VAN TOUR | Space Saving DIY Van Conversion With INNOVATIVE HIDDEN Shower And FLOATING Bed

hi we're riding the Laura and this is a van tour of our self-converted Citron relay hope you enjoy it [Music] so first off this is the cab area of the van and we decided to separate it from the living space as we just wanted two separate areas and also for security reasons and because we have a lock on the front door here and that we were able to close and then people can't see into the van as well so come on through and I will show you the living space [Music] so first things first on my right here we have our shower now when we were researching showers we found the general consensus was they love having a shower in the van but they do take up a lot of room and they end up getting used to storage so what we decided to do to overcome this was to have a shower that folds away so let me show you how this works so first we unlock it here and then it both the doors open up here and we have our shower tray that folds out at the bottom so to do this you just twist these two areas and then it just folds down and we put these two doors together and it's held together with the pole that goes along the top and this shower curtain will come down and have magnets around the edge to prevent water getting in the van we also have these two seals that slot in either side as well just to prevent water getting in the van and water damage from things so to put it away we just do the same thing but backwards so the shower tray goes back up and goes back into the holes and then we just close the two doors and you would never know that it was there so next up is our bulkhead area and storage so this is actually the factory bulkhead that came with the van we just cut a hole out of it to make a front door as we said to split off the front and the back then up here we have the parcel shelf which was also the factory one we just store bedding up here and and toiletries in the shelves that Ryan made above in this back corner we've got a deeper shelf where we store our electrical hookup Point connector and that gets stored there and then we have these um reclaimed scaffolded board shells as well just to fit little things on like toothbrushes and plants to make the place look better as well and up above us we have our max air fan this brings air both in and out and is great for ventilation and reducing condensation in the van and then we have our wardrobe next to it so if we have a look in here both of us have a shelf each a draw each and we also have our longer clothes stored at the bottom and it is space at the bottom as well for bags and so on behind the Wardrobe there is our electrical cupboard and Ryan's going to talk to you a little bit about that now so arteries are underneath the driver's seat we've got 230 amps of lead carbon Asian batteries and there's three ways of charging them so one is you can you can hook up to 240 to 5 volts um that powers this fuse board we've got a battery charger underneath here which then would directly charge batteries if you've got our main way of charging the batteries which is on all the time is our solar charge controllers mppt model um we've got 600 watts of solar on the roof which I'll show you after so that comes through the charge controller and then Powers the batteries and then we've also got a victron battery to battery charger so when we're driving and the alternator is on the current also goes through to the Leisure batteries our 12 volt system which runs throughout the van all comes from this fuse boards so we've got the series everything that's run from 12 volts on here um and then the 240 volt sockets which you can see at the top here at the moment they're powered from the inverter which is just underneath this step but if you hook up to 230 240 volts then this automatic changeover switches and then all the outlets are powered from the hookup that we're on I could talk about the electrical system for 20 minutes but that's a short overview of everything we've got if you want to know more let me know so this is our block countertop with an insert that doubles as a chopping board and fits just over our seat and I think we have our tap that runs both hot and cold water and also has filter points so we know wherever we are we have fresh um clean drinking water as well and that connects to our 66 liter under slung fresh water tank too and so moving on to our hop we have a two ring burner hob that is powered by our 38 liter LPG tank that is under the van as well that also Powers our oven and Grill that we have it is a perfect size to fit the pizzas in that we like and it's just enough for the two of us next up our fridge we have a fridge freezer um we find that in the summer we need ice cream so our freezer section is perfect to fit our ice creams in and then we have enough space underneath to store our food we can store about five six days worth of food for the two of us in here so a good enough um space for the things that we need um and yeah um a good little fridge so there are appliances and Brian's now going to talk you through the rest of the kitchen oh overhead storage we have our pots and pans for cooking our dry goods and an abundant amount of hot sauce all the cabinets or drawers they all have this locking mechanism here so you push it to lock it and what it means is you can't open it so nothing can fall out when you're driving then you have this magnet and then that allows you to open it if you park up somewhere push it shut it means you can just continue open and close it fur along we've got these against re reclaims scaffolding boards with a custom-made bracket stopping anything for falling off got one here and then one down that side this side holds food food goods and then that side just holds books and miscellaneous sort of stuff onto the central compartment so top one acts as extra countertop space or chopping board it has a hole at the back as well so what it means is if you have the food waste been open in this drawer when you're chopping your weight can go straight into the bin [Applause] this drawer has a compartment for glasses for cutlery and plates all the plates have individual slots all the glasses of felt lines and the cutlery is felt lined as well so to minimize rattling this is all our utensils pot handle scales knives and then a felt line compartment for the bowls as well and then the last one in this section is just our bins with extra storage down the side to maximize as much as possible and then moving into the toe kick again just to maximize much space this is where we keep all our spices and then underneath the fridge is just where we keep miscellaneous items like clove lines and inset repent this is our toilet the initial plan was to try and have the toilet here so I was going to have the oven fridge um but after I'd purchased both of them I realized that wasn't possible so the toilet goes here it can be removed so you pick it up and put it to the other side but that's where the toilet lives so the last thing we have in this area is our control panel our Utility Board so we have our solar display our inverter on off the control for the propex a reading for how much water we have and then a series of buttons this one controls the light just underneath there this one's free at the moment so if we need to hook anything up we can and then we've got the gas on off and then water pump as well this is just a master switch so if we wanted to turn all the 12 volt appliances off we can switch that you can also remove the key instead of stop people from tampering with it and we also have these remotes so this controls a max air fan and then this controls we've got LEDs around the perimeter of the van so you can change the colors mood lighting Etc so some more storage we have is above the wheel arches we've got um one behind the sofa over here which stores all of our camping gear so our chairs our table and our camping cooker um this as well is a storage box where we store our um laundry bag and kind of other things such as our hammock and stuff so that gets stored there and then underneath the sofa um we also have some drawers as well that kind of just store all the stuff that we don't need to access often because it's not the easiest to get to and here is our sofa the perfect place to watch the TV and now this was designer made by Ryan and his dad and all it is it works as a concertina so it can be lifted up and makes our bed system and that just means that the end here is connected to these two metal connection points and it just balances on top and with it being a concertina as well it also means we can fold it all the way up completely and have all this lovely floor space to work with as well so let's show you it in bed mode so this is it when the bed is up as you can see it's a lovely size we managed to keep it as a double width ways we just lost two inches lengthways but around six foot one and he can still just about fit so perfect there and lots of room underneath as well we've managed to have Ryan's sister stay on a single air bed as well underneath so you can sleep three in here and if you do want to see a more in-depth version um or video of the bed do just let us know in the comments and we'll put that together for you but for now let's put this away and show you the rest of the van so I'll quickly show you our table setup so on the back door which currently have open there's a beautiful day in turkey at the moment we have this uh again we're climbing scaffolding board and we've uh clad in on the inside so what it means is when it's on the wall ties in doesn't stand out too much so we've got the lagun table system attached to it what it means is when it's attached in you can swivel out the way see Campbell through the van and then when you want you can sit at the sofa have your lunch do you work and so on and then another feature that we've got the cool plate in this is another mounting point for the leg so you can move this to the back and then you can have the table outside we've got a portable stove so we can put this on here have a BBQ at the back we've got a barbecue a cut Point underneath um so you can use this to cook for the knife another feature that we've incorporated in is just these wooden crate boxes here so use a shoe storage or someone both sides of the van so mine's meant to be the top one these aren't mine and then we've got the bottom one which is for Laura shoes hooked for towel storage and then what we do is we'll go up onto the roof and we'll show you the outside of the van as well to my right here is our barbecue hookup Point like Brian mentioned and our outdoor shower the outdoor shower is great because it runs both hot and cold and both of these items are perfect when it's really warm outside and you just want to be outside the van instead another thing that we tried to do was make it look as like still for Incognito as possible so we didn't want any water points or gas hookup points on the outside of the van so we've designed this board you've got your water hook up here your gas hook up here your gray waste and your little fresh waist there so that just slides away um when you're not using it and then when you need to fill up or dump you slide it down like so and then these padlocks hold it into position so it won't slide down as you're driving along it keeps it outside so no one knows what a few people know as possible that he is a camper and then behind the passenger seat we have a telescopic ladder which allows us to get up onto the roof so this is our roof area we've got it separated into roof Decking at the front and solar panels at the back and this roof decking area is just made out of marine ply and then stained and to the color that we wanted it and fits around our max air fan um this part of the roof decking lifts up and um what we do is we just attach adjustable straps and to the four anchor points we have around um and what that means is we can adjust how high or low we have this kind of back area and then we can sit and admire the view in front of us wherever we are parked up and then again we just lower it back down and we strap it on either ends with velcro just to make sure it's secure when we are driving at the back of the roof we've got two 295 watt panels running parallel so roughly about 600 watts in total um they're connected via y Branch underneath and then they go through the roof at the back and then go into the charge controller at the front which we showed you they're a bit dirty at the moment um we've been at the beach for about three days now um so they could do a bit of clean but this has been more than enough for our needs we haven't had to hook up once while we've been away we've been away for about five and a half months now so the solar panels partnered with the battery to battery charger the charges is driving this is more than enough around these so that's it for the roof and that concludes our van tour thank you so much for watching our van tour hopefully you liked it and if you did like it do make sure to give it a like and we'd really appreciate a subscribe as well as we do hope to be putting more content out of both our travels and our van as well if there's a lot of things we like roster not rushed over but we went for it as quickly as we can just to make sure this video is not too long but if there's anything that you want to see in more detail like the roost deck in the bed or the electrical system let us know and then we can expand on that [Music]

Channel: Vehicle Adventure Network

Views: 79,525

Keywords: Van Tour, Van Conversion, Citroen Relay Conversion, DIY Van, Citroen Relay, Self Converted Van, Self Converted Camper, Self Converted Motorhome, Home On Wheels, Space Saving, Innovative Van, Van Design, Van Life, Self Conversion, UK Van Conversion, Fiat Ducato, Peugeot Boxer

Id: 6NS1IZJ0DOg

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 30 2023