Van Tour Solo Woman Living in a High Top Van!

it's a 2002 gmc savannah 2500. um i bought it uh used from the original owner he had put the high top on and had bought it with a heavy duty towing package so that he could haul his airstream back and forth to florida when i bought it it had 100 000 kilometers 62 000 miles and still had two of the original tires on it needless to say i was a little gun-shy about driving on them so the first thing it got was the new set of wheels great and uh you then it was it was an empty shell when you got it you still had to gut it i had to gut the uh stuff that was inside and have a body shop plug a whole bunch of holes in the fiberglass roof and fortunately for me all of the uh bodywork that needed to be done was below the bottom character line so it just got stone guarded so we didn't have to paint the whole thing good so you ended up not having to put a whole lot into it beyond the original purchase price no and you said that was 3 500 3 500. that's amazing for this beautiful van with those low miles and with the high top on and you don't mind if we say you're canadian and so in canada vans are much more expensive so that's an especially good deal uh yes they're more expensive and uh ones that haven't been beat to death are also really hard to find yeah the same as they are down here yeah that's true because in the last two decades most vans have been used commercially right right okay well let's go take a quick look and and run through here we've got a basic introduction to the van like most of you that she's done i think standard things mostly uh first we'll take a look inside the front door this is is that a swivel seat or swivel base um it didn't have it originally i had that uh put in the body shop uh modified the base to fit my van the original bolt holes are still there hiding underneath the um uh section of my uh jack so you just took it to a um a body shop and said i want a swivel base and they manufactured what you needed i found an old uh an old uh junkyard that had the um had the swivel base but it was set up with the shoulder harness still attached to the um to the uh base which mine of course is on the wall so that had to be cut off and uh the mounting bolts didn't match so new holes drilled and of course it was all rusty so it got a paint job so just a a junk yard and you found what you needed and then made it work yep and nearly all this is a really good body guy that always helps having a guy and boy this just having the van a seat that swivels just opens up so much comfort to your van oh it's used as my living room my dining room and my office amazing yeah that's great all right now let's take a look inside so one door when one door shuts another one opens and this you gutted this basically and so you have built in all that we're seeing here yep all the cabinet work i did it with a jigsaw and a uh drill and that was it so you didn't need a whole handful of tools a whole garage full of tools you just did what you had with you no i keep telling the guys that they don't need a whole lot of toys yeah well we love our toys i know ladies some ladies like their uh and you can see the high top gives you an amazing amount of room inside uh some ladies like shoes and clothes guys like toys hard toys most high tops have the just the drivers compartment original roof left in i was very fortunate that both ends were left in uh which provided me with mega amounts of above storage there's six feet uh of open high top there but that back storage unit is the width of the van by 24 inches high by 30 inches deep you have no idea how much i can stash oh my yeah that's that's wonderful yeah storage is always at a premium in a van and of course there's no roof vent in there yet but the square is in place four screws come out and that center panel drops down and it's all done exact specifications for dropping a roof vent in all right right right okay um i'll get in we will get in and i am able to easily no i'm not all that tall i'm 5'8 but i'm easily able to stand upright let me see if i can turn this around oops i'm going to turn this so i don't want to catch you you might want to dock behind me so i'm going to turn this and here i am i'm five eight and oh man there's uh eight inches six at least six so i can't really see it i'm holding the camera in an awkward way but that's a lot of room that's a whole lot of room and the windows are amazing too so i'm standing here here i am and i can stand and look out this window and i can also stand now and oops here i am and there's the window i actually have to stand on step stools to look out the window because i'm short right which is an advantage sometimes so that's great i really love the windows and that's very unusual in a high top i think one of them leaked i had to take it in i took it into an rv dealer and had it removed and reinserted because it's definitely a two-person job and i wanted it done right and so let me let's back up and when you go over the kitchen this is your uh you built in this oh you can open up and poke inside your doors now you can poke inside nothing will pop out i gotta go let me get back i'll go over here this is a bed right here sorry it's a little awkward with two of us here nice nice arrangement i put in organization drawers because shelves the things you need most often are always to be found at the back and the only way to get at them is to pull everything out in front so that's all food pantry and i'll just reach in and pull one out um here take the top one i have to do a bit of modification to one wall because there's always a few things that you've got to change once you didn't happen until i started loading the shelves right then the weight revealed that the oats that that wall is bowed a slight bowl because you should have used three quarters today we used at least three-quarter plywood right i was trying to save weight and here i can open your drawers open that one can i sit on this no not right now yeah sit on the band and that one opens fine nice drawer nice just like your kitchen at home folks this is just how you would have your kitchen at home and you're going to put in a sink a sink over here falls front that's a false for this one's a false front and then you can get your water below yeah that's saved for water and whatever else i can fit in there after the fresh and gray water jugs go in i'm just going to put a manual pump in because it saves on water even over an electric pump it also means that i need less electricity and this will be continue to be a fridge down that's meant for the uh 12-volt compressor fridge the tray is upside down right now because i have to build a gate to keep it from sliding outwards it comes out and rolls down to meet you if you don't have a gate on it so i flip the tray upside down right now so that it can't roll around on me once the compressor fridge goes in there then it has to be right side up i also had the countertop uh custom painted for me a girlfriend did it she's a beauty yeah well i wanted um i wanted a nice countertop and i couldn't find a partial sheet of laminate and so then it was like okay what are we gonna do next so um she came down and did a couple of days worth of faux marbling on it for me and you can reach up just your hand and open that door uh the top uh closet yeah can you halt that for a sec well i just up okay because i got to lift that out of the way i have to put um the uh rv um lift things on there so that uh i i don't have to hold it up with my head or my hand right but there's a huge amount of of uh storage so yeah yes i used a couple of the uh kitchen wire um uh shelf razors to be able to double up on layers that in there but uh yeah everything that you need is up there and then down here you have in this box what what is in here that's the bathroom ah oh now this is uh something we let's see we especially want to spend some time on you have a sea head yes would you say semi uh composting toilet they're considered a separating toilet as opposed to a composting toilet they do that because obviously it takes longer than you're going to leave solids in there um to compost so you let them sit until it's full and then remove them yeah you can go ahead and lift that lid why don't you give us a quick rundown on how it works okay um what it does is it's separating toilet there's two compartments in there the front one is for urine collection the back one is for solids and yeah don't appear too closely in there bob it's used as well but once that lids back in place if you want to lift the entire white section up yep oh this too lift that section up there you can see the uh liquid collection it goes into a one gallon standard milk or water container oh i see it can be removed and stored if necessary they were originally designed for marine use and meet all marine specifications and consequently you can go out for 100 days and have 15 bottles left to dispose of when you're done if you're so inclined to bring it back to shore you have a lever that goes in here and spins to agitate the solids once you need to stir the solids all you do is drop that in place and rotate 15 to 20 times and you're not going to charge me oh i won't charge you either for rotating your solids yeah and that's just to help it break down and that's that's to stir up the i'm using wood shavings right now i buy the hamster pet bedding at walmart and a block of it under four dollars fits in a five gallon food container once it's broken up and you just keep sufficient supply in a container like this dump some down the toilet after you need to and stir it around and when it's full you put it in an external storage container until you're ready to dispose of it and for most people uh homesteaders for example would have a human manure pile yes that they finished composting it with yeah now let me add that folks you can't hear you can't smell it at home but uh there's absolutely no odor in in here whatsoever i'm standing you know i'm standing right here beside it and got my nose right up to it and it has no odor at all it does come with an accessory of 12 feet of hose if you wanted to um put an exhaust vent i kept it to find out whether or not i was going to need it and i see absolutely no reason after almost two months of using it one month part-time and another month full-time that i would ever ever need to externally vent this thing right my head lays right there on the bed right at the other side right beside the toilet and i can't smell anything no and uh now when i lifted the lid i could definitely smell it just a little bit but that's because it needs emptying right that wasn't part of my house work list this morning yeah yeah it's got to be on my list too but it works it really works there's no odor chemicals takes no chemicals at all yeah which is you couldn't if you're going to use it for composting manure you could not add chemicals that would make it dangerous no once once human waste is is properly broke composted it's perfectly safe to use it's kind of gross as most of us out but it's completely safe science behind it is because the liquid in the solid is separated there is no odor that the only odor you get in a standard rv black tank or a porta potty is either the chemicals or the combination of the two right that the two combining is actually what's uh what's smelly okay why don't we uh go back around and take a look at the uh oh you missed the freezer compartment freezer compartment it's got another cooler in there right now come on in oh oh down below yes okay this lifts up okay and a 12-volt compressor unit will go in that will be set on freezer lift that up again if you don't mind it doesn't doesn't look apparently let me get in there because it's got a and it's just a large open area yeah okay that was size to fit there's also two more storage compartments under the bed one over the wheel well at the head that's just strictly wheel well that's my laundry hamper when it's full it's time to go to the laundromat the other one actually starts right in here and goes all the way to the back um part of it is to the floor so i use 5 gallon food buckets to store back stock of food and my bear vault for back country camping with dehydrated in it and a bunch of other stuff that's stuffed in there okay and so you're gonna have two compressors one is the freezer one is a fridge mainly because it's a single it's virtually impossible to buy a pork chop a chicken piece unless you find a grocery store with a butcher counter and this will allow me to continue my usual practice of buying in bulk and freezing and then having my choice of what i want for dinner so here you've cut the bed a little short like uh two feet uh and built in just over a foot and that's because it's a 30 inch wide twin size so it fits standard sheets i took a standard twin size mattress and uh twin is plenty big enough for me fortunately because i'm short i can sleep side to side uh and i have eight inches extra uh between the size of the bed it's cut down to 68 inches can i pull this out pull this out and turn it sideways to lift it out it's full but i really like how you've done an extra shelf here you've got it because you've got a high top the bed can be a little higher i had to put the bed up high enough to clear the sizing i needed for the freezer that was what dictated the height of the bed right i feel like a princess climbing on it because i'm short but um having it up high enough like that also enabled me to put lots and lots of storage underneath it so an extra shelf gives you a shelf and and stacking storage on the ground that's the sewing machine you're looking at in there a sewing machine this must be the tube for the uh head that i have to figure out what i want to do with and then like most of us should have we've got uh standard supplies like extra uh antifreeze generator that's my storage unit for my sports equipment um i needed some place to put kayak paddle and and uh pfd and stuff like that so it all goes in there put a couple hooks in there to hold my uh hiking sticks that aren't in there right now being a very active person you have so you'll have your kayak you have backpacks you have just all kinds of outdoor gear backpacks up top along with all my backpacking gear and alcohol stoves in the kitchen area if i needed a third third burner i can always haul it out and yeah so that well folks thanks for joining us hope you've enjoyed this tour got some good ideas for yourselves and your van and be sure to like this video on youtube and subscribe to our channel and we'll talk to you next time

Channel: CheapRVliving

Views: 419,210

Keywords: live, living, car, van, RV, Fill-time, nomad, gypsy, camper, camp, boondock, travel, high-top, c head, composting toilet

Id: ae6k4vnDVNM

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 05 2017