Tiny Metal Tube
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2018
- Messages
- 80
- Reaction score
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Hello to all! After all these years, I think I may have finally found my people. I'm not sure whether there's a preferred format for these intro posts, so I'll tell you a little about myself first, then I'll go into how I got here, then I'll just kinda ramble for a while.
I'm a software developer, working mostly in database stuff. I work remotely 99% of the time. That is to say, I had to go into the office twice last year. The rest of the year I have a one-minute commute to downstairs.
A series of related interests (minimalism, stoicism, outdoors/nature/camping, self-sufficiency, financial independence, pantheism) had predisposed me toward van life, though I didn't realize those interests had names at first. While I was aware some people live in their vehicles, I certainly had no idea it was a large, growing, semi-organized movement, sometimes at the forefront of technology.
Boy, was I surprised, roughly March 2017, when YouTube suggested a video. I'm pretty sure it was "Living in a car: Top 10 places to sleep" from Hobo Ahle. I don't know why I clicked it (probably because of the hot girl), but I did. I suppose YouTube knew my interests better than I did. Questions streamed through my mind before I even clicked it. Why would you live in your car? Why would you tell everyone where you sleep? Why are you making YouTube videos about it? How are you uploading them? Well, I watched the video, and suddenly van life wasn't so crazy anymore. But one video is a fluke. I needed more.
From there, I clicked several related videos, and from there, and so forth. I quickly came to realize this was a much bigger phenomenon than I thought. Eventually I started looking for the videos. YouTube took me through a spectrum of lifestyles and terminology, from RVs to cargo vans to boondocking to urban camping to stealth to Hotel Walmart to living in Nature to workamping to... well, you get the point.
I found one common theme amongst it all: These are - by far - the happiest, most fulfilled people I've ever seen. And they're doing it for a fraction of what I'm spending for my mediocre life. I have a great job, a great wife, a decent house, a decent income, but I'm still not happy. How could these people be so much happier than I am on less money? Young, old, rich, poor, all kinds. Everyone.
Clearly something else is at play here. You folks have taught me the error of my ways. I've been materialistic and hadn't even realized it.
Finally I realize there must be a catch. So I start proactively looking for the downsides. Everything I can think of. Everything I can find. I found many problems, but every single one seems to have at least one effective solution.
After thousands of videos, hundreds of blog and forum posts, and months of research, I chose and bought a van. A 2017 GMC Savana 3500 with the extended wheelbase. I bought it new (8 miles) because (1) I have had a dozen used vehicles and they always have problems, (2) I demand a comprehensive maintenance history, and the only way to be sure is to do it myself, (3) If I'm gonna live in it, I need to be able to trust it completely, (4) The additional expense is offset by selling the house, and (5) all the used vans I see on YouTube seem to come with a bunch of rust or cargo-related equipment you have to get rid of. I already had a big project in front of me, I didn't need two.
Many people in this community seem forced into it by financial or other causes. I mean no offense here, but I am not one of those people. I have a very good full-time telecommute job. If I'm very careful, with the greatly reduced expenses offered by van life, I can retire in my late 40s.
I have enough equity in my house that, even if I can only get half what it's supposed to be "worth", the sale pays off the mortgage, the new van, and the truck we'll use for commuting to town and tourist destinations. Everything above that just goes right into savings.
The wife is not excited about this but is begrudgingly going along with it. For now we've agreed on a "we can always go back to a house or apartment later" state of mind. Needless to say I'm doing the conversion by myself.
Back to the story. I did the research. I bought the van. Immediately we start going on camping trips. We started in campgrounds at the nearby National Park, then eased our way into National Forest campgrounds, and finally boondocked in Kaibab NF for two nights during a trip to the Grand Canyon.
At first I was unaware of how much BLM land is around Moab, so when we visited Arches NP, we slept at the Pilot/Flying J in Grand Junction. Apparently they're very generous with their overnight parking policy, you can even rent a parking space and a faster wifi plan, they have nice showers and laundry... So there's a fallback we'll probably always have available if need be. I could definitely work from there during the day and then disappear into the desert.
When Bob was in Leadville, he extended a public invitation to camp with him. I asked, but he indicated he was absolutely swamped under a huge pile of requests. As an almost hermit-level introvert myself, I understood completely. Nonetheless, I had always wanted to see Leadville, and I only live a few hours away, so I went down there anyway. Figured I might see him at the gas station or something. I couldn't believe I had lived in Colorado for 20 years and never bothered to check out the western half, where all the beauty is!
Yeah, I said hermit-level. When I was single, I had my groceries delivered. Years ago, there were times I didn't leave my apartment for months on end. I'd've rather been in the forest if I'd known it was an option.
I stayed for a night or two at a free Fish and Wildlife campground south of Leadville, which I found by accident. I was going down that road to find a boondocking spot marked on freecampsites.net, but I chickened out when the road got too muddy. On my way back to the highway, I noticed the campground and pulled in. Ha! It always seems to work out.
While I was there, I had the first ever impromptu meetup with a genuine vandweller. His name was Rich and he lived in a minivan. He came over and introduced himself, and was ecstatic that he was no longer the only van in the whole campground (Everyone else was in an RV). I think he was on his way to a van build Jamie was gearing up for at the time. He had recently gone on disability and had to live on very little, but he was one of the happiest, most fulfilled people I can remember ever meeting. I got that same impression from the vandweller channels on YouTube... Well, the less-fake ones, anyway.
You can tell some are forcing the happy appearance. Rich was not. Bob is not. The Carolyns are not. I want in.
Every trip I've taken has taught me valuable lessons, and each lesson has made me better prepared for the next time. I insulated the walls with multiple layers of R3 XPS (walls R9, roof R6, doors R12, all are inconsistent depth so all have varying R values). I paneled over the walls and door tops with a nice white finished composite particleboard I found at Home Depot, which saved me the effort of sanding and finishing it myself. I built a bed and kitchen, decided they sucked, tore them out, and am now rebuilding them in a much better way.
In Colorado, it gets down to -20F in the winter (lower in the mountains) and up to 120F in the sun in the summer. So I can only spend long amounts of time working on the van in the spring and fall. In between I have to pick the good days. I also work long, weird hours, and am on call 24/7. So work on the van is proceeding slowly, but I think I'll be ready some time in summer 2018. When I camped near Leadville, it got down into the low 30s, but I was well-insulated and woke up only slightly chilly. Thanks for teaching me how, Bob! Rich had only insulated one wall of his minivan and very nearly froze.
A great deal of inspiration for my build has come from Bob and Rolling Earth-Ship, but I've watched similar builds on similar vans on other channels too. I found both on YouTube first but quickly found them both here. It was interesting reading the pre-YouTube part of Luis's build.
I have the extended wheelbase (the van is 20' long), so I have plenty of roof space. I plan to get a Fantastic Fan and 5 100W panels on a custom wood frame I'm building on top of some VanTech roof mounts. The battery bank will be roughly 400-500Ah and will sit directly over the rear axle. I figure the weight there will give me more traction on the driving wheels in tough terrain. The batteries will be a bit toward the right side (1) to offset the additional weight on the left side (kitchen and cabinets), and (2) so I have a good entry point for the solar cables. I figure I can jam all the electrical stuff down there with the batteries, except things with displays, which will be up on the wall next to them. For example the inverter will be under the bed with the batteries but the remote switch for it will be on the wall.
I plan to run a lot of electrical stuff: Two laptops, two phones, TV, induction cooktop (no CO/propane gas/condensation), microwave, big fridge (maybe two smaller ones so I can have a freezer). I'll have a backup generator, and possibly a genuine RV Converter for shore power. I may boondock a lot, but I've come to like the NF/NP campgrounds. Maybe we'll go get hookups sometimes; I need power and Internet.
If I decide the solar isn't enough, I figure I can always put more (removable) panels on the side like Ausia did. If I get two good MPPT controllers, they automatically work together intelligently to avoid overcharging the batteries, right?
I have absolutely no skills relevant to van life whatsoever, but here I am having to become a carpenter, electrician, plumber, cook, all at once. It should be a fun adventure, and I look forward to a lot of fulfilling time in Nature (but just deep enough into Nature that I can still get a cell signal for work). For me, finding spots with a good connection, and not going over my monthly data usage, will be the hardest parts. Everything else has copious information here and elsewhere.
The bulk of my job is basically sitting, staring, thinking, typing, and uploading and downloading small text files and datasets. Sometimes a large dataset. But we videoconference a lot. I'll have to break them of that.
I have corresponding Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, and a .com, all under this same name, in case anyone cares to follow along. No links here so I don't appear spammy on my first post.
Here's my campsite when I was south of Leadville:
[img=800x600]
Here's what the inside currently looks like (parked in my driveway). The U-shape will have a dinette in the middle, mounted by a PVC pipe. I will remove the pipe and rest the board on small beams to put it in bed mode. Both dinette seats will be storage underneath. Rear of that, the two full-width areas will be on hinges so we have a forward-facing couch and a rear-facing couch (for sunsets, mountains, etc). The big thing on the wall will be cabinets. I was going to build another set on the right side, but decided I would lose too much bed for two people.
The bed is currently a queen size, minus six inches width, but plus a few feet length. The area forward of the dinette, on the left side of the van, behind the driver seat, will be the kitchen. I plan to remove the passenger seat and build a wood structure there for the fridge(s) and microwave. We bought an AquaCube, which will sit under the right-side dinette bench. The AquaCube will serve as our shower and dishwasher, and can provide hot water on demand if we don't want to wait for it to boil on the stove.
Heat will be provided by a Buddy Heater. The kitchen will have a sink that will drain into a grey tank (water jug), but I don't currently plan to bother with a plumbed water pump or heater. Probably just rest a water jug above the sink and let gravity pump it for us.
[img=800x600]
Questions, concerns, gripes, complaints, let me know.
____
I have another account here. I started this one because I want to keep my pending van life separate from my personal identity. I won't be using the other one anymore. Apparently you can't delete your own account on MyBB forums.
I'm a software developer, working mostly in database stuff. I work remotely 99% of the time. That is to say, I had to go into the office twice last year. The rest of the year I have a one-minute commute to downstairs.
A series of related interests (minimalism, stoicism, outdoors/nature/camping, self-sufficiency, financial independence, pantheism) had predisposed me toward van life, though I didn't realize those interests had names at first. While I was aware some people live in their vehicles, I certainly had no idea it was a large, growing, semi-organized movement, sometimes at the forefront of technology.
Boy, was I surprised, roughly March 2017, when YouTube suggested a video. I'm pretty sure it was "Living in a car: Top 10 places to sleep" from Hobo Ahle. I don't know why I clicked it (probably because of the hot girl), but I did. I suppose YouTube knew my interests better than I did. Questions streamed through my mind before I even clicked it. Why would you live in your car? Why would you tell everyone where you sleep? Why are you making YouTube videos about it? How are you uploading them? Well, I watched the video, and suddenly van life wasn't so crazy anymore. But one video is a fluke. I needed more.
From there, I clicked several related videos, and from there, and so forth. I quickly came to realize this was a much bigger phenomenon than I thought. Eventually I started looking for the videos. YouTube took me through a spectrum of lifestyles and terminology, from RVs to cargo vans to boondocking to urban camping to stealth to Hotel Walmart to living in Nature to workamping to... well, you get the point.
I found one common theme amongst it all: These are - by far - the happiest, most fulfilled people I've ever seen. And they're doing it for a fraction of what I'm spending for my mediocre life. I have a great job, a great wife, a decent house, a decent income, but I'm still not happy. How could these people be so much happier than I am on less money? Young, old, rich, poor, all kinds. Everyone.
Clearly something else is at play here. You folks have taught me the error of my ways. I've been materialistic and hadn't even realized it.
Finally I realize there must be a catch. So I start proactively looking for the downsides. Everything I can think of. Everything I can find. I found many problems, but every single one seems to have at least one effective solution.
After thousands of videos, hundreds of blog and forum posts, and months of research, I chose and bought a van. A 2017 GMC Savana 3500 with the extended wheelbase. I bought it new (8 miles) because (1) I have had a dozen used vehicles and they always have problems, (2) I demand a comprehensive maintenance history, and the only way to be sure is to do it myself, (3) If I'm gonna live in it, I need to be able to trust it completely, (4) The additional expense is offset by selling the house, and (5) all the used vans I see on YouTube seem to come with a bunch of rust or cargo-related equipment you have to get rid of. I already had a big project in front of me, I didn't need two.
Many people in this community seem forced into it by financial or other causes. I mean no offense here, but I am not one of those people. I have a very good full-time telecommute job. If I'm very careful, with the greatly reduced expenses offered by van life, I can retire in my late 40s.
I have enough equity in my house that, even if I can only get half what it's supposed to be "worth", the sale pays off the mortgage, the new van, and the truck we'll use for commuting to town and tourist destinations. Everything above that just goes right into savings.
The wife is not excited about this but is begrudgingly going along with it. For now we've agreed on a "we can always go back to a house or apartment later" state of mind. Needless to say I'm doing the conversion by myself.
Back to the story. I did the research. I bought the van. Immediately we start going on camping trips. We started in campgrounds at the nearby National Park, then eased our way into National Forest campgrounds, and finally boondocked in Kaibab NF for two nights during a trip to the Grand Canyon.
At first I was unaware of how much BLM land is around Moab, so when we visited Arches NP, we slept at the Pilot/Flying J in Grand Junction. Apparently they're very generous with their overnight parking policy, you can even rent a parking space and a faster wifi plan, they have nice showers and laundry... So there's a fallback we'll probably always have available if need be. I could definitely work from there during the day and then disappear into the desert.
When Bob was in Leadville, he extended a public invitation to camp with him. I asked, but he indicated he was absolutely swamped under a huge pile of requests. As an almost hermit-level introvert myself, I understood completely. Nonetheless, I had always wanted to see Leadville, and I only live a few hours away, so I went down there anyway. Figured I might see him at the gas station or something. I couldn't believe I had lived in Colorado for 20 years and never bothered to check out the western half, where all the beauty is!
Yeah, I said hermit-level. When I was single, I had my groceries delivered. Years ago, there were times I didn't leave my apartment for months on end. I'd've rather been in the forest if I'd known it was an option.
I stayed for a night or two at a free Fish and Wildlife campground south of Leadville, which I found by accident. I was going down that road to find a boondocking spot marked on freecampsites.net, but I chickened out when the road got too muddy. On my way back to the highway, I noticed the campground and pulled in. Ha! It always seems to work out.
While I was there, I had the first ever impromptu meetup with a genuine vandweller. His name was Rich and he lived in a minivan. He came over and introduced himself, and was ecstatic that he was no longer the only van in the whole campground (Everyone else was in an RV). I think he was on his way to a van build Jamie was gearing up for at the time. He had recently gone on disability and had to live on very little, but he was one of the happiest, most fulfilled people I can remember ever meeting. I got that same impression from the vandweller channels on YouTube... Well, the less-fake ones, anyway.
You can tell some are forcing the happy appearance. Rich was not. Bob is not. The Carolyns are not. I want in.
Every trip I've taken has taught me valuable lessons, and each lesson has made me better prepared for the next time. I insulated the walls with multiple layers of R3 XPS (walls R9, roof R6, doors R12, all are inconsistent depth so all have varying R values). I paneled over the walls and door tops with a nice white finished composite particleboard I found at Home Depot, which saved me the effort of sanding and finishing it myself. I built a bed and kitchen, decided they sucked, tore them out, and am now rebuilding them in a much better way.
In Colorado, it gets down to -20F in the winter (lower in the mountains) and up to 120F in the sun in the summer. So I can only spend long amounts of time working on the van in the spring and fall. In between I have to pick the good days. I also work long, weird hours, and am on call 24/7. So work on the van is proceeding slowly, but I think I'll be ready some time in summer 2018. When I camped near Leadville, it got down into the low 30s, but I was well-insulated and woke up only slightly chilly. Thanks for teaching me how, Bob! Rich had only insulated one wall of his minivan and very nearly froze.
A great deal of inspiration for my build has come from Bob and Rolling Earth-Ship, but I've watched similar builds on similar vans on other channels too. I found both on YouTube first but quickly found them both here. It was interesting reading the pre-YouTube part of Luis's build.
I have the extended wheelbase (the van is 20' long), so I have plenty of roof space. I plan to get a Fantastic Fan and 5 100W panels on a custom wood frame I'm building on top of some VanTech roof mounts. The battery bank will be roughly 400-500Ah and will sit directly over the rear axle. I figure the weight there will give me more traction on the driving wheels in tough terrain. The batteries will be a bit toward the right side (1) to offset the additional weight on the left side (kitchen and cabinets), and (2) so I have a good entry point for the solar cables. I figure I can jam all the electrical stuff down there with the batteries, except things with displays, which will be up on the wall next to them. For example the inverter will be under the bed with the batteries but the remote switch for it will be on the wall.
I plan to run a lot of electrical stuff: Two laptops, two phones, TV, induction cooktop (no CO/propane gas/condensation), microwave, big fridge (maybe two smaller ones so I can have a freezer). I'll have a backup generator, and possibly a genuine RV Converter for shore power. I may boondock a lot, but I've come to like the NF/NP campgrounds. Maybe we'll go get hookups sometimes; I need power and Internet.
If I decide the solar isn't enough, I figure I can always put more (removable) panels on the side like Ausia did. If I get two good MPPT controllers, they automatically work together intelligently to avoid overcharging the batteries, right?
I have absolutely no skills relevant to van life whatsoever, but here I am having to become a carpenter, electrician, plumber, cook, all at once. It should be a fun adventure, and I look forward to a lot of fulfilling time in Nature (but just deep enough into Nature that I can still get a cell signal for work). For me, finding spots with a good connection, and not going over my monthly data usage, will be the hardest parts. Everything else has copious information here and elsewhere.
The bulk of my job is basically sitting, staring, thinking, typing, and uploading and downloading small text files and datasets. Sometimes a large dataset. But we videoconference a lot. I'll have to break them of that.
I have corresponding Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube accounts, and a .com, all under this same name, in case anyone cares to follow along. No links here so I don't appear spammy on my first post.
Here's my campsite when I was south of Leadville:
[img=800x600]
Here's what the inside currently looks like (parked in my driveway). The U-shape will have a dinette in the middle, mounted by a PVC pipe. I will remove the pipe and rest the board on small beams to put it in bed mode. Both dinette seats will be storage underneath. Rear of that, the two full-width areas will be on hinges so we have a forward-facing couch and a rear-facing couch (for sunsets, mountains, etc). The big thing on the wall will be cabinets. I was going to build another set on the right side, but decided I would lose too much bed for two people.
The bed is currently a queen size, minus six inches width, but plus a few feet length. The area forward of the dinette, on the left side of the van, behind the driver seat, will be the kitchen. I plan to remove the passenger seat and build a wood structure there for the fridge(s) and microwave. We bought an AquaCube, which will sit under the right-side dinette bench. The AquaCube will serve as our shower and dishwasher, and can provide hot water on demand if we don't want to wait for it to boil on the stove.
Heat will be provided by a Buddy Heater. The kitchen will have a sink that will drain into a grey tank (water jug), but I don't currently plan to bother with a plumbed water pump or heater. Probably just rest a water jug above the sink and let gravity pump it for us.
[img=800x600]
Questions, concerns, gripes, complaints, let me know.
____
I have another account here. I started this one because I want to keep my pending van life separate from my personal identity. I won't be using the other one anymore. Apparently you can't delete your own account on MyBB forums.
to your co-workers...limit them to audio-conferencing to eliminate the jealousy... 
