the bottom we've got the salad and vegetable compartment and then on top of that you've got two shells which you can adjust the height of to suit your needs and then right at the top we've got an ice box [Music] there's plenty of space in the fridge door as well for things like drinks and milk and there's another small compartment at the top [Music] possibly the most important part of our kitchen is our cooker we went from a thetford triplex which has got a three burner hob it's also got an oven and grill which has plenty of space you can cook a roast dinner or anything that you want in there the cooker runs off of our lpg tank and we designed the housing that it sits in so that the gas fittings are completely enclosed at the back and it also has a gas drop out so if there is any leak it would go directly through the floor of our van to the outside rather than actually into our living space down below the cooker we've got a little cupboard where we keep all of our pots and pans one thing that's absolutely essential when you're cooking in a van is ventilation it gets rid of both condensation and any smells that are created when you're actually cooking we went for this max air fan which sucks in and out it's got 10 speeds it works in the rain and it's also got a cool little remote control [Music] as we mentioned before having a proper kitchen was really important to us so putting a tiny little vanity sink in wasn't really going to be practical instead we went for this big stainless steel bad boy and it's deep it's wide and it fits all of our washing up in but because it's so big it's not only our washing up that we can do in there we can also wash clothes and we can also have a wash ourselves brush our teeth and all that kind of stuff obviously what you need for a big sink is a big tap and this one is really cool there's your normal flow and there's a sprinkler flow as well which is handy for rinsing off dishes and uses less water but best of all this tap is extendable so you can direct it to exactly where you need it to go [Music] in the sink we've got a sink tidy which keeps all of our washing up bits and pieces nice and neat and then below that we've got a washing up bowl which is what we actually use to save a bit of water when we're doing our washing up and in the plug hall we've got two strainers the first one is quite a fine one and the second one's a larger one we just want to make sure that we don't get any bits of food going into our waste water tank a low kitchen area would be complete without a plan say hello to a lovely spider plant rita of course the sink goes into the unit a little bit but then underneath that we've got quite a big storage area where we keep all of our cleaning products and bins and i'll just show you anyway this is our food waste bin for all our food scraps and our normal bin i love these bins by the way we spent far too much money on them another one of these little cuddies so that it keeps all our cleaning products together and then also in here we've got some spare toilet roll and a vacuum cleaner that all fits in there lovely and neatly [Music] and here is our bathroom come take a look so the walls and the ceiling in here are made out of pvc cladding slot together to make it waterproof and the floor is just a standard wet room flooring and then we've got a drain that goes straight through the floor of the van and into the waste water tank which is under slung so that just sits underneath the van underneath the shower area and the sink area here on our mixer tap here we've got hot and cold water and then as you can see we've just got a shower curtain that comes across because we have our extractor fan just outside there so when we're taking a shower all the steam comes straight out of there and through the extractor fan in the roof also in here we have our toilet which is the thetford porta potty 365 so we take that out when we're having a shower we typically have to up to the toilet about every five to seven days but we also use one of these to pee in which means that the toilet doesn't get full up as quickly [Music] this area is probably the most versatile part of the van it's also where we spend a lot of time because we eat i was gonna say sleep we don't sleep here uh work play games most of our evenings are spent here and so we try to cram as much into this little space as possible so let me show you around show you how it all works our seats are made from a material called durafoam and i think they're 10 centimeters thick and the covers we designed them so that they've got a zip that comes off so we can wash them if we need to also underneath the seats we have some storage area the seats just lift up like that the main thing that we keep in this one is our dirty laundry so we've got two bags one for our dark clothes and then another one for white clothes and they just sit in there out of the way so we can't smell them stinking exactly the same on this side so this seat lifts up and in this space we've got our control panel and our diesel air heater this controller here is for our solar panels so that tells us how much electricity we've got coming through from them and also how much charge is left in our batteries this is for our lpg tank so that tells you how full that is here is for our water supply so this side here is for how much water we've got in our fresh water tank and that one is the waste tank so that just works on when that's full that red light will come on this is a bit more of an indicator to tell you how full it is this controller here is for our air heater the diesel heater but that actually works off a little remote as well that we use more than anything and then coming out the front here we have our mains electricity supply our 240 volt so that charges things like our laptops and i think the vacuum and j's hair clippers run off that and that's about it this is the vent for the air heater obviously you've just seen that in there so this just directs you can turn it round a bit so that you can have the air going in different directions and just here we've got a 12-volt socket so that charges i don't know loads of things our phones speaker everything this is probably my favorite part of the van jazee's kitchen as you already know but i think this is really clever how we did this this is the table so it's a really comfortable area for working which we work full-time in here so we've both got plenty of space for our laptops really versatile area like i say we eat here play games here on an evening just really really nice table space and then in here we've got storage so we keep most things in these little storage pots so that they're just dead easy to pull in and out and we can access things and under here is my absolute favorite bit [Music] so we created this area both as a sofa area so there's just more space to sit down and relax but also so that it's an extra bed if we ever have a visitor staying over they can join us and sleep here [Music] the sofa also is another storage area because underneath here this drawer keeps all our towels in it box just general storage stuff [Music] up here we've got the most important bit that enables us to be able to work full-time on the road which is our internet so this little device here is a mini router that has a sim card in it and plugged into that is an external aerial so that goes through through the top of the wardrobe and out of the top of the van but we'll show you that when we're up on the roof and very important for safety is a carbon monoxide detector and now we're into the bedroom we opted to put a fixed bed in rather than one that we have to make up every night because well for two reasons really first of all we just couldn't have to do that we're too lazy we're living it full time and we don't want to have to do that every single evening before we go to bed and second of all it means that we've got a load of garage space underneath which we'll show you in a little while we also opted to put the bed lengthways rather than width ways and the reason for that is that i don't actually fit in with ways so i would have had to be scrunched up and it just makes it a lot more comfortable for us being able to stretch out fully it's a standard sized double mattress that we went for and we decided to put it on slats as well rather than just a flat board and the reasons for that is twofold first of all it's a bit more comfortable because they got a bit of spring into them and also for the ventilation from underneath and it is seriously comfortable we absolutely love sleeping in this bed in fact i spend probably about 90 of my time in this van in this bed on this bed never get me out of it that is true while it's winter you're normally in there working and i'm down here at the table you might have seen this little fella lurking at the side of me this is romish he's really as me we've both got a full height wardrobe and we designed it so that it actually drops down below the height of the bed which means that we've got enough space to fit full length clothes in so sarah can fit dresses in i can fit shirts in and they hang all the way down to the bottom we've got a bit of a his and hers thing going on back here so this side is sarah's side and this side is mine i'll just run you through what we can fit into our wardrobes [Music] in my wardrobe i pretty much just keep jumpers jackets and shirts [Music] in the top compartment i keep all of my underwear and again we just keep them organized with these what are they caddies i don't know just keep them organized with these organizers so that's all of my socks and that is my box of shorts in the second one down i've got all of my t-shirts and my vests roll them up get loads of space then and as you can see i mean i've got plenty of leftover space as well i do and in the bottom one i've got some more bulkier items and like my gym wear and stuff like that these bottom covered doors come completely off jay cleveland made them like that because there is loads of storage space in there it goes quite far down like he was saying about the wardrobes because of the depth of them it means you can get right in there and scrabble about and get your things so in my compartment here i have my underwear socks pants tights pajamas a couple of jumpers in here i've got my tops and gym stuff i do seem to have a lot more clothes than jay i don't know why you'd think they'd take up more space less space because my clothes are smaller but hey and in the top i've got bottoms jeans dungarees jumpers all that kind of just we deliberately put this window in just above the level of the bed so that when we're lying down in bed we can actually see out of it if there's a nice view or to watch the sunrise now to make a bit more of a feature out of it we decided to actually frame it in wood and then to make it practical we put in this ledge which is kind of like a bedside table for me and i can put my morning coffee on this mat as well because these windows are made out of tinted privacy glass you can't actually see in from the outside unless it's dark outside and we've got a light on the inside so if we don't want anyone seeing in or we don't want the light coming in in the morning waking us up then we have got a little blind that we can just pop on here and that blocks out everything from the outside and gives us a bit more privacy we also have one that goes on this window here that just unfolds and sticks on around the edges little magnets [Music] one of my favorite features of the bedroom area is these doody little reading lights and they've got two light settings but they've also got two usb chargers built into each side so we can plug in our phones or any other devices that we need to charge [Music] you might have noticed our down lights in the ceiling and we've got a number of these throughout the van and we debated quite a lot which type to get and we opted for in the end ones that are touch so you can touch them on you can touch them off but also you can dim them by holding it and you can brighten them up again and what it does it just means that we can create different areas within the van so we've got the bed area and we can dim that and keep that nice and low if we want to we can also make the seating area a bit more highly lighted and we can have spotlights on just over the kitchen if we want so it's really handy um the reason why we were unsure about them is because we thought that perhaps it would be a bit annoying having to go along turning them all off at night but it's such a small space it didn't work out like that at all now up above my head we have got our roof light and we really really love it we weren't actually intending to put one in but when we put the fan in at the front we saw how much light it opened up into the space so we decided that we wanted one at the back as well we absolutely love looking at the stars at night and this roof light allows us to do that from the comfort of our bed it's also great for ventilation and when it's really hot we can crack it wide open pop the fan out the front and it pulls through a nice draft it's a max air model and it's got both a blind and a moznit on it and you can have them kind of half and half as well if you want to we don't tend to use the blind at all because we prefer to wake up to natural light as well but in the summer we do tend to pull the moznet across just to give us a little bit of added protection what's now that dog just run in covered in mud muddied up on the floor great do you even get to stroke it it's over there okay [Music] another feature that you might notice behind me here is our security camera which is pretty cool it works with our wi-fi and it detects motion so if someone comes through the door that is pointed towards the side door or even walks past it we get an alert on an app on our phone which tells us that something has happened so we can look at it we can save that video and if someone has come in and robbed our van then we know who you are so don't even bother trying at this side i have got my reading light and my morning coffee shelf this also comes off and it's a little bit of a secret storage box for me so i can keep stuff in there and at this side jay has a little storage area where he keeps his books and earphones and bits and pieces and things like that [Music] just popping back outside again we've got a little storage area here for shoes i think we'll probably keep it we don't actually have anything in it at the minute we just thought we'd leave it open so that it wasn't a wasted space and then underneath the back of here we have some cables running that go from the battery bank into the back through to the cab in the front where we have our batteries to battery charger under this seat here is some more storage area [Music] so in this first compartment we keep shoes and then in the second one is our battery to battery charger so what that does is it takes the excess charge from our van engine battery and puts that into the back into our leisure bank battery we do have to be driving for the battery to battery charger to work so we typically have to be going about 40 50 mile an hour it can't just do it while the fan's idle that isn't our main way of charging the batteries we'll talk a little bit more about that in a bit but i just want to show you up here that we have a reversing camera that we installed because the van didn't come with one that was one of the first things that we put in so that obviously fixes on there and the cables run through into the back where the camera is near the backdoor [Applause] [Music] and this is the false ceiling that we put in to create the storage space that you access from the cupboard door just above this hatch area in the kitchen department we covered the walls and this in carpet so it matches the rest of the interior in the cab all right let's show you in our garage [Music] having a fixed bed means we've got a large storage space underneath it where we can keep all kinds of essential stuff there's a few tools a food storage box spare toilet paper toilet fluid walking sticks yoga mats a recycling bag folding chairs various other useful bits and pieces [Music] all right let's take a closer look this is our on off switch for our water pump this is the switch for our water heater that heats it to 50 degrees or 70 degrees and this is our water fill point where we put fresh water in [Music] okay this side first of all this is our water section so we've got our 100 liter fresh water tank just over the back there we've got our water pump and the accumulator here is our water heater and then just at the side there are gas pipes that come up from the lpg tank that is sat underneath just basically directly where i'm sat and that feeds this and the oven in the front and this little thing just here is the gas drop out exactly the same as what we were talking about in the front that's underneath the cooker just here we've got our diesel tank for our air heater just over the back of that is the fuel pump for it and lastly in here we have our electrical system so we've got our leisure battery bank which is 330 amp hours coming off that we've got our 500 watt inverter that feeds through to our main socket in the living area we've got our 12 volt fuse box so pretty much everything runs off this this is our fridge the fan the oven clicker the usb points um the ignition for the diesel heater the ignition for the water heater basically and then power in that is the solar panels obviously i mentioned we've got the battery to battery that comes through the front but that's our backup charge for the battery bank our main thing is our solar panels this is the mppt which converts the electricity coming down from the solar panels into 12 volts so that the battery bank can use it this is just an isolated switch so that we can turn that section on and off if we need to work on the solar panels at all in between there we've got lots of different circuit breakers so you can isolate every single part of the circuit if you need to work on a new [Music] up on the roof we've got 450 watts of solar panels which are the main way of charging our ledger batteries the other thing that's up here is our external aerial and that connects to our pocket wi-fi we showed you inside and keeps us online wherever we go all right guys that is our band tour done make sure you tell us what you think of our home in the comments and if you've got any questions we'd love to chat with you there too and don't forget to hit that thumbs up button if you enjoyed the video and also subscribe because we're going to be producing a load more content on how we actually built the van and that's coming very soon see you then [Music] bye [Music] you

Channel: The Whole World or Nothing

Views: 453,304

Keywords: Van Tour With Bathroom, Van Tour With Shower, Van Tour Sprinter, Van Tour UK

Id: cJ2ECZdryCw

Length: 29min 57sec (1797 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 07 2021