Off grid (4 month old) conversion with shower, toilet and 4 berths!

Here we have ‘Van’ my conversion I built to live and work in after renovating and selling my house. I built her to be a studio flat on wheels and that’s what she is. With all the comforts of home, like a log burner, internet, stereo and even underfloor heating. You can wake up in the morning with toasty toes, make coffee, have a shower and be sat at your desk ready for work without ever opening the door. Be it in a field or parked up on a London side road. I’ve done all of it with Van

The idea was to make a conversion that I could full time in whilst still being stealthy enough to park up, as well as being OK to use on a proper site with a hard standing. After 4 months of full timing in it and staying anywhere and everywhere I’ve never had the knock or been refused on site.

Everyone loves this van, whenever I park onsite I always get lots of people asking me about it! It’s definitely unusual for a camper conversion but that also means when parked up on the street no-one looks twice at it. It’s the ultimate stealth vehicle and the 3 skylights mean you get oodles of light inside even with the blind closed.

Cooking

There is no permanent gas to worry about, cooking is via a ‘camp bistro’ portable hob that I put on the worktop to cook, it means you can have the whole work surface when not using it I didn’t want to be reliant on gas as it’s been hard to get hold of the big cylanders. I have a box of canisters for the portable that comes with the van and in 4 months I’ve only used a handful of them.

The Wood burner also has a dedicated oven and additional hob. Obviously it’s only for use when it’s cold enough, not for hot weather, but the oven is fantastic and it works brilliantly (for what it is).

I also have an ‘instant pot’ which is great and I use that all the time for making meals, I rarely find myself wishing for more cooking stuff. I do like to cook as well and it’s been great so far!

Insulation

With 25 mm ecoflex on every wall and ceiling, then 12 mm structural ply on the walls and foam insulation and cladding on the ceiling, she’s been well insulated. This also gives you a really secure feeling as the sound insulation is good as well.

Security

The doors are steel with a layer of insulation in the middle. They have big beefy locks and I have fitted a security bolt to the inside for locking yourself in as well. As it was previously used as a pharmacy van it’s really very secure and feels it. Even in a supermarket car park which is about the worst place to park up, I still slept soundly

Heating

Obviously the wood burner does a great job when you are in a field in the middle of nowhere. But if you’re parked up on site some places can be funny about them, but that’s what the underfloor heating is for! So if you have an electric hookup that works great. Then finally for stealth mode there is an 80 watt bar heater on the wall that also does a great job, it’s a little slower at heating the van up but it does get there

Cooling

Having lived in a van previously in Australia I really thought about this when doing the conversion! There is a small air con unit that pumps in cold air for when you have hookup (it will run off the battery as well) but the power fan in the ceiling is amazing. It pulls so much air through the van that it really does keep it cool. It also has a rain sensor, so you can just leave it open and go off for the day and if it starts raining it will shut itself. It’s pretty neat! It also keeps the upper sleeping area nice and cool on hot nights, which with a memory foam mattress is vital as they get warm otherwise.

Power

There are 600 watts of solar on the roof, which is then split with 400 watts powering the 240v system and 200 watts going to the 12v system. The 240v system is powered with an Eco flow Delta and gives you a massive 1.2kW of power and an 1800 watt inverter. It’s a fairly pricey all in one system which I went with over relying on a home built system. I wanted something safe and reliable that was built to last.

The 12v system is powered from 2x 110amp leisure batteries, which is way, way more than it needs! This just powers things like the lights, water pumps, etc. I have also fitted a 2000 watt inverter which is connected to a pull up socket on the worktop just for a bit of redundancy. I will sometimes run my laptop off that socket if I’m using a lot of power and there isn’t much sun just to balance out the power use.

In months of use I have never once run out of power. Or even come close. After a week on very overcast Dartmoor I was hitting 50% at the end of an evening. That’s with working full time from the van, so laptop going all day and charging phones and running lights etc.

Hot Water

As I didn’t want to use gas and instead have loads of solar I went for a 10l hot water tank designed for caravans. This works great and I can turn it on in the morning and it will stay hot for the day without needing to be on all the time. If I’m on hookup I’ll just leave it on all the time and not worry about the power consumption! It’s 800 watts and takes about 10-15 mins to get up to temperature and eats about 10-15% of the battery to do so.

Bathroom

There is a Thetford Cassette toilet fitted in the shower room so it’s got a proper actual little bathroom, you don’t have a toilet in a pull out box to sit on and look your loved one’s in the face as you use it in the middle of the van. The shower itself is great and as the water pump is a proper sure flow pump it has great pressure. It is only a 10l water tank though, so you get enough for a quick shower. I usually turn it on and get wet, lather up, then turn it on and rinse off. But I’m sure you will work out your own technique!

Kitchen

The kitchen has a decent sized work surface and a proper sink with draining board! If you’ve ever tried to stay in a van for any length of time you’ll know how impossible those tiny camper sinks are and with nowhere to leave stuff to drain and dry off.

The fridge is a 40L Alpicool C40 compressor fridge. This runs off 12v or 240v. I have it connected to the 12v outlet on the Ecoflow battery which runs it without issue, there is so much so solar that even on the most overcast days it can run the fridge barely using any battery. The fridge is bluetooth enabled and will go all the way down to -20 so you can use it as a freezer if you want.

There is absolutely tons of storage and you can easily bring a months food on board for 1 person, or enough for a couple of weeks for two, without having to eat dehydrated rubbish. I have it stocked pretty similar to what I would have at home.

There is a soda stream machine fitted as well, this does come with the van It’s been one of my best van purchases and I use it all the time. It’s great! But it’s also great to have room for stuff like this on the worktop.

Driving

She drives really well, I was genuinely surprised at how well she does! I’ve been all over Cornwall with its steep and windy roads as well as Dartmoor with its even more tiny roads and narrow stone bridges. She’s a similar height and width to an ambulance, so she can pretty much go everywhere. Plus she eats up the motorway miles. I have never had an issue parking either, which I did think I might have issues with but it really has been fine.

As the van is nowhere near her max weight (I think these are built to be able to take up to something like 6 tonnes) she actually feels pretty spritely to drive! Obviously the legal limit is 3500KG which means she is fine to drive on a car license.

The conversion

I built this to live and work in which I have been doing full time. I did not build it to sell. As such it’s solid and has everything you need, like a fridge, loads of storage, desk etc. But for example the fridge is just secured to the wall rather than being in a cabinet. The storage is big plastic boxes as I found cabinets in a van were a pain as you spend your life having to empty them out to find stuff and boxes can just be pulled down and looked in.

The price is absolutely commensurate with it not being built to sell. This does mean it’s a great base to use as is, or if you wanted to do that stuff there is definitely a lot of value you could add to then resell. I’m only selling now as I have to be in France in 2 weeks!

All in all, you’re getting a lot for your money and she won’t be around for long. So just give me a call, text or email and make me an offer 🙂