What's the highest priority piece of a conversion?

[willingtorelocate]

For the last couple of weeks, I've been looking at my camper, and saying to myself, "shit dude, everything is in absolutely the wrong place." So I started looking into replacement campers, and quickly discovered there too, that pretty much everything in a traditional camper is not actually built to be lived in. And even the ones that are don't seem to work well as year round living machines.

Meanwhile, the reality that I'm in a city, surrounded by people who could make my life difficult if they wanted to is starting to sink in. And I feel like I don't have enough stealth. 

Taking this into consideration, I started making a shopping list.
There's a lot of stuff I could take out of my current camper. Things like the gas lines, the stove, the refrigerator, maybe parts of the plumbing. I can also hit up a habitat re-store, I think, and get a break on things like cabinets and construction bits and pieces. And there's a fair bit I can do with cheap arduino boards and embedded raspberry pi's. My build would probably be very electric and gadget-centric.

All told, I figured out that if I bought a nice stealthy box truck, preferably with some kind of wrap or corporate logo on it, I could do a full conversion for about $15,000, above and beyond the cost of the truck -- which doesn't seem like an unattainable number. It's just not the kind of money I can plop down all at once. 

I think the electrical system, solar cells, and insulation would probably be the most important things do first in a situation like that. And I've got this idea in my head, to split or augment the roof on the truck knight rider style, so that I can hide the solar panels when I'm not using them. A bed is important. But plumbing in broad general terms doesn't seem to be as pressing an issue as I thought it would be when I started.

Anyway, it just seems like a big job. Essentially building a stealth rv from scratch, bit by bit.

If you were doing it, what would you put in first?

Thanks.

 

[AMGS3]

Where do you live? I ask because staying safe from the elements is going to be a different job depending on what part of the continent you're in. But for me I'd say heating is priority number one. If you were in a warmer area where it gets hot enough to kill you, I'd say interior climate control (AC).

Btw, staying warm or cool also includes things like having a proper sleeping bag setup, a bed that's not on the floor, warm clothes to sleep in, and water storage space.

That be my number one. Everything else is for naught if you freeze to death or die of heat stroke.

~angie

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[willingtorelocate]

Hey Angie,

I'm in New Hampshire right now, but I travel every three to six months or so for work. So I can end up anywhere, at any time of year. Hot or cold, in any kind of geography, and I never know ahead of time until I have an offer in hand. Heating and staying warm has been a real challenge. But I'm getting by with my propane heater, and a little electric one for when the weather is a bit warmer (above 30 degrees or thereabouts). I've been in my camper since about December (it's my first one), and I've sort of been learning as I go.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

If you were doing it, what would you put in first?

Not trying to be snarky...  but.....


my butt.

Just my butt and as little stuff as possible. 


Seriously. We hear over and over again about people who planned everything out to the last detail and then had to pull it all out and redo it after living in it for a while. I lived in my minivan for a year with nothing but some tubs, a board with foam on it for a bed, and some plastic drawers. I was boondocking in Austin at the time. As I sat in my minivan, doing things, an image formed in my head of where things should be so I can reach them easily and still fit comfortably in my minivan.  Here's my van build thread: https://vanlivingforum.com/showthread.php?tid=33524

And $15K seems crazy high. Are you trying to bring your house with you, or are you trying to bring your butt to the outdoors?

Just stack some tubs in said box truck, as if you were just moving. Lay a board across some of them for a bed and some of them for a make-shift counter. Bungees will hold them in place. Then live in it for a while. Over time, you will figure out what you want to be where for maximum convenience. No one can tell you what will work best for you. Too many variables.

I suspect you will also find that you don't really need $15k worth of cabinets and plumbing and counter-tops, and appliances and......   stuff. Save that money for emergency repairs. 

Though, I am super curious as to what you will build with arduinos. They are definitely on my list of things to dabble in..... eventually.

 

[AMGS3]

Yup, I'd say that heating and cooling are number one.

Surviving winter weather is the reason I chose an ice house over a traditional RV. I know you're talking about a conversion/modification, but keep in mind that insulation can be critical, and it's useful for staying warm and staying cool. This time of year it's a pain in the @$$ to have to be thinking about insulation though, if you don't already have it. And most RVs don't have enough for efficient winter heating. Ripping everything out... ugh.

~angie

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[willingtorelocate]

And $15K seems crazy high. Are you trying to bring your house with you, or are you trying to bring your butt to the outdoors?

Well, oddly enough, I've been living minimally for years. Believe it or not, since I stopped renting rooms in my random cities, I've actually accumulated more stuff. But that's neither here nor there. The single biggest component of the setup I want to do, in terms of financing is the battery bank. Everything else is pretty workable. Maybe $3000 total, with every feature I could possibly want. But, I want to be able to run for a week without having to move or charge during arctic winter weather. There might be a way to save some money there (like a salvage grade tesla battery pack from copart), but right now, if I'm paying retail, proper lithium high drain batteries are expensive.

Other than that, I would like a bigger bed. Maybe a nice Queen size, or at least a full. That's not unreasonable. I need my fridge. I want a better propane setup, with lines I can snake around under the walls or the floor boards. An air conditioner that's actually designed for an RV or boat would be nice. For work, I need a much more sophisticated 4g system. That would be part of the build, with omni-directional antennas, and a signal booster. Get a proper wireless network going. Right now all I have is a phone, and xfinity hotspots. That's just not enough.

So yes, I want it to replace my house. Or rather, the camper I'm using as a house now.

Though, I am super curious as to what you will build with arduinos. They are definitely on my list of things to dabble in..... eventually.

All kinds of stuff. One thing that's been nagging at me is water. I would like to know how much water I have. And I would like an api on my computer that can talk to a sensor, which uses a laser beam to tell me how much water I have in my tanks without having to open them and look. I want to know the temp, the dry weight, if the water has gone stale. Then, using a bank of tiny pi's, I could recycle it, move all or some of it into a gray water tank, or water some tomato plants.

I think it would be cool to be able to grow some of the food I eat on the road. And I feel like I need more oxygen. Burning all this propane, even with good ventilation can't be healthy. Too much carbon dioxide means cognitive decline, which is bad. I get enough bad air at the office.

I also want to power some electric lawnmower engines in the roof, which would slide the solar panels and cameras in and out of view. You know, the knight rider stuff, heh heh.

Anyway, arduino can facilitate most of this. And what you can't do with arduino and some custom boards or dirt cheap sensors, you could manage with raspberry pi's, a little bit golang, and some flash memory.

It would take some code and a lot of cables, but it could all be done. I'm sorry if I'm nerding out too hard, lol.

Surviving winter weather is the reason I chose an ice house over a traditional RV. I know you're talking about a conversion/modification, but keep in mind that insulation can be critical, and it's useful for staying warm and staying cool.

There's a thought. How do you like the ice house? Is it big enough? Most of the ones I've seen have been smaller than small.

 

[AMGS3]

Yes, it's big enough. The one I have is an 8'×17' toyhauler with a v-nose on the front. But in my shopping around I was in an Ice Castle 5th wheel that was 9'×45'. That thing was huge. Even had two sleeping lofts, one on each end. There's a lot of different brands of ice houses. Mine has a vented propane furnace, cassette toilet, shower, and a full kitchen (the kitchen's small, but everything's in there).

I have pictures of mine on my thread in the miscellaneous vehicles section if you're interested. Very definitely not stealthy though.

~angie



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[willingtorelocate]

I think I saw that one!
Is that the one with the wonder oven video link about six pages in?

Been meaning to set one of those up.

 

[AMGS3]

^^Yup, that's the one.

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[maki2]

you asked what to bring with you out of your camper....not much of anything unless you plan on a full propane install

in that case things such as a furnace, 3way fridge, water heater, stove top have good value if you want to devote the room to them

maybe the mattress if you like it

sink and faucet are likely good for reuse.
Maybe you would want the keep water tank and pump.

As to sensors...you can usually see through the semi-transparent fresh water tanks enough to see the level, so make it easy to see the level by looking at the side of a tank if you put it into a cabinet. You can draw lines on the outside of the tank indicating how many gallons are in it. That is what I have done to mine. My under-sink freshwater tank is only 5 gallons. I keep the drinking/cooking water in gallon sized jugs that are easy to refill from a faucet or filtered water machine. Four gallon jugs fit into a milk crate and milk crates are made to stack on top of each other. That way you can have 4, 8 or 12 gallons of water in a relatively small amount of floor space or they can slide under a bed. The drinking water won't go stale if you do a rotation system. I don't know why you want to complicate something that is so easy to do without any technology. Gadgetry can become an addiction....addictions are something to avoid if at all possible.

 

[Wabbit]

Maybe think outside -> in. Does wiring go inside or outside the insulation? Not using insulation? Then start there.

For me and my steel tent, I should have layed wiring first(I didn't need insulation), I didn't, wires now running everywhere! Lol. Although my process was what LoveCareThinkDo mentioned, getting my a$$ on the road.

In the end, whatever you do, you'll wish you did it different...lol. Best of luck with everything!

 

[flying kurbmaster]

When I  moved into my step van I slung a salvaged piece of plywood over one of the wheel wells, propped one end up with a piece of 2x4 I found, slept there on a thermal rest, had my small camp stove on the dog house, camping pots and pans and borrowed a cooler. Bought a 10 liter water tank. First thing i did was insulate, and slowly got a bit done a little at a time as stuff came to me. I charge my phone, computer, battery tools, I have a vented propane heater, a fridge, a stove, extracter fan, tv, DVD player, stereo, a toilet,lighting and running water with a system to bath. I have 140 watts of solar and one deep cycle battery and never run out of power. This is my 10th summer it is very attractive and comfortable to live in.

 

[regis101]

What camper do you have? I also notice that most floorplans are not well designed.
Any thoughts to remodeling the one you have?

 

[willingtorelocate]

Maybe think outside -> in. Does wiring go inside or outside the insulation? Not using insulation? Then start there.

For me and my steel tent, I should have layed wiring first(I didn't need insulation), I didn't, wires now running everywhere! Lol. Although my process was what LoveCareThinkDo mentioned, getting my a$$ on the road.

Interesting. I didn't really have a plan for wires. But I would like them to be easy to get to without tearing out a wall. Maybe sandwiched between the insulation and the dry wall?

What camper do you have? I also notice that most floorplans are not well designed.
Any thoughts to remodeling the one you have?

They told me it was a 1993 sunshine star ray, but I'm pretty sure it's an 83. The biggest issue, and sadly, it's not one that's fixable, is the water tanks. They're positioned on the bottom of the camper, outside the heat bubble of the interior. I can almost get to the tanks, but I would have to pull up the whole bathroom floor to fix the freezing problem, and I don't want to do that while I'm living it.

I don't want to sound negative, but the floor plan in this thing is silly. It sleeps 8 people. I've got beds for everything. Not much else. And I'm worried about pulling them out, for fears of destroying the walls. They're in there pretty good. Nailed and glued to the walls with epoxy. The kitchenette is really too small to be useful, but it impacts the floor plan. I've got maybe 18 inches between the kitchenette, main bed, and the bathroom, width wise. And I've got a ton of space (big enough for two small desks) used up by the bunk bed, which I'll never use for anything but storage.

So my thinking is that a construction project needs to happen, one way or another, and it would be easier to start again, with something like this: https://nh.craigslist.org/cto/d/newmarket-1997-gmc-cbox-truck/6791414681.html where I could build it out, and get it mostly right the first time.

As to sensors...you can usually see through the semi-transparent fresh water tanks enough to see the level, so make it easy to see the level by looking at the side of a tank if you put it into a cabinet. You can draw lines on the outside of the tank indicating how many gallons are in it. That is what I have done to mine. My under-sink freshwater tank is only 5 gallons. I keep the drinking/cooking water in gallon sized jugs that are easy to refill from a faucet or filtered water machine. Four gallon jugs fit into a milk crate and milk crates are made to stack on top of each other. That way you can have 4, 8 or 12 gallons of water in a relatively small amount of floor space or they can slide under a bed. The drinking water won't go stale if you do a rotation system. I don't know why you want to complicate something that is so easy to do without any technology. Gadgetry can become an addiction....addictions are something to avoid if at all possible.

Hey, thank you for this. Bear in mind that I'm a technologist by trade. I know a lot of about things like data and computers and internet systems. So it's not like we would be running an amatuer build on that. My thinking with sensors is automation, remote control, and notifications as the main drivers.

Yes, you could check your water levels or water your tomato plants manually. But you would have to be there, in the truck to do it. You couldn't go to an office or a work site and do it. You couldn't tell if someone who wasn't was supposed to be in your truck is in your truck, you certainly couldn't see them and record evidence from inside and out. And if something horrible happens when you're not there, like (god forbid) a fire, you would have to wait until you were done working, then come back to deal with it.

Using arrays of sensors and discretely placed processing nodes, you can do all of that from anywhere. And, I'm making a big deal about writing code for it (I enjoy writing code), but people have already written open source home automation systems that work on hardware like this, and you can download tools that'll do nearly all of it for free.

 

[ckelly78z]

If I had $15,000 to spend (beyond the vehicle purchase price), I would go with a used Ford transit van that has a logo on the side. They are much more stealth than a box truck on residential streets.

Start out small with just a bed, and some storage to figure out exactly what you ultimately want.