[Music]
all right guys we're inside my 2019 ford
transit 150 van
and this is 148 inch wheelbase so it's
the non-extended but is the longer one
than the smaller version that they make
like i said it's obviously a little roof
and i'm going to take you through here
and do a quick tour through all the
components that i have in here
a couple things i like about them
i use this van to go hiking and camping
campgrounds
going to trail heads and it is
so fun everything in here is has a
purpose and makes it just really
enjoyable to be outdoors
bring all your food
have water be able to wash your hands
make coffee it's really great
so we're going to go right to left here
the first thing we're going to look at
is this fridge
so this fridge is not a 12-volt fridge
it's a
volt fridge or 110 volt
and it runs off of my inverter i have a
2000 watt
pure sine wave inverter we'll show you
here in just a minute
but i went with this because uh you know
you can go two ways this one is really
inexpensive it was like 80 bucks i got
it at best buy
um it does use a little bit more power
than normal
off the inverter but as long as you have
solar and a good way to recharge your
batteries
it's real cost effective solution and so
inside here what i've done is i just
added a quick latch so the door wouldn't
fly open when i'm driving
and you guys can kind of see this is a
little bit of
the size that we have in here
one quick note always make sure
you have a temperature gauge
inside your fridge
especially when you're doing the whole
van life because
the setting on your fridge is typically
not in degrees it's just going to be
like high low or one through seven or
something like that so you need to make
sure your food is
being refrigerated properly
so i got that in there i can kind of
lock it up
and then we go to the right hand side we
have a six foot countertop
i got this countertop from home depot
actually no i'm sorry this one is from
lowe's
and it's kind of like a faux marble
just a laminate countertop and i didn't
even cut it this is actually the full
length six feet non-cut
works out great
looks nice
comes with a nice backsplash here
and then above it what i did is i
installed
you can kind of call it the pantry
so we got slam latches here
and i just made this so this is the
store coffee
um
coffee filters
food
any type of dry food or anything like
that can go up here
just got to be careful when you put
stuff up here it gets really really hot
so
if you're in the whole mode of going
camping
don't have to worry about it just don't
leave stuff in there but anyway
this is integrated into here
it works out really well we have the
cedar
backsplash here so this is cedar tongue
and groove
and we just got a little bit of i think
danish oil is what i put on it
coming from our inverter we have our
uh
house outlet here with two usb ports
something that's pretty cool and i
designed this whole thing around this is
i have a espresso machine that i bring
with me when i go hiking
and this thing is
custom designed to have that
espresso machine in there
and so i'll insert some b-roll in there
so you guys can kind of see the whole
the look but i wanted to show you how
nice and open this is a lot of room for
prep
space to prep food
this seat works out really well
and this is i'd say a classic
you know
van life camper van layout
over here on the left hand side
we have a sink from ikea so stainless
steel sink
and then i found this on amazon it's
really cool it's a battery powered
faucet
and what's nice about that is when you
have a camper van
with the exception of this fridge in my
setup you want to make sure everything
is either 12 volt or very power
efficient so this actually is a battery
powered rechargeable
faucet
and
it'll technically last almost a whole
month on one charge so it's really
efficient
and then below here
is where i have my fresh water and gray
water tank
fresh and gray
and each one is seven gallons
and then on this right hand side i put a
closet rod inside here so i can also
keep my
like my puffy jacket and stuff like that
for hiking
this is still a build in progress even
though it looks pretty complete here
i'll show you in the back that it still
is a build in progress
but we have all of our connections here
for
uh to turn our inverter on
we have our
uh
battery monitor
and that's going to tell us you know
what the percentage is of our battery
which is fully charged right now
and then last but not least we have our
controller here for our diesel heater
and i'll show you that in just a second
my plan is that this whole entire
controls what's going to happen is i put
in this
uh soft-close
hinge and all the
display and
you know battery monitors and stuff like
that they're all going to be lined up
here nice and neat so that you can turn
on the inverter check everything out
and i like to have no light when i'm
sleeping so
once this closes
all the lights are concealed in here and
you have a nice rest you don't have to
worry about light
speaking of light we have our puck
lights which are all the way up here
and they are controlled by this dimmer
switch down here at the bottom
so we can turn them off we can turn them
on
and it's a stepless dimmer switch which
means if we push our finger on it
we can dim it all the way down
and turn it off and then turn it back on
before we move around to the seat in the
back of the van
it's a pretty interesting
uh look right here you may notice it's
not traditional cabinets we have one
traditional cabinet over here this was
actually purchased from lowe's as well
and then it's just painted to match the
toolbox
so this is a full husky toolbox from
home depot
and what's nice is you have humongous
drawers i've got this locked right now
but these drawers go the full depth
and basically keep all my kitchen stuff
up here pots and pans go on this left
side
camera gear and equipment is on the
right and then these drawers are like my
clothes that i bring with me when i go
hiking and again the jackets are in here
before we open this up to show you guys
a little bit of electronics i put in
a table
so this way if i want to edit a video or
just sit down have some food this is a
good place to eat it and this is
actually a
door from ikea so this is one of their
clearance areas you can just buy like
really cool stuff like this it's a
stainless steel cabinet door
and then i got some hinges here
and then i just repurposed it as um
a table to be used for uh
yeah for eating and stuff like that
so i think we're going to do is take the
camera off the tripod and then that way
we can get over here
and get a little better look at
the power system before we move to the
rear of the van
all right back in the van this is the
part where i was sitting filming that
part you just saw
and
believe it or not these two cushions
were not custom made i bought them at
lowe's they are outdoor
cushions for seating
and this top one you'll pull off here
and this is actually just a back rest
for a
uh
like just a backrest for a
you know
outdoor chair i actually think this is
this seat cushion and then what i did on
the back is you can have you can
find iron on velcro
and then that
attaches it here to the carpet so it
doesn't move around and then there's
just one more spot at the top that ties
into the
three-way stretch fabric
same thing goes for the bottom
this is just a long bench seat and it
just happens to be when you fold it here
it is just
it's perfect and
yeah sometimes you just find stuff like
that because i did not design this bench
around this pad
but we take this off
and you can see here this is the
beginning of
kind of the brains of the van
as we open this
lid up
you guys can look in here
and i might have to zoom in just a
little bit
there you go
so on this side we have our
2000 watt
pure sine wave inverter
we have our disk main disconnect for our
battery system that's over here
so if i tilt down maybe you guys can get
in there awesome
so this is an ames 100 amp hour
lithium iron phosphate battery
not a lot of amp hours but we've got 200
watts of solar on the roof i'll show you
here in just a little bit
but between this
and just doing weekend trips this allows
me to make all the coffee i need i'm not
running the sink
the fridge uh
pulls very little amperage so
this will give me two solid days with
pretty good sunlight
for a trip
so if we have really good sunlight and
i'm on the road driving
i can probably stretch it to
three days two nights
for making coffee and
keeping food cold and stuff like that
but yeah so that's the battery moving in
we got our disconnect right here
and then moving in a little bit deeper
we have our
uh
distribution block for our positive and
negative side
um and then so our positives go over
here
to
our bluesy systems
fuse box and all of these components are
blue sea systems
and then we have our main fuse it's a
mega fuse and that is for our
inverter
and somebody out there may be saying you
know nick why
are you pairing a 100 amp hour battery
with a 2000 watt inverter
it's a good question
uh
the main reason the easy answer is is
for my espresso machine it's simply that
somehow the discharge rate on this
battery
doesn't time out before the bms or the
battery management system shuts it off
and it runs my
special machine just fine the espresso
machine does pull 1700 watts
while it's doing its thing
uh and it may be due to the fact uh
that i have two hot wire going to the
uh inverter
so
this works i got everything fused
properly
if we move to the back
you see this little vent so we got one
vent here
and then down here we got another vent
and that just allows ventilation for
the inverter
behind here
they will show maybe some b-roll later
this is the diesel heater
so this is just one that was bought for
amazon it's the cheap version some
people call it
parking heater
or a chinese diesel heater because
extremely
cheap i mean 140 bucks on amazon
and
they work great i'm
i would never put in my professional
builds just for
you know durability longevity
but they're so cheap that
i mean this one's lasting a whole entire
year no problems whatsoever works every
single time
uh it's a two kilowatt version so it's a
little bit of the smaller one they have
a two and a four
um
it works great i mean no complaints at
all
so this is like i said the brains
as we go into the back
we're going to show you guys the air
intake for the diesel heater
and then
we'll also show you
uh
the exhaust port
so while we're at this angle i'm going
to show you
uh
this side of the panel this is the light
switch that you guys were looking at uh
it's um
touch you can just you know it's a touch
of dimmer switch you don't have to push
it or click it in
everybody needs a cup holder
that's a
perfect location
and then this one is the vent for the
heater so you can turn it any different
way you want to
so this is the exhaust from the diesel
heater
and then while we're down here on the
ground let me go ahead and shut this
let's talk a little bit about the floor
before we go back to the
rear of the van
so this floor that i have this is a it's
called smart core
floor it's a 100 waterproof
and it's got the integrated underlayment
in it um or moisture barrier whatever
you want to call it
uh
it works out really really well
something i did that was a little bit
different
for my other builds is if you look down
here let me get down here on the bottom
so
the step up into the van was just really
a
useless space
and what i've done is this is
this is where i keep
i keep some tie downs
it gives me access to my power cables
that are coming from the battery
that are going back and charging the
uh that connect to the battery and the
inverter
i've got my dog
novus stuff
i've got
this is a bag of jumper cables but
there's just a lot of storage here so if
you delete the step
and you don't have the vehicle lifted
this is a great place to
just store everything because it's
it's just a waste of space if it's not
being used for storage that's why a lot
of people like to just build the van out
to here and make this like a shoe cubby
you see that often in van builds
one thing i like the most about it and i
see a bunch of my friends do when we go
camping is everybody just likes to
sit here it's just
you know everybody can sit here
hang out
so it's a good place to sit it's right
on the edge
and then everything is you know nice
upholstery we have this
aluminum
step plate
that is uh
that's right here um
to finalize this uh
this there will be a carpeted panel
that's gonna go around this whole entire
thing then we're gonna have like little
oval inlets to go grab stuff
so that's how this will actually be
finished off
um yeah so now what we're gonna do is
head to the back of the van and show you
guys where
what our bed system is made out of as
well as the the garage area
all right we're at the back of the van
and i wanted to show you two things the
bed system the garage and then we're
gonna zoom in a little bit closer show
you the
insulation on the side panels of the van
the ceiling ceiling fan
roof vent and then the garage
and then the diesel heating system
okay let's start with the bed
so this
platform here is
large enough for a full-size mattress
full-size memory foam mattress is what
when i'm not loading equipment and stuff
like that in here a full-size memory
foam mattress goes in here and it fits
perfectly
i didn't use flare spaces because that
wasn't the point of this van because on
a ford transit you can sleep end to end
just naturally in this van if you're
around six feet or less
and so by adding the carpeting on the
side and not actually building in
insulation and stuff like that i'm able
to put that
mattress in here so everything was
pretty much sized off that
mattress layout
this is just like a little edge piece
this is actually a two by four
underneath here
that's to kind of just hold the bed in
and then also give us a little bit of
structural
rigidity to the bed
we'll get you some detailed footage of
this garage area but down here in the
garage area
if you guys can see actually you can see
it pretty good
we get a ton of space
and uh
i use the space to store everything that
i'm using um during a camping trip uh
so if you can imagine a bunch of
firewood goes in here my backpack
my dog's food
anything that i'm helping
like friends bring
so
a couple my friends ride motorcycles and
then we do like a moto camp so their
gear will be in here as well and then
we'll follow each other to the campsite
and
you got a ton of room so i'm just going
to get in here you guys can kind of see
i mean
there's a ton of room under here it's
almost the same size as you know
obviously what's above it like a full
bed
so the plan on here is to get this
trimmed out
we have our air intake at the back for
the diesel heater
and then over here on the right hand
side we have
the diesel tank
this is a 10 liter tank and it's
completely overkill
i filled this up maybe a quarter of the
way
and it's lasted me a full year
so all throughout the winter
so
diesel is extremely efficient
on the van builds that i'm currently
building that's all going to be a
gasoline-fired
heating system
so
but this one was just kind of
you know
the way that i designed this van
just kind of
as you go as you need
certain components you know put them in
and so it was winter time i was cold and
i put this diesel heater in
it's been working great
uh if we can talk about let's see
check the framing here this would be
good to do b-roll do you because you're
gonna need that when you talked
yeah
i'm gonna bring you guys
in oh yeah this is good
perfect especially showing the walls i
don't know if they're too dark
yeah
so let me bring the light around no
that's good
so we're gonna go ahead and zoom in here
on the walls
yeah perfect that's doing a really good
job
so as you can look at the walls here
what i did is there's some cavities in
here so it's like four cavities and then
what i did is i took uh
there's this duck wrap and it's like a
metallic aluminum
with uh
i'm trying to see actually
there we go
piece just kind of comes off the ceiling
so if you guys can see this
it's a it's got metal foil on the
outside and then it has this like rubber
membrane on the back side like it's
almost like foam it's a foam membrane
so it's foam and then it is metal like a
radiant
uh
i guess you can call it like a radiant
barrier
it's to make pipes
and attics not sweat
like ac pipes and stuff like that and
then there's an adhesive right here so
you guys can see it's kind of it'll
stick to my finger so this adhesive is
great because you can
the whole entire ceiling here
you can look
so the whole entire ceiling
has that
stuck on it
okay
and then underneath that what i have you
can see it uh
in this corner just sticking out a
little bit
um i have rock wool
and rock wool
uh let's take a little bit of this
it's actually
rocks that have been
rock fibers that have been uh
shaved like super thin and it's crazy
creates a
like an insulation
so it's really really cool you guys can
see that
it doesn't matter if it gets wet it
won't mold anything like that it is fire
resistant
and uh does a really good job insulating
the van it's a great thing to use
as opposed to like 3m
or
uh wool or something like that
the whole entire ceiling is tongue and
groove cedar so it smells great cedar is
a natural
uh
insecticide maybe it's a too strong of a
word
it repels insects insects don't like
cedar like the oils in it
and then if we go up here this is our
max fan
and this max fan is it's not the fully
automated one it's simple it's got four
speeds
on and off that's it it only exhausts
but it does have the integrated range
shield so that makes it really easy to
have it up when it's raining
and the way that i ventilate this van is
i just have one vent fan here and then i
have the front windows cracked with a
bug screen that i roll up into the
windows
and that gives me my ventilation cross
ventilation for the whole entire van
does an excellent job
uh this is a let's see here a little bit
better view of the
the bed you can see over here we got
some rails that keep all the carpet nice
and
tied down so this carpet is
super 77 3m spray adhesive is how
everything is connected
and then
we got the diesel heater
and then the last part that i'll show
you guys i'll take this off
the tripod
i'm going to show you where
this is where
the intake to the diesel heater is so
the fresh air so what you want to do is
you want to have
the colder air from the garage being
pulled into the diesel here and the deal
user exhaust the dry air
and then that way
you create a convection so you have the
air
coming out through here
comes down around here goes back
underneath this
and it circulates it creates a
convection in the van to help circulate
the heat
and get rid of any moisture
so that does a
does a great job
next we are going to
take a camera up here
you guys can see the max
ax fan right there and our solar panels
so we're gonna put this on another
tripod i'm gonna get up here and talk
about the roof
so that's what it looks like when it's
fully extended
and see what's nice is you don't have to
have a rain shield or anything like that
um
so we got that for our ventilation then
come over here
and just a simple electrical system i
mean it's just 200 watts
of solar panels from renegy
and
you know these keep the batteries all
topped off
last but not least we have our roof rack
so this is a custom roof rack i built
and all these parts are at lowe's so
this is called unistrut so if you're
wondering what the
stuff they use for like electrical boxes
and warehouses to mount them
this is the same thing what's nice is
you can put these hooks and sliders
this is for my little awning
tarp that i have
i can tie into it
and then if i want to add more solar
panels or i wanted to load something on
here this thing is extremely strong so
this thing is
completely bolted to the van
and
it's not going anywhere it's been like
this for a year it's doing great
um i put these little
bar pads or whatever you want to call
them surfboard
bumpers i did that because there's a
little bit of a whistle and then as soon
as i put those on it fix the whole
entire thing
uh
yeah and so we're gonna swing around to
the driver's seat and show you the last
part of this tour and that is the
electrical system coming from the
battery so that is the charge controller
from the solar panel for the solar
panels and also
the battery leads that charge
the battery so let's go down there and
check that out
okay so check this out
back here behind the
driver's seat
and
this looks pretty complicated but it's
actually really simple the reason it
looks complicated is because i used to
have a
dedicated dc to dc charger over here and
this was not part of the system so i've
removed this system
i just went with a simple pwm controller
and then i'm going to clean all this
stuff up
but basically
this is all the connections that needed
for the van so you've got your
breaker coming in from
your alternator that charges your
battery
and then we have a breaker that is going
to our
uh our main battery so one is our
power coming out from the
alternator and then one is our battery
disconnect
the line going to the battery we got six
gauge wire for that
then right here is our
negative terminal
we have our pwm controller like i was
talking about
and this thing is excellent it's super
cheap and it also has the ability to
obviously charge
lithium iron phosphate
but it has a mode in there to where if
the bms of the battery cuts itself off
what this charge controller will do is
it's able to send the appropriate amount
of voltage to wake up the battery
and get it going again
so that's pretty cool so even if you
kill the battery which i've done
two or three times
give it a couple days the solar and this
controller will automatically bring your
battery back to 100
life and uh there's a
just a little fuse for
the
the solar as well
and then these are the leads that go up
through the ceiling
to the solar panels on the top
all right guys let's end the tour for my
ford transit camper van
nova and i here are going to sign off
and
hope you guys enjoy the video