From the discussion of Tom Brown’s #solar-energy calculations, ronb1964: “I build off-grid camper vans for a living and install solar + lithium battery systems regularly. The technology has matured a lot in the last few years. What used to take a massive roof array and a bank of heavy lead-acid or AGM #batteries to run basic appliances now fits in a fraction of the space with lithium.” morphle gives #pricing: “15kWh 48V LFP battery around $1800 with low quality battery management system in metal box on wheels. Car batteries need more expensive inverters if you want to fast charge them (150kW-950kW) and super fast discharge them while driving fast (>100 kW). (...) The Mercedes eSprinter 56kW van costs around $80000 new but we sell 3 year old vans like this for $4000 without battery. So refurbished and converted to eCamper with 1800 mile range you pay $6700.” #vanlife #energy
on 02026-04-09#San-Francisco, #California enacted a ban on parking RVs on the street for more than two hours, effective last November. “A large vehicle is defined as an RV, trailer, house car, mobile home, or any vehicle longer than 22 feet or taller than 7 feet.” Exemptions for up to a year are available to anyone living in their RV last May. #vanlife #politics
on 02026-02-24#CNBC #news #video #toread about "vanlords" renting RVs to people experiencing “RV homelessness” (aka #vanlife) in #California with RVs in RV parks such as wehope.org’s Berryessa Supportive Parking, whose program manager Victoria Garibaldi says they have 86 RVs.
“As the Bay Area’s housing shortage intensifies[,] vehicle-based homelessness has more than doubled since 2019, forcing even full-time workers into makeshift homes on wheels. This desperation has fueled a predatory shadow market where “vanlords” rent out aging RVs to those with no other options. While cities crack down on street encampments and ban these illegal rentals, San Jose is testing a different path with the Berryessa Safe Parking site, one of California’s largest sanctioned lots with space for 86 RVs. CNBC’s Kate Rogers visits the site to explore how these communities provide a vital bridge to long-term housing.” Says 37% of “homeless people” in Santa Clara County are now sleeping in vehicles, up from 18% in 02019.
Garibaldi says many of the vanlords charge only US$500 to US$600 per month for their RVs, which sounds amazingly cheap for the #SFBA. San Jose enacted a law against renting RVs on city streets last year; last year they opened a second “safe parking site”, bringing the total (?) to 128 RVs; Berryessa Supportive Parking provides breakfast, dinner, bathrooms, laundry facilities, a community garden, and a dog park. Meanwhile, for-profit RV parks like Candlestick RV Park, managed by Tsin Fung, charge US$2500 per month for a parking space.
In SF, Mayor Lurie limited RV parking on public streets to two hours with new legislation last July, with a so-called “Large Vehicle Refuge Permit” exemption permit available.
on 02026-02-24#video #toread about “homeless people’s” #vanlife in a car: how to cook, sleep, and shower
on 02026-02-16#video #toread from yesterday by "Wandering Jeepsy" (!) about quitting #vanlife after 4 years
on 02026-02-16#video by #lifeoutofmyelement after 8 years of #vanlife giving a tour of her #Honda-Element conversion #toread
on 02026-02-16#video by Rosa (#lifeoutofmyelement) after 8 years of #vanlife claiming that now vanlife is “kind of normal” and has “become normalized and more accepted by society” but describes her relationship with her car as “very attached and kind of codependent”. She recommends iOverlander.com and freecampsites.net for finding places to camp; in the urban areas where she spends a third of her time, she recommends rest areas and Park & Ride lots. She’s driven 214000 “miles” (344000 km in modern units) over the 8 years, 43000 km per year (118 km/day, 1.36 m/s). Now she’s spending US$3000–4000 a year on car maintenance, but gas is more expensive still. I feel like you could probably cut those costs by an order of magnitude by driving less, but maybe not the car insurance (and she also says she has to pay for health insurance, phone bill, food, and gas). She’s on her third iteration of the build of the furnishings using Amazon shelves and whatnot.
on 02026-02-16#video #toread about “10 things I regret about my [#vanlife] conversion”
on 02026-01-12Apparently a GMC Savanna 2500 cargo van with 145,000 miles suitable for #vanlife costs US$6386 in Fremont, California.
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”.
#Jana-Vanana #vanlife ten essentils #video #toread
on 02026-01-09#vanlife #stealth-camping #video #toread
on 02026-01-09#vanlife #video about a Mercedes Sprinter with a 170-inch wheelbase converted into a camper van for offgrid FPS gaming. He’s installed “bump-outs”, bulging the van walls outwards, to make the bed area a little wider. A three-step stairway for his dog leads up to the bed, designed with storage inside it. His air conditioner bulges out of the top. He’s using a pretty standard setup: diesel space heater inside, a “garage” for storage under the bed accessed through the back door (with some mechanicals: electrical, with a 48V side and a 12V side all running on 12V lithium-ion batteries, and plumbing, with a 35-“gallon” freshwater tank and an electric hot water heater), a portable 10-“pound” propane tank for the stove, a Dometic dorm-sized fridge under the bed, 1000W in five rooftop solar panels. The 48V battery bank is 270Ah, so probably about US$1000,
on 02025-10-26#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#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#vanlife video channel, the OG who is reportedly now living in a shed on the land he bought to do vanlife on
on 02025-06-07#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#vanlife #video of a couple who is currently parked half a block from here on our sidewalk, Hugo, Gaby, and their shaggy brown dog Yacú, from Junín de los Andes. Their Mercedes had clutch trouble on the fourth day. They have 131 followers on YouTube and 309 on Instagram, where they’ve been posting more recently.
on 02025-05-11#video #toread on #vanlife by #Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate doing #tourism in #Bolivia
on 02024-09-18#vanlife #video about how their year has been a nightmare. They call it “Mr. Lemon” and paid US$100k for it. Their alternator burned up. The skylight would not seal and blew open when they were driving. The electrical system extending the vinyl awning broke. They had to buy a spare tire. They mention that being able to connect external propane appliances to the van’s propane tank has been useful. They like having swivel chairs for front seats. They also like having added a backup camera and a front camera with a memory card. I gave up watching after 9 out of 28 minutes.
on 02024-06-24#video #toread about a Japanese #vanlife couple living in a tiny minivan, like the Morris Mini of minivans, on a rainy day. They’ve lived in it for four years; they parked near a public restroom. The faucet is powered by an electric pump; they toast breakfast with a butane torch. An inverter powers hair curlers. Gas stations provide trash disposal. Laundry is done in a laundromat once a week. Bathing is done in public baths. A steering-wheel-mounted desk holds a laptop at face height, using a wireless keyboard in the lap. A top-loading refrigerator is under part of the bed, which occupies all of the space behind the front seats. Elaborate cooking: panko-battered skewers of many kinds with okonomiyaki sauce, mixing up the batter in a plastic cup, fried in a pot on what looks like an induction stove.
on 02024-06-19#AmericAndo #video #vanlife on getting kicked out of a Wal-Mart parking lot in Calgary
on 02024-06-02#vanlife #video in Rosa’s 2009 #Honda-Element car named Elrond with a Sodastream. A 7-gallon jug of water was inconveniently heavy; her “build” was under US$200, and she’s been living in it for six years plus US$11250 for the car. She cooks on a Coleman 2-burner stove on the tailgate. “My entire conversion is actually held into my car using zipties.” She built it out of plywood from Home Depot and piano hinges. The interior is too small to stand up in, but the car is pretty boxy and voluminous for being a car, and it's 4WD, so like halfway to being an SUV. Also the rear doors are backwards-opening “suicide doors”, so you get a double-door effect. She uses aluminized bubblewrap windowshades with blackout curtain taped to the outside with black duct tape, which she says blends in better from the outside. Rear windows are tinted, which would make the blackout hard to see from the outside. She showers at Planet Fitness. Stores water (two 1-“gallon” bottles) and a tarp and a folding chair in the passenger footwell, and a backpack on the seat, so someone looking in through the non-tinted forward windows would see that the car is being lived in. But she hasn’t made any modifications to the outside of the car, so there are no solar panels, shore power, stove chimneys, etc. To work on her laptop she goes to cafés, libraries, and Whole Foods (“really great Wi-Fi”). On the road for the first few years, she worked seasonal jobs at national parks and resort towns, and Subway and similar chain restaurants. Then, when Covid hit, DoorDash, InstaCart, etc., and now she’s a YouTuber (“#lifeoutofmyelement”). She feels like roof racks or stickers are not good for stealth camping.
on 02024-05-08#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#vanlife #argentina #video #Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate #clickbait pretending to give up again, but it turns out they just had to go back to their hometown to renew a driver’s license and the verificación técnica of the van. They say the Axion stations are better than the YPF stations for spending the night, and often have picnic areas; in the south, near El Bolsón, there are more places where you can’t spend the night because they’re overloaded with motor homes. Lots of footage of driving down the highway
on 02024-05-03#Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate apparently bought these 380-watt-peak #photovoltaic #solar #energy panels for his #vanlife, 20.83% efficient PERC, “Oushang Solar” brand OS-HM60-380. Currently US$160.
on 02024-05-02#vanlife toilets #video considering cassette toilets and blackwater tanks. Finally at the end of the video he talks about composting toilets. Mentions the risk of thousands of bugs hatching in your composting-toilet medium overnight, something I hadn’t heard of (but apparently happened to a friend of his).
on 02024-05-01#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#Stories-from-a-Van guide to living in a car to save money. Recommends 5%-transmissivity blackout limo tint for rear car windows and curtains hung behind the front seats. Recommends parking on busy streets, in residential neighborhoods with apartment complexes where other unfamiliar cars regularly park, but never parking in front of a house, instead parking next to open spaces or churches or public buildings, or in the overnight parking lot of a train or bus station. In San Francisco he would exit his minivan through the driver side door to go to the gym to work out and shower. But he was wasting US$800+ per month on eating out. He suggests using a UPS Store or similar “CMRA” mailbox address. #video #vanlife
on 02024-05-01#vanlife #video of camper bed designs #toread
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 02024-05-01another super low budget #vanlife #video, this time from the #USA: a PVC pipe frame and a silver Harbor Freight tarp over a Chevy pickup bed, with some rubber mats in the bed, which also contains a couple of ice chests, a portable generator, an air compressor, some gas cans, a toolbox, some nylon strap tiedowns, and a plastic tote. But they didn’t actually succeed in sleeping in the bed because their bedding got soaked in the tent before they even got it set up, so they went to a hotel. After they got back home they did tie the tarp down with some ropes and it looks pretty okay.
on 02024-05-01#video by #Alyssa-Vanilla about giving up #vanlife due to migraines, copper IUD problems, and other health problems. A cold, windy hike kicked her ass back to Love’s Truck Stop. Lots of footage of hiking around in the desert.
on 02024-05-01#vanlife #video about a minivan conversion by "Alyssa Vanilla", whose video about being stalked went viral. Stained plywood and painted pine boxes screwed together on stringers and hinges with leather handles, with a yoga mat on top of a box as a bed, plus some open-cell foam as a mattress, cut to size with an electric kitchen knife. PVA glue to attach wood trim on the outside of furniture. Flooring seems to be prefab tongue-and-groove (?) laminate (?) paneling with pressure-sensitive adhesive on the back, laid over painted plywood (?) on top of insulation foam. Very IKEA look. Wicker baskets under the bed work as very lightweight drawers. No toilet, no stove, no fridge, no electrical, no air conditioning, no sink.
on 02024-05-01#Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate #video #vanlife about the electrical setup in their van. They use a US$350 “Daza” brand “pure-sine-wave” 1500-watt inverter which consumes 33 watts when idle, mostly to charge their laptops, and had to replace one of its MOSFETs at one point (though he misleadingly displays a 2N2222 at this point in the video), which was a huge problem because the particular US$5 transistor model was unavailable in #Argentina. (A commenter says he overpaid for the big inverter.) So he replaced it temporarily with a small 300W modified-square-wave inverter which “only” consumes 3 watts idle. The electrics boxes (built under one of their bench seats) are wooden, which I don’t think much of. Their #photovoltaic #solar panels are 380 watts peak, which is all they had space for on top of the Sprinter. The solar panels connect to an “Epever” brand 30-amp MPPT charge controller, and then they have a ridiculous 6-breaker 240VAC panel through which they’re running their 12-volt power (because 240-VAC breakers are much cheaper than 12-VDC breakers, like US$35 each?), plus some car fuses. He’s still confused about the difference between amps and amp-hours, again incorrectly describing his 2500-amp 275-amp-hour (each) gel batteries (GreensunSolar JFM275-12 if the photo he showed in a previous video isn’t fake news) as “275 amperes”. Again he shows the “Aleba” BC-1240 40-amp battery charger they use to charge from “shore power”. They chose lead-acid batteries instead of lithium so they could afford them without selling the van, although I think probably they could have gone with a much-lower-capacity battery, which he seems to agree with. One time he forgot he was charging the house batteries from the van’s starter battery (he has a switch) and drained it halfway.
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#vanlife #video about problems she encountered in France: locked herself out of her van from paranoia, lost her credit card, had the diesel space heater break down in the middle of the winter (using a hot-water bottle and wishing for an electric blanket as backup), had the sliding door break stuck open (terrible in midwinter), one of her headlights broke, she sliced her leg open on the cabinet handles inside the van, she slipped on some ice at a historical monument and fell and hurt her collarbone and shoulder, and finally got attacked by a dog, though it didn’t break the skin; basically her vacation in France sucked shit. She’s using a rechargeable battery pack with a built-in inverter that she’s being paid to shill.
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#Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate #Argentina #vanlife #video #toread
on 02024-05-01#Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate #Argentina #vanlife #video #toread
on 02024-05-01#Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate #Argentina #vanlife #video #toread
on 02024-05-01#Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate #Argentina #vanlife #video in Posadas. Giant Andrés Guacurarí statue. International Bridge to Encarnación, Paraguay. Beach. 30° hellish heat (posted 02023-09-07, but probably several days earlier). There’s a place reserved exclusively for parking motor homes. They spent a day on their laptops in the van, in separate spaces, during a rainy day. A bit dull.
on 02024-05-01#Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate #Argentina #vanlife #video of being “EXPELLED” from Salto Encantado park in Misiones. Mostly they went camping and swimming in the 5° waterfall and played with a dog, made some food, worked on their laptops, etc. Micaela took an afternoon nap on a blanket on the greensward. But apparently the reason they got EXPELLED was that they asked a park ranger if they could spend the night parked in the park parking lot, and he had to ask his boss, and finally they were told to park across the street. They just drove to a YPF station to park for the night so they would have internet access, then returned the next day.
on 02024-05-01#video #drvelazquez and Martu are taking a break from #vanlife and renting a house because for days it hasn’t stopped raining and snowing in San Martín de los Andes, and everything in their pickup truck bed got wet! Their “snorkel” system didn’t work as expected. #DRAINAGE
on 02024-05-01#drvelazquez #video explaining that they use the showers and bathrooms in campgrounds and service stations and hostels and hotels because their #vanlife has no bathroom in the actual truck, and they get 8–10km per liter of fuel (19–24 “mpg”), with an 80ℓ tank. 1.5m² of living space, like living in a tent, with a bed occupying 120cm × 190cm when open. They’ve started using a 6ℓ water bottle as a graywater tank. They’re spending about US$30 per day between the two of them, which seems pretty expensive for #Argentina.
on 02024-05-01Gonzalo Velázquez, the #drvelazquez #vanlife “Vendo Todo: Me Voy a la Mierda” author.
on 02024-05-01Martu and Colo/Gonza (#drvelazquez) live in #Argentina in Martu’s grandfather’s 01994 Ford F100 pickup, with a truck bed cap (“cúpula”). There’s a couch which unfolds into a bed, woodgrain wallpaper, a 12-volt-pumped kitchen sink draining through plastic accordion pipe out the tailgate onto the ground, mounted in a wooden counter painted white, a couple of ultralight portable camping stove burners on the counter (which run off the little spray-paint-sized butane cans), a polyethylene carboy (bidón) of water. The couch/bed bed is apparently two pieces of particle board hinged together so they can unfold to twice the couch’s width, extending up to the counter and eliminating the floor space, presumably supported on parts of the cabinets. Underneath the bed, which seems to be made of 19mm particleboard screwed together at butt joints, is the clothing. There’s enough headroom to kneel when the bed is folded up to expose the floor. The kitchen counter has curtains on cables which slide open to reveal the dishes, foods, shampoo, tiny fire extinguisher, etc. No bathroom, no graywater tank, and I think not even privacy curtains or air conditioning. They have rolls of aluminized polyethylene foam instead of privacy curtains. The water pump and LED lighting are powered by one of those little gel batteries used in motor scooters or home security systems, which they say came from a UPS, and which they recharge with a car battery charger when they can plug in, or just by hooking it up to a cigarette-lighter socket hooked up to the truck’s starter battery, without even a diode. They also use this for a USB charger. When parked they can use a jack to raise the truck bed cap to make enough space to almost stand up in, with vinyl fabric filling up the space. The furniture is built from wood they found in the street, including discarded broken furniture. They’re trying to survive by selling Colo’s book, “Vendo Todo: Me Voy a la Mierda”, author Gonzalo Velázquez. This is the lowest-budget #vanlife #video I’ve seen yet.
on 02024-05-01#video on Luis’s #vanlife in #Argentina in his 01957 jeep (?) Simona, license plate XCK 003, nickname Estenopo Viajero, which has two gas burners to cook on (powered by a 3kg propane bottle, of which he’d used 500g after 6 months cooking on it), a box for a bed, some cabinets over and under the sink, all made apparently of 19mm particle board framed with welded square steel structural tubing, cheap hinges screwed into the cabinet doors, and curtains hung in the windows. Not quite tall enough to stand up in, with a wood ceiling. No bathroom. He plans to set it up as a mobile darkroom; his old enlarger is installed already. 1.5m² of floor. The water tank to feed the sink is in the rooftop rack, connected through garden hoses, and is just a long piece of (150mm?) PVC pipe. Kitchen things are in a milk crate in the over-sink cabinet, like a drawer. Very rudimentary but seems reliable. The passenger seat folds up and forward to expand the space behind.
on 02024-05-01#video on problems/regrets #Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate had with their #vanlife build: shower drainage when they’re not parked on level ground, the vinyl flooring on the bathroom walls (because there are places where it isn’t really stuck down), the bathroom accordion door tearing up the vinyl floor, not having space heating, putting the stove in the middle of the door (because the wind can blow out the fire), not having a place to sit next to each other and watch a movie, and not having a desk in the cockpit (which he evidently later added). However, having the air conditioner panel straight over the bed is a big win.
on 02024-05-01#Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate gave up on #vanlife according to the title of this #video, buying a house in El Calafate, but it’s a #clickbait lie; they’re just hanging out at a friend’s house. There was reserved motorhome parking made a good impression on them, but it costs $9000 per 2 kg for milanesa de pollo, and they had to spend the night at the YPF station. Every single motor home in the YPF parking lot has solar panels. This video also shows the storage accessible through the back doors where they have their 30-liter liquid fuel bottle. Apparently flying drones in national parks is forbidden. Mostly just a travel tourism video, bleh.
on 02024-05-01#vanlife #video of carpenter Daniel Metrailler (IG @callejer0s_viajer0s) from Caseros, Entre Ríos, who built a 1400kg wood-siding-covered trailer out of phenolic to live in with his three dogs, pulling it behind his 01974 Peugeot 404, license plate UQX 538. The trailer’s brakes are activated by compression into the car, and it has a 6ℓ hot-water heater on the front of it. On top it has two 110-watt #photovoltaic #solar panels for electrical #energy and a “100 ampere” (probably erroneous) battery. The sides of the trailer have architectural-salvage windows with screens, so it’s about as far from a stealth-camping trailer as can be. The interior furnishings (drawers, cabinets, kitchen countertop) appear to be wood. He’s removed the stove he used to have in favor of a small gas burner next to the sink, powered by a gas cylinder under the sink; vinyl fake-ceramic wall tiles line the kitchen wall. He still has a 220-volt fridge, but his inverter is insufficient to run it. The bed is a loft level about head height which can be moved aside to allow you to stand up, ceiling height 192cm. The air conditioner runs off 12 volts. Mateo of #Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate reveals his height as 176cm. There’s a bathroom with a sink and super-luxury shower, with cuerina (naugahyde) to keep the water vapor in. The toilet is a baño seco, a separating toilet with sawdust to dehydrate the poop; he made the urine separator out of PVC pipe.
on 02024-05-01#vanlife #Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate #pricing of the stuff for their motorhome conversion. Demonstrates some of the techniques they used: pop-riveting wooden stringers to the van’s steel rafters, varnishing knotty softwood while kneeling on cardboard, etc. They said they planned the whole thing for five years. Or maybe three. This #video is a waste of time, a guy talking to the camera interspersed with shitty stock footage. Fortunately the costs he provides are converted to dollars, and using the blue dollar rather than the official one. The van itself runs about US$31k–US$42k, I think (though he doesn’t say), but the conversion involved electrical installation (US$2900), water and gas plumbing (US$3164 including, for some reason, the fridge and air conditioner and maybe the stove?), and the building stuff (US$500, including wood, insulation, etc.), and they also had to buy tools (US$340), plus paint and screws. The electrical installation involved two humongous 275-amp-hour batteries, an MPPT solar charge controller (“Epever” brand?), a 40-amp battery charger, and a 1500-watt inverter. They did actually put a tiny bit of fiberglass and polyethylene foam insulation in, contrary to my previous speculations, but we’re mostly talking about millimeters of insulation, not centimeters. As I speculated, almost all the interior is wood, but it’s not pine as I’d thought, but the super-lightweight kiri (Paulownia tomentosa), technically a hardwood but extremely fast-growing and abundantly produced in Misiones. The two of them spent three months working on it.
on 02024-05-01#video #Al-Mundo-con-el-Mate the #vanlife shower floor (plato de ducha) ended up not being level and therefore not having proper #drainage, so instead of fixing it, they decided to put a wood floor above it so they wouldn’t have to step in the cold puddle. But they were trying to do this in a corn field in Misiones with power tools (run off the van battery?) and ran out of sandpaper. Then he kind of screwed up the bottom of the vinyl accordion door with a reciprocating saw to make space for a threshold to stop it from scraping holes in the vinyl flooring.
on 02024-05-01#vanlife #video channel "AmericAndo" of a couple from #Argentina entering the #USA in their van (SXZ 125) after four years of driving, at the McAllen, Texas (and Reynosa, Sonora, and Pharr, Texas) border crossing on the Anzaldúas bridge. The border folks searched their car with a drug dog and looked up their YouTube channel, but they said it was “one of the easiest borders” they’d crossed, and they can stay 6 months. They camped overnight in the Wal-Mart parking lot, got stopped at a police checkpoint, marveled at the lack of pedestrians, visited some friends in San Antonio, threw an opossum in the garbage, and added a new removable wood desktop to the middle of the van.
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 #vanlife #video about, mostly, plumbing. A collapsible camping sink and a funnel gains Evan’s approval, but he suggests using a pressurized hand pump sprayer instead of a little USB pump to get running water. He also strongly endorses Further Fabrication’s carpentry skills.
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 02024-04-29Ryan 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 02024-04-06turning 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 02024-04-06