For a very long time, I have already been planning to show you a bit more about my campervan and its facilities but I have been telling myself always that I am gonna make better pictures, but it is time to accept that that is not gonna happen. So, Welcome to my little home!
So, this is my bedroom, toilet, living room and office pretty much in one room. It is the place I feel the most at home from all places in the world. I feel extremely happy with how everything worked out. It isn't totally finished yet, but I hope to finish the last jobs in April (Installing a hot water boiler + a diesel heater to stay warm and shower hot + some small jobs)
As you can see in this picture, the kitchen is divided in 2 blocks, With the stove at the side of the door so the cooking smell can go out easily, and the sink at the backside since I wanted the shower and watertap nearby each other so it is easier to install.
This is the little sink + watertap with decent pressure, big enough to wash big pots and pans. Most campers have a super tiny sink. I am always wondering why, if you can barely wash a plate there. I decided that a kitchen is more important than chairs or a couch and needed the space for this big sink.
We also have a stove inside to cook, connected to a gas bottle. As we will camp a lot in the colder months and in the middle of cities, it was important for us to have a stove inside. We also have a ceiling ventilator which can either blow fresh air inside, or outside, which is extremely nice to have while cooking.
The most important thing for us was the bed. Our last van wasn't that comfortable to sleep in as you could feel the wood through the thin mattress. This bed has a real mattress, and the bed is 190cm by 140cm, and there is no place where I can sleep better and wake up happier than here. We also have a window above the bed for fresh air and I love it when the sun wakes me up in the morning. I appreciate that even more now I live in Austria for two months, in an underground room. I love that daylight.
We also have a shower, although it isn't finished yet. We can shower with cold water which is fine in summer, but I would like the water a bit warmer in the winter. Last December the water was around 6 degrees Celsius... no thank you! So, at that time I boiled water in a pan instead.
The toilet is a compost toilet. It doesn't need water, but it needs soil instead. The number one and number two get separated inside. The pee goes into the pee bottle which we need to empty every 2 or 3 days when we are traveling with 2. When I am alone it takes 4-5 days.
A ventilator takes the smell from in the toilet, through the grey tube through the floor outside. It does not smell. I am happy with this toilet. Well, this is too much information already about my toilet I guess.
At the outside, we have a stair connected to the backdoor. The stair was already there when we bought the van, but it is the perfect spot to dry our laundry. (If I don't forget to remove it before driving away)
So, how do we get our water?
We have a 150 Liter clean watertank inside which we need to fill up once a week or whenever it is almost empty. We either do this on a campsite, or along the highway or wherever we find a watertap (with some help from the app Park4Night). We have our own clean hose with us which we can connect to a tap.
The back of the van is super super messy. There are all tools and things I still have to fix in laying around, spare parts + my foldable bicycle as you can see at the left
After the water goes through the sink or shower drain, it comes in a tank under the van. I don't know if you can see it, but it is a white plastic tank. I was emptying the tank in a special hole in the road to ditch grey water. Those places are also findable in the app Park4Night. I hung the watertank there myself, I was so scared to lose it along the way as I don't trust my own abilities. But it survived already driving through 10 countries so I guess it is fine..
We also have a large LiFePO4 battery inside + 2 solar panels on the roof. It allows us to turn on the lights, charge our devices and boil water with a waterboiler and that kinda stuff.
And not to confuse you, the van is yellow now, but it went into storage just days after painting was done, that is why it is white in all the other pictures
Well, I hope you liked my little tour through the van and now you know a little bit more about what it looks like to live in a van. Would you like to try out living in a van?
Regards,
Sascha
