Additional Features


Color Scheme

Having a background in design makes you go a little over-the-top in the planning stage. I had to wait a few days for my van to be ready to pick up and I spent a lot of this time playing with ideas.

As the primary color in the van essentially the pine – I looked for inspiration from ski chalet designs to find what sort of colors worked well.

I noticed the use of neutral colors with a tendency to have a warm, but slightly muted, color as an accent.

This is my mood-board with various chalet interiors and the basic color schemes.

I liked the warm lighting effects – so when it came to my design I went for a yellow accent and a grey neutral color system.

I played with lots of colors in the design file – it seemed right. The hard bit was finding reasonably priced and suitable upholstery fabrics to fit my design ideas.

Feature Choice

The main features and systems are essentially where a lot of your build costs go – I chose the following key features to go in to my latest van conversion;

  • Kitchen: SMEV sink, electric tap and extraction fan
  • Water:
    • Van 1: Simple 20ltr fresh/waste water system
    • Van 2: 70ltr water tank with external pump
  • Gas: 11kg refillable LPG tank
  • Solar: 320W solar panel, 50Amp Split Charge & Solar Charge Controller & remote monitor
  • Batteries: 260AmpHr AGM sealed leisure battery
  • Heater: Heatsource 2000 with external inlet/exhaust LPG (propane) heater with Thermostat
  • Lighting: Three ceiling lighting rings (kitchen and bed areas), LED side lights and door light

There was quite a bit of thought behind each of the choices above – and there is more detail about component choice in the relevant sections.

Citreon Relay with all lights blazing in Spain

Do you need a heater?

A family friend who converted a van assured me that adding a heater would be a waste of money. That said, I like to be warm – at least I don’t want to be cold all the time.

Also, on a more practical level, I have never really dated someone who is warm all the time and I just imagined being somewhere a cold for a month or so with a cold grumpy girlfriend wearing every single layer she owned 24/7.. and then imagining that the world could just be a better place with  the flick of a switch.

That image quickly added a few hundred dollars to the build cost. After three years of living in a van it was one of the best decisions I made.  

What I didn’t install

What is almost as important as what I put in, is what I decided to leave out..

No toilet

Do I really want to poop in the small enclosed space of a van and then have to dispose of it again later? Not unless really necessary.

So the reality is, there are toilets pretty much everywhere that you can  use for a poop – even if, especially in cities, you might have to think ahead. If you are in nature you can just go in the woods and bury it… as a climber I do this fairly often in wild spots so it is just not an issue.

I keep a couple of pee bottles in the van (under the sink) for when you cannot be bothered to leave the van – one is an old Nalgene for those of us not equipped with a hose.

Portapoty/cassette toilet option..

This is a decent work-around solution for those who need a toilet. You can read more on different toilet options later in this guide.

No internal shower

An internal shower adds a level of complexity and space use which was not right for me. I have added a whole section later in this book about shower and toilet options which goes through all the alternatives and practicalities of building a shower into your van.

For three years I just washed in lakes or rivers and when these were not available (or too cold) I used a solar shower, which I heated up in the cab of the van during the day. I made a shower curtain set-up which I fix to the back of the van doors using a few neodymium magnets.

External Gas-powered shower

In my second van, the Citreon Relay I built in a gas powered shower to replace the solar shower. This required more kit (pump, accumulator, 70ltr tank) but to be able to have an instantly hot shower out the back of the van feels like a real luxury after 3 years with a solar shower. More on how   to install this later

Fridge

For 3 years I did not have a fridge. I always figured I could get a 12v cool box if I needed to but as a climber I spent most of my time chasing Autumnal conditions so it was not really necessary - the food storage being under the bed, using UHT milk and not eating much meat made it work.

That said, in my new van I bit the bullet and got a Dometic coolbox-style fridge – at £450 / $550 it was not cheap but the reality is that cheap cool boxes can be pretty poor when it comes to energy efficiency and can really take its toll on your battery.

I must be getting soft in my old age!

Check the fridge section later in this guide for more information.

 Mark lesson complete