VAN TOUR - Greg Virgoe's Sprinter Self Build Campervan

hello guys my name is Greg Virgo and welcome to our van let me show you around first thing we like to do when we get to a campsite is a lot to swivel these front two seats around it's really easy thing to do [Applause] we've got this swivel seat mechanism which is held on by six of these bolts so you simply undo these bolts I've already taken four out undo the last two and then that allows the seat to turn round on itself and then it simply as easy as that just to turn the seat round and then what we normally do is pop a couple of the box back in there just to secure it while we're in the back of the van so now you can see with this double seat swivel ground that's opened up this whole living space and that's probably giving us another two or three feet of extra living room so that really has changed it massively originally we were going to put an l-shaped seating here and leave the bulkhead in but I think this has really changed it and giving us a lot more freedom and a lot more space this is the table arrangement in our van and this is a leg on leg it's an adjustable leg and it's from the marine and boat industry there's a lot of similarities between van building and boat building and there's a lot of things that you can source from marine and the boat industry that you can use in your fan so it's always worth checking those out this allows us to have the table in this position at the bench seat so we can sit here it also allows us to spin the table around to these two front seats so we can have somebody sitting here and then sometimes we just stow the table away like that and then we can use it to put things on or we can even have it between us I can use it here and Luke and use it over here so it's really versatile and then lastly if we want to get rid of the leg all together it simply lifts off folds away and then we can store that either behind the driver's seat or in the cab one of the first things that we figured in our fan was a reversing camera because we haven't got any rear windows so we put a camera at the back where the brake light would be a high level and then we've got a video screen up front here it's linked to the reverse gear so when you put the fan into reverse the camera automatically comes on and then what I have done in addition to that is I'll feed a little switch up here in the headliner so I can flick the switch it will put power on to the camera and then I can automatically see what's outside without having the van on or without having it in gear so it's quite a nice little safety feature we can be parked up at night with all the curtains closed we can flick this switch and instantly see if anybody's outside the back doors to give us some extra storage in the cab area there was a big space above our heads here so we've put a shelf in here plywood shelf we lined it with silver carpet and then we've basically created another cupboard up here and then this is what we use to store some extra bedding or we actually store our screens for the front screen in here and it just uses another little cupboard and makes use of this space which would basically be wasted otherwise everything in the van is built with zabrze no it's a lightweight furniture board it's 15 millimeters thick it's made of poplar and then it's got a high-pressure laminate both sides and we chose this zebra no high gloss finish is the one that we really liked and then what I've done as best as possible you'll notice is I've tried to match the grain on all these cupboard doors so it looks continuous all the way through the vein these screen covers of what we use and they've got a dual purpose they've got this reflective foil on the inside what that does is that reflects all the sun's radiant rays back through the windscreen so during the day when the sun's out and it's nice and warm like it is today that helps to keep the cab really cool and they've also got some thermal insulation inside them they're like quilted so at night when the temperature drops it also helps to keep the cab warm and then they've just got these little suckers and stick on to the glass and a complete set of these is relatively cheap I think they're about 40 pounds for the whole cab the windows in our van we purchase from van pimps and I was originally going to fit them myself but because it's such an important element of the van we actually decided to get glass four vans to do the fitting for us the guy called David came and he made an absolutely superb job these are a privacy glass so from the outside you can't actually see into the van they're very black from the outside but obviously from inside we can see out perfectly and then to go with these we bought curtains fitted into these recess and these curtains were from a company called van X they're a stretchy fabric they're black on the outside and obviously a colored fabric on the inside and they do come in a different range of colors and they simply fit in these little tracks and they slide across the window like that and they fit really well and at nighttime you can't see anything they're really good at blacking out any of the lye and similarly from the outside even when we've got lights on inside the van you can't see anything inside here at all and they stow away really neatly with these little tie backs so I think they're quite a neat addition to the van this is the bench seat in our van and what we did was we constructed it initially out of tuber 2 timber I got some bed slats from Ikea and made the top section with these springy bed slats the framework is built out to Batu timber and then it's clad with the zebra no furniture board and in inside here what we've got is our crew mer boiler and this does our heating and hot water so in here we've got a combi boiler it's joule fuel electric and gas is four kilowatts of LPG and 1.8 kilowatts of electric and then this does our heating and our hot water so these brown ducts that you see going off the sides this is the warm air we've got two that go to the cab and we've got two that go through to the back one into the shower which enables us to use the shower as a drying room and the other one goes all the way through to the back of the van and I'll show you that one in a minute and that gives us some warm air into the bedroom throughout the van from front to back we built these high-level storage cupboards the framework is just made out of timber battens and then they're covered with the same zabrze no furniture board and in this end of the van we use these ones to store our cups glasses and plates these are all made out of a plastic type material there's nothing glass or China in here so there's nothing that's going to break and then what we did do is we put some additional shelves in here just to better utilize the space and then working our way down the van we've got a little TV on a bracket mounted to the end of the shower cubicle this is a smart TV so it's got built-in Wi-Fi and then what we do is we normally stream stuff live over the Internet we can either watch YouTube or we can even download movies we don't have a TV erial and we find that the internet and movies is really all that we watch so this is our kitchen unit we built it in three sections and then it's got a bamboo worktop and what we did do is we put this extension piece on the end of the kitchen with these lift up brackets just to give us a bit more counter surface because obviously once you've got the sink and the cooker cut into the worktop you lose a lot of your counter so that gave us it back we've got an allergen sink which is a thetford sink what I did with the cutout for the sink with a router I made it into a chopping board that conveniently drops into the bowl and throws away and then this particular sink comes with a draining board it just clips on the edge of the bowl like that and then when you're doing any washing up all the water drains back into the bowl we've got two taps on air sink we've got running hot and cold water which is fed from the trimmer boiler so this tap has got hot and cold water and it's also got this pullout hose facility so you can rinse things and also when you're outside you can actually swivel the tap around and rinse outside so you could rinse yourself off or have a shower outside so that's quite handy it's got two different spray patterns when you press this button water comes out the center click the button and you get more like a shower spray and in addition to that we've got this little drinking water tap and the reason we put this drinking water tap in here is because we didn't really want to rely on the water sources that we were going to get when we were traveling around sometimes you can't guarantee that the water is clean enough to be drinkable so this comes off of a separate tank in the bottom of the kitchen cupboard and we can just put bottled water in there and you can get bottled water really cheaply about seven liters for about sixty cents in Europe so it makes sense to put drinking water in there and we know we're safe then we're making a cup of tea brushing our teeth or even boiling some vegetables so this little drinking water tap that we've got on the end of the kitchen here is fed from a water bottle in here we've got 10 litre water bottle here it's got a little 12-volt submersible pump in here and it's operated by the little switch on there I've got an electrical disconnect I can unscrew that and then I can just simply lift it out of the cupboard and then above the pan draw we've got our cooker this is a Thetford XXX cooker it's got three gas rings on the top and then it has got the grill and oven combined so you can either use it for grill toast or so forth or you can use it as a conventional gas oven that's a really handy piece of kit and it is just like cooking at home and then lastly down this far end we've got our 12 volt compressor fridge it's got a little freezer compartment in it it's a domestic CRX 50 and we find this ample storage space in there and it works really well the splash back on our kitchen is actually a vinyl printed map it's a wipe down surface so you can actually clean this and then above the space between or storage cupboards constructed in the same fashion as the other cupboards they've got a very strong magnet on this there's nothing that's going to fall out while we're driving along and again this is where we store all of our food and mostly our dry produce tins stuff things like rice and pasta and a lot of our spices and it next to the food cupboard this is the control center so this is the heart of the controls for the whole van everything electrical in our van runs off of solar we've got three 160 watt solar panels on the roof that gives us a total of 480 watts well I've got three 110 M power batteries in the garage below and in everything generally is run off a 12-volt and there's one or two things that are run off the inverter like some of the sockets here we've got the solar charge controller this tells us what we've got coming in from the solar panels and what's been actually charged to our batteries and it will also tell us the battery condition as you can see at the moment we've got probably 120 watts but our batteries are actually full next to that we've got the controller for the true my boiler so on here we can set the temperature for the heating and we can dial in whatever temperature we want and we can also turn the hot water on we can have it on an eco mode or we can have the water on hot and then we can also change the fan speed for the lighting in the van down the center of the ceiling we've got these recessed LED spotlights there's no switch to turn these on they simply operate just by touch so if you want a light on in a particular part in the van you just touch the bezel and on they come and then underneath the cupboards here we've got recessed LED strip lights and these ones are controlled from an app on my phone so I can turn the light on and I can also change the color these are color LEDs so I can have them red or green and that's all gone from this app on my phone and in the cupboards in the bedroom that we've got down both sides of the van they also have colored LED lights recessed into them exactly the same as this and they also work off of the app on the phone the only one that's different is the one in the kitchen this is just a pure white light and this is controlled from a switch on the side here so we can turn this switch on when we want the kitchen light on so I don't need to be fussing around with an app on the phone it's just a lot more convenient and also when we open the side sliding door coming in in the dark we can just reach in and flick that light on from outside and put light on in the van this is that shower cubicle one thing we wanted to have in our van was the facility to have a shower if we needed it and also to go to the toilet inside here we've got a Thetford toilet I'll show you that in a minute and then that is a cassette toilet now one thing I didn't want to do was cut a hole in the side of my van and then have trouble trying to make that watertight so our cassette comes out here into the van this is all sealed it's perfectly hygienic you know that is a sealed cassette and it's very simple to empty you know it's been an absolute dawdle to work with no problems whatsoever and then it just slides back in there locks in place and the door closes and we've had absolutely no problems with any smells or anything like that the toilets always kept really clean and anyone who goes in our wet room will always know it smells really fresh in there we have a normal shower mixer in here it's got hot and cold water supply off of the trimmer boiler shower tray fitted into the bottom and then that's all molding around the Thetford toilet now the set for toilet is quite clever the whole toilet pan swivels through 90 degrees so it moves out of the way so you've got a bit more room to have a shower and this is quite a generous shower in our van it's about 950 millimetres long and 750 millimetres wide so there's plenty of space in here and then just to make the door waterproof what we've got is we've got a shower curtain here which is hanging up on a rail and then we just pull this across and that makes the door waterproof and in for lighting in here what I did is I recess some LED lights and then we've got like an opaque perspex over the top just to act like a diffuser and that gives us absolutely plenty of light in here we've got a couple of little suction cups to hook things on like towels or wet coat and there is an extract phone in here as well which is run on a Paul chord and it's also run on the timer and a humidistat so if it does get moist in here the phone will come on automatically or you can just do it manually on the pull cord and down the side of the toilet you'll notice there's at room event mer which is off of the warm air heating system and that vent glows warm air into the shower and the combination of that and the extract fan running we can use the shower as a drying room so if you come in and it's wet you can put wet coats in here or even hang up your wet towels after you've heard a shower and this shower room dries out in no time at all another good feature of the shower is this handset this trigger operated so this enables us to save water you know you're limited to how much water you can carry on your van so anything like this is a great help so on the shower mix so you select what you want hot or cold and then you won't actually get any water until you press this trigger and it does produce quite a lot of pressure this is our bed it's a six foot long and we sleep front to back and it's about 5/8 wide so print your space and these are obviously spillage cupboards this is life size here last door and obviously a Greg has all of his down this side he's are a lot neater than mine [Music] and we also down above the kitchen area they are extra and supply eat fans we have the one in the kitchen area usually on extract when we're cooking to allow all the smells cooking smells to obviously extract out the mattress for our babies six inches thick it's four inches of a firm foam with two inches of memory foam and it's been manufactured by a company called custom sized beds you give them the dimensions that you want and they'll make the mattress to that particular size there's really efficient service they only took them about two or three days to make the mattress and deliver it to us and it was really reasonable in cost as well and then because we've got a solid bed base a lot of people say that you should have slats to get air circulating underneath your mattress we've actually got this product called air mat now this is like a half inch of honeycomb and what this allows it to do is to get air circulation underneath your mattress and again I'll put all the links in the description if you're looking for something similar as loose just explain they're paid six foot long but it's made in three sections we had a good friend of ours Jade who's a metal fabricator and he manufactured for us these aluminium frames and the built in three two foot sections by lift up the mattress here you can just see the first joint now what that allows us to do is we can lift these panels out we can lift all three sections out take the mattress out and then that gives us the full height of a van back if we want to put anything in here large it shows you how the beds put together you can see the three distinct element frames there that then sits on an aluminium angle which runs down the side of the van and they're bolted into roof nuts which is in one of the main steel structures of the van so it's a really secure system and that just gives us loads of space in here to store stuff we've got plastic boxes up the end there and we can get a couple of decent folding bikes in here so in the garage here you can see that's a water pipe that's insulated coming up from the freshwater tank underneath the van through an isolating valve then we've got a sure flow trial King seven diaphragm pump which pressurizes all the cold water then it goes through a little expansion vessel another isolator and then that pipe dives off into the van and feeds all of the cold appliances and it also feeds the coal feed to the boiler there's a little isolating switch there if we want to turn the pump off sometimes you'll find when the tank runs dry the pump will just keep running because it's trying to suck water out of the tank so it's handy to have that isolator there just to switch it off if you need to and in this side of the van is where all the controls are this is that control panel it's really a distribution board so the feed from the inverter and hookup comes into this and then there's a changeover switch at the bottom there where we can select mains supply or inverters supply and in this panel then feeds all of the sockets within the van it also has the 12-volt blade fuse holder in here and it does all the 12-volt supplies off of our leisure batteries just next to that you've got these solar charge controller on the wall there it's an MPPT solar charge controller from photonic universe is 40 amps and in that takes the power from our 400 watts of solar on the roof and in meters it to our trees and that's what charges the batteries and we've actually been a hundred percent off-grid all the time since we first put the van into action we've never hooked up once and we've had plenty of power I've got three 110 amp AGM batteries supplied by alpha batteries I've got a really detailed controls video which explains the installation of all this on the YouTube channel and I'll put all the links in a description below the back of the van here we've got our gas bottle it's in this purpose-built cupboard it's a gas low refillable cylinder there's a connection on the side of the van and we can just pull up a local petrol station and refill with LPG without having to exchange the bottle and then on the other side of the bedroom here is one of the true moments so this blows hot air down the back of the beds in that space between the garage doors and the inside of the van doors and it blows a nice warm air curtain up the back of the bed and just keeps any cold drafts away from the doors so that wraps up the tour of our van if you're new to our channel we've done really detailed build videos of every aspect of our spring to build from start to finish there's about 60 videos on the YouTube channel of every aspect so please do make sure that you check those out there's loads of useful information for you if you're planning your own build all the items that I've shown you here in this van tour I'll list as many as I can in the description below if you're looking to purchase something similar you'll find the links down there and if there's anything that you've seen in this fan tour video that you want some further information on and please do leave me a comment and I'll come back to you as quickly as I can just want to say a massive thanks to everybody who's been supporting the channel so far I've really enjoyed reading all your comments and hopefully you found the videos to be useful thanks very much for watching Cheers

Channel: Greg Virgoe

Views: 558,840

Keywords: Greg Virgoe, #vanlife, Mercedes Sprinter, tiny home, full time van life, self build camper van, van tour, self build van tour, mercedes sprinter camper van, van life, professional sprinter, the best self build van, greg virgoe insulation, greg virgoe van, greg virgoe sprinter, greg virgoe van tour, free download, off grid camper van, off grid living, how to convert a van into a home, how to build a camper van, free van build parts list, sprinter van tour, living in a van

Id: QBeGQc3WoMk

Length: 24min 29sec (1469 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 14 2019