Crypt Bedroom in a 2 Kilowatt Cargo Trailer Conversion

If you've ever dreamed of building your own custom

cargo

trailer

in an incredible man cave that's beyond anything anyone could imagine, imagine 2

kilowatt

s of power and building a sleeping

crypt

area where no sound or light can enter the room. They have secret basements and hidden cubbies, hidden bathrooms and washing machines and an incredible surround sound system with a full sofa in the living room. Well, if you've dreamed of doing that kind of thing, then you'll enjoy Michael's EF e build that Michael is all about. to show you in this video, so this is my model, it was a 20-17, I bought it in late 2016, a

cargo

trailer

from an aluminum trailer company.

I had them custom built and I optioned them for the features I wanted, they built the shell and then I did everything else to The size of this trailer I ended up going with what I considered a medium size. I built versions in my head that were smaller or longer, but this seemed to do everything I wanted without being gigantic. It is quite large, although the interior has a ceiling height of 8 feet. The interior has been slimmed down a little bit with some features, but you'll see that it's eight and a half feet wide and then the total interior length is 24 feet.

It has a V-tip on the front that takes up a little bit of The last time I weighed it it weighed just over 11,000 pounds and it fluctuates a little bit whether the water tank is full or not, but it's around 11 or 11 V, which is within its axial classification. I think it maxes out at 13 something. So back in the back of the trailer, we can see this horrible thing sticking out of the back, which is my split air conditioning unit, kind of like what you have in a normal house, where one part inside and one part from the outside, this is the outside part and can cool the place very efficiently.

I don't use the heat from this thing anymore because in the winter it's hard to get enough solar power and I was having some trouble with the error code anyway so I just use it as an air conditioner on top of the The air conditioner is very high up and there is a weboost trucker antenna so i leave it on all the time. I have the indoor antenna buried there and that is wonderful for ping times and solar charging speeds, which you can see just a little bit there. I needed to build a giant solar panel for this Ray because I wanted it to be all electric, so with the way the vents were arranged and everything, trying to put the panels on the roof just didn't work out well, so I built a custom rack. and I lifted the whole thing up, it was ten or ten and a half inches, so the sunlight extends almost the entire length of the platform, almost as wide as the platform and there's two thousand one hundred and thirty watts up there, let me show you the inside . what I call a garage and it gives me a lot of storage space, a lot of room for all kinds of things, so first I have a 125 gallon water tank.

If you're wondering how long that lasts, if it's just me on the shelf, I can do a month of showering, you know, every other day, that kind of thing, there's a shelf here with just a ton of storage space, another shelf next to it. which is accessed from the inside, has dry food, dry goods, clothing and other storage up there, miscellaneous tools, they added an extra. refrigerator back here that's not working right now, but sometimes when my girlfriend and I try to live here, we need extra space in the refrigerator so we can plug it in and turn it on and then I'm going to take out a bunch of this so we can see the electricity back there because I spent a lot of time on it so we got out all the tools and the extra cooler and all that kind of stuff so we can look at the fun electricity so when I was building this I was looking at the cost of the batteries I knew I needed have a huge battery bank for what I was trying to do.

Pre-built solutions like Battleborn are really nice because they're all protected and everything, but the cost was just. too high for me, so I ended up building my own lithium cell bank. There are sixteen individual cells here, each cell is 200 amp hours, so when you connect them in series you are still at 200 amp hours, but you increase the voltage, so I have a 48 volt system right now at 200 amp hours, which if You look at that on a 12 volt system, the times would be 800 amp hours at 12 volt equivalent, so moving up a bit to the solar charge controller, it was just over 2

kilowatt

s. on the ceiling and I have them connected in series parallel so there are three lines coming three positive three and negative and these are pretty thin wires but because they are connected in such a way that they send 60 to 80 volts down If you run all DC calculators this 10 gauge wiring is more than enough for what I need so I just combine them all together use something a little thicker that comes out I can't remember what it is it all comes in a controller solar charging.

It's the 60 amp Outback model which I'm not even using 60 amp because the voltage is too high and it goes to the bus bars and batteries and this has been fantastic, zero problems after a year and a half and it's solid. Back to the water tank to fill the water tank, this thing unscrews and you put a hose in there, there's no water fill connection like the one in the city, you just put a hose in and fill it up and you can watch it go up, so it's really simple on the On the output side here they have this giant output like 3 inches or something so of course I scale it down.

I have the main line going from my water pump to the rest of the rig and I just built a tee for another valve that If I want to add something later, like an outside spigot to fill other people's rigs or something in the future , I can do it. If you are wondering about the weight of this, since water weighs about eight and a half pounds per gallon, we will. Check my calculations here, but it weighs about 900 pounds or so when completely full and when I have this water tank full and my holding tanks empty, my tongue weight is about 12 to 13 percent, which is supposed to must do on a trailer with a bumper. be between 10 and 15 percent, so I think it's great, it's perfect, so on the front of the deck, one of the cool features is that I incorporated windows in the V-tip, you can't see it yet, but I'm going to open it up and I wanted to protect the windows so I asked the company to design these metal covers that extend almost like an awning so I'm going to show you that we're on a little bit of low ground so could I just open it up and have to stop? my stool looks great when they are open, we are looking at a couple of utilities.

I built this deck to really be for the season, so we see the sewer spillway here and there's a dump valve inside. I have the real one. flush valves for the gray and the black so the water stays in and this is just kind of a safety valve so when I go to flush I'm going to hook up my pipe open this then I'm going to go in and open the black and then the gray . and that sort of thing, but this means there's no water in this part here when it's frozen outside, so it's completely seasonal, plus we're looking at the tailpipe of my diesel heater, which has been fantastic.

I can review a little. a little diesel, heats up the whole thing works great on 12 volts and I really wish I had this when I started. It's pretty awesome to combine it with that diesel heater. I threw a canister in front here and connected it to the diesel heater. I've had a few thousand miles on this now, so it may not look great, but it works well, is held in very well, and the manual jack on the front doesn't move much. I'm going to convert this entire bumper tow system. to a gooseneck in January is going to be incredible, so this whole area is going to be reconfigured, but it's working for now.

I have the Anderson wheat timing hitch on there, yeah all I can say is for this ring size. I don't think this is enough, that's why I'm going to use a gooseneck, so now that we've seen the exterior and some of the nice features of the platform, let me take you inside and show you why it's the coolest Ford ever. has ever existed. Welcome to the interior we have just entered. and this door has a window but since I tend to like things on the darker side I just put up a curtain and it worked great so when starting in the kitchen area I wanted a medium sized sink but now it can be large for the majority. platforms, but it works very well for me.

I could have gotten a small bar sink, but it was too small and this seemed to be in the next few breaths. It's been great to continue moving forward. I have multiple electrical systems throughout the rig and anywhere near the water. I have GFCI outlets and I also thought it would be nice to charge a bunch of stuff in here so I have USB outlets behind me. Here's a window with blackout curtains and you know, nice big windows, but once. Again, most of the time I leave them closed just to the left of the sink. I have a custom cutout here that you can lift up and then you have access to the washer that I used yesterday and to go with the washer.

I have a dryer in the back, it's not a combo unit, they're separate, they're apartment sized and I thought it should fit a little better on the deck, so I have another window back here that's on the other side of one of those opening panels, but since I haven't been using it, I put some hooks in and just hung coats on there and that works best for me. I'm standing in the shower right now and these removed panels will show you that in a second, but I have access to more storage on both sides when it's not a shower and I also have the ten gallons of water down there since I like to drink good normal showers so let me set this up so now I'm standing in the showers set up as a shower since I built it myself I can place the shower head wherever I want and of course it's removable.

I built everything at this height to fit me because it's my kit and as you can see, these cubes come off. I have a residential shower pan down here and I just bought these rails that you can shape any way you want so they overlap one another and I have a residential shower pan that is 30 by 30 inches in size and it's wonderful, the The reason this can fall over is because the floor in the galley area is actually 10 and a half inches from the floor of the cargo trailer and so I was able to put the tanks inside and take advantage of that raised floor.

You could sink this shower a little to reach the subfloor. I use a glass suction on the wood laminate floor and it just stinks in there and I can get this stuff out and then I can access the flush valves that are on. the inside because I want it to be true for the season also down here I have a sump pump that is made for the marine industry and that is so I can choose to have my shower go directly outside or I can inflate it In the gray tank I also have a diesel heater down here as we mentioned from the outside and it just sucks air in from this area and then helps put it out by the door and it's wonderful when you're in cold weather so On the driver's side of the bed I have another window back there which I actually insulated and covered because once again I wasn't using them and instead installed a cabinet which is great for all the extra stuff you can put in there.

I have a microwave and a toaster oven, they are both secured to the wall so they don't go anywhere when I travel, they just stay there. I built more storage space, that's fun, what's really fun is that I have a freezer. on a slide so I'm not a carpenter but I ended up doing all my wood work here so I built the cabinets and the drawers and it was important for me to have good glides on the drawers so they could slide pretty easily and some of them they work better than others because I'm a newbie to this like this it doesn't go in as smoothly I have to push it and if you're wondering where the stove is since it's not visible here I decided to go with portable induction units I have two of them down here.

I take them out, put them anywhere I want on the counter and if I need to grab another one and thanks to that giant inverter on the back I can easily run it. Both are not a problem, so they are very efficient, they are lightweight. I can put them in the drawer when they are not needed and they have been working great so next to the freezer which is a 12 volt freezer. I have a 120 volt refrigerator and that means I have to have my inverter on all the time, but it doesn't really bother me because I have a big enough battery bank and enough solar power, it's not a problem.

I really like that he opens the door. refrigerator because you have access to everything easily when before having this platform I had a truck and when the propane refrigerator wasturned off, I put this freezer in it. I set it up as a refrigerator at the time, but it was always possible to reach around to get it. Really cumbersome after a while so I really wanted something with a door that opened like this. You can get them in 12 volt versions, but they cost five or six times as much and for that kind of money you're just throwing away a few more batteries. solar powered and then you have an easy refrigerator, the inside of the mini split is here and it just has pipes going in that direction and I have a little remote that I can use to set it to whatever temperature I want.

A drain was opened that way and for the air conditioning it works fine. This particular mini-split unit runs directly off my 48 volt battery. It does not go through the inverter. However, I would not recommend this particular model to anyone because I have had some problems. with it over the years, it is very efficient, although at its maximum setting it uses about 1200 watts, but it often drops to six hundred or three hundred or something like that, it runs very efficiently, it has variable stages that can be used, so after the equipment cools down which it does very quickly, then it will reduce the use of very little energy and just keep it comfortable here moving on this panel lift up and that's it, put the toilet because I thought I would be single forever that's how it was how my life was going so I built this rake and got a girlfriend so that's it but she has her own equipment so I installed a Dometic toilet it's a normal gravity flush toilet in a black tank which was just my choice.

Everyone has their own toilet options. Up here I hooked up a control panel so we can see what's going on with the inverter and the Vic Tron solar battery monitors the C level tanks well. I just filled them so both tanks are empty and I also have the controls for the diesel heater , so it's all in one place. I put all the brake light switches on the right. next to the door these are all 12 volt switches and I have them set to different zones so I can turn different zones on or off so you can probably see the lights changing on the camera and everything is on. a dimmer so it's probably getting really dark in here and then it comes back on and I can turn off the whole system and I wanted them near the door so I can get in or out and hit the switches easily up here.

I also have residential homes. one hundred and twenty volt light switches, so a lot of people ask where the bed is, where do you sleep, do you have the folding couch or something like that and no, I have what's called the Crypt. I love the Crypt because I wanted a space that was soundproof and lightproof and I got pretty close to those points. It has three different layers of sound insulation and eliminates most frequencies. Is really nice. I would like to have a really quiet sleeping environment and lots of people when I see this. there's about 50 50 some think, oh my God, that's horrible.

It would be claustrophobic. Other people say it's great. Can I come in and see? So let's show you what it looks like. I just moved the stairs out of the way, they're pretty light and then this thing just folds up and inside I have a queen size residential bed and like a couple of inches to spare I also have ventilation that goes in and out 24/7 , so sometimes I leave the door open. Sometimes I leave it closed and really enjoy the Crypt. It's a better sleeping experience for me because it's quiet and safe, so I usually don't go into the

crypt

wearing jeans and long sleeve shirts, but I'll show you how.

I go in, yeah, there's the jeans, so now that I'm on the side when I was building the Crypt, that's where it really felt like a fort experience and I felt like a little kid here, it's like the most amazing fort ever. the times and that is. where the name comes from welcome to the loft, the loft is my recharging space, it's where I can go and watch some TV or if I want I can have a lot of friends that I've done many times with, I think so. Several photos, we have like eight people on this couch.

The sofa was made by Home Reserve. I think that's the name and you can choose whatever sections you want. It's a real couch, it's not just like an RV couch that's three inches thick or something. It's really comfortable and to me that's the difference between living somewhere part-time on the weekends and living somewhere full-time. I wanted a real sofa and that is very important to me, so I made it happen. I also have a The coffee table has been with me for 20 years, it's a little too big for the space, but I had it, it was free because I'd had it forever and I liked it.

The colors match well with the rest of the team. I kind of went a little overboard on the TV, I'll give you that, but it's nice to have and I really enjoy a good sound system, so I have full surround sound with a subwoofer and the movies here are wonderful because you can sit back nicely . then they will have a big screen TV with great sound and that is just a great experience and if I didn't have that I would really miss it so since this is like I said my full time rig I wanted to have all the amenities. from home, thank you very much Michael for the tour of the most impressive fort of all time.

This is simply amazing. I love what you've done with 2000 watts of solar, the Crypt and your clever design for the subfloor, all the hiding places, all the interesting things there. Thank you very much for the tour and for letting us see the inside of his house. I now understand that you are starting a new business and endeavor. Briefly mentioned about yes, older AFE solutions. I found that every time I pulled out my power tool kit, it made me feel happy. I'm happy because I've been doing so many of these solar installations for people. I think we'll make a business out of this, so I'm happy to offer that now.

If you want to contact Michael, check out The description below will have contact links there so you can get in touch with him. Thank you very much for watching this tour today, savor the moment and see you in a future video tour.