Custom Van Build

In 2016, I bought a Ram Promaster 1500 from Texas and turned it into an off-the-grid tiny (very, very tiny) home. I spent about 1.5 years living out of the van, with the support of showers at Apple, where I was working at the time, and Planet Granite Sunnyvale, my local climbing gym. This project is woefully lacking in documentation, but I have included random snippets that might be interesting or useful to people here.

I sadly no longer own this van (thanks, city living), but I am happy knowing that it is now in the hands of someone who can appreciate it to its fullest! I look forward to being able to do a second van build. Below are some brief, incomplete notes and reflections from some parts of the build.

prep

With only 2 weeks to go before my lease expired, I had to quickly prep my new home to be move-in ready. I spent a few days after work in the Apple parking lot scouring the van with Krud Kutter and laying down FatMat RattleTrap over the wheels and floors for sound-deadening. For insulation, I mounted pieces of 1” polyiso rigid board and a plastic condensation barrier to the walls and ceilings. I then drilled a few wooden supports into the walls and ceilings and nailed on cedar planking, stuffing gaps with extra denim insulation and GreatStuff as I went. For the floors, I used basic subfloor material, 1/8” plywood, and laminate flooring. After all this, the height and width of my van were roughly 5’3” - I could stand upright in it and sleep lying along the van’s short side, but virtually no one else I knew could.

As part of my prep, I also mounted a Maxx ceiling fan to the roof of my van. Honestly, cutting a giant hole into the top of the van was probably the most horrifying part of this process. Anyone who has ever built anything knows to measure twice and cut once. So I measured twice and cut once…cut a hole smaller than what I measured, that is, because sometimes logic and rationality is just too scary. Long story short, I spent the next few hours hand-filing my too-small cut until the hole was big enough to shove the fan into. For this, I have 2 great friends to thank for their labor and morale support and many neighbors to apologize to for withstanding the cacophony of cursing and metal-on-metal scraping. I sealed this with butyl putty tape and EternaBond sealant tape and hoped for the best.

Finally, I hacked together a basic lofted bed frame with 2x4s and plywood so that I had plenty of space to store all my belongings under my bed. As a slight side note, having a bed allowed me to register my van as a non-commercial vehicle at the DMV.

electrical system

For my electrical system, I wired up 2 100W solar panels, a 40A MPPT charge controller from Renogy, and 2 x 6V Trojan Reliant T105-AGM golf cart batteries. I connected the batteries in series and hooked them up to a DC fuse block and an 1000W AC inverter. I powered a mini-fridge, LED strip lights, and all my personal electronics off of this system. I bought basically the fattest wires I could (AWG0) for the battery and quadrupled the thickness of the wires I thought I would need based on max current analysis for everything else. Also, I put fuses everywhere, because as much as I thought I understood the electrons in my system, really, can you ever be 100% sure?

Everything came together more or less without a hitch! The only errors were some loose mechanical connections to the LED lights that ended up being a real pain to fix, because I had not bolted down things with adjustability in mind. Better planning next time…

Also, I had purchased a faucet that was advertised to be able to heat water electrically on demand. However, I failed to check the power spec of this against my system, and it drew much more current than my 1000W inverter could handle. It still worked for unheated water, but it was a bummer to not be able to take advantage of my fancy faucet that I had picked out.

"plumbing" system

I would not call what I had a system. Because the van was already compact, I knew I wouldn’t be even trying to include a shower. I didn’t want to bother with mounting tanks beneath the floors, as cutting a hole for the fan had been traumatizing enough.

I did buy a waterless toilet (one of those futuristic-looking ones that operates on a rechargeable battery and tightly seals your business with the press of a button). I have rather mixed feelings about this. It’s entertaining to watch and does do the job. However, let’s just say it does not handle liquids very well.

furniture overhaul

In 2018, I found myself with extra time, so I did a total overhaul of the “furniture” in the van. I designed and built under-bed cabinets, a pull-out drawer for a portable propane-powered stove/oven, and a small kitchen island/counter with space for a fridge. I built my furniture at IsGood Woodworks in Seattle with the mentorship of John Good, the owner there.

I re-built the bed frame with PVC piping with the idea that it could also be reconfigured into a futon-style couch.