Alaska Overland Truck Cabin Official FULL TOUR : Truck House Life Episode 4

Now that I have a decent video camera, I want to give you a proper

tour

, so let's take a look. Welcome to Truck House Live Baby. I basically wanted to build the

cabin

on wheels. I wanted something that was super fun, something super unique. that I felt good about something I was proud of and this is the design that I came up with, so the

truck

is a 1996 Ford f-350 like a Power Stroke diesel with a 7.3 engine, so it supports the weight of the camper amazingly and I can still tow trailers or whatever else you need, let's get a six inch lift that way.

You could put 35 inch tires on there. Your

truck

camper takes a lot of abuse on the road just from road vibration and potholes, it's essentially like your

house

takes a 5.0 earthquake constantly, so you need to build them tough if you want them to last. Most commercially manufactured campers are made one at a time and held together with staples and glue, so of course they get shaken up by the road. My number one priority when building a camper was durability. I wanted it to withstand the vibrations and bumps of the road and not fall apart. This camper is over-engineered in critical areas such as the corners of the floor, the places that are most likely to fall apart in your vehicle.

To offset the corner reinforcement I used two-by-twos along the walls to help lighten things up, so another priority in building the camper was a unique aesthetic. I really love the look of natural wood and wanted to keep that look. For some reasons, the number one people in the world work with wood, so if something happens while you are there, you can find a general carpenter or do it yourself and fix the caravan as necessary to waterproof the wood. I did. Just like you would with a wooden sailboat on the ocean, it has varnish, which is essentially a waterproof gel coat.

I used captain's varnish and applied four coats of captain's varnish to the entire exterior of all the wood so that all the windows are double sealed there. I put it on with silicone tape and then I also put silicone on top of the silicone tape and that really helps waterproof the windows and seal out all the water. I kept getting messages under the windshield wipers, so I decided to just put up a little mailbox. There I thought it's funny, you can see up there on the ceiling. I have a 100 watt solar panel and for the chimney flue I use a three inch wind directional chimney cap that just rotates and creates a nice vacuum so you can actually start a fire while driving down the road. .

The roof of the caravan has a pitch of 512, so most caravans have a flat roof where water collects, pools and leaks, which is why a lot of water damage occurs. Flat Roof Camper In this camper you don't have to worry because it sheds water instantly that way there is no chance of it rising and it also sheds snow that way you don't have to worry about a heavy load of snow collapsing the roof of your caravan If you leave it for a couple of months, the exterior of the camper under the plywood is wrapped with Tyva like a typical

house

, it's waterproof and breathable so it helps condensation escape.

The roof has two layers of water protection, first being the metal roof. It just keeps the water out and point underneath, you've got a grace ice and water shield, a super waterproof rubber membrane, super awesome, so you have two layers of protection on the front of the truck. I had a friend Joe, well the custom front bulb is just For added protection, I mean, I put a worn out 12,000 pound winch in here, that's already come in handy several times. I highly recommend putting air bags in the rear suspension, it simply takes the load off the springs and helps stabilize your ride.

Here is the system. it's just a double hinge direction that double collapses when you let go, it releases under the bottom and they fold like that, nice and easy to go up, nice, you need to go down when you need to put them away, it takes a split second, like that latch underneath, a latch on the side and voila, the camper design can still see the brake lights and signals and tail lights on both sides, but I went ahead for an extra measure of security and installed just more brake lights, twist and go as you can see I have a couple different tie down points there are tie down points up high if you want to do side mount tie down points and I also installed some hidden ones down here and it just connects down there to the frame.

The front of the camper also has a couple of different tie down points. There is one on the outside in case you want to do a torque lift style tie down to the frame. I also have tie down points right inside. there so you can strap yourself right into your bed here's a reversing camera right here so you can see when you're backing up since you can't see through the camper and there's a couple of seats on the porch, one of them is for propane storage the battery and furnace drain the other side, you can store whatever you want right now in winter.

I have firewood there for the wood stove, super cozy to sit in and get out of the rain so you can sit here with a friend. and taking in the views under a nice dry roof so the door is completely hand made it's five foot seven tall so you have to dip a little bit if you're over five foot seven but the porch is six foot three, so you totally can. stand on the porch, yeah, so let's see the inside. Stoke to show you guys and the door handle is much better than your typical RV door handle, it has a latch style lock and is nice, strong and sturdy, easy to open and close, has foam insulation between these cedar panels the inside of the door has weather stripping along the sides and the door jamb also has weather stripping to keep the cold out and the heat in or vice versa in the summer and here is the inside now keep in mind Note that you are looking at an 8 foot truck bed, so we can fit a lot of room into this, so here on the left side of the camper you have a

full

size propane oven so you can bake cheesecake and lasagna as you like. you want and a three-burner burner on top instead of a sink.

I found that I usually don't use a ton of water when camping or try not to so I just made a faucet style system so if you need to wash dishes you can just place a container over the sink and use it as a sink and then flush gray water to the toilet. Get your small sink with pump. Water is very easy to fill right here. Six gallon jug. Take it out and fill it. up anywhere you want up here you have a fantastic fan that points at the wood stove and recirculates the warm air in the winter around the camper so it works very well under the furnace you have your propane boiler, the boiler has been turned on your thermostat right here, so that makes it really cozy to just be able to wake up in the morning and hit the thermostat and heat up the camper without getting up.

You're probably wondering, hey, where's the counter space? Sitting right there, it folds on the side, this is not finished, what you do is you open it up and a little wooden peg holds it in place when you're ready to take it out, you just take out the peg and fold it like that and that's it. I just have a simple cutting board and put a little stand on the bottom and you'll get instant counter space, like this, stand back and you won't be using it between the folding counter space attached to the oven and this other counter space on this side. enough to work to do what you need to do to cook, so there are a couple of different charging ports on the ones in the camper here near the kitchen, let's get a 12 volt outlet and a couple of USB charging stations of different levels of power and just a little tray up there that I built to set up your cell phone or batteries or whatever you need to charge the same on this side you get a nice DVD player for TV so on a rainy day you can sit here and spend the hang on top of the taps you have. a battery level indicator that shows the battery level, as you can see there is a lot of lighting here.

The LED burns about four watts compared to sixty watts for incandescent bulbs, so it saves you a lot of energy. One of my favorite parts about this camper is you can have six people sitting here very comfortably. I know of almost no other RV that has two

full

size couches. This couch on this side of the driver's side is a jackknife couch and actually converts into a bed. in a couple of seconds like this, like this you have a bed that can sleep two people really comfortable when you're ready to put it away, boom, like this, like this you can sleep two people on this side and one person on this side, like this Here three people fit very comfortably.

I didn't want to place

cabin

ets high because that creates a lot of swinging weight with a high center of gravity. Keeping the storage low increases your performance and your safety when driving around the sofa in the side storage. There are many things. I keep all the bedding underneath, here, jackets, sleeping bags. Things like that work very well down here. You have floor storage, so you lift it up and you can put all kinds of things down there. There is also storage. Down here, under the driver's side sofa, is a Dometic CC 40 refrigerator-freezer. Very simple, just remove the release strap and you can slide it out and access everything you need in there.

Runs extremely efficiently on battery instead of propane. It will last you a long time and it won't use propane which is great so your bathroom rolls out nice and easy for an instant bathroom and snaps back into place very easily so you have a toilet paper bathroom. the toilet is on a hanger right here above the trash can so it's convenient so the wood stove is a Kimberly wood stove. These are amazing wood stoves in caravan applications. It's one of the only stoves I feel comfortable driving down the road with the fire on. I'll put it that way.

I have a little firewood rack built into the back so you can store some firewood inside overnight and not have to go out to the back porch to get extra firewood instead of a wall. Here I use glass that way. You can be sitting on this couch here and still see the fire at night. I made porthole windows in the front, nice and tinted so you can't see into them and they give you a good view of what's going on in the front. of your car on the roof, so that's pretty cool now the camper windows are one of the best parts.

These are special windows. There are a couple of places in the world where you can get them. De Matic makes them in Europe and a company called Megan. They are made in Japan, so these are the Japanese version. They say the windows open very easily just open these latches here and there are different settings so you can open them wherever you want when you are ready to close them you just lift them up and latch when you are ready to go to sleep at night there is a blind that opens It rolls up from the bottom very convenient for privacy and there is also a mosquito net on top if you want to leave the windows open this summer, one of the other amazing parts of the camper is that you can totally stand up in the kitchen.

I'm just 6 feet tall. I have a couple of inches over my head so I'm about six foot three in the kitchen and it comes up to about yes, about five feet tall in the very front of the camper so there's plenty of room to walk around as you all know It's very cold in Alaska, so I didn't want to waste time insulating this camper. I sprayed foam on the ceiling and walls to make it very airtight. When you turn on the heating here it stays here much longer than will and almost any other caravan, one of my other priorities with the caravan was functionality.

I wanted to have all the amenities of a large RV in an eight-foot space. The space meant I had to be very thoughtful and conscious about where I placed things, but into the same footspace I was able to squeeze all the comforts of home, basically.