A Fantastic Super Cheap and Easy Van Build With Almost No Construction or Tools Required

[Music] hi everyone welcome back to my next video now today we're going to show you a no build build and I think this is going to be one of the most important videos I ever make if you have no money to spend you can buy an amazingly good minivan for $3,000 homes on wheels Alliance how on by some searches for them buys them all the time and we just have had tremendous luck finding them you know a hundred thousand miles or less a 2000 and later I believe the one word have now is the 2003 we paid three thousand for it and it's got less than hundred thousand miles so we get mechanics to check them out they're in great shape three thousand will buy you a really nice good quality trouble-free minivan but a lot of people worry well won't it cost me thousands to build it out where am I gonna get that money and I don't have the skill I'll to find someone and I don't know anyone that can do it night so I can't I just can't live your life because I can't do the build you don't have to that's the good news you don't have to do the build it can be really really simple so this is a no build build a comfortable Pleasant life with no skills no minimal carpentry I can't say none but minimal perfectly so let me show you what we're doing we bought a car the most important thing is it caught you'll be comfortable will be off the floor and you'll have storage you get all those things the foot loop seems this and other [ __ ] that will work in here but we have a problem the floor on almost every minivan I've ever looked at is a convoluted mess I mean it's just a convoluted best one answer is to take everything out and put down plywood but then you're building aren't you you're really building because you got to cut correctly to around all the curves and even then it won't be completely leveled we have a better plan that's so simple that we think anyone can do it if you buy this cot or one very similar to it you'll see that it's not in line it's not parallel with this because the floor is very uneven so if I raise this to make it level so that's about level I would probably just get a tape measure and measure down and say this is level and then if you'll look at this leg once I've got it level the distance from here this this crossbar to here we'll measure that and we'll cut a piece of PVC pipe that's the right length to go from here and keep this level right you got that it's really simple this is an inch and a half so I bought a piece of pipe in PVC pipe schedule 40 it was six dollars and it will do this and we'll have a whole bunch left over and you cut it from the distance from here to the floor once it's level and let's say that's eight inches yeah because they're all going to be different and your deputy or van will be different the bed will be different then you cut this one to six inches then you just slide it under and we'll show you we're gonna do all this for you and then you've come over here holding it up there you measure this distance and you cut it you say well I don't have a saw that's way too hard I can't cut that we're gonna use a the cheapest worst saw you've ever seen you really honestly can do this you can go to Walmart we're gonna use a hacksaw you can use a hex on almost everything and you can go to Walmart and buy a cheap app so hacks on a blade for two three four bucks I mean they're just cheap it's cheap chinese stuff you only need it once and you can keep it and use it a lot of times or you can buy a cheap wood saw that's actually better and more useful I think although hacksaw is pretty darn useful so we'll get this cut and leveled and then we're gonna build out the rest of the van really simple no carpentry this is all the carpentry going to be required now an option thank you an option would be to cut the legs to the right length and if you have a half hex all which we do you could do that but it's gonna be a lot harder than cutting a piece of PVC if you've ever cut PVC yes a lot easier to cut that and get it be reasonably good and cut all these middle legs that would be really hard we're not gonna do that so next we will show you cutting the PVC the measuring the cutting and we'll go from there so let's do that next so I'm gonna have Dewayne and Doug demonstrate this for you and I'll show you how this is done so I'd do it guys thanks alright okay the first thing we're gonna do is hold it up level let's drop a little right about there measure the distance from the floor to the crossbar of the bed it's eight and three-quarter make sure it's close to the same on the other side [Music] look similar eight and three-quarter and the next thing we're going to do is cut the PVC to that light market your measured distance 8 3/4 probably the two critical things they're getting an accurate measurement and trying to make a square cut if you make a crooked cop okay [Laughter] all right now we're going to lift up the bed and slip over the front legs now second step will be to take measurements from the crossbar to the center legs here we've got seven and three-quarter and this side for whatever reason is only seven and a quarter so that's the size we're going to cut so that all six legs rest evenly so 7 3/4 and 7 and 1/4 that works sat down we have stable and wait on all six legs and pretty level and done six minutes that's it so we've got the bed and that's the most important thing you got to have a bed we'll have links to below we did this simple thing with these tubes just works great just a brilliant little system it's a little wobbly but I think it'll stabilize itself with some weight on it also you have to be very careful that you don't hit your head that's a big big thing if you set on your bed and you hit your head all the time that gets really old fast so you might want to very seriously thinking about an option because we raised the bed to make it level is to lower the two back legs or every mini man is different usually is you have to lower the two back legs but not always and then you'd have to probably cut six of them with a hacksaw just like we cut the pipe it's just metal so be harder and that will lower the bed the big advantage to a higher bed the other than the big disadvantage hitting your head is that you get more room more storage underneath okay so where the bed is set now I'm going to built put in a whole bunch of storage just cheap plastic drawers it won't overload your weight the weight won't overload the minivan it'll give you great practical organization and storage and it's cheap I mean all these things are liked in between ten to twenty dollars each so a whole bunch of them and you may be you may spend a couple hundred bucks on the entire build that way and light and cheap and easy and you're on your going so I'm going to throw all that stuff in and then we'll come back and I'll show you an example of how you might could do it okay let's do that now and so you can see here but we've just arranged a bunch of plastic drawers and things so this one we've opened to the outside you can open it from here and we didn't want to lose this the bed is fairly deep so we put storage here you if you had a battery you could put a battery here if not I'll show you a tote we have totes that would just fit right inside there you just you know you stuff every corner and here's the big problem that people have all the time and I hear about this all the time they go out in their rig they throw it all in and then they're and they have way too much that's the first thing you have to do is get way way down on how much stuff you own but then they just throw it all in and so they can't find anything because it's all just piled in and so it's they move the pile to here to find out and then they want this thing so they have to pilot that and it it that is the most miserable life you can have you must avoid that if you possibly can and so just drawers and and very quickly you'll start to realize this is office supplies all my office supplies are here all my my toiletries I wouldn't put toiletries here tools I'd put a bin here with tools that you don't need to get very often so you would come back around here and get your tools things you don't need often you just stake it all through and you'd make good organization how did nothing I mean this is like five bucks seven bucks at Walmart and these I think or maybe they're ten twelve I don't know it's been well let's go around and I'll show you some more so here I've got an exact matching drawer and you open it to the inside so the things you need often you get here and these don't have any real conclusion to roll out you can't go forward it's up tight against the it's up against the seat this build wedge is it it can't that's really not going to move anywhere well the big forces are breaking and that's the problem oh and if you'll stick the camera in your bread you'll see I've got a drawer unit in between now that problem with that is I'm blocking you from getting in the back and you may not want that I'm just showing it to you as an example of how you could really maximize your space I mean that thing must be about eight inches whatever size your minivan is all this all the dimensions will be different for every minivan in different years of minivans you can find something that fits in there and if you may not want to do that and block that you could pull that out and I also just stuck this water in here you got to have water you want pretty easy access that's a perfect jug for right there and then these are something I really highly recommend soft totes because they can go anywhere they're not going to go flying around different sized totes this is still enough room for the entrance here's an odd space so you'll find an odd bag for an odd space and as this fills up it expands and as you use it it gets smaller so you know you just there's a little cubby you stick something in there and these platt and these soft soft items are what are easy and they're tall they're skinny that's just organized you know exactly what's in here this belongs to Lisa who were building this van for when we build it the no build build and this is her entire kitchen she knows it's in here she knows exactly where it is she's not shuffling everything around to find it all the time kitchens here maybe tools are in there under closer in there you know however you organize your life you can do it and you won't be doing that shuffling everything around all the time okay and here is something that I would really recommend it these are just individual drawers you know you know you've seen these at Walmart or Target target has a good selection and so you get a couple of these and you know you know what everything that like this and this and you can just reach them and I you know you can easily get four of these and then you have to put something in the back or something long but I'm not you know every van every floor every length it's all gonna be different these are just ideas of a no build build you can do this for almost no money and no effort and I just really want you to be aware of how easy this is and okay let's go now to the back just to give you another example of storage so you could use these are long and so you can see you're using that entire space and yet this is tremendously organized you can know exactly what's in it you are going to have to slide it in and out every time and that's not the best but hey it's better than being frustrated and angry because you can't ever find anything and so two of these think about all the storage that this is in these two items and again I could push them all the way back and put something like this in here so now that is all that space is completely used up and really nice so that's just really bright and then I would put things here because you don't really unless you but if you put these here then you can move them easily and have walked through if you want I would probably go there not see how unlevel the floor is that's a problem with all the minivans and then you need a kitchen and here's what I would do is I would put the kitchen back here this is brand new we're giving this to one of the recipients so this is one of the butane stoves you've seen these before and I believe this is one we try always Jeff this is one that will use both the butane bottles and the propane bottles so I would put here I would keep all of my kitchen items in these two bins so that anytime I knew where everything for the kitchen was here or here my pots my pans my food baby I keep in here and all my pots and pans and utensils I keep here and then I would keep the stove and this is the great thing about these stoves is you can leave it out and throw this away but that's up to you that's your choice or keep it in the box fold it up and keep it right in here so the kitchen is gone I can stand back here and cook or I can sit on the bed and cook I can cook inside or out depending on the weather I just that's that's something I like that option and again you got a little little nook here so you just look for every every nook and cranny and you find a tote of some kind that would go in there but it's organized you know this would be more kitchen stuff since you're cooking here thing is it to reproduce this because you probably have a bunch of plastic totes in your home right now make use of them you'll find a place for them in a minivan and use all the kitchen utensils use your bedding the bottom line is here it took no carpentry skills we had to cut the legs to make the height adjustment that's the only even slight skill that was required and it believe me it's within the capacity of anyone to this you can go to Walmart and buy a cheap hacksaw for five ten bucks at the most and you can do that and adjust the legs on this car the total cost of everything in here $300 or less I'm certain I'd have to total it up you probably have some of it at home I mean you probably have this at all who doesn't carry this kind of stuff at home and water jugs and just use one gallon bottles you can find a place to stow one gallon bottles and find something like this to put on top of it so you don't waste the state of state space above it so get rid of everything you possibly can and then find soft things and plastic things and you've got a great comfortable I just think that's so very very very valuable I'm gonna do a companion video to this a part two of super cheap and super easy solar because that's the next question I get how am I gonna have power in there Bob sure okay great thank you so much for showing me this but I gotta have power too and I don't know how to put on the solar system now what's MPPT and Watts Watts and bolts and amps I can't I just can't get it believe me I understand I've spent years learning amps volts and MPPT it was not a pleasant experience but I had to so I did I'm gonna make it really super simple so watch that video coming up next thanks so much for watching this I just hope this is his life changing as I mean it to be 3 grand for a good minivan 3 400 bucks for the entire build a couple hundred bucks for the entire solar and I'm going to show you how to do that and you have a great life on an absolute minimum amount of so I just hope this is his life changing as I mean it to be so thanks for watching I really appreciate that you that you watch hit that thumbs up button subscribe please that's how we get the money to pay for all we're doing that homes on wheels Alliance is doing so please subscribe and we'll talk to it one third of all Americans haven't got a penny and savings and are on the edge of homelessness we get many emails from them asking for help with of one third of keep RV living subscribers gave a dollar a month that would be 100 thousand dollars to create homes out of minivans and trailers and to loan out tents for temporary shelter it's helping hundreds of people on the brink of homelessness worth $1 a month to you 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Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 1,221,143

Rating: 4.9282126 out of 5

Keywords: Travel, van life, van dwelling, simple living, van tour, tiny house on wheels, van conversion, vaN, vanlife, living in a van, camper van, van build, diy van build, sprinter van, diy van conversion, van life build, van living, sprinter van conversion, van life tour, #vanlife, van dweller, campervan, camper van conversion, van conversion ideas, vandwelling, florb, diy camper van, stealth van, solo, female, solo female, solo female travel, van, girl with no compasss

Id: 25VBk8AOqRQ

Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 28 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/youchasechickens]

I love his channel because it gives a different perspective on nomadic life compared to the 20 something's with fully built out rigs

[u/FlippinFlags]

Bob Wells - the legend.

Didn't watch the video but more newbies need to do this.

The amount of people who haven't slept a single night in a vehicle then plan for years and second months building things out and have no idea if they'll even like or need what they think they'll need with no explanation is crazy.

A no build build is the best way to do it.

All you really need is a mattress and hit the road.

Re assess after a few months of experience.