Very Detailed Skoolie Tour // Every Aspect Of A Skoolie Build Covered In This Video //

[Music] everybody Chris here from the off-grid Schooley and tiny home tours today's video features dean he goes into great detail about his school ii build this video is perfect for those that are looking to build their own school ii some of these videos go 20 minutes two of them go an hour and 40 minutes like this video basically i just start out some questions and as much detail as the person wants to go into i let him do it once again if you're interested in building to school ii this is the video for you thank you so much for watching and we'll catch you in the next video hi my name is dean this is my bus her name's Felicia but it's the school II on all of my Instagram YouTube social media channels and I've been traveling around in this bus for actually a year today so really a big day to be filming and this is actually the same place I started in Arizona so she's gone around everywhere from Alaska to Florida and everywhere in between the minimum I want to stay for a little bit of school Aoife loser well welcome to the inside of the bus the way I designed this was based off of old time campers because the design that they used worked well and they still do the same design and that would be having a little buffet style area over here where you can sit down have your breakfast and it's small enough to stay out of the way but large enough to actually use it and typically they have the kitchens on the other side opposite so you can do what you need to really close by and still have a nice flow through the middle wanted to have my hallway down the middle I'm a tall guy the bus ceiling is about well now it's about six foot I'm 6 foot 2 so yes I have to sort of slouch but I'm not usually doing jumping jacks or running laps back and forth through here I'm usually sitting driving sleeping whatever so to me it's been fine I just wanted to have a nice flow through the middle so you could actually make your way through all the way to the back we'll start over here in the kitchen area I went with some butcher block countertops that I picked up a Home Depot calm I can say now that I love them but what I can suggest is if you are going to purchase them yourself maybe even through anywhere online that you're not sure where they came from built them how they built them is to reinforce them reglue them I put this in place the first time and I use wood conditioner I take care of them but they ended up with some cracks that I've since taken apart the whole thing free sanded it reglued a tree sanded again and sealed it and it's been perfect because when you're in these vehicles it's a permanent earthquake so everything is always shaking you need to make sure that things can withstand a little more than it would if it was just in a house as for the sink I wanted to go as large as possible it's been one of the best decisions I've made because when you want to wash a large pan even small pans you're not struggling you're not wasting as much water because you're able to get at what you're trying to clean without forcing everything in the way and you're not splashing everything everywhere plus if you don't have a shower you can give yourself a bath in this thing it's just about big enough and speaking of water consumption having a sprayer is key you'll save so much water when you can get that high pressure jet on there and you can just get where you want to without this just running constantly trying to get your dishes washed so I suggest a sprayer do what you want but to me it was really important these cabinets are unfortunately but fortunately the only thing that I reclaimed wish I could have been able to reclaim more material but these I picked up from Habitat for Humanity I was looking for pre-made cabinets because I just wanted something a little more character and I had a friend that was working nearby one of the Habitat for Humanity ReStore z-- and he sent me a photo of these this is exactly the color they were they have that antique look they're not antique but somebody did an ok I think a good job of antiquing them so I needed something that would fit in this space because I already had my wall up because I designed the center first and then wanted to put in whatever I can after that so after I had these cabinets in I found a sink that would fit the best in that space the largest I could fit between here was what I wanted so I took a tape measure went to Home Depot clothes went to everywhere and looked online and just found the one that would fit as wide as possible between these two cabinet spaces and since then it's been a great decision and I wouldn't change it to a smaller sink when I design these cabinets I needed a way to lock them and when you're driving down the road if you don't have some of those soft clothes even those will open on their own or you can get these little magnets to work with it and with these cabinets being the way they've been designed I couldn't find a way to use those clips that childproofing all those sort of things they're just designed in the squared-off way that nothing like that would work for me so I invented these pins I didn't invent them themselves but a way to install them into here so I twist them in and then they're locked in place and so when I shut the door you don't see those anyway people always think my cabinets are broken because they can't open them which is good then they can't get in there but keeps everything from coming out these cabinet doors don't have anything but things don't fall out of there like they do out of the top drawers because they're not on rollers that come flying out really easily I installed this built this myself to hide everything behind the sink it's worked really well this is out of birch wood I just kept it the natural look instead of trying to mimic the cabinet's because I would probably never be able to make it look the same so it's better to look closer to the countertops then to match the cupboards themselves up above this was a shoe rack and I intended to use it as a shoe rack in the beginning out by my front entrance but I would suggest again in my own opinion not putting a bunch of things in your entrance because you're walking in and out of there you're gonna knock things off you're gonna hit your shoulder hit your leg whatever it is so I kind of like the rack and I wanted to find a use for it and just kind of walked around and what can I use this for and eventually it came up with this as a pot rack it not only does it hold the pots just to keep them out of the way but you can dry everything that'll hang straight into the sink so you don't have to use your towel or whatever is you're gonna use they can just drip dry so it works really well but I question I get all the time is don't those Bing around when they're up there but no because they don't go up there when I Drive I'm the kind of person that I don't want anything on my cabinets on my cupboards on my counter tops when I'm driving it's fine when people do it that way they can do what they want but for me I don't like things to fall off so everything goes away as you see it now is almost how I am most of the time but it can get cluttered really fast but yeah so these do go away up here is I'll grab something to show you just one of the magnetic knife holders again I don't leave these here when I Drive because if you hit something fast enough and you survive it that's coming at you so these are strong but not when you hit a brick wall they're not strong so I wouldn't keep something out like that if you don't have something protecting you or you're not super far away even still I would still put them away just put a little piece of diamond plate here to protect the wall just from the immediate heat it seems to do the job haven't caught on fire yet so I've been model moderately happy with that it's fine back in this rear corner is where I keep my stove this is an Atwood they call it the Wedgwood vision I don't know why that it's calling Atwood but it's a propane stove I didn't really want one type of stove over another but I did want to have propane on board so it seemed like the likely way to cook my food and I'm happy with a gas stove I've cooked with propane and propane before and I've cooked with natural gas before and so to me it seemed like a win-win I have 220 pound tanks of propane on board I go with the typical barbecue style if you don't know what the 20-pound are they're the barbecue ones that go on here your grill and I wanted to have the option to either fill them or to exchange them it's cheaper to get them filled than it is to exchange them but I have run into scenarios where there's nowhere in town that you can get them filled but they do have them at the local grocery store to exchange so I've been able to save myself from being without propane when I've needed it and this stove works fine I have two burners I'm not some gourmet chef but I've cooked everything that I need to cook on here this is the only source of cooking I don't have a microwave I don't have an oven nothing else so I'll reheat food on this I'll cook food on this and heat up water boil water of course you know that but it's worked perfectly for what I need I don't need more than two and I can fit a really large pan on here plus a small one or two small ones whatever I'm gonna cook on there and it's served me well I'd be able to cook food for two years on this thing and I'm still alive so it works really good it also produces heat as you would expect so if you're in the morning and you like coffee you can turn it on and you'll be heated up at the same time that's one of the nice things about propane if it was an electric heater it wouldn't really heat up the bus at the same time so kind of another win-win there one of the things that could be overlooked but it generally people tend to put them in anyway are these roof fans this works really well not only to cool the bus but to pull out any smoke or any cooking smells out of the top of the roof so I would suggest keeping a roof fan nearby you don't want to have to always open the window to de vente late especially on a day today it's really windy and it would just be blowing back in at you so it's nice to have an option to have a way to ventilate your stove propane burns fine you don't need to worry about it killing you if it brings out all the carbon dioxide and all that you're gonna be fine but it's good to have ventilation of some form when you are running propane it's not like other kinds of burning material it's not as bad as something else so I still suggest having a fan these are great because you can pull off the cover which I actually need to do it picks up the grease and you can just pull off the screen and wash them really easily this is what I was talking about with these fans are really nice I think if I was to do it again I would probably choose the max fan this is a fantastic fan they're great there's nothing wrong with it but max fan just seems the function a little quieter has more options and just does a little bit better job I believe but these do have temperature control that you can adjust here but generally you're just going to have it - come on whenever you feel like it coming on I don't imagine you're gonna ever get to a temperature and it come off and on a whole bunch of times so does have a moisture sensor rain sensor so if it is raining down and you don't have a shroud around it it'll keep from rain just coming into your space here so it's a good option to have on there I believe they all come with them unless you get some knockoff that decided not to put them in I don't really know but they're fused here you should fuse them at your panel as well and this one does have three speeds and you can go reverse or else you can go bring the air in or you can bring the air out one of the things I say why I don't prefer the fantastic over the max fan is when this one if it wasn't so windy I would turn on have you here but when the air comes in the motor is very noisy on the way out it's fine the in is just like three times as loud so I don't really love that so I'm always pulling the air out which is fine that's what I want to do anyway it has a manual override but you usually just use the automatic on there one of the questions I get asked the most is about how I attached my ceiling and what my ceiling is made of this is something I've recently changed it I mentioned that it used to be in three parts to people and they don't really understand when talking about but I had the back as one section the middle is one section the front was one section and that didn't really work for me I didn't like how that turned out so I wanted straight lines all the way through the back so I picked up this pine shiplap which has worked really well the first ceiling I had was tongue-in-groove which is fine to install until you get to a curve and the more you get to the curve the harder it is and get inside the groove for the tongue and groove so the shiplap just goes one layer over top of the other it's a little harder one direction than it is the other direction but it's so much easier than the tongue and groove to install this is sealed it is sealed with Danish oil so it keeps it looking as natural as possible but it protects it so you can do whatever you want you can stain it you paint it whatever but to me I wanted to have the natural look because I do have a whole bunch of other colors and the bus and white walls and things so I wanted to just kind of break up the the color scheme a bit and when I did my remodel I wanted to add more lighting my original system was just these lights they're a nice orange kind of soft glow so it's really nice for like a mood sort of a setting keeps it from you know hurting your eyes or anything but you can't see that great with only these when you wanted to actually see something you're working on on the table if you're doing a project or something so I installed these pot lights you can pick these up on Amazon you can get a pack of them for four there I think there's twelve them for like thirty dollars or something and so they run off the 12-volt really easy to install you just cut the hole you want and they go up with a clip and I've been super happy since I installed those because I can have all the lighting that I want now so I installed a whole bunch all the way along ran a whole bunch of new wires when I did my remodel got everything that I thought I didn't need before but now I know I needed and I've been really happy with that I have what a lot of people like to put in buses and it's hammocks I'm not gonna pull it out and show you how that works because it's you know I think you can probably understand it just hooks on and then hooks on to this one it sits in the middle and I've used it a couple times but not often enough so I have other seating I don't really need a hammock it's just if I wanted to underneath my ceiling is foam board I would say the best way to insulate a bus would be the foam not foam board but the spray foam the commercial grade spray foam that's the best way to me the second best way is a foam board as long as you create a vapor barrier condensation happens when it gets up to your metal ceilings it's cold outside and it hits the freezing cold ceiling and it creates a whole bunch of moisture so make sure you have a vapor barrier so those areas don't mix so I have the foam and then it's all the gaps are filled in between so it doesn't reach the ceiling that is one of the biggest ways to keep your vehicle staying warm or cold whatever it is you're trying to do for me I'm lucky with my roof deck and my solar panels it blocks the Sun directly hitting the metal so I don't get as hot in here and the roof insulation doesn't matter to me as much in the summertime as it does in the winter the winter it matters summer it doesn't as much but the biggest thing that can help you stay comfortable in a vehicle especially the school bus are curtains if you don't change your windows to double pane or these RV windows you're gonna lose all your heat and cooling out your window or gain all your heat and cooling out of your windows so adding curtains to these windows makes a massive difference it's crazy how much they actually help create a barrier between the outside and the inside not only for the insulation value but for the privacy mine are meant to bring in light without people being able to see in I don't need it pitch-black up here so these are only a single piece of material I sewed these myself they're super fancy because I did them I just put a piece of half-inch conduit meant for electrical and put them between these clamps I probably would change these clamps at some point because they are sharp but for now they're not anywhere if someone's gonna hit their head or anything you're not gonna be back in that back corner so it works well for me over on this side I wanted to use it as much of the storage as I was able to when you get in these tiny spaces storage is key so I didn't want to have anything that lifted up and that was hard to get to all the time I wanted a space where I can pull things in and out put shoes in store random things so I built these in a way that I could utilize as much of the storage as possible as well as being functional for seating the thing about this that's the coolest I guess is that it does fold down the leg goes up here and then it's on this track system back there and it fits if I can learn how to straighten things so this goes down here and becomes a bench or a bed another mat that I'm not going to pull out right now but it sits up on here makes it continue all the way across so people can just sit in a normal way or sleep here I'm tall this is short but I've slept on here for two weeks because of this opening on the railing I can put my feet all the way through and I don't even notice that it's shorter than a normal bed so this just goes up on the track I bought this from Amazon as well this mounting system it's meant for campers it's meant for this exact application so works well super strong it's not going to go anywhere I built this table myself out of beetle kill or blue pine whichever one you want to call it and made sure it was thick enough that you could handle this mounting system and be super strong and covered it with a little bit of polyurethane and it's been working just perfectly for me over on this side I wanted to have a railing of sorts so if someone was a sit here and wanted to ride they can hang out and have somewhere where they're not going to go flying off and it also mostly functions as a way to climb in the bus I've done a few tiny home tours and it's been a very wide variety of people that come through and there's a lot of people that need the extra assistance and this came in handy the thing I would hear all the time for them is all this bus you can actually climb in because these were made for kids that were like 6 years old that have all the energy in the world they don't need railings they're gonna run up and down so for me I don't yet need one of those however when it's been wet outside I've missed stepped on one of my steps and it saved me from falling all the way down the stairs so it's good to have a little railing anyway I kind of like the way it looks it was just made out of just some metal pieces that I had extra so I welded that in and put it in there it's mounted to the floor and mounted to the wall so it's not going anywhere and like I said about sleeping on here leaves an open space so you can put your feet through there and it doesn't just completely contain you in then I think I would say I feel like would be nice to have would be some form of cup holders that's not for me that's for passengers obviously so I just tell them to hang on to their their soda if they're gonna go drive through here with me these cushions were something that I always wanted to get somebody to upholster them for me I can so but not to the extent that I'd want them to be looking so the way to solve that was I did them a lot like a seat cover I have the piece of foam and underneath it's stapled to the wood itself and wrap back over and then I use this nail head trim as a finish to hold it in place so there's absolutely no sewing involved in this whole system here and it gives it a little bit more character kind of the old-world style with a nail head trim and it was really easy to do so if you want to do your own form of cushions like a seat cover style that's a good way to do it the other way is to take a board throw it over top staple on the bottom but then the board needs to be mounted somehow so it's not sliding around that's why I chose this and so far it's been really good and happy with it my first design of this bus was a lot like a lot of people's buses where they do one large bench here not saying anything's wrong with that but the way I had it designed was a lid that lifted up and the lid would get really heavy to try to access everything and I wanted to use all that space so the original design meant that I had to have a place for this cooler which I'll talk about in a minute and that used to be underneath and it was slide out and then I would open it but because it's a top loader that was really annoying to have to pull it out open it put it back every time you were getting something out of there you'll find you get into your refrigerator fairly often when you actually have to work to get at it so I built this corner here specifically for this one that I already own this is the CFX 35 Dometic it runs off 12-volt or 110 it's going to jump to the 110 if it's available so you're not using your house batteries or you can choose not to even plug in the 110 and it'll always stay on your 12-volt you can do one or the other it's not going to run both obviously this size that I got is one or the other it's either a refrigerator or a freezer they have a whole bunch of different sizes and compartments that'll do both so you can get one that does freezer freezer or refrigerator freezer or refrigerator refrigerator whatever you want to make them do but mine is either freezer or refrigerator I don't need to freeze things there are plenty of stores on the side of the road that have refrigeration for me so they'll freeze my popsicles for me if I really need something frozen so for my needs I'd rather have a fridge and it's just enough space for me I've had two people travel with me and we've been able to get by but I would suggest something larger if you're gonna go with two people in your vehicle or whatever it is you're traveling in this is just enough for one person I would say and it's been functioning non-stop now for two years it's not been turned off and other than cleaning it I unplug it move it that's one of the benefits of these coolers is you can take them anywhere you want they have these handles on there taken of outside they'll stay cold for a while you can throw ice in these those other stand-up refrigerator front doors you can't just cool them down with ice you could but not in the same manner this works just like a normal cooler it has a drain on here so you can keep the water in there and then you can drain it when you're ready so it's multifunctional and you can set it to as cold as you want to to freeze something so for my style it's been really good and I've been really happy with it really durable I am securing this down by gravity and friction there is nothing holding it other than these walls from going that way it would be a pretty abrupt turn if this were to fly out I would probably roll the bus at that point anyway so that would be the least of my concern and this would probably survive it better than the bus would survive it so it's really just sitting in place slide it in and out you need to make sure you have a little bit of breathable room on them because they do have fans on there that need to bring the heat out so make sure you have a little bit of space and have a little bit of air around it needs to breathe when I built this bus the first section I built was the center so this was one of the first things I installed and it's the blue pine as well this is kind of a theme through my bus is the blue pine I really like how it looks it's become darker as times worn on it gets more of the blue so I really like the way it looks this is pine and it's tongue and groove so it was really easy to install up a flat wall and because the way I did my ceilings I didn't have to worry about the curve on this is much so it wasn't very hard to get my angles right because you didn't have to be exactly perfect on those but they have this is similar to my back wall it mirrors it in my bedroom and it's one of my favorite pieces of the wood because it really is the first thing you see when you walk in not just my table matches some of my trim and just kind of consistent throughout the whole thing and I have the two lights which is one for the orange light and the other for the white lights and then I have my speakers on both sides which also mirror in the back bedroom as well and these are alpine speakers for the six by nine s I think they call these ones and they put out plenty of sound because my wall is hollow right there it actually kind of works as like a subwoofer sort of a deal and they put out a pretty good bass sound so been happy with those as well and got these little silhouette pictures from Ikea people asked if I painted them I wish I could say I did but I didn't they're just an IKEA brand and just really fit well with what I had going here almost looks like the same wood back there this area is really what I based my whole bus design around it was important to me to have a fully functional bathroom and I wanted a shower and I wanted a toilet so there on each side of each other you can choose what works best for you when you want to design one for me I don't like the what they call the wet bath where your toilet is in the same room as your shower because I don't want my toilet to be wet from my shower walk in with socks I've done that those bills bus and have wet socks but that's neither here nor there it's whatever you want to do with your own so I went with this pre-made surround also from Home Depot I didn't want to deal with tile I know you can make it work with a movable moveable bus they've been in giant RVs for a long time with tile and they work fine you can make it happen but I wanted to just have this around and that's one of the main reasons why this was the first thing I built is because I needed to get this in place and get through my back door but if I had all these walls and things it would have been almost possible to get through there actually have a friend who ran into that issue and he always jokes at him and his wife almost broke up because of it so make sure you do things in the right order think about what you buy I wet with cedar on the trim on the top this is sealed and it's also has moisture barrier on the other side so it's not gonna drip through anywhere get where you don't want it to go and that's why I liked about the surround you don't have to be an expert when you do this because you put it in place you put silicone and you're good to go you don't have to be a master Tyler this is 32 inches by 32 inches it's enough space to take a shower the question I get asked the most especially after doing tiny house festivals is how do you shower in there you're tall and the answer I give is that this is the typical height that I find shower heads they've changed in the more modern times they've started to raise them up and make showers bigger but most of the old homes I go to or old apartments or whatever it is old hotels this is the height they always are so I always have to duck my head underneath it no matter what I do so the other answer I give is I have a shower on a bus so I'm happy with that you know it's not gonna make me sad that I have to duck a little bit when I get a shower as often as I want to depending on my water storage this is the it's the moyen system I didn't go with any water saving things I'm not not against the fire environment I love the environment but I would rather take a high-pressure quick shower than a low-pressure really a really long shower so that's why I just went ahead one with that this has also got the lighting that I have on the front of my bus in the front portion it's the low voltage its outdoor lighting so it's meant to get wet so to me that seemed like a good solution for this problem to have something that's already waterproofed in 12-volt and so there it is I have light it does have face for your shampoos conditioners whatever it is you use soaps it's enough for me because I don't hit a lot of product I have no hair on my head just my beard so I don't need a lot I just need a little shelf but you could always add little shelves if you wanted to if you want with this kit I originally thought I was gonna put a shower door on this and I stressed and stressed on how I was gonna do that if it would hit something if it would be a slider how that was gonna work and then I just remembered that keep it simple stupid rule and decided to put a shower curtain on here and the shower curtain actually matches the theme of my bus with the pine trees on there silhouetted and that's one of the few things I actually thought about in design everything else on board I have 86 gallons of fresh water and the way that I tested how long that would last was with my shower here I mentioned that it's normal high flow and we'll turn it on for that just so you can see kind of what the baseline is I can run this for 45 minutes straight with the water reserves that I have before my water tanks run out so you can imagine how many showers that would be if you took a five-minute shower or if you did military style where you just get wet turn it off so turn it back on that sort of thing you can last a really long time in that water storage I still take a shower at least one time every day unless I'm gonna be somewhere I know I'm not gonna get water for two weeks or something because I like to wake up and have a nice clean shower so it was important to me to have enough water storage a lot of people I know have that much and there's two of them and they last a long time as well with the water capacity that they have so for me I think the ideal water situation for two people would probably be at least a hundred gallons if you want to go boondock for a long time and I'm near that and I've had I mentioned I've had three people on this bus at the same time and we went about a week taking military-style showers every single day to me and what I've heard from other people the largest user of water is actually your dishes I find I can run out of water really quick if I am making a lot of meals and doing a lot of dishes so really watch your water on your dishes your showers aren't as consuming as those are so I would suggest a shower if you have the space you can also do outdoor if you wanted to now mirroring this shower is where I have my composting toilet area all my toiletries that don't fit in a little drawer go back here on the Shelf that I built one of the other things that was really important to me was to have a separate toilet area when you're in a small space you can imagine that things sounds smells go everywhere so I wanted to close it off with a complete door I have it insulated all the way around not that it's that loud when you practice your trumpet in here but just to be sure you want to make sure you get that insulated really well for other people's sake that maybe might be visiting and aren't comfortable with using the toilet in your space it can become an issue I'll tell you a lot of people are afraid of it so it's nice to have it so they can feel comfortable as well I went with a cedar roof when people come into my bus they always say it smells nice smells like wooden here so I tell them they're smelling my bathroom because the cedar smells so good and the compost toilet works so well to keep the smells out one of the favorite things well I would say two of the favorite things in here are the pressure regulator that I pulled off a boiler just thought it was kind of cool and wanted to you know go with this sort of it's almost like a nautical theme on accident because I put it in this porthole window that is a favorite of everybody's provides light it provides ventilation and it provides a nice few when you're just hanging out doing what you do when you're in here make sure nobody's trying to rob your your vehicle the shelf back here was actually originally designed to go in the kitchen area of my bus I thought I would want a secondary kind of a spice rack sort of thing but it didn't really fit the style that I wanted to do and it blocked the window so at the same time I wanted more storage in my bathroom and sure enough it fit perfectly in here I didn't have to change the width I don't know how that happened but I just thought I would see where it fit and it fit right in here so that's why it is the way it is however I probably would have put in some shelves at some point anyway but it's nice to have lips on the top and bottom so things don't fall out I just added this little strap on the top to hold the taller cleaning supplies keep them from falling out and it's one of those storage issues where you probably wouldn't think about it until you actually get out and do this thing and realize that you don't have space for things that you want to clean with a lot of people in one of the sinks but I wanted to store the things under there and so I keep things like I keep laundry detergent in here I keep the cleaning supplies and sunblock things that are a little taller and keep them out of the way because I don't have a vanity of sorts to store all those things and I don't have any any outlets in here I'm not charging my phone I'm not using a blow-dryer or something in there anyway so it's just for storage and just for the toilet and my wheel well which is something that you will encounter on some buses don't have a wheel well they sit differently this one had a wheel well so I wanted to find the best way to hide that and incorporate it at the same time so it actually starts right behind the toilet and the reason why this doesn't sit on the toilet is because or the toilet doesn't sit on top of the wheel well is because these toilets these nature heads toilets are already taller than a lot of toilets and people are used to you put them up there your legs are gonna be dangling down or you'll be sitting up on a pedestal which is fine if that's what you like but I kept it back far enough that the lid could still open when you not going to open this for your sake but when you open these the top lid will come back and you need to be able to have the space to open it so if it was against a wall it's gonna keep wanting to fall forward so you need to be a little bit further set back so you have that space plus you have a vent that I'll show on the outside that comes out and you need to find a good placement for that so you need to be able to have space on the side these also have a turn crank to turn the compost so you need you need some clearance on the sides plus it has the mounting system to the bottom that you also need clearance on the side so I would suggest if you're gonna use this type of toilet or any other type of toilet before you put in all your walls and everything kind of dry fit it see how it's gonna work for you see what kind of space you have and design around that so you don't find yourself too crammed or wasting a lot of space that you might not need a waste for this sort of thing this is the nature's head toilet I've been really happy with it I've used it full-time now for over a year actually I've lived in the bus for about 15 months been traveling for a year and I've been using this that whole time a lot of people choose to use their toilet as infrequently as possible they'll go use the gas stations or whatever it is and this is more of an emergency but I can tell you I've used it full time and there's no issues with it for me for somebody that may be physically incapable of lifting heavy things this would not be the toilet for you unless you have someone to help you because you do have to dump the bowl to clean it out so if you cannot lift that you're not going to be happy with this toilet because you have to actually move it that's why black water probably better for you and in that instance because you can just carry the little pipe and that's a lot easier so you also have to empty out your urine diverter if you keep it stock a lot of people have been running pipes into a separate tank which is a great idea because the urine diverter fills up much faster than the other side so just something to think about you'll be emptying your urine diverter just me alone it happens probably every 3 or 4 days and if you have a family of three or four you're going to be emptying it all the time so just another thing to think about other than that they work really great there on the more expensive range of things but I would not replace it it's a thing I say that is the best thing that I bought on this bus I'm moving back here a little bit further this is where I keep the bulk of my storage I have my solar controller all of my utilities in there everything that runs the bus electricity DC power everything is all through there I wanted to be able to access all of that without having to go outside without having to crawl underneath anything and be able to change any fuses that could possibly blow or whatever reason you need I also kept my stereo in there it's a Bluetooth stereo so that I don't have to I don't know why I did it but I have my bluetooth stereo in there and I run it off my phone anyway and control the volume and I can be anywhere in the bus I just want to keep all my electronics all in one little spot basically my water heater the rear of it is behind here so it takes up almost the whole space of my closet up here is just some towels and things just whatever else I wanted to store and down on the bottom if I could show it but it's kind of hidden back there are my batteries they're pretty much behind this heater here which I'll talk about in a minute but I have four of the 109 amp power AGM batteries which is plenty for me to keep everything running just fine I also have my system hooked up to my alternator so every time I'm driving I produce electricity and charge up my batteries and with me doing so much driving it is really a godsend it helps me a lot to keep everything charged all the time and if you have a very cloudy bunch of days in a row and your solar doesn't charge you can just start your engine for a little bit and it charges fairly quickly off the alternator there's a lot of resources on how to find that and just look it up for yourself and you'll find it very very useful to have in these mobile vehicles in the front which I was mentioning is an empire brand wall heater this is off of my propane it's something that I wanted to have just because I want to go off-grid a lot and I didn't want to run electricity and waste any of that so I just wanted to use my other fuel source and be able to heat the bus this little guy is a 10,000 BTU system and it heats up my space this bus is a hundred and sixty-one square feet total on the inside and I have been in negative 16 degree temperatures through the night and this me kept me just plenty warm with no issues so it's a lot like what someone would have like Kubik mini stove sort of an idea where you have a central little small heater and it actually radiates quite a lot of heat but the thing I like about these over the wood stoves is that it's temperature regulated it's thermostat so I can turn it to what I want to and it'll turn off and be cooled down again when I'm ready for it to cool down and I don't have a flame left in my vehicle when I want to go do a hike I could turn it off and I don't have fire running those stoves are great they are really smart in the way they built them but for my own my own well-being I'm happier not having any flames going when I leave the vehicle just in case so really like this unit it's far enough away that it's not going to catch anything on fire but you do also have to be very careful of hanging anything above or leaving anything in front because like any heater it can catch it on fire so just be smart about it if you do something like this that's why I set it back in the wall a little bit kept it out of the way and so far it's been great for the past two years so highly suggest something like this if you want to go propane it's like a little buddy heater so moving on to the other side I've talked about the wheel wells one of the wheel wells is behind this side of the closet and of course the other mirrors it on the other side so naturally it made sense to but storage there something that you don't need to climb into something you just put things in and put them away I don't really have a reason for why I don't have a door on my closet I just keep things organized but I still think I'd like to put a door on here it's just fine by me the way I have it I've suggested this to one of my other friends who's building a bus and that is to put lighting into your closet right now we have a lot of natural light and you wouldn't be able to tell that usually that we really need this lighting but it's really important to see what you're looking for unless you don't really care what you're gonna grab out of your closet which a lot of van life people probably don't care if you grab whatever shirts clean so I just made the biggest space that I had available and thought I would have to get rid of a lot of my clothing but I ended up be able to keep way more than I thought I would I even keep a full suit which I've used since I've been in my bus I've had to go to weddings and funerals so I still keep that with me I'm not gonna buy another one just for one wedding or something everything else works great I have plenty of storage in here I have these little baskets that I've picked up also from Ikea just recently put those in to hold socks and things and that's been a big difference it gives me that little bit extra space one of the biggest space savers that I added was this for me I use it for the t-shirts it's really for anything but pants in there whatever but it hangs on your hanger as you can see and it's collapsible when you want to put things away and it really gives a lot more space if you don't feel like building your own shelves in there and it works great but for me I don't have a door as I've mentioned and you can tell sometimes I'll hit a bump and this will swing and I'll lose a few t-shirts on the ground so that's the biggest drawback if you don't have a door in the way but if you have some to stop it's not gonna be an issue at all but you can pick these up know on Amazon I think that one was something like Walmart err I don't remember why I picked it up at but I've seen them everywhere again probably IKEA as well they have all kinds of things back here in the bedroom area is something that I've stressed over and changed many times this is my fourth design and so far I've found nothing wrong with it I've been really happy with it one of the issues I have which is also a benefit is I keep my water tanks under my bed so they're inside the structure and they're not exposed to the elements directly so when you're in a really hot place your tanks are getting hot and when you're in a really cold place they're not freezing the thing you could do if you're worried is you can put a pan underneath them and keep water from coming out make a drain whatever it is that makes you feel more comfortable but for me I was happy putting them in here so they take up a lot of space and they're probably about a third of the space that's underneath my bed so I wanted to utilize as much space as I could for other things for storage and I wanted a full bed my original idea was I wanted to be able to walk all the way through so I had two small beds that could combine into one it worked if I wanted to transition the bed often but if you're doing this full-time you want to be able to jump in bed when you're ready to go to sleep you don't want to keep moving things off your bed changing things pulling down stuff it's just gonna get exhausting the more you do it every single night so if you can find the space to have your bed here all the time I would highly suggest that it's been a game changer for me plus I have a normal memory foam mattress under here rather than a piece of foam and it's much more comfortable and just looks better I think one of the things to consider if you're building a bus in particular is don't put your bed too high this is going to depend on where you're gonna travel but if you're prone to get condensation on your windows with school bus windows especially your bedding is going to get wet against the windows mine's a little higher than I wanted to because of the tanks and the mattress but try to keep it as low as you can so you're not getting wet blankets and people think that you can't control your bladder it's because of the condensation the space in a typical bus on the inside is just under seven and a half feet I'm 6 foot 2 I believe this is a full-size mattress and I believe it's six foot five is what it comes out to be so I still have a whole foot to the back so this position was better for me than this position because of the way I've used the space in the front I actually have more length that way than I do this way and it worked really well to where I wanted to put things like the TV have extra storage it was something that I thought through until it was what worked best for me so this angle it was one of those thinking outside the box you see everybody do that way and it's fine to do that way but finally I just thought why don't I go that way and gave me space to kind of walk around the front here and if I need to climb up there to make the bed that's what people have the biggest issue in these small spaces they have to climb over to make beds I still do that a little bit but the solution to that is to not make your bed just something that you should think about people aren't gonna walk in here unless they have cameras with them so just don't make your bed people it's a lot easier I'll go with the base stuff here still there's storage underneath that go straight through to another door that will see through the other side that's mostly just for some of the larger things that I'm not gonna get at very often and just want to tuck away and a little bit longer things I carry a lot of camping gear because I also like to go backpacking and don't want to get rid of my camping gear because I never know when I want to go do something different so I reserve that for this backbench plus their space for blankets and extra extra blankets and things so I really liked having that drawer back there or that you know that access back there behind me there's an access this doesn't normally go here but it's out of the way back here is laundry basket and that was something that gets overlooked a lot when people do these builds they don't even think about it and then when they go to put their laundry they realize they have a basket sitting around all the time in the middle of their space which you don't have a lot of space so I would suggest if you have the space try to make a laundry space for it and it's been kind of a game changer for me and that's only only like a two month recent addition and so far so good I have a matching one on the other side that actually opens a different way my can opener right now but that's where I access my water system my water pump my all my connections everything is accessed right there so if I need to work on it I can get at it without much trouble and that's actually the way that I check my water level as I open it up and visually look at my tanks you can get much better things where they are electronic and they'll tell you what your levels are they'll work great I've seen them not work sometimes but I can visually just open that up and just see what I'm at there so I wanted to make sure I could get it out really easily and in the way is a guitar that I don't play but I practice that's what I was so that I practice guitar so it was the only wall space I had available and so I pull that off to get to my water tanks along with all my remotes and everything on that side over on this side is a thing that a lot of people may not know what it is because they don't like to watch them but that's my TV and it's on a swivel and it can go in and out go to the side whatever which came down when I was going to talk about anyway so I have a seat belt that I used to hold my tea be in place when I'm driving so it's not moving around since it's on the swivel system and I throw this on here to keep it from scratching but that's been working really well because if you don't put it on there and you've got your swivel it's gonna end up all over and hit everything so unless you don't want to swivel but that's the way I've come up with solving that I will move back here underneath here is a through the wall fan I will open this when I want to actually use it because right now it's windy and it's blowing through but I'll open it now if there's a lot of dust like in the area we're at now and I'm driving dust will come through here if I didn't have a cover so I made this little cover for that fan to come through there was a nice little plume as we speak but it looks like it's running but it's not running that's just the wind but that's basically what it sounds like it's just as quiet as that and this provides protection against the dust wind noise and anything else you don't want coming through there the number one question I get asked about with my build is what this is this is my mini-split heat pump so it provides heat or cooling provided that I have power to it I don't run off my solar so this needs to be either through my Shore power or a generator and it works amazingly when I need it I've been in 100-degree Plus weather and it keeps the whole bus nice and cool I've been in the really cold weather where it's snowing and it keeps it nice and warm this is the quietest system I would imagine that you could put as far as air conditioning in these vehicles RV ones work awesome but when you're standing next to them you can't talk to each other they're so loud this thing you can barely even hear it running when it's going and it does an oscillation where this goes up and down and so you can set it to whatever you want and it'll work great it does have filters on the top you need a clean and it has the outdoor unit that's up on the roof so you need to have somebody that knows what they're doing install it I've seen these installed by people that don't know and they'll work for a while but if you don't do things right you're gonna have issues and it's not gonna last very long so I would suggest getting help from somebody that knows what they're doing this is a fredrik system it's a really good system actually this is what I did for a living so I was able to get it at so that's why I went with a nicer one you can buy there's a Pioneer brand not the Pioneer that people know and love of speakers but it's on Amazon and it comes with a full kit I've installed those and they've been running for five years no problems so if that's one that you want to go with it seems to be working fine there's just a few things you need to do with vacuuming out the lines to remove air and remove moisture from the copper lines so you need to have a vacuum pump put on the system you can buy one yourself if you know what you're doing and the thing I like to mention to people when they install these they like to put them like two feet of the outdoor and the indoor and if you read the instructions most of them will say at least seven feet you need for the reaction to happen with the freon that's in there so it'll still work however you do it but for maximum efficiency follow instructions as much as possible and make sure they're not moving around a lot so other than that is saying functions perfectly for the space I have this is a 9,000 BTU system and pumps out all the air I need for this size if you were a larger bus than mine which I said is 161 square feet you're going to need a larger system or two of them you can get two of the heads off of one outdoor unit so you could put one in the front one in the back and really get the place hot or cold whatever you want there one word of warning with these things is when you are using the heat pump when it does a defrost cycle so it doesn't freeze the outside will actually get frost on it and be frozen and it needs to circulate the freon through there so it heats it up and keeps it from freezing it's going to be a really loud whooshing sound and if it's right above your head you're gonna hear that and it's probably going to scare you first time you hear it so just know if it's near where you're sleeping and you're gonna use that off and you're gonna hear that so that's the only down side I would see to these things other than having to put an outdoor unit out there I recently put all these magnets back here that used to be in the front before I change that console to not be magnetic anymore but now this is metal so I can put them back here these are all of the places I've visited plus a few other just ones that I really liked but I try to collect a magnet from all of the national parks or just the points of interest that I go to ends up costing a little bit to buy some of these things but I'm happy that I have and they're really cool as a little keepsake I never was like a magnet collector but it just came to me that I would start picking them up when I went places so it kind of shows all over people ask me if I've driven to Scotland in my bus no I haven't driven to Scotland but I've been there so I had the magnet from before it's not necessarily where I've driven the bus to but most of them are to where I've driven the bus and get all kinds of shapes from donkeys to the beer steins tacos to whatever you know so I'm running out of space so I think I gotta stop traveling soon I'll get smaller magnets or something that with these buses you have these very large windows that you need to cover and the quick solution for me was to buy these pre-made curtains that normally go on a curtain rod and just run a cable through there so it slides on the cable and gives me total blackout with that without total block up a pretty dark with those really dark blinds or those shades and then I can open it completely wide and get my view that I want to see out the back when I'm driving plus my privacy and it's been a really really simple solution it might not be completely as pretty as I'd want it to be but it definitely does the trick and I have the same style of curtains on those sides as I do in the front except I've doubled these up for more privacy plus heat retention when it's cold I've left a gap in between here I've not been cold enough that I've made it yet but I can slide some insulation in there some of the reflectix can fit perfectly in there if I really want to get a lot of insulation and I've found that this 2 layers has been enough though so if you're gonna be in the really Sub Zero and you can slide something in there that's a good way to go plus a little darker but these really keep this dark enough for me to sleep and I don't have any issue with that so in the back I wanted to be able to access my controls for my battery and my power system so I have a victor on energy battery monitor up here so whenever I want to look and see what my batteries are looking like I can just quickly peek over and I know my biggest power consumer would be the television because it's running through my inverter and that really draws I believe someone had told me there was 30% more power whenever that's on so this really drains the battery more than anything and I can decide what my television time is it's like having a parent telling you how much time you have to watch TV keeps me from sitting staring at that all the day and I also have my button for my inverter that I can just turn it all off when I want to and don't have to get up out of bed because I'm lazy so this is also my switch for my air conditioner it's not that I am lazy for this reason but this is what they give you it's the only way to control it so don't lose those you can get replacements but just don't lose them when I first designed this school bus it's actually changed from the beginning design I used to have this broken up into a separate part here because I wanted it to look 100% like a school bus from here forward I don't know why it's just something I wanted to do since then I've changed that but one of the things that was important for me to keep was the air door which it's been sitting so I don't have air in my tanks right now to show you it actually worked but you've probably seen a school bus air door open where I can and over here push a button and then it opens up automatically so that's something I've been happy with it seals really well I don't have any trouble with that I just didn't want to change it to a different door because of the way it functions that's the way or the only reason why I kept it not because it works better than a different type of door it's just kind of a little fun thing to do to have that air door on there for me and you can shut people out when they try to get on with a lot of fun for me on this front console with the original build of the bus it has a big piece of metal all the way across different school buses have different use of this most of them have this sort of console in them seen some that have a sort of big door about right here so there's a little bit of use out of it for me it had one little cubby about this big that I could use for papers so all of this space in here was wasted nothing could be put in there nothing can be set in there there was nothing so when I took off the ceiling I was able to take off the panel I believe in some of them you could take this off without taking out the metal ceiling but for mine I needed to have it all the way out and as soon as I took this off it's just a complete blank space behind there you'll see the front warning marker lights and things coming back protruding there's a couple wires through there but for the most part it's all the way open I didn't need to move any wires they didn't shoot across the middle they were down low so they kept out of the way didn't have to do anything major in here as far as putting this back in it was pretty simple I have a sort of floating structure I don't know how to explain that real well other than I do have screws through the bottom into a plate because this is also a solid metal on the bottom so if you want to mount to it you need to screw through that which is tough if you don't have the tools or don't want to really get into it so I have a piece of wood as a ledger to mount everything on there and once I built the square structures to exactly the size I wanted I went and found a TV if you can't tell that's a television here a lot of people just think it's just a blank space but I found a TV first and found what would fit into a certain spot and you need to make sure if you get a wall mount that you're able to reach behind and lock it in place because if you make it too tight you're never gonna get it on there because you have to lift up and down so that's as tight as you're gonna get it once I had the square pieces in I used foamed it in it doesn't move at all it's never going anywhere and have my wiring in here I have little pod lights that are meant for low voltage outdoor lighting which work really great for indoor low voltage lighting because they're all 12-volt and they actually run off a switch over here let me turn them off and on it's just an accent thing not really used for lighting other than if I just want kind of a nice warm glow in here I do have HDMI and aunt Anna back there plug so you can program it whatever you want on there the wires go back to a back closet where you can install whatever it is you want to watch on their Roku or you know whatever it is these kids these days watch I don't know what they used what I do have these little speakers in the front I forget the size four and a half I think they call them when I used to drive around before I did this remodel of all of this I would have my rear speakers going and it's fine I can hear just fine but if I have a passenger and we're driving down the road it's gonna blast their eardrums out from the back this bus is not actually very noisy but it's just enough that I have to turn the volume way up so as soon as I install these that solve the problem I can listen to music at a normal volume and be able to not blast out the eardrums of my passengers so it's been a good way to do things I believe the majority of school buses at least the older generation have these fans if not and if you don't have air conditioning I suggest installing some I think you can get them for about $30 brand new and they'll keep you nice and cool when it's hot outside and you're driving around and sitting in the Sun like we are right now so if you can get fans put them in don't throw them away if you don't like to look out of them you can take them apart and you can paint them and they look great so keep them if you can I feel like I got lucky when I picked out this bus like any kind of motor or any kind of manufacturer out there someone's going to say they like for someone's gonna say they like Chevy it's preference and what it really comes down to is reliability and how it's been maintained school buses are great because they've been maintained through the school system and they have mechanics on duty that make sure these work great all the time this particular motor is a caterpillar 3116 a lot of people if not everyone that watches this might know what caterpillar builds with a lot of farm equipment and those sort of things they do marine this motor actually is most commonly used in a marine application so they're in boats everywhere so this motor is 185 horsepower diesel it's strong enough to do whatever I need to do get up any hill I need to get up without going ten miles an hour I can go up a pretty common big incline and still hit about 60 if there's not a big head wind or something so it's plenty powerful for what I need on this bus it comes with the Allison transmission the 545 I've heard both sides of people loving and people hating them it's gonna be that way for whatever you buy someone's gonna love it someone's gonna hate it it's been really strong it works really well they're just perfectly fine for this application as well the first day I drove a bus was the day I bought this thing like a lot of people that buy these they don't think about what its gonna be like to drive them when they go get them maybe they do but they don't think about how they're gonna get them home what's gonna happen in the future when you do decide to buy one so for me I was somebody that had been driving not big trucks but you know big f3 50s or something pulling a big trailer so I felt like I at least had the awareness of a large vehicle behind me sort of a thing so it didn't really intimidate me but at the same time I didn't know if the controls were gonna be different if there was gonna be something that I needed to do special on this bus this is an automatic so it works the same as any car that you're gonna drive I just have a normal shifter here just pop it into drive if I need to go forward park put it in reverse law to go reverse so the only thing I can say that was different is when you start most buses if not all buses you have to put it in neutral first and this is something that I've found that can still stump me sometimes I will think there's something wrong with the bus and then I realize I didn't put it in neutral so there's one little thing with that that you just have to be careful of make sure you put it in neutral this has air brakes because this is not a commercial vehicle anymore I was not required to get a CDL and even with the air brakes I get this question all the time do you have to get a CDL for your air brakes maybe in some states but I'm from Utah and it wasn't required in Utah to get a CDL to drive this vehicle I'm not carrying I believe the limit was 12 passengers and it's not being run commercially so really it just came down to getting behind the wheel and just driving off but it really drives very easy just had a friend and never driven it before a mechanic and he mentioned that same thing he's like wow that's like driving a truck like it's not bad at all it's very smooth I can just sit like this not that I'm going to but it would drive straight and be fine so it's very easy to drive this particular bus I can't say for many other buses I've driven to others and they've been just fine as well so don't be too intimidated about if you feel like you wouldn't be able to drive a bus go find a friend that will let you drive their bus I don't know if that'll happen or not that I've been driving this for a year since I started this trip and my average miles per gallon has been 8.5 I keep a detailed log 100% everything I write down the fuel costs I write down the mileage I write down the gallons that I put in there so 8.5 is what I came up with after driving 25,000 miles this year so it's not really that bad when you consider if you were to pull an RV or scuse me a bumper pull trailer a lot of people get less miles per gallon pulling one of those so the difference is you can't just detach and go in your little vehicle somewhere so this is gonna go with you unless you do have like something in the back to carry or to pull imagine your mpg will go down if you are pulling something but I'm not this currently has 250,000 miles on it which every time I talk to one of these old-timer mechanics he says I'm just breaking it in right now so these things are very strong you are gonna have parts that go out that aren't as strong as the motor itself but that's going to happen with any vehicle of you know of any age even but the older they get the more it can happen so just be aware that you need to know a few things about repair or just be ready to find somebody that does and there are plenty of people that do so don't be afraid of that this is my backup camera system here so we can see behind us right now and I don't have to put it in Reverse to see that and I can just make sure there's no little kids running around back there or something before I even get started and just be ready to go this is my airhorn there's no air in here so we can't honk it right now wake up everybody we're up pretty early so they're gonna be happy about that even though we're unhappy I get asked that a lot what is that and it kind of baffles me because everybody knows this symbol but nobody knows why you do that it's because of this pole cord right here to blast the airhorn but that is one of my favorite things on this bus is my air horn I do have the original Sun Visor these are great because you can see through them at the same time they're not like other vehicles where it just blacks it out you can't see anything so you can keep it in your field of view and still see through there originally when I had this bus it came with a gigantic mirror so you can see what's going behind you make sure the kids aren't causing trouble because they always do and when I put in this console I removed it because it kind of gets in the way of everything but I still put in a little rear view mirror I like to see what's going on back there as a solo traveler I don't have that extra person that's going to remember things that are on the shelf if I forgot them or if a drawer opens up I have to stop and pull over and fix that so I need to know if there was something I missed and I need to get back there and get so it doesn't come flying and go through the windshield or something so I really like having a rear view mirror even though I do have a backup camera and I can see all the way through to the back and see what's going on without having to look here anyway so to me I really wanted one of these this is the original console that came with the bus all the original switches and everything I can't tell you what everyone used to do but I can tell you what of a few of them what a few of them do now I did keep my fans there individually listed and you can do a high and a low on each of them so you don't have to have these blasting all the time I do have my right side and left side defrost they are individually separated here and as far as anything else nothing else works here anymore I've tapped off the wires so they're not installed anymore oh actually no I I do have one I've turned in this accessory that looks like rocket launcher button to my my light bar so it turns on green turns on my light and then I can flip it off just kind of a cooler switch so I wanted to keep that one but I suggest keeping all these in here and not making a separate panel and unless you don't like the look of it because there's a lot of reason you could use these they have the 12 volt coming from the engine so if there's anything you want to power when the engines running you can make use out of all of these I have used the power to them for other things but currently it's only those few things they used to be for all of the rear heaters that I don't use anymore some people keep in the heaters I didn't this rear defrost actually will heat the whole bus when I'm driving without any problem at all so that's everything that's used on there nothing else is about four of them at work and the rest are just dead one thing you're gonna find if you don't already deduce that yourself is that they're not going to have USB charging points on a vehicle that's from 1994 did have a cigarette lighter adapter that was previously installed it didn't work so I added a new one up here to where I can actually get at it I put in my front-facing camera here I charge my phone whatever else right here it's really nice to have that availability to charge your phone without having to come up with a new solution or use the old cigarette lighter so something to think of when you're doing wiring don't forget that you want to be able to do things up here at the same time so put in your chargers if you can you'll be happy you did so the bus has changed a lot since I first decided to do the exterior I first did roll on method with a metal paint I forget what the type was I got it was like krylon or something and I thought it was okay but then I realized I didn't really love the color so when I decided on a new color I wanted something that I could pick up at any Home Depot so far that's been the case so I picked out what's called sand and now if I need to get a little bit of touch-up I can go to whatever home people's near me just spray it on and it's good to go the thing I can say about the roll-on is it was a big pain to do not to put on but to take off so if you're gonna do a roll-on and you want to take that off there later I don't suggest you do it first it's a lot of work this whole thing here was a surprise that it worked out as well as it did when you get close for me I'm really you know finicky and worried about there being brush strokes and things but everybody asked me if this is a decal so I'm happy that they think it's a decal because once you've paint something this large and then do something like this all over there you don't want to mess up and I've been happy with it has kind of become iconic at least for this bus and really hard to miss me when I'm driving down the road so I've been happy with that and I I think if I was to do it again I would probably take like the blue tape and cut out you know make it more of a sharp image but it's been just fine especially with the kind of things I do like I'm careful with the bus but I'm also not afraid of a few tree branches going by if you're gonna overdo your paint job you know stay in the RV parks and everything or you're gonna have it all scratched up so this holds up pretty well so this is what you see from the outside of the bathroom that's the porthole we were looking at this metal all three of these panels actually came from the existing ceiling that I had taken out before I put up the insulation in wood so I just reused the heavy gauge metal that was already there a lot of people will just trash this throw it away and then you know kind of lose some material that they could have been using I purposely did three windows on both side for symmetry and just kind of decided how I wanted it to work after so I closed I knew the bathroom would be there but I closed the windows three of them knowing I would do something there eventually and this is a cover that I made for the toilet inside there's a hose that comes off we probably didn't go back there and hide and see it but it normally comes out in just a little round sphere that's flat but I've found when I'm traveling or when it's windy it's a little windy right now the wind can find a way in there and push it backwards so for me that was the best idea to keep it from doing that and getting the back flow so it's worked out so far on this the bus I wanted to get everything that worked for shore power that's you know hooking up at rvs and things like that and water that's the typical side that you would install these on any RV it comes out the left side sometimes people don't think about that they put it on the wrong side and then if they do show up in an RV park they have to run something really long underneath this is where my water inlet is I don't have my key with me there but I do have my key to my shower I've never showered in here myself but I have some some dirty hippie friends that have I've given them the option to shower inside and they wanted a shower outside but I've cleaned off shoes cleaned off anything else that I don't want to bring back in the into the bus so this has been really useful actually clean dogs actually other people's dogs have been showered in there this is the way I did my shore power a lot of people will have the plug where you just have the adapter and then plug in mine is on a long cord so I can just pull this all the way out hook it up and then I'm ready to go mine's a 30 amp service a lot of the larger ones will be 50 amp I don't need that much so that's the size I went with this little port here is my water tank drain I have a friend that's actually nearby me right now that didn't put one in and his bus need to put one in for him because he can't drain his tanks if he needs to if there's ever a problem or ever wants to clean them out for whatever reason so you need to have a drain in your tanks one of the things that people have a hard time with these buses is finding a way to put a screen in bus windows are not all the same most of them are completely different from each other so with this style I was able to fit a normal screen inside the grooves if you see on some of these there's a little bit of a space and they just fit really flush I decided to add silicone around there just to keep it from ever having any trouble but I drove around without the silicone for oh I don't know 3,000 miles and never had an issue so I just did it just to be sure so they're really nice especially if you're going somewhere like Alaska that's why I put them on with all of the mosquitoes it's a life changer if you want to have some cooling and you don't have an air conditioner at least one you can run all the time one of my favorite things that I've changed about this bus is the rear motorcycle deck my motorcycle is a little weak right now but normally there's a motorcycle there what I did was extended the frame straight out from the original frame and put in really solid beams in there to be the main structure kept the original bumper and added a bunch of structure all the way around if anybody's interested I do have a little bit of what I've done on my website under the blogs I get asked a question a lot so I kind of wanted a reference for people I did put trailer lights on here because you should have lights for anything that extends out and I didn't ever want to have an issue with law enforcement or anything I wanted to do it right don't want anybody to hit me and I have on the top even though it's hard to tell because I am in the desert and it gets dusty this is red would last forever it's been really durable and works well when I was building this bus at first it was really important to me it still is to be able to use a back door I wanted to feel to open it up when I'm pulled up next to a lake which I wasn't sure I was ever going to do but I have a few times so I like the idea of being able to just open straight up and go out to the world that way and not only that but I have locked myself out of the bus a few times I've never done that in a car but I do it all the time in the bus because of the air door I will shut the air door there's a lever and turn on the bus and when the air fills up the door shuts on its own so I've had to use my lock to come in here about five times so I wouldn't have any other way and if I didn't you need to have at least two exits in your vehicle and of the something this size anyway so you should have that if you can this block here was something I added and it's worked really well it was almost exactly the size you need for a bus door so I now have a deadbolt that you don't normally have on a bus before so it's been a really good system for locking the little bus up and keeping it safe and I picked this lock up at Home Depot I know I've seen these at Lowe's and ace and all those kind of places all the hardware stores but this one I did get a home beep Oh easy to find easy to replace if you had to I'll talk about my backup camera first because this is something I feel like everybody that has a vehicle this large should have my first backup camera I had was a wireless was what they call it but you still have to wire it for power so it didn't really make sense so since then I've added this wired backup camera and it's been a game changer you need to be able to see behind you I wired mine up so that it's not connected to the reverse lights I can turn on anytime I want and always look behind me if I need to if someone's crawling around the outside you can take a peek even at the night the night vision so not a lot of people crawling around at night but just in case this fan is what we saw from the inside that had the board around it this is something that's a little different than what everybody else does being a HVAC background guy I wanted something a little different so this actually pulls the air in so when I have my fan blowing out it creates a circulation a lot of people will do to roof vents but because of my deck I don't have a fan here so I needed a way to come in that way not only does it work really well with the ventilation but it works well with white noise and things when you're in these areas where there's a lot of people or a truckstop and you don't want to listen to things as long as you're not blowing in there their engine exhaust you're fine this ladder system is attached to my bottom deck and then as you can see to the top deck I've had very heavy people climb up this so it works really well this is 3/4 steel tubing all right up here on my deck I have a lot of storage because I don't have undermount storage it was something I thought about installing on the bus but I never did so I just walk up my ladder put some of the things I don't use like some of the compost and my hoses and different things in these bins so that I have a place out of the way for the things that are not so clean that you want to keep out of the inside of your bus they also work really well for seating so they worked out fine for me my deck space up here is 7 feet by 10 feet so even with these boxes there's still a lot of room for people I don't really want that many people up here that would fill the hole although I have had 20 people up here at one time so it can hold it people think that bus roofs can't hold weight they can hold a lot of weight especially if you install them the right way my mounting points are on the bus ribs themselves instead of against the side that's you know your own choice of how you want to do things but for me it made more sense to put the weight on the top of the arch rather than on the side of the arch so that's how mine's mounted and it's very secure it's been this way for two years over on this side this is my split system air conditioner the outdoor unit we saw the indoor unit and people questioned me all the time about is it okay up here I've worked in the business my whole life given my age away I'm 38 I did it 20 years full time I wasn't afraid of there being an issue ever because I could repair it but just don't hit trees that's the biggest thing you know just stay away from trees it's far enough off that it's not been hit by any rocks and it's been protected and it works really well just have to have isolator pads to keep it from vibrating you don't want your copper lines to be too attached because I need to be able to move with the bus so they don't shake loose and the flare nuts so it's worked really well how it is and works for me so in the front I mounted four of the 100 watt panels I don't know what the brand is actually it came with a kit it's some generic but it works great I mounted these panels on their own mounting system so I have the 3/4 square tubing and that whole system could come up at once if I needed to with solar panels they need to have air underneath so they don't get too hot as with this type especially so it's nice to have a little air movement underneath them anyway and it works to keep them off the top of the roof and keeps them safe 400 watts has been adequate for me it also matters what type of batteries you get how much storage you have to keep all that energy coming in for me I run everything that I need to run just fine I'm run a welder or anything massive so it's okay it's powered off that except my AC unit that's not powered off my Solar that's got to be either shore power or a generator I would love to go off the panel's one day get something larger but I just go where it's nice and cool anyway so I don't have to worry about it I'm in Arizona and I'm freezing right now so we don't need air conditioning here near the front of the bus there's a few things there the first is the square vent cover there that's the fantastic fan that we saw from the inside don't have a winch rod it would be nice to have one of those so if you're in the market get a winch route so when you're driving your fan can stay open and if it's raining your fan can stay open these fans have an automatic moisture sensor so if it rains at all or even sprinkles or even condensation it'll just shut on its own and that can be annoying so I highly suggest a shroud I have one of these lucky buses that has an air horn already so we've talked about it a lot where I am right now about air horns and I'm surprised how few of the buses have air horns I thought it was a common thing but it's not so I can blow the doors off somebody if they do something I don't like I've only had to use it a couple times and I'm always happy when I get the chance so if you see me cut me off it's great the the black bar in the front is my light bar it's an Amazon style light bar it gets great reviews it's hard to tell on Amazon reviews if it's actually as good as they say because they like to give things away with a great review in return and I can say that it has worked really well I've had it on there for two years and it could shoot across the valley over there just fine and it's something like thirty dollars for the thing so it's worth getting a light bar if you want to up there I built my deck out of Redwood just like I did out of the rear deck and it's worked perfectly it takes a lot of abuse with people walking around and tools coming up here or whatever so it's a good idea to have something that you don't have to replace all the time get a good material up here that's really sturdy I've put giant lag bolts through bolted in both sides it's not gonna lift up and end up on somebody's windshield one of the things I see when people build decks is they don't build them correctly and it always scares me that it's gonna injure somebody else so make sure you actually secure these things when you put them in place you can also see a little bit about how I made this on my blog post as well over on this side I have an Atwood ten gallon water heater you won't be able to see from the inside but that's the insides here which aren't the prettiest thing to look at but this is a very typical style of water heater for RVs a lot of people will put in the on-demand which are great and I don't know if I would choose one over the other at this point this has worked really well for me and you don't want to take four hour showers and a school bus that has limited amount of water anyway so having ten gallons of hot water actually gives you a really good amount of time in the shower probably about five to ten minutes depending on how hot you want the water so it's been a really good system for me when I decided to buy the bus it wasn't for the sake of choosing an RV over a bus or anything over something else the first time I saw this was in a town called Moab Utah somebody had a school bus that was chopped and had a monster truck on the back and ever since I saw that I was like okay you can buy a school bus and turn it into something you want so it was kind of in my mind and I didn't buy a bus for probably ten years after that and one day I was doing what everybody does and got into the worm hole of the internet and saw that these things were a lot cheaper to buy than I ever thought they'd be so I started looking and found one almost immediately the size I wanted and everything so I got pretty lucky and what I got here so when I bought this I also didn't intend to do full time travel I just wanted something that was different than what everybody else does I thought it would be funny to come home to not my home but my parents home and bring in the bus and Surprise them with honking the horn one around the corner and they weren't even surprised at all so I was really disappointed but it just kind of shows that that's what they're like so I'd spent Oh probably the first four months building this and just getting it as quick as I could to actually go use it just on the weekends and things and then it came to my mind that I could probably do this longer than a couple weekends so it just kind of went on from there in my mind snowball and snowball until it was something I decided to do and just take off one day if you want to see more of my bus or of any of my travels all of my social media channels are the Schooley so the as normal and then sko oli II links down below but the Schooley I'm on Instagram I'm on YouTube I have the school EECOM and Facebook the school II I don't use Facebook as much but I'm all over Instagram and I'm all over YouTube so feel free to check them out [Music]

Channel: Tiny Home Tours

Views: 1,660,509

Keywords: tiny home, tiny house, tiny home on wheels, van life, camper van, shipping container, design, tiny houses, tiny homes, tiny house tour

Id: 7nEnY6fozEQ

Length: 87min 41sec (5261 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019