#Video from last year by #Stealth-camping celebrity #Steve-Wallis in a plywood “fort” designed to blend in under a bridge in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.
He took some peeling paint from the bridge to a paint store to match the bridge’s paint color, then painted the plywood with a roller in his garage. The plywood was stiffened with other boards. He installed a TV and a self-inflating air mattress. He deploys a Starlink antenna off the side of the bridge for Internet access. Some vertical plywood boards, painted gray to look like the nearby concrete (taking a concrete chip to the paint store for a match), form “ground skirting” around what I’ll call his “access shaft” from the bridge loft down to the ground, where he has also set up a camping chair, since up on top of the painted plywood loft, the roof is too low to sit up. The entrance to the “access shaft” is somewhat hidden behind bushes.
He has a propane heater and some camping propane cylinders to warm the space up (it’s 5°, with -2° expected at night — frost formed), which he warns can stimulate spider egg sacs to hatch and create an explosion of baby spiders. He also has a big fluffy sleeping bag, a coat, and jeans with a warm inside liner.
It’s pretty noisy.
His Lander-brand LED light can be dimmed from his cellphone (Bluetooth?) and is also a power bank. He struggles a bit with lightproofing the seams where the plywood panels meet the ground, one another, and the bottom of the bridge. He hangs some camo netting in the doorway to the “access shaft” to reduce the amount of cold air coming in, which presumably also helps with the light.
He cooks a meal in a skillet on a one-burner propane camping stove from ingredients brought in cans and a ziploc: chicken breast, artichoke hearts, cherry tomatoes, garlic, sauteed in olive oil with pepper and white wine, Campbell’s prediluted broth, parmesan, and finally some fusilli pasta.
Then he engages in nostalgia about his dead “crazy neighbor” Glen.
To remove the “fort”, he and a friend come back the next night wearing high-visibility vests.
on 02026-08-11#WildBeare #video #toread of tarp camping in the rain. Quasi #stealth-camping maybe
on 02026-05-14new #Las-Vegas mole people tunnel life #documentary, guided by a guy who lived down there for years. There are 1500 people there, and they ride bikes. #video #toread #underground #stealth-camping
on 02026-02-15#stealth-camping #video by #Nomad-Sam with his German Shepherd, laden with saddlebags, showing making limpet and sea-lettuce pizza on a not-very-stealthy smoky campfire on I think a rocky beach in Ireland, constantly dulling his knife on rocks. He claims it’s illegal but never explains anything about the law.
on 02026-01-12#Stealth-Camping #vanlife #video by #Amber-Baldwin listing 9 “secret” camping spots that only the 121000 people who have seen this video know about:
Hotel parking lots that don’t require a tag on the car (which you can see by checking to see if other cars have tags on them). Apparently hotels in southern California are not yet using automatic license plate recognition, but cheaper hotels don’t bother requiring you to register your vehicle. She says it’s safe but noisy.
Rest areas. (Could this possibly be any more obvious? I’m tempted to stop watching the video at this point.) Washington and Texas are apparently the best states for rest areas in the #USA.
Residential areas, but not super fancy ones where they’ll knock on your RV door, and not right in front of somebody’s house. Sigh. She recommends an app called Overlander to see which ones permit camping.
Marinas.
Boat launches.
Home Despot.
Trailheads.
Highway pullouts.
“Beachs”.
#vanlife #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02026-01-09#video by #AmyMakesStuff showing her #stealth-camping #Honda-Element car setup. Not very stealth, really. One really interesting thing is the bed: a wooden frame like for a futon, but instead of having a single giant futon on it, it has multiple separate cushions, which are held in place with velcro. Also she added snaps to the edges of her curtains to hold them in place over the car windows, with the other side of the snap “screwed directly into the plastic trim”. Smart. Her solar panel is suction-cupped to the inside of the moonroof, so it doesn’t protrude outside the car. Also her bed frame sort of slides together to be half the width to use as a couch I think.
on 02025-12-09#video on #vanlife #stealth-camping by "Jana Vanana", who says she’s been doing it for 7 years and in particular has been stealth camping around Perth without any issues for over a year, even though most parking lots have no-camping signs. Her top tips are:
Condensation (in winter), for which she uses Bar’s Bugs anti-fog spray on her windshield.
Window covers: no reflective window covers in the front windows, because they’re conspicuous, but black umbrella-style sunshades on the windshield are totally common. She hangs a black cloth behind the front seats instead of trying to cover up the side windows of the cab. The other windows are blacked out with removable “blackout static cling window film” (for houses, not cars), so they look dark tinted, but let no light out.
Make people think you left, opening and closing a car door after you park.
Parking spot. She prefers parking near apartment buildings and never parks near the main entrances to houses. “For all anyone knows, I’m just visiting someone.” For larger vans, like the one she used to have: industrial areas like near the Auckland airport. Or parks without public toilets, or building sites where nobody lives yet, quiet streets between commercial buildings.
Keep the cab clean, no blankets and food wrappers.
Use headphones to watch movies.
Bathroom needs: laundry detergent bottles for men, kilogram-sized protein powder bottles or coffee cans for women.
Avoid parking near public toilets, because “rangers” (?!) check for stealth campers there first.
Exit through the front, because the side sliding door makes a loud van sound.
Park late, leave early. Before it gets late, you can park in a supermarket or public pool parking lot for a few hours.
Rotate locations: don’t stay in the same place two nights in a row, but cycle through a few different locations.
Keep your van clean on the outside as well.
Waay too much talking head footage, but whatever. A commenter suggests auto repair shops, since they always have new vehicles appearing. Another commenter points out that snoring makes as much noise as listening to a movie without headphones.
on 02025-10-18#stealth-camping can save your life. #news
on 02025-09-16#video #toread on sleeping in your self-storage unit #stealthcamping
on 02025-06-29#video by “Rob the Nomad” about surviving homeless long-term. “This type of lifestyle is no joke.” Recommends a tent because bugs never stop coming. Getting wet or dirty in the winter is a serious problem if you don’t have heat. Things that get wet don’t dry out without heat. “It’s a nightmare out here. It’s not fun at all.” He says he just sits around and doesn’t do things because there’s nothing to do. He seems like he’s maybe suffering from depression. His tent is lined with cheap “fleece” blankets to keep the cold out. Lining the tent with aluminized reflective blankets creates condensation, which is very dangerous. #bushcraft #stealthcamping
on 02025-06-29#stealthcamping #vanlife #video #toread about making a side window “invisible”. He’s covering it up with one of those stupid bus wrap grilles (“vinyl privacy window film adhesive glass wrap roll”). I think you’d have to darken the paint of the rest of the van to make it really work. Mostly tips on using the power tools.
on 02025-06-13#vanlife #video by Nomad Brad living in his work van (a converted U-Haul truck) in a Home Depot parking lot. Not very #stealthcamping because it has tinted windows on the sides and an air-conditioner condenser sticking off the back, wood siding and a residential-sized door on the back, and visible solar panels on top, and it also advertises his services as a solar installer for vans and RVs on the sides. He does seem to have a door between the cab and the box, but he doesn’t use it. Brief demonstration of installing a kilowatt of PV on the roof of a trailer for a client. Separation toilet, small fridge, induction cooktop, espresso machine, 1200W of #solar #PV on the roof, 5100Wh of LFP batteries, a 3kW Sungold inverter, etc. He also has a portable “power station” for use on the job site. He spends the next night in the parking lot of a Planet Fitness gym, where he showers.
on 02025-06-12#video #toread on #stealth-camping in the #vanlife asbestos removal van at a train station.
on 02025-05-20#video playlist #toread on the ultimate #stealth-camping #vanlife asbestos removal van.
on 02025-05-20another video of the ultimate #stealth-camping #vanlife van. It looks like there’s probably some telltale light leakage around the “power station” in the bulkhead. No hot-water system. His airfryer uses too much power for the “power station”. “And the reason why I built this stealth camper was just because I was getting fed up with there being so many restrictions on where you can park and everything.”
on 02025-05-20#video on ultimate #stealth-camping #vanlife with an “Asbestos Removal” Vauxhall Vivaro CDTI van with a very subtle 200W #solar panel and a skylight camouflaged by a roof rack with a ladder. The wooden bulkhead between the van compartment and the driver compartment, covered in carpet affixed with spray adhesive, has a hidden bifold door in it. His diesel heater exhaust pipe, installed under the driver’s seat, hangs down under the van to avoid conspicuous wall chimneys. He uses a portable “power station” from “Bluetti” for the electrical part, installed protruding through the bulkhead behind the passenger seat. The convertible bed/couches are CNC-routed from 19mm (?) plywood by Contour Campervan Furniture. Electric 12V Yeti fridge, Dometic two-burner gas stove fed from a tiny Coleman camping propane/butane cylinder. Total cost, including van purchase, £11350, of which £6850 is the conversion cost. The toilet looks to be a Porta Potti brand cartridge toilet stored under the bed. He used very small CCTV surveillance cameras painted black on the sides of the roof rack so they wouldn’t be noticeable.
on 02025-05-20#video #toread by #WildBeare about rainy #stealth-camping
on 02024-11-16#video #toread on Carlos who got kicked out of his #underground #stealth-camping house in New York City’s Freedom Tunnel in 02012. He has a hard time recognizing people’s faces, it seems, and has some apocalyptic delusions from Family Radio, 94.7 FM.
on 02024-09-15#stealth-camping celebrity #Steve-Wallis livestreamed for an hour about the recent deaths of his wife Jess, his mother, and his best friend Glen, all of which could have been prevented by going to see a doctor; his baseless shame and guilt over his slipping YouTube productivity; his difficulty getting a passport; and his fruitless search for someplace that feels like home. “I’m not a YouTuber, I’m a furnace repairman.”
on 02024-05-09#video on a nice #vanlife conversion for about US$900: 12-volt chest fridge (US$250), furniture from scrap wood or modified thrift-shop goods, metal bed frame off Craigslist, mattress (US$300), blackout curtains for #stealth-camping, custom insulation panels fit to (“ceramic” tinted) windows, 4 100W “Renogy” #photovoltaic #solar panels for #energy feeding two 100Ah LiFePO₄ batteries under the bed, no inverter, “shore power”, dc-to-dc charger for when driving, one-burner camping stove, 12-volt electric blanket, fuse panel under bed, smoke detector and carbon monoxide detector, “Renogy Rover” 40A charge controller. I think he’s maybe forgetting a lot of the costs and the real cost is a lot higher. USB fans for ventilation. Diesel space heater hooked up to a gas can screwed to the back door. Indiana plate C843CA. Two fire extinguishers. No toilet, uses public restrooms, bucket for emergencies. Showers at Planet Fitness, friends’, and truck stops.
on 02024-05-03#stealth-camping #vanlife #video of an old woman #toread
on 02024-05-01#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 02024-05-01#stealth-camping #vanlife 26-“foot”-long Freightliner bread truck DIY-converted into a motor home (truck license plate Pennsylvania ZTK 4042), designed to look like it belongs to a construction crew when the bulkhead door is closed. Very fancy: 19 “feet” long inside, almost 200 “square feet” of living space, leaded-glass cabinets, wood cabinets, multiple beds (a twin and a queen), high ceilings, ceramic-tile counters, tile floors, tongue-and-groove ceiling with 10cm or so of spray-foam insulation above it, ¼-“inch” birch plywood walls with two-“inch” insulation, ¾-“inch” plywood floor over “inch” and a half foam, cassette toilet, 32-“inch” square shower with graywater tank, kitchen sink, birch butcher-block countertops, PEX plumbing, two giant gas burners, 1000-watt microwave, propane instant water heater, separate sink graywater tank, coffee pot, 12-volt chest-style fridge under the bed, bikes and wetsuits and whatnot under the other bed, 600 watts of solar on the roof and a 300-amp-hour “Ampere Time” brand LiFePO₄ battery powering the “Renogy” brand 2000-watt inverter, tool chest, propane and electric space heaters and then a US$125 diesel space heater too. 2000-watt backup generator and Coleman portable stove and portable grill. Looks like mostly pine construction over the ¼-“inch” plywood. Construction cone rack on the front. The propane tank is external for safety. Various external ports result from the installations: hot-water-heater exhaust, fresh water fill cap, LPG door for access to the propane tank, “shore power”, diesel heater exhaust. Vise mounted on rear bumper. 6-inch air conditioner exhaust port on rear. Solar panels are installed on parts of a ladder installed on the roof rack, so it looks like ladders from the side more than solar panels. He says his budget for the build was US$10k, but it came in under US$15k, plus another US$10k for the used truck itself. Most insurance companies will not insure a truck! But you don't need a CDL because it’s under 19000 “pounds” and has hydraulic brakes.
on 02024-05-01#stealth-camping in a forest with a tarp, camo netting, a bivvy sack halfway into a bush, a space blanket, etc. Also different kinds of small, well-hidden fires. #bushcraft
on 02024-05-01#stealth-camping #vanlife #video from Cheri, a woman in late middle age. The US$120k van, Mungu Bariki, is an RV conversion by Embassy RV, which puts in air vents that don’t look very air-vent-ish for added stealth. There’s a rear-view camera, a plugin on the side, and some inconspicuous tubes hanging down. But the license plate is a Wisconsin motor home license plate: D L4376, and the Embassy logo is on the back door. She uses a rather large “Sea Head” brand composting toilet hidden under the bathroom vanity, which swings up; the toilet uses hemp bedding and a poop-stirring crank. A “Premier” brand 12-volt air conditioner protrudes from the top. Standard ground clearance (rather than lifted), no solar panels. A 32-inch flat-panel TV swings down from the ceiling. The air conditioner is rather noisy. The interior is all plastic, vinyl upholstery, and steel structural tubing, no wood. Cutting board with a hole in the middle covers the kitchen sink. Touchscreen control panels for the lights and stuff. There’s a DVD player mounted on one side, a microwave above the sink (running off a 110VAC inverter), and an induction burner for cooking. The space heating burns the van’s gasoline. The fridge is a Nova Cool model, almost full height, mounted near the ceiling.
on 02024-05-01#stealth-camping #video in a hammock in a green space along a foot trail between two neighborhoods in, I don’t know, Edmonton, Alberta, or something, “disguised” as businessman in a thrift-store sports coat, with all the camping gear packed into a naugahyde suitcase that vaguely resembles a briefcase from enough of a distance. Almost out of sight of the trail, about 30 seconds’ walk away, he strings up the dark green hammock between two trees with a tarp over the top, some time before nightfall because of an incoming thunderstorm. With the tarp and hammock, he reports being “bone-dry” despite the heavy rain. He has some kind of butane-powered insect repellent, which he then switches to a butane camp stove to roast hot dogs over on a telescoping fork, and then zips a mosquito net onto the hammock for sleeping.
on 02024-05-01#vanlife #video #Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate they ran out of butane to heat their van with in El Chaltén, because most gas stations don’t sell butane or propane there. (I’d suggest that their total lack of insulation may also be a factor.) The front of the van isn’t actually quite as #stealth-camping as the previous video led me to believe; there are two solid vertical gray partitions behind the seats, which doesn’t look much like a normal minivan. They had filled up an extra container of liquid fuel at a gas station, which they store in wooden storage compartments under the bed, which does indeed have rear-door-accessible storage as I had speculated, which also seems to contain foldable camping chairs, a telescoping ladder, a fire extinguisher, the gas cylinder that powers the hot water heater, etc. There seems to be a plywood floor. Also they’ve plastered their van with YouTube promotions, making it much less stealth. Mostly the video is driving around southern #Argentina, going to RV parks, hiking around near waterfalls, a hamburger recipe with homebaked bread, that kind of thing. They report using the app Overlander to find out about free Wi-Fi, and they demonstrate emptying the graywater tank in some kind of parking lot specifically designed for this (“Estación de Descarga”/“Dump Station”). They normally empty out their cassette toilet tank into other toilets, rather than blackwater hookups, but here they demonstrate emptying it into the dump station. Mateo demonstrates how he sets up a desk in the van’s front seats, partly hidden by a sunshield in the windshield, to work on his laptop.
on 02024-05-01#video on #vanlife #stealth-camping in #Argentina (channel "Al Mundo con el Mate") in an 02019 Mercedes Sprinter 415 “mixed” van (i.e., with windows, which are tinted), license plate AE 043 BE, about US$31k–US$42k. It’s a little shorter than the 515, which is harder to find parking for, but tall enough to stand up inside, with 5m² inside space. The solar panels on top are quite low, so you don’t see them from ground level; on the outside of the van you can see a ventilation louver on the bathroom, the drinking-water inlet, a power connection, and an extra sliding window which is over the bed. They have a two-burner stove with electric ignition and oven fed from a butane cylinder inside the van, plus a third burner they can place outside, and a second butane cylinder for the hot-water heater. Because the stove isn’t designed for motor homes they have to take the wire top off to drive, and it doesn’t seem to have a countertop option to use it as a counter when not in use as a stove. They have an electronic gas alarm (“Intelligent Gas” brand) next to each butane cylinder. They installed a 100ℓ “Belli” brand dorm fridge, but I don’t know if it’s a compressor type, ammonia absorption, or what. It’s partly blocking the van’s stock sliding door, so it can’t be vented outside. There are latches on the fridge and (25ℓ) freezer doors, suggesting that it’s a motor-home-specific design. The internal furniture is almost entirely wood painted and screwed together with wood screws, probably making it rather heavy. There’s a kitchen sink with two faucets, one straight from their 200ℓ water tank and one filtered. The sink, like the stove, seems to lack a countertop option. They have a 100ℓ greywater tank underneath the van. The indoor paneling looks like white-painted beadboard, with wallpaper around the sink, perhaps to protect from splashes. The dining table is a 600-mm-long slideaway thing between two (600-mm-wide) bench seats. The slideaway table seems like a missed opportunity to put drawers underneath the tabletop. They have two GreensunSolar JFM275-12 gel batteries under the seats (in the video he says “275 ampere” but they’re actually 2500 ampere deep-cycle gel batteries, 275 ampere hours, and also they cost US$600 each) which power an inverter and a large breaker box with six 240VAC circuit breakers. Their charge controller is a 40-amp Aleba BC-1240. There’s a narrow round aluminum flexible duct (100mm?) running, for no obvious reason, from the hot-water heater in the bathroom through a cabinet to a non-obvious chimney on the roof. The ceiling seems to be stained and varnished pine with some wooden crown moldings, and maybe 2cm up to the roof-vent fan, not enough for any insulation. It doesn’t look like there’s any insulation behind the beadboard walls either. There’s a 12-volt air conditioner above the bed, which also isn’t visible from the ground outside. The 130cm×190cm bed, in the back of the van, is normally collapsed to half its length, extending out for sleeping over the dining table and seats and the refrigerator and the sink, a process which takes one person about 45 seconds because the sheet is already on. The bed is about waist height, so underneath the bed is presumably storage space accessible through the Sprinter’s back doors, though that isn’t shown. The 110cm×75cm bathroom has a folding accordion door, a cassette toilet (“portapoti”), vinyl flooring on the walls screwed down under some wooden moldings, the 6ℓ gas hot-water heater, and a shower with a plato de ducha floor like you might install in a house. There’s a curtain hung behind the van seats separating them from the living area, so the cab looks like a perfectly normal van.
on 02024-05-01#vanlife #video on #stealth-camping spots in the #USA: hotel parking lots (that don’t require a tag on the cars), rest areas (which often include water tank facilities), residential areas (if you’re not in an RV; arrive late and leave early, don’t park in front of somebody’s house, and check recs on the app Overlander), marinas, non-marina boat launches, Home Depot, trailheads, freeway pullouts (especially on the Pacific Coast Highway), and “beachs” (but be sure to check the tides).
on 02024-04-29#stealth-camping #vanlife fail in a fishing village in the UK. He was able to spend the night successfully, but in the morning a fellow out walking his dogs pointed out that there were no-camping signs posted.
on 02024-04-29#video on #stealth-camping #vanlife in a box truck. Luke Siebert converted a US$34k two-axle work truck, an 02007 Isuzu NPR HD, 28 “feet” bumper to bumper, 8 “feet” tall inside, 7.5 “feet” wide inside, 20 “feet” long inside. Wood stove, felt on the walls, fume hood over the two-burner gas stove, sliding glass door in the back, blackwater and graywater tanks, 30- or 40-“gallon” propane tank, three solar panels on top. Superdeluxe US$20k camper conversion.
on 02024-04-29#video claiming #stealth-camping isn’t necessary for many people because I guess they can just park elsewhere if people don’t like it. YouTuber claims that in 8 years of #vanlife they’ve gotten three Knocks, all in Wal-Mart parking lots, including one in Las Vegas that had stopped allowing overnight parking, and also one time his big RV got tire chalk and a threat of ticketing in his mother’s neighborhood if he didn’t move it. Recommends an app called Allstays to find out where camping is permitted.
on 02024-04-29another small-van #vanlife #stealth-camping #video in Los Angeles where the guy goes to like coffee shops and the beach and shit. He has a gas burner in his van which he uses to make scrambled eggs with potato, cheese, and hot sauce, and a small kitchen sink, etc. His poorly-soundproofed van lets the traffic stress him out. Dude wastes a shitload of your time talking to the camera.
on 02024-04-29#stories-from-a-van #vanlife #video about #stealth-camping in Los Angeles using Spot Angel to find free parking and avoid street sweeping hours. One benefit is that he parked near a Hollywood Bowl show he was going to and then could walk back to the van from the show instead of having to deal with the traffic.
on 02024-04-29#stories-from-a-van #stealth-camping #vanlife #video. Has 200 watts peak of monocrystalline #photovoltaic panels for #energy autonomy, dropping down to 20 watts on cloudy days. Reviews dc-to-dc chargers, automatic charging relays, “shore power” (plugging the car into an outlet), etc. He did the Nissan NV200 (car) conversion in 02018, with only 100 amp hours of deep-cycle lead-acid, after an earlier fancier Mercedes Sprinter conversion with 400 amp hours of LiFePO₄ batteries; he says it no longer makes sense to use lead-acid batteries because LiFePO₄ only costs 40% more. (That was August 6, 02021.)
on 02024-04-29Dominic Van Allen lived #stealth-camping in an underground house in Hampstead Heath for two years until he got caught, charged with terrorism (possession of a firearm), and sentenced to 5 years in prison (which he escaped after a year). “There was space in the bunker for two camp beds, pushed against opposite walls. In the 4ft gulley between the beds, Van Allen could stand, comfortably enough, without his head scraping the trussed timber roof. The floor underneath him was poured concrete. He’d put up hooks for his coat, his bag and his cooking utensils, and there were shelves by the bed for odds and ends. Push-button LED lights were stuck to the walls using tape. There was a portable gas stove down here, and now that Van Allen was in for the night, he lit it and emptied a can of soup into a pan. After eating, he washed up with wet wipes. Litter was tied inside plastic bags, to be spirited away to a distant bin, early tomorrow, before the heath’s park rangers came on duty. On the whole, Van Allen slept well. Beyond the timber walls there was more concrete, to keep out groundwater... Liked by his friends for his graveyard sense of humour, Van Allen told them he’d built a ranch. What he did not say was that the ranch was 14ft by 10ft, about the size of a generous disabled loo, and hidden under one of the country’s busiest public parks.” I wonder if he could have stayed there for the rest of his life if he’d only come out once every week or two? No, it was a heat leak that gave him away: “Still: it came as a surprise, one ranger told me, when they came across a patch where steam was rising out of what ought to have been solid ground.” They thought he was cooking meth.
on 02024-04-11#stealth-camping in an abandoned automobile, actually an ambulance, in the middle of a forest. #video #toread
on 02024-04-06#stealth-camping in a storm drain #video #toread
on 02024-04-06#digging an #underground 1-bedroom apartment #dwelling. Lots of talking-head filler, like most #Kevin-Builds #video productions. Useful datum: some garage-door panels are steel-faced sandwich panels with a styrofoam interior. He’s using a dump-truck trailer, backhoe, etc., so this is far from bushcraft. Bit of a Minecrafty feel as he circular-saws the legs off his just-crafted table, so it won’t be so tall, while waiting for the pizza to get done in the oven. The plate-steel culvert, canned food, and Tang are less Minecrafty. He discusses but does not show his future plans to put in drain tile “with a sock on it so the sediment don’t get into it” to drain water from below the shelter. Also he put down a tarp under the surface dirt to keep rain from soaking into the shelter from the top, which he did sort of show. #stealth-camping
on 02024-04-06#clickbait underground “tunnel” shelter #video. With a narrow shovel and a lot of sweat, she carves an elaborate bedroom out of the hard, dry clay, including a fireplace, in the hillock under a tree (a commenter says it's an old termite mound, which is why it’s rock-free). The bed and table are elaborately-squared-off blocks of clay, with chamfers to prevent chipping. Beneath the tree there is no risk of a cave-in; apparently the tree does not have a taproot. Maybe she’s Filipina or Vietnamese; her machete curves forward. She lashes a frame together from machete-cut saplings with vines to form a door for her entrance, sloped like a conventional US cellar door. Lashings to hatchet-pounded stakes serve for hinges. Sod cut with the shovel serves to cover both the spoil pile from the excavation and the door itself. A candle illuminates from an alcove carved into the bedroom wall. Smoke from the wood fire up the chimney makes her presence obvious; she could really benefit from Cesar’s pyrolytic coffee-can stove. Coals raked from the wood fire into a cooking pit permit cooking pineapple brochettes and a steak on a Korean-style barbecue on a steel grill she brought, though possibly also risking carbon monoxide poisoning. She cooks with tongs and a kitchen knife, eating with the knife, without chopsticks. A silky-looking green tarp protects her from the bare clay of the bed. The grass in the area seems to be of a mowed variety. Another commenter claims that the interior is not actually filmed in the same place as the exterior, but at 17'22" we can see that it at least has the same tiny entrance, which has the tree roots cut off in the same place. #scouting #bushcraft #stealth-camping
on 02024-04-06hand digging a “war tunnel” and sleeping in it #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02024-04-06adding an emergency exit to the “#spider-hole” #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02024-04-06the “#spider-hole” this guy dug on flat ground in the forest got flooded #stealth-camping #video A useful cautionary tale. Once the dirt was saturated with water, plasticizing the thick clay layer, it began collapsing his wooden walls inwards. They were made with short lumber braced against posts in the middles of his walls, but the posts weren’t braced against anything, nor were they screwed to the wall boards; once they had moved inwards a few centimeters, the walls broke free, and the mud flowed down from above ground level until you could see daylight. Actually it was holding until he pumped the meter of water out of the interior, at which point the increased pressure difference had that effect. Drainage is utterly fundamental for underground building. One commenter pointed out, “I wouldn’t go in later without breathing protection, it’ll be a mold hole.” Other commenters pointed out that digging a sump under the floor so you could pump it out would help, and that having an elevated floor would help. #Drainage, man. Motherfucking drainage.
on 02024-04-0624 hours underground in the “#spider-hole” #stealth-camping #video he installs a TV and cellphone antenna (threaded through the air duct) in his secret underground apartment. This is before he added the escape hatch and before it got destroyed by flooding. In this video he also set up a hollow tree stump above ground to conceal his air vent. Also this is where he built a bed onto one wall at knee height.
on 02024-04-06digging a secret massive underground room #video as an add-on to the “#spider-hole” video, a couple months later. I notice he’s using a 4.0-amp-hour 18-volt Makita battery to drive screws into his shoring wood; if we assume that battery is 2C then it’s 8 amps and 144 watts. If you could use power tools driven by a few batteries like that to do the digging, maybe you could get the minimal shelter dug in less than 8 man-days? Like maybe you could drill into the dirt with an auger, then move some of the dirt on some kind of a conveyor belt? This seems especially relevant given that in the middle they’re advertising the “EcoFlow Delta Pro” “portable” (with built-in wheels) “home battery”, which features 30A 120V output, which would be uh 3600 watts, the equivalent of about 25 laborers. There’s even an AC-powered rotary hammer in the background of the advertisement shot, there on the forest floor! (Oh, halfway through the video they whip it out, calling it their “secret weapon”.) He also strongly recommends wearing gloves. Also I feel like maybe you could advantageously use galvanized steel studs instead of wood, or maybe even ferrocement. They start singing “Diggy Diggy Hole” in the middle, and he’s enjoying the 12° temperature in the hole because it’s 28° in the forest. Eventually they install a galvanized steel air duct. #stealth-camping
on 02024-04-06Ryan Twomey #video on #vanlife #stealth-camping in airport parking lot #toread. He starts out camped at Lake Meredith in Texas. He was actually taking a round-trip flight from the airport (Albuquerque), though, so I don’t know if this really counts! Planet Fitness makes an appearance, the implication being that he showered there.
He has a black cloth curtain behind the driver seats. But I’m not sure how stealthy this setup actually is; it’s a gray huge-ish (Mercedes?) van that’s tall enough to stand up in, and a diesel heater, plus a fan in the ceiling to suck humid air out of the van, and there are solar panels clearly visible protruding off the sides of the van roof, and at night, when he has all the lights on inside, you can see the van’s back windows from inside, which makes me think they are probably visibly illuminated from outside.
He says the Albuquerque airport only charges US$7 a day (apparently for at-airport long-term parking of the camper van in the “Basic Economy lot,” which is in the sun), and he doesn’t have to worry about getting to the airport early. He actually prefers parking in the sun because it charges his battery through the rooftop solar panels and because he worries that otherwise his pipes might freeze.
Some of his kitchen stowage is in a hammock-like net hung from the bottom of the cabinets; another part is hexagonal jars screwed into lids attached to the bottom of the cabinets, over the sink. Lots of footage of cooking and eating.
He has some kind of internet connection in the van that’s about 90MB/s (500Mbps), maybe 4G, since no Starlink antenna panel is visible. He uses it to play Fortnite on a large monitor inside the van.
The whole ceiling has what looks like indirect LED lighting between some parallel wooden boards spaced some distance apart.
He takes his laundry to his friend’s house to wash it.
Commenters out that airports often feature bathrooms, free Wi-Fi, and a food court.
on 02024-04-06building a secret dugout #bushcraft #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02024-04-06turning a U-Haul van into a comfortable home for US$365, without making it impossible to return after the rental! This is their $19.95 per day van, not tall enough to stand up in. Goals: sleep, eat, excrete, relax. Camp cot, camping pad or mattress topper, sleeping bag, blanket, plastic drawer totes, filing cabinet, plastic totes under cot, duffel bag, 20ℓ bucket (maybe with pool noodles or pipe insulation), plastic water basin for dishes, towels, wet wipes, camp mirror, propane camp stove with canister, skillet, pot, silverware, cooler (12V compressor fridge usually but in this case just a styrofoam box), foldable camping chair, folding TV tray table, aluminized bubble wrap for the windows. No insulation, no solar, no battery, no air conditioning, no water, no shower. #stealth-camping #vanlife #video
on 02024-04-06solo overnight using 6 #stealth-camping tips #video #toread
on 02024-04-06#stealth-camping like a hobo from the 01930s #video seems to be some kind of poorly filmed fiction with no useful information; I’m not going to finish it
on 02024-04-06#stealth-camping on the smallest roundabout yet #video #toread
on 02024-04-06fully enclosed tarp #stealth-camping #video by Claire #WildBeare. She has a 3m × 2.9m “SuperLight” brand tarp from DD Hammocks, and she converts it into a tetrahedral tent (with no floor) by pegging the tarp’s four corners to three points on the ground and then lifting up the midpoint of an edge on her trekking pole, which was insufficiently tall, so she instead pulled up the tip of the new tent on a ridgeline run between two trees. Then she sets up a ground sheet inside, and bedroll, and air mattress, etc. The edges of the tent don’t quite reach the ground, leaving some air space. Most of the rest of the video is her cooking on a campstove and eating sausages. Not really very stealth, and I’m not convinced that it would work well in the rain.
on 02024-04-06freeway interchange #stealth-camping #video, in a sparse strip of forest a few seconds’ walk away from the freeway, the forest strip being only about six meters wide. He strings up some camo netting between the trees during daylight hours to hide the campsite, then puts up a gray-green tarp canopy, and under it, a low white tent covered with a forest-camouflage cover. Lots of military-surplus gear, but for once it doesn’t seem like military fantasy but a practical way to escape notice. Not the most pleasant environment with the incessant traffic noise, but he says he doesn’t mind it and could stay for days. He does his cooking about an hour before sundown, on a so-called “instant barbecue” (“Zip” brand), to avoid lights after dark. This seems to be a metal dish with naphtha-soaked charcoal in it, which makes enormous, visible flames when lit. Once it’s burned down to coals, he puts a foil pouch full of frozen pasta onto the expanded-sheet-metal top. The base of the “barbecue” seems to be thin aluminum flashing. To all appearances, the coals are just sitting directly on the flashing, with nothing to keep them from burning through the aluminum; after a couple of hours he extinguishes the fire with water. I thought he failed to wake up to strike camp before sunrise, but actually he deliberately arranged for his ride to pick him up well after sunrise.
on 02024-04-06#stealth-camping in the city #video. Full of ultra-right-wing propaganda, misinformation (starting with “over 80% of the population of the world lives in a [sic] urban environment” at 1'16”) and talking-head filler. Also the guy tries to use bigger words to sound more important, but isn’t very clear on what those words actually mean, so he ends up misusing them, making him sound like a policeman and making the video harder to understand. Unsurprisingly there’s also a bunch of soldier cosplay and ammunition ads, followed by a lot of bragging about how great they are. Finally they start talking about the actual topic around 6'00", but it turns out they’re talking about how to run away from the police, not how to stealth camp. It's 100% talking-head filler for the first 7 minutes, but then after he demonstrates taking off his shirt and walking down an alley, we’re back to talking-head filler. At 11 minutes they’re recommending mesh networks, but again, just talking to a camera about them. Finally at 19'19” the #survivalists start trying to demonstrate how to improvise a charcoal filter for water, in case you’re in a city whose water has been cut off by a natural disaster, but they don’t actually finish it. Some potentially effective suggestions: collect dew from short grass with clean socks tied around your ankles, sleep in shifts so there’s always someone on watch, sleep in parks or under bridges with hobos, steal their clothing, beg facemasks from protestors, eat food out of the garbage, maybe cook food with citric acid, eat insects, and you can go two weeks without eating. A less effective suggestion is to try to cut rotten meat off of steaks to eat the non-rotten part.
on 02024-04-06super #stealth-camping #video by British woman #WildBeare under a camouflage net in a depression in the ground near a freeway, blending in to the dry oak leaves that cover the ground.
on 02024-04-0620 extreme #stealth-camping tips #video #toread
on 02024-04-06#stealth-camping #video sleeping in a “non-permissive environment” (for soldiers or civilians in disaster scenarios, but generally with non-permissiveness caused “by the enemy”) Apparently FM7-22 says that soldiers need 8–9 hours of sleep per night, up from 4. His first recommendation is to dig a so-called “ranger grave” with an entrenching tool to get below ground level, “if the situation dictates”. For wet-weather gear he recommends surplus Gore-Tex gear and specifically “full-zip” pants that you can put on without taking your boots off, and especially a poncho, which can also be used as a ground cloth; he especially likes the USMC tarp poncho and the Bushcraft Outfitters poncho, which has snaps for different configurations. Mostly some bozo talking to the camera, though it does demonstrate some of the gear.
on 02024-04-0620 #stealth-camping tips #toread
on 02024-04-05“ultimate” #stealth-camping van #video "Stories from a Van". Looks like a dream come true. It looks like any old ordinary white Nissan minivan, with a gray curtain behind the bucket seats, no side windows, and a tinted back window, but inside it has a cassette toilet, a bed, a desk with seating, a sink, clothes on hangers, a deep-cycle battery powered by roof solar panels, a graywater tank, and a shower (though it is not tall enough to stand up in). He says he lived in it in San Francisco for a year and could park anywhere and nobody ever bothered him. Rooftop vent, indoor 12V LED lighting, Igloo cooler, 1000-watt inverter, dual removable freshwater tanks, and the graywater tank slowly leaks onto the pavement under the van. Wind deflectors on the front windows allow him to crack the front windows to let in air without them looking open or letting in rain. He’s using ice in the Igloo cooler for food storage, says it lasts a week and a half. Probably would be useful to have active refrigeration. He says the “automatic charging relay” that charges the deep-cycle battery from the van’s alternator when it’s running hasn’t been needed because the two solar panels have been more than enough. He has a butane stove to use outside the van, and also a sort of polyethylene foam foil box for low-temperature low-wattage cooking inside of, astonishingly, Tupperware. He says he’s living in Santa Cruz now.
on 02024-04-05fake billboard #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02024-04-05“I live 25 meters above the ground, safe place from wild animals and bears” apparently in a lashed-construction wattle-and-daub sphere, painted white over the earth tones, hoisted up between trees with ropes and a chain hoist. Armed with a backpack full of tools and a comically wide-bladed axe, Ramiz digs a shallow well in a dry creek bed, cuts saplings with a machete for his framework, and measures out a three-meter circle on the ground with a machete-sharpened stake (hammered with a rock) and plastic twine. His initial lashings use baling wire twisted tight with fencing pliers. More stakes bend the lashed saplings into the circle; more lashings add spokes. A smaller circle of stakes is used to bend four smaller circles of saplings with lashed spokes. A thrown river rock pulls twine over a tree branch some 15 meters up; the twine draws up rope, and the rope draws up Ramiz and the chain hoist, which he installs in the tree. To support the sapling armature during further construction, sapling guide poles constrain the spoked circles to remain vertically aligned, supported on the poles with wire. Further saplings bent around the outside form the convex spherical shape, held in place with more baling wire twisted and cut with the fencing pliers. The guide poles now being unnecessary, they are removed, and the rope is removed from the tree to distribute the hanging load over many points of the sphere; the chain hoist hook connects to it, and suspension is achieved. Heavier saplings across the lower large circle serve as floor joists, lashed in place with wire, and another layer of saplings at right angles to the joists serve as floorboards, also wired in place. Windows and a door are sawn. Apparently he forgot his cigarette lighter, matches, and steel wool when he packed the machete, saw, fencing pliers, shovel, comically large axe, and chain hoist, because he has to start his fire with flint and steel. He boils the nasty muddy water from his well in a steel teakettle over the fire, suspending it from a sapling over the fire with baling wire. The next day (though several days have evidently passed, enough for leaves to dry from the rain) he digs mud from a bank, brings it back in a gunny sack, and adds more of the nasty water to make a plastering mud, which he reinforces unwisely with fresh grass that will shrink rather than dry straw, making adobe, with which he plasters the interior of his sapling frame from the inside, up to knee height. Removing the spokes from the upper large spoked circle, he adds two new joist-sized saplings to make a raised bed at knee height on one side of the sphere. Then he plasters the outside with a fresh batch of adobe up to knee height, then both inside and out up to chest height. He gathers chestnuts (?) and eats them raw, and finds a coral fungus he had carefully placed on the bank previously, which he roasts on skewers over a campfire. Rain comes again without a roof; he makes do with a disposable raincoat as he makes more adobe. Eight more saplings lashed up with baling wire form a crude ladder, permitting the plastering of the roof with adobe from outside; he later daubs adobe on the inside as well, and also plasters the floor with it, a choice which seems suboptimal to me. Vinyl sheeting in the window and a door made of more lashed-together saplings complete the sphere, which at this point has somehow come to rest off the ground on a new sapling circle wired to a circle of stakes, perhaps having permitted the plastering of the bottom. Another crude ladder affords access to the door, which is by now a meter and a half off the ground. Inside he covers the adobe plaster with shiny green cloth he apparently brought in his backpack. Many more short sapling sections, stripped of their bark by the machete, rest on the bed joists to form the bed itself, lashed down to the joists, but this time with the plastic twine rather than wire. Evidently weeks or months have passed, and dry leaves impede his access to his adobe bank, but he digs more mud to make a fireplace on top of the green cloth, which he has evidently also used to cover the floor, stapling it in place all along various the saplings with a staple gun not shown. Twigs bent into arches support the mud of the oven, and somehow or other he also formed it into a chimney; perhaps a metal pipe is hidden under the clay chimney. A metal lid over a round hole in the top of the oven serves as a stove burner. The chimney is routed up the wall and through a round chimney hole, like for a stovepipe. He gathers black berries in a tin can and smushes them up, then uses fern leaves to paint the adobe with them; somehow they color the orange adobe white, or a light lavender, so perhaps some slaked lime got added along the way. By hoisting the house up higher with the chain hoist, he can even paint its bottom. Charcoal serves as black pigment to paint his name and YouTube channel name on the outer wall. By dangling his legs out the door he can reach the hoist chain to lift the house far off the ground. Off in the woods one day he spots a gorilla; in a panic, he lifts the house back off the ground. At the end of the video he finally attempts to use the comedy axe but doesn’t know how. #stealth-camping #video
on 02024-04-05“10 years after he lived in a train tunnel” #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02024-04-05“meet the mole people living beneath the Las Vegas Strip” #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02024-04-05“inside [Carlos’s] amazing home in the [Freedom Tunnel] beneath New York”. He had heat, electricity, computers, refrigerators, and a microwave, and lives on food discarded by supermarkets; he’s converted a former sewer into a comfortable, clean house, maintaining cleanliness with a no-shoes policy. He had to bring in water in jugs. “The [homeless] shelter is a very, very wicked place. (...) Drugs, fighting...” Later the authorities kicked him, and everyone else, out. #stealth-camping #video #underground
on 02024-04-052 nights extreme cold #stealth-camping in the city #video #toread
on 02024-04-05McDonald’s Drive-Thru #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02024-04-05U-Haul #stealth-camping in the cold #video #toread
on 02024-04-05hammock #stealth-camping under a bridge #video #toread
on 02024-04-05police station #stealth-camping in hammock #video #toread
on 02024-04-05homeless man moves into his pop-up shelter #stealth-camping #video. He built a tiny pentagonal house, sort of like a doghouse, out of discarded (insulated steel-skin plastic-foam sandwich panel!) garage-door segments, with a diesel generator, LED lights, a solar panel, etc. He adds a 20ℓ bucket toilet at some point. “Jim”, homeless six years, moved in, and was interviewed for the video. The YouTuber offers Jim to stay as long as he wants, but gets somewhat annoyed about “garbage everywhere”, and then Jim moved into a hotel.
on 02024-04-05sleeping in a war-style trench #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02024-04-05#stealth-camping in a rather tiny, noisy traffic circle (“roundabout”) in Canada, but with bushes; too small for a tent or hammock. He enters camouflaged in a retroreflective safety vest with his gear backpack in a fluorescent orange garbage bag. Countersignaling FTW? After crawling into the bushes just before sunset (while apparently carrying a giant camera on a selfie stick), he hides the high-visibility stuff and lays out a gray ground sheet and bright turquoise sleeping bag, which he turns inside out to display the gray side instead. He gets a scare when one of the police cars and “community safety patrols” constantly passing parks nearby when he goes out to look around. He doesn’t wake up until after sunrise, despite a low of 6°, and he got lucky in that the sprinkler system didn’t go off. #video
on 02024-04-05“he lived 25 years in a train tunnel” #stealth-camping #video Walter Wengert, Jr., in the Freedom Tunnel in New York; he built himself a tiny but comfortably-decorated house high up in the wall of the tunnel, letting down a long ladder when necessary. Walter has poor taste in video player software, running Windows Media Player on his computer instead of something decent. He makes his money by rebuilding computers he finds out on the street and reselling them, selling used books, recycling aluminum cans (“going canning”), etc. This interview is maybe from 02008. He says that because his house is built into the superhighway, it’s under the authority of the Department of Transportation, not the railroad, so the railroad people haven’t been able to evict him because they have no authority over his house. He died in 02012.
on 02024-04-05digging a Japanese #spider-hole and sleeping in it, 45' #video #stealth-camping Demonstrates how the right-angle mode of an entrenching tool is more effective than a traditional shovel for removing dirt from the bottom of a foxhole. They seem to have started (pre-filming) by clearing pine needles away from the whole area so they can cover up their digging with them when they’re done, using pitchforks. Apparently the actual Japanese term is 蛸壺, takotsubo, octopus pot; “spider hole” is from the US Civil War. Two people digging for the entire day were able to get the vertical 1.7-meter-deep shaft done, though I feel like they were being rather generous with its horizontal dimensions. To shore up the roof they’re using square-cut “2×4” and “4×4” hemlock (which I thought was pine) which they then sawed to length for “cribbing”, using very simple post-and-lintel construction, with the posts being the 2×4s. The mosquitoes chased them down the hole, and kept coming down the hole all night; a bug net for their heads would have been useful. The horizontal tunnel with its floor 1.7 meters deep is tall enough for the YouTuber to squat in; he knows how to squat even though he’s Canadian. Some fungal growth is visible on the timbers, which seems like it could be a problem. After four days of digging they were just about complete with their unsupported 1.7-meter vertical shaft and 2-meter horizontal shaft. They nailed 13 parallel 4×4s together into a square wooden manhole cover, then cut a recess into the dirt around the hole to support it. Square-cut 4×4s are really 4 inches, so this is 1.3 meters wide, and the hole maybe 0.9 meters wide. Then they cut a small “access hole” in the middle of the panel, three 4×4s wide (305mm) and a few times longer than that, dimensions he later wishes had been slightly larger. Once he’s holed up in his hole, he demonstrates using a flint and steel to strike sparks, and then demonstrates the use of a portable folding stove to heat up a can of beans. Later on they punched some holes in the manhole cover for ventilation. Full of military fantasies.
on 02024-04-05