MEET OUR VAN
Making the decision to live vanlife wasn’t easy… but it was easy compared to all the other decisions that were ahead! What type of van to buy? How did we want our van layout to be? Would we have a shower? Honestly the list goes on and on! We did a lot of research and came up with what we thought was best for our family. We built our entire van ourselves, and it was definitely a labor of love! This post is just a small glimpse into our tiny home on wheels. So read on to meet our van!
WHAT TYPE OF VAN
There are several options for which type of van to buy when doing a van conversion: Mercedes Sprinter, Ford Transit, and Dodge Promaster are the most common. We chose the Mercedes Sprinter and here’s why:
biggest space available
diesel engine
Sprinter vans come in a couple of different sizes, 144”, 170”, and 170” extended. They also have two versions of each: cargo van (empty shell) or passenger van (rows of seats). We have the cargo van 170” extended which adds about 18” in length. We knew we wanted the 170”, it just so happened that we found the extended during our hunt, and the extra 18” helps a lot since we added the bench seat for our daughter. We also chose the color white (although not our favorite color) because it is more practical. Black or dark colored vans get hotter in the sun, making it harder to cool.
VAN LAYOUT
This was one of the HARDEST decisions, and I feel like for obvious reasons. With such a small space available, we wanted it to be functional for our everyday lives. The two most popular layouts are a platform bed and table converting bed. The platform bed is a fixed, raised bed at the end of the van that provides a lot of storage under the bed for gear, water, propane, etc. The table converting bed is two fixed benches with a table in the middle that drops down at night and converts into a bed. Both layouts have positives and negatives; we chose the table converting bed and here’s why:
provides an area for our daughter to draw/color/play
we’re able to have family meals together sitting around a table
hosting other people into our small space
To be completely honest, we almost started regretting not doing a platform bed once we hit the road. We really just have so much gear that the extra storage would be nice. However, we’ve been able to have other vanlifers that we’ve met on the road hang out in our van… something we would never be able to do with a platform. For that reason alone, we are so happy we chose the table conversion and would never change it.
extra seats
As I mentioned earlier, we bought the cargo van version of the Sprinter. The passenger van is more expensive since it comes with several rows of seats, which we would have had to tear out anyway. However, the cargo van only comes with the front two seats (driver and passenger). Since we have a little girl, we obviously needed to add another seat for her! We went back and forth but ultimately decided to get a two person bench seat. It is a nice option to be able to have another person ride buckled up - we’ve actually had a friend come and stay with us while on the road! Plus if we ever have another kid we won’t have to build an entirely new van. Mercedes only has single or three person bench seats. The Ford Transit vans have seats that look almost identical, so we ordered one off of Ebay and Orry installed it!
APPLIANCES
For our kitchen, I knew I wanted an easy, functional space. I knew we would be traveling on a budget, so eating out all the time wasn’t going to be an option. I think the key (at least for me) to cooking more often is making it as easy as possible.
We’ve seen a lot of vanlifers that have portable stove tops or even kitchens that slide outside of their van so they’re cooking outdoors. Both of these are cool options, but I didn’t want to have to unpack/pack our stovetop for every meal, and I definitely didn’t want to be cooking outside while it was raining. Induction cooktops are also a popular option, you just have to make sure you have the battery bank for that! We chose to have a mounted propane cooktop. I loved our gas range in our previous home, so it only seemed natural that we have it in the van. We also have a small toaster oven that we can cook pizza or other frozen foods in, we store it in a drawer since it isn’t used very often.
As for our refrigerator, our thought was the bigger the better! haha. Once again, for me, easy is key. I didn’t want to have to go grocery shopping multiple times a week just to be able to cook. We wanted to have the option to go off grid for a while if we chose. Orry and I took a ski trip to Colorado right after we bought our van and met up with another vanlifer there. He was nice enough to give us a tour of his van, and he showed us his big top loading fridge. After talking with him, we were sold. We have the Dometic 95DZW dual zone so we have both a fridge and a freezer.
SHOWER & TOILET
When we were doing our research on different types of vans, we realized a lot of vans don’t have a shower in them. If they have a shower at all, it was usually a solar shower/road shower that people used outside. There is also a good amount of vanlifers that don’t have a shower at all, but instead have a gym membership at a place like Planet Fitness or Anytime Fitness that has gyms all over the country.
Orry is a shower-every-day type of person, plus having a kid, we knew we wanted a shower inside of our van. It just made sense for our family. We knew we wanted to be off grid pretty often to go hiking or climbing, both hobbies that involve sweat and dirt. We 100% love having our shower. I don’t think we would be able to enjoy our lifestyle nearly as much if we didn’t have a shower in our tiny home.
This section may contain TMI… that is a fair warning, haha!
Next up was our toilet decision. Preface: we do not have a black water tank. Black water is when poop and pee mix, creating a toxic waste and is what most all RVs have. These tanks must be emptied at dump stations. Again, our plan was to be boondocking and being off grid and did not want to be tied down to a dump station.
There are a couple of options for vans, but the most popular seems to be the composting toilet: pee in the front, poop in the back with the compost, empty the pee when full, and change the composting back as needed. The composting material has to be maintained at the right moisture level; therefore, if we chose this option, we would have to remove it from our shower each time we wanted to bathe. It also requires either adding more moisture or adding more compost material, as needed, to maintain the perfect balance. We didn’t really like this option for a couple of reasons: removing it from the shower, we are from the humid south, and diarrhea is real and unfriendly to compost.
We decided to go with a urine diverting toilet inside our shower. Most RVs that you go in have a shower/toilet combo, and it just makes sense with the space that is available. We pee in the front that drains into our grey water tank below the van and poop in the back which goes into a bin with a bag, that we tie up and throw out when used (similar to a camper toilet).
If you are interested in any of the products we used during our van conversion, check out our van shop here.
That’s a quick overview of our van! If you have any questions or are currently converting a van, please leave them below! We love to help out anyone we can because we know how hard building a van can be.
