VAN TOUR | Incredible SELF-BUILD with FULL BATHROOM, SPARE BEDROOM (!) & Self-hiding TV

hi so i'm emily and i'm john oh that's joey say hi joey hello john fully converted the man himself it took him about 18 months um as he was working full-time so just as i finished the van i met emily happened to love vans and last summer we went on our first adventure from the uk all the way down to the amalfi coast and we are currently in norway exploring scandinavia so this is one of the main features of the van the kitchen where we prepare food we've got a baby belfast sink which is made of real porcelain so it does weigh quite a bit two ring burner lpg the gas is in the back for that hot and cold water hot water runs off an lpg boiler in the back as well so it's really useful in here we've got storage which it's just a slide-out drawer and then in this one we've got a waco 12 volt fridge which is 65 liters we've got uk plug sockets with usb chargers really handy if you need to charge your phone or cameras or anything like that i tend to do most of the cooking john does the driving and it's really really good this kitchen we've got the extending part here which is good because obviously you can prep all of your food and there's tons of storage so in here we've obviously got all of our plates and utensils and in the fridge we have got plenty of room for lots of prosecco and beer but it's also got a freezer compartment at the top which is really helpful because obviously when we're wild camping and we want to go off-grid for quite some time it means that we can obviously do frosty food [Music] this is the tv so this is one of the luxuries of the van it's a samsung 32 inch smart tv it's 240 volts and it runs off the inverter but it's really energy efficient so if we're off-grid we can use it for days and days and the battery won't run out because it's powered by the solar which is great it's also on this swivel so it positions um where we want to watch tv and it all sits nicely in this tv cabinet so with this remote you just lower or higher to what position you want it and it sews away safely in the day um our people always ask as well how we watch things on it so we just plug it hard driving and that's how we watch our movies and tv shows [Music] so one of the main things john thought about when he was designing the band was the fact that he wanted a full bathroom so we have got a betfred cassette toilet and it swivels around as well which gives you a bit more room in here which is really good and we've got a full thermostatic shower last summer we only had cold water we did a bit of an upgrade so this year we've got hot water as well which runs off the gas boiler in the back and it works perfectly it's pvc lined and it's got a wet room vinyl floor so it's completely [Music] waterproof this is the electrical system so this is like the heart of the van we've got a solar inverter which is 2.5 kilowatts so it's pure sine wave so it can handle pretty much anything in the van which is really good including emily's hair straighteners we've got a bosch 230 amp hour um deep cycle leisure battery this was an upgrade this year our batteries last year weren't up to the job so we've had no problems with that and i highly recommend those we've got an epivert mppt solar controller so the there is a 300 watt solar panel on the roof and then this is the consumer unit that runs all the 240 just behind me here we have a um sterling battery to battery alternator charger so as we're driving that charges up the laser battery so one of the really important things was obviously been able to do all of this off-grid and so not only can i use my hair dryer i've also got full working ghd's you just plug them in it makes a bit of a pretty nice to start with it then takes a few seconds and they just click on just like the rest of them we are going to now set up the bed and show you what a simple process is fingers crossed so we start by taking down the extra kitchen work surface we just pull out the bed [Music] and there we go [Music] so we have the double bed but we also have this single bed as well which is brilliant so it's really really comfy and it's just somewhere that we can chill out in the daytime if we have people come then there's somewhere that they can stay if joey wants somewhere to hang out he can just come and chill on here and it's really really nice it's got a skylight up at the top so you can have a windows open it's got a window out the back and it's also got two usb sockets up at the top there which is obviously really handy for charging your phones it's really important to have loads of storage in the van so we have got this overhead storage compartment i tend to put most of the food up there it stays nice and cool so it's a really good place to store all of that we've also got the hatch doors and a lot of people ask us why did we put the hatch doors on there's a couple of reasons uh first reason is if it's pouring down outside it means without go outside and we can just jump in the front the other reason is a bit of a safety thing as well if we're in the back and we feel like something's happened and we need to get away quickly we can jump in there and drive off and we have had a couple of times where we have needed to do that joey's now going to demonstrate how to get in and out of the hatch thank you joey and down just like that we have two skylights in the van so there's one at the back that emily's already shows you and then one above us um really good for ventilation they've got flyknits built in and also blackout blind so it's great if you want fun blacked out at night for sleeping and they also open up to let the fresh air in so an absolute necessity for any van um especially if you're going wild camping is have some sort of fly screen and we didn't have one last summer and we learned the hard way this is literally just a piece of neck curtain from boys's we put a wire through the top and it just simply slides across all we've done here is a safety pin it into the wall but it works really really well these blinds are from ikea so when i originally bought them i just wanted something that was black out and was easy to trim these were the best ones on the market i could find at the time actually they are thermal blinds as well which is really good because what that does is it if it's a hot day it'll keep the van cool and if it's cold outside and you're in the van it'll keep it warm and it'll stop the heat escaping which is really good it's really important to have as much storage as you possibly can so under this seat and this is kind of for stuff we don't need every day because obviously it takes a little bit of work getting all the cushions on and off but in here we've got loads of space we tend to put the inflatable kayak here which is brilliant to take out impossible to put away and then in this one uh we've got a lot of the camera equipment things again that we use and that we definitely need but don't need access to all the time so a lot of backup toiletries a lot of backup food under the picture we've got the control panel we've got the fridge the pump which we've got quick access to got the webasto light heater the inverter we've got two usb sockets there for charging phones 12 volt and then this is for the battery to battery charger it's just a controller yeah that's pretty much it so the storage down here actually solves two problems and obviously it stores our things which is really important but it also creates a step which we need so obviously if we're ever sleeping up here and we need to get in and out at this step makes that really easy to do [Music] this is the garage as you can see it's a nice big space we can fit all our things in here we've got storage at the back crates with all our food in house pipe chairs we want to be able to access our clothes really easily when we're on the road so john and build these shelves they work really well they've just got crates inside of them you can just pull them out get what you need and put them back in and it just means we can see absolutely everything we've got last year we ended up with loads of bags and it was just really really difficult to get what we wanted and this makes it so much easier when we were packing the van we realized that we needed more storage than just the shelves because we managed to fill those with just our clothes so we bought these storage boxes two of them are just filled with food the other one is just filled with shoes but we've just created this wooden effect at the bottom and that just keeps it all in place and again loads of more storage for us this is the boiler it's an instant lpg boiler the water that comes out of it is extremely hot so we've got nice hot showers which emily is very pleased about this year at the back there there's a 70 liter fireman water tank so we can go off grid which is amazing and then just in here we've got the gas this is the cassette toilet from the rear the reason why it's placed here is because i didn't want to be taking it out through the van it's much easier and quicker access straight out the back door and then we can get rid of it also here we've got a hose just for washing off your feet it's a really powerful spray in the hose so if you've got any pots to wash or you need to wash the sand off your feet at the beach great [Music] i hope you enjoyed that content um if you hadn't noticed we do have an e-book that we sell and the link is just in the description uh it contains 160 pages crowned full of practical advice walkthrough information electronic schematics and part lists which will make your job a lot easier for doing a van conversion and it will save you time and money also we've created special videos for the ebook which enable you to see walkthroughs for how to do loads of things in a van conversion so that's for water systems for your electrics for how to do simple woodwork joints that anyone can do i really believe that anyone regardless of that experience can make a half decent fan conversion thanks for watching we really appreciate you watching our content and we put a lot of effort to make it interesting informative and find those cool projects that feature on our channel consider subscribing leave a comment and we'll see you next week you

Channel: Nate Murphy

Views: 1,039,461

Keywords: van conversion, sprinter conversion, #vanlife, vanlifediaries, van conversion electronics, van conversion gas, van conversion solar, off grid soar, off grid camper, van conversion electrics, van conversion heater, van conversion how to, how to van conversion, vanlife, van life, how to van life, digital nomad, selfbuild van, selfbuild camper, vw crafter conversion, campervan, camper shower, campervan kitchen, how to convert a van, campervan conversion, van tour, tiny house

Id: P8EBTPds_o0

Length: 11min 3sec (663 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 10 2020