I spent ONE MONTH CONVERTING my VAN into my OFF GRID MICRO HOME
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June 6th, 2016 marks the day that I gave some sucker 2000 pieces of paper for this Chevy 1994 G20 Gladiator Edition that I named Gladys, that is my home. She came fully loaded, one might say like a baked potato, with a fully functioning wheelchair lift and 65,000 miles. I camped around New England in practically just a metal box with a mattress and a cooler.
And then in August I took her back to Kansas and I built out the inside. Day One of my van build the only goal was just to strip everything out of it and get it all completely gutted. My friend Lindsey helped me for like two hours before we finally got the wheelchair lift out. With the help of Waboosh (Michael Kelly), and Lindsey, we installed the sub floor. I framed the walls with two-by-twos. Ended up not being perfectly square, but neither is the van.
I insulated with R-13 fiberglass. We had it in the basement, and so it was free. I then installed laminate flooring for one of the walls, but I had to take all that off. Laminate expands and contracts, so as soon as it gets into cold weather it's going to contract and pull itself off the wall. Instead of having to replace it in six months I decided I should just take it down right away. I Instead chose to install cedar paneling.
We kind of insulated the ceiling and then installed a piece of plywood for the ceiling. I bought the wrong sized swivel seat and installed it anyway. The base of the seat was wider than the swivel. So I fixed it with two straps, two holes, two bolts, and then the same thing back. I had to cut it off with the saw zaw in order to be able to swivel around because it was getting stuck.
I built a bed frame, installed a Maxxair fan. Not to be confused with the Fantastic Fan because the Maxxair fan is better. Got that 200 watt solar system and a 200 amp hour battery bank going on. I struggled to build a cabinet. It wasn’t the prettiest cabinet in the world, but I made it. Then I built another one that was definitely better.
From getting started, to on the road was about 35 days, August 3rd to September 6th. I did not work on it every single day. Gladys is by no means perfect, but she is my home and I did build her and so I love her. I have considered driving her off a cliff before, but I didn't do it. That's what actually matters.
Anyway, I'm working on adding some additions to Gladys like something like a light bar and I also want to change the fridge situation. Currently, it’s a freezer because it has more insulation and there's a relay that runs the inverter. Because there's a temperature probe inside of the freezer, that keeps it at refrigerator temperature. Doing it this way, it's pretty efficient, but it's way cheaper than buying a DC compressor fridge. This way is about $230 opposed to like $600 plus for a DC compressor fridge. A downside is since it's side loading every time you open it, it cycles on because all the cold air falls out. So what I want to do is I want to get rid of the box and possibly put like a DC compressor fridge or at least some sort of fridge that is top loading in that space and then where the fridge is now, I would remove that obviously and turn that into a cabinet and then I could move all my food that is in that box into the cabinet and that would free up all of that space and it would be a lot nicer.
I have one gallon of propane for cooking and that lasts me about three months and then I can carry 7.5 gallons of water and I can go completely off grid for a week without having to resupply. I average about 16 miles to the gallon depending on the terrain. Under the bed is all sorts of storage. I can't stand in here so I have these towels that I kneel on. I also have two anchor points where I can set up a hammock in here and recently I've been sleeping in the hammock and I have been enjoying it. I want to redo the cushion situation because those are lumpy.
Whenever I built this van I was pretty tight on cash and so I did everything as cheap as possible. Hence the lumpy cushions. I bathe whenever I can and sometimes that ends up being in a river and toilets are actually surprisingly super easy to find. They're everywhere. We live in a land full of toilets. Seriously though, there there's an absurd amount of toilets I think sometimes.
The build cost me about three and a half grand and almost all of that went on credit. That's just reality, that is not advice. The van, the build, and any mechanical fixes have cost me about seven thousand dollars. So seven grand for a home on wheels and I don't pay rent. I think that's pretty reasonable.
I really think that this lifestyle, the vanlife lifestyle, is the most attainable and super attractive. It's super affordable. Once you get into the van and after you have the build, expenses are like nothing. You have no rent. But, vanlife is totally not for everybody. The road can be a hard place sometimes and it can get pretty lonely, but it's allowed me to create the life that I want to live. There's no lease. You own the van outright. You can go where you want. You can stay where you want. You don't have a recurring payment. There's benefits to living in a vehicle or just living smaller.
To live in a van you totally need a level of resilience and a pretty high tolerance for being uncomfortable because, I can't even stand up in my house, like that's a thing that I have to deal with every single day. And that's not the best thing like there are totally some downsides to living in a van, but the upsides that it offers me personally are totally worth it.
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