SCHOOL BUS converted to TINY HOME by High School STUDENTS
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Eric Gordon lives in a 40-foot tiny house Skoolie called The Mountain Bus in Boulder, Colorado. He is always trying to live as minimally as possible. He lived part time in a VW van, started out doing that for about three or four years and now he’s upgraded to a larger situation. In his experience, some of the best things in life can be found on Craigslist. It's how he found his old 71 VW, as well as this school bus that was built out down in southern Colorado. He reached out and it turns out it was built out by a high school shop class. They were looking to sell it to essentially fund their art program and their outdoor program. Being a climber and an artist, he was stoked on that so he went down and checked it out and it was everything he wanted.
It's a very simple build out, there's no inset plumbing and there was no solar setup when he bought it, but he’s already had both of those situations figured out. When he drove the bus off of the schoolyard it was his first time something this big. He ended up actually having a friend who has a 40-foot driveway which was just big enough to fit the bus. He started off living in the school bus in downtown Boulder around million-dollar mansions, and he definitely got some strange looks for that. Soon after that a friend that owns the property and house that he’s currently parked really wanted to start a collective living situation. She just moved in there and really wanted to still embrace community and have a strong sense of friendship around there so he had to widen the fence to sneakily drive this in because they’re in kind of a quiet neighborhood.
The Mountain Bus is a 40-foot 1990 Thomas Skoolie tiny house. He has the glorious Skoolie front door which is very important to getting into your bus. He keeps the space heated by a big wood-burning stove inside, so he stores his hardwood under the bus so it doesn’t get wet. Being parked somewhat indefinitely, he’s managed to use the underside of the bus for a lot of storage. He tries to keep it as tidy as possible. For electricity he’s got four Goal Zero solar panels which he opted to not mount to the roof. Part of the reason was that he didn’t have time, but he’s also found that it gives you a lot more mobility as far as getting optimum sunlight wherever you are throughout the day. He just runs the cables from the panels through a hole he drilled in the side of the bus.
His bus came with a wheelchair door on the side which is a feature he loves as it gives great access to the inside of the bus. It’s located really close to the wood stove so when he needs to restock the fire it makes grabbing wood from underneath the bus really easy. One cool thing actually is the clearance that this bus has. It’s a little bit more than most school buses which is super helpful for when he drives it up in the mountains. For the woodstove, he has a reclaimed chimney setup that only cost him about six dollars total.
In the doorway he has all of his outdoor attire ranging from winter coats to shoes to his skateboard. A little further in he has the living room, the kitchen, and the writing table. He decided not to do any sort of intense plumbing for this setup, so he just has a three gallon jug that gravity feeds into a wash basin where he can do some dishes. He tries to use things that aren't harmful to the environment, so he is able to just dump his greywater outside on the lawn. Since he travels a lot in his VW van and camps for months at a time he decided to use a bunch of the camping gear that he already has. For example, for cooking he simply uses his Jetboil Genesis Basecamp System that he can run off propane on the bus, but it also easily disconnects and so he can use it with smaller cylinders when he’s on the road.
You end up having an impressive tool collection once you've lived in an alternative or tiny house thing because there's always something that could be fixed or you could move it two inches and it'll change your life. He just got a little writing table that used to be twice the size. When you're living in a small space for long enough you realize you only use so much of the table, so he cut it a little smaller to save space. He could probably even cut this down to half this size, but so far it works well for him. He has a cooler that he uses as a fridge and doubles as a bench for seating.
For Eric, having a woodstove is the biggest thing for him, especially during winters in Colorado. The floors do get pretty cold just because the cold winter air can blow freely underneath, so having a really big wood-burning stove is excellent. He has some more lighting from the Goal Zero setup he has. For battery power, he uses two Goal Zero Yeti Solar Generators
Near the back of the bus he has his bathroom. An awesome hack that he learned about from somebody is the urinal he has. He has a five-gallon waste water tank and then a funnel. In that funnel he put a ping-pong ball. Pee goes in there and then it caps it automatically, so there's no smell. he has a self composting toilet that is essentially a bucket, compostable bag and then he takes ash from the fireplace and uses that as a compost initiator.
He owns a coffee business that he runs out of his VW van around the country and He’s incorporated the advice of 'Life is short. Live your dream. Find your line'. He thinks of this motto on a daily basis. Life is extremely short when you think about it. What one thing would you do with this magnificent life? You should just start living a dream as soon as possible. That looks different for everybody, so the find your line part is just kind of like what line are you gonna choose to get to that point in life where you're doing exactly what you want and if you died tomorrow you would be a happy person. Figure out the direction that you really want to start putting yourself down and start to look for the avenues that you can do that. When you find the one that feels right and you know it feels right, don't hesitate to go for it. You know if you have the ability to do it just do it or even if you're not even there yet, create that path for yourself.
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