#vanlife #video of UCLA med school student Ethan, who did a US$14k conversion of a “2015 Ford Transit”. To save money, in his van (California 9GQK477) he has two gas burners (with electric ignition), a double bed (parallel to the back door), drawers, cabinets, bookshelves, sink with restaurant-style sprayer partly blocking the sliding door, all inside a van tall enough to stand up in. Behind the butcher-block countertop and stove is real ceramic tile (6 rows, 9 per row in running-bond pattern, 75¢ each). A US$900 “Indel B” CR130 130ℓ 72W truck fridge, using 60 grams of R134a, is under the counter which he cut down from a US$300 8-“foot” slab. Curtain hung between cab and living space. Insulating opaque panels cover the windows, giving the false appearance of a dark window tint. Warm-white LED lights shine down from the knotty pine ceiling and from the bottoms of kitchen cabinets. Floor seems to be tongue-and-groove “Home Decorators Collection” brand plastic laminate fake wood laid directly over plywood over foam, with no foam over the plywood. Nothing is visible from the left or right side or rear of the van, except that there are two domed skylights/roof vents, which is slightly unusual, and two small added sliding windows near the rear. With more attention, or from above the van, you might notice the three solar panels on top. Therefore, this qualifies as deep #stealth-camping, as long as all the doors are closed, but sometimes he hangs out downtown with the sliding door and curtains wide open. The bed, really a US$50 memory-foam mattress topper, is at the back of the van with ample storage space underneath, accessible through rear doors, including a bicycle, stored with its front wheel taken off, and the 200Ah battery, 1000W inverter, and charge controllers (dc-dc from the van’s alternator, and solar). Fridge, fans, lights, water pump, and propane-valve solenoid are all 12V. Two bench seats between the bed and kitchen, exactly like Al Mundo Con el Mate. The front seats swivel back to provide more seating, and there are opaque panels to put in the (untinted) cab windows and windshield too. 120VAC sockets in the wall. Walls and ceiling of pine screwed to thin studs, with thin flexible foam insulation behind the wood. Very minimalist IKEA vibe. The sink water is pumped (with an electric water pump he must manually turn on with a lightswitch inside the sink cabinet) from two 7-“gallon” water tanks which have dual carrying handles, similar to what we used to take to Burning Man, so they can be refilled away from the van, in a friend’s bathtub every week or two (since they won’t fit into a sink). There’s a dish drainer in the bottom of the sink. He says the water hookup took hours and hours and hours at Home Despot and Lowe’s. One of the roof vents has a working fan. One bench seat has the 5-“gallon” propane canister and its regulators and valves, and also his pants and shoes. The bench seats and drawers are butt-joint plywood construction, painted white, with dado joints for the drawer bottoms (though he calls it “dodo”); the bed and sink also seem to be plywood, but with stringers at joints. No regularly used toilet, just a pee jar, plus a folding toddler potty for emergencies that takes a bag, which looks much smaller than any #composting-toilet I’ve seen. He reports he can stay parked in one spot until Friday street cleaning. He and his dad spent two months at the family farm in New Jersey converting the van. The video also shows his friend Justin’s van, with similar screwed-pine construction and a somewhat similar partly-blocked-sliding-door layout, but a wall and pocket door between the living space and cab, and with a shower and bathroom. Justin has the cutting-board top for the sink that Ethan lacks, as well as a three-burner stove, an oven, a floating Lagoon-style table, a fridge under the bed. Then they show the van of another friend; I’m getting overwhelmed.
on 02024-05-0110kg of sawdust, as used for a #composting-toilet, costs US$4, 40¢/kg, comparable to bark mulch.
on 02024-05-01The Trelino Evo S (small) #composting-toilet is 296mm tall, 330mm wide, 390mm deep, and holds 5ℓ of urine and 6.5ℓ of “solids”, weighs 3.9kg, and costs €304.
on 02024-05-0150 liters of bark mulch, as used for a #composting-toilet, costs US$6.60, 13¢/ℓ.
on 02024-05-01#vanlife #video about toilets. She didn’t like the “Bivvy Loo” or the “female urinal”, but did like the “Trelino” brand “Evo” separating toilet she’s being paid to shill, described as a #composting-toilet, even better than the “Nature’s Head” brand she’d used previously. One of the things she likes is that it doesn’t look “as much like a toilet” because it’s square and dark gray. It kind of looks like an ice chest, with finger notches near the bottom, and it has a dashpot soft closing mechanism. The pee bottle has a sort of soft funnel membrane which lets pee go down but without remaining open for gas exchange when there’s no pee, sort of like a check valve. She mentions a bag or liner for the poop bucket, as well as a “carbon-rich cover material” such as sawdust; other alternatives are organic cat litter, fine bark mulch, peat moss, or coconut bricks. And she rinses the pee funnel with dilute vinegar and wipes it with “a tissue”. For carrying the poop bucket and pee bottle at a campsite, she has a bright yellow reusable shopping bag so it doesn’t look like she’s carrying a poop bucket and pee bottle. She prefers the composting toilet to chemical cassette toilets, because it’s easier to clean and requires less maintenance, among other things.
on 02024-05-01