VAN TOUR | DIY Sprinter Van Conversion with Full Bathroom | Gorgeous Tiny Home For Off Grid Living

Alright people, how are you doing? I'm James, I'm Sarah and we're also known as everyone or nothing. Welcome to Arvantor. When we bought the truck, it was just a standard panel truck and we added a couple of windows. which goes to the kitchen area and this one which goes to the bedroom area which also opens and has a small mosquito net. Another thing we added is these security locks, some dead spots, so it gives us a little more security they are separate from the normal locks on the van and we have them on these main doors, the sliding door on the side and the side of the passenger and driver in the cabin, this is our kitchen, come take a closer look, we made the decision that we were going to separate our

living

room from the cabin area, so we put up this insulated bulkhead wall, which It means the

living

room is a lot warmer because there's obviously a lot of glass in the front which also lets a lot of heat in and out.

It feels, I don't know, a little cozy in here, like it's not so much a van, um and it also meant that we could use this whole wall to build our furniture and our

bathroom

. Up here we have a large storage compartment. So this is where we divide the upper area from the cabin area and we store the things here that we don't use much on a day to day basis, so we store our summer clothes there. We kept our backpacks in there and then right in front here we kept Jay's guitar and the lines we have for the windows in the living room, but we didn't want to completely close off the cabin area so we put in this hatch. that if we're in the back and we need to get in the front to get out in any kind of emergency we can do and we can both go through this by the way we double check we'll take you through the kitchen now, which is my domain, I do almost everything I cook and this was probably the most important part of the van for me, so I'm going to walk you through one of the most popular ways to design a kitchen. triangular design and that is what we have chosen here, what it means is that you have a stove, your sink and your refrigerator, which are all in the shape of a triangle, which means that when you are cooking, everything is within your reach and you are not going around and wandering around different parts, not that you really couldn't have found it anyway, but besides being practical, we wanted it to look good too, so we went with these sticky subway tiles, they're not real tiles and the The reason behind this is that the actual tiles are quite heavy and we were worried that they might fall.

We also decided to go with a solid oak countertop, which may sound strange considering I was just talking about the weight, but it's only 22 mil thick, so it's not. actually so heavy it's about the same as a normal countertop made of mdf or a material like that and as Sarah mentioned before one of the reasons we blocked this bulkhead was so we could use the

full

width of this wall and that It means We have tons of space to prepare our food on this counter it's really wonderful, we custom design and build each cabinet in the kitchen area exactly to fit the space we have and I'll show you what we have in our drawers and cupboards .

This first draws our utensil drawer and has pretty much everything we need to cook up a storm in the kitchen. This middle one is our cutlery drawer and this end drawer is next to the

bathroom

we have all our toiletries and stuff. We have equipped all the cabinet drawers with ball catchers so that they do not move and open when we are in transit in this cabinet. We have all. For our dry foods we use containers like this just to make it really easy to grab everything we need, so we have all of our sauces in here and then in the back of this cupboard we have all of our dry staples. like rice, porridge, oatmeal, pasta, flour, beans, that kind of thing, this cupboard here is where we keep all our plates, bowls, cups, glasses and dropping boards, things like that.

We have lined each of the shells of this non-slip mat just to make sure nothing moves while we drive and so far it has worked perfectly, we haven't had any breaks. It took us a while to figure out exactly where everything should go, but now everything has its own place and fits like a The refrigerator we chose is a Dometic CRX-80 and it was very important to me that it not be a chest refrigerator. I wanted one that was as close as possible to a refrigerator you would find in a

home

. Approximately 80 liters and it also has a small ice box so you can put some ice cream or some ice cubes in there.

A nice feature of this refrigerator is that it also has a double lock to prevent it from opening while we are actually moving the refrigerator, it holds about 80 liters which for us is enough for a whole week of food. At the bottom we have the compartment for salads and vegetables and above that we have two shells that you can adjust the height to suit your needs and then right at the top we have an ice box. There's also plenty of room in the fridge door for things like drinks and milk, and there's another small compartment at the top, possibly the most important.

Part of our kitchen is our kitchen. We moved from a Thetford Triplex which has a three-burner hob. It also has an oven and a grill that has plenty of space. You can cook a roast or anything you want there. The kitchen works. our LPG tank and we designed the housing it sits in so that the gas connections are completely closed at the back and also has a gas outlet so that if there is a leak it goes straight through the floor of our van outward. Instead of being in our living space, under the kitchen, we have a small cupboard where we keep all of our pots and pans.

One thing that is absolutely essential when cooking in a van is ventilation, as it eliminates both condensation and any odors that are created when you are cooking. We chose this maximum air fan that draws in and blows out, has 10 speeds, works in the rain and It also has a cool little remote control, as we mentioned before having a proper kitchen was really important to us so putting in a small vanity sink wasn't going to be really practical. Instead we chose this big stainless steel bad boy, it's deep, wide and fits all our dinnerware, but because it's so big it's not.

We can just wash our dishes in there, we can also wash our clothes and we can also wash ourselves, brush our teeth and all that kind of stuff, obviously what you need for a big sink is a big faucet and this one is really great. there is your normal flow and there is also a spray flow which is useful for rinsing dishes and uses less water, but best of all, this faucet is extendable so you can direct it exactly where you need it on the sink that we have. a tidy sink that keeps all the bits of clothes clean and tidy and then underneath we have a washing container which is what we actually use to save a bit of water when we wash and in the socket room we have two strainers, the first one is quite fine and the second is larger.

We just want to make sure no bits of food get into the wastewater tank. A lower kitchen area. would be complete without a plan, say hello to a lovely spider plant, Rita, of course the sink goes a little way into the unit, but underneath we have a fairly large storage area where we keep all of our cleaning supplies and containers, and I. Anyway, I'll show you that this is our food waste container for all of our food scraps and our normal container. I love these containers for the way we spend way too much money on them, another one of these little stuffies to hold all our cleaning supplies. together and also here we have some spare toilet paper and a vacuum cleaner that fit perfectly and here is our bathroom, come take a look, the walls and ceiling here are made of PVC coating slot. together to make it waterproof and the floor is just a standard wet room floor and then we have a drain that goes directly through the floor of the van and into the wastewater tank that is hung underneath so it's right under the van . the shower area and the sink area here on our mixer tap here we have hot and cold water and then as you can see we have a shower curtain that appears because we have our extractor fan right outside so when we're taking a shower, all the steam comes straight out of there and through the extractor fan in the ceiling, also here we have our toilet which is the Thetford 365 porta potty so we take it out when we shower like we normally do.

We go to the bathroom about every five to seven days, but we also use one of these to pee, which means the bathroom doesn't fill up as quickly. This area is probably the most versatile part of the van and it's also where we spend a lot of time because we eat, I was going to say sleep, we don't sleep here, uh, work, play, most of our afternoons are spent here so we try to squeeze in as much as possible in this small space, so let me show you the show. How does it all work? Our seats are made of a material called durafoam and I think they are 10 centimeters thick and we designed the covers to have a zipper that comes off so we can wash them if necessary as well. under the seats we have a storage area, the seats just lift up like this, the main thing we keep in this is our dirty clothes, so we have two bags, one for our dark clothes and then one for our whites, and just sit back there out of the way so we can't smell them, they stink exactly the same on this side, so this seat goes up and in this space we have our control panel and our diesel air heater, this controller here is for our solar panels.

That tells us how much electricity comes out of them and also how much charge is left in our batteries. This is for our LPG tank. That tells us how

full

it is here for our water supply, so this side is. to know how much water we have in our fresh water tank and that is the waste tank so it only works when it is full a red light will come on this is more of an indicator to tell you how full it is. The controller here is for our air heater, the diesel heater, but it's actually also powered by a little remote control that we use mostly and then coming out to the front, here we have our 240 volt mains supply for it to charge things. like our laptops and I think J's vacuum cleaner and hair clipper turn off and that's it.

This is the vent for the air heater. Obviously you just saw it there, so this just directs. You can rotate it a little so you can get air. going in different directions and right here we have a 12 volt outlet for it to charge. I don't know a lot of things. Our phones talk. All. This is probably my favorite part of Van Jazee's cooking, as you know, but I think this one. It's really clever how we did it. This is the table so it's a really comfortable area to work in that we work full time at so we both have plenty of space for our laptops.

A really versatile area, like I say, we eat here and we play. Here on a night there's a really nice space on the table and then here we have storage space so we keep most of the things in these little storage containers so they're really easy to put in and out and we can access to the things below. It is my absolute favorite part so we created this area as a sofa area so there is more space to sit and relax but also to be an extra bed, if we ever have a visitor staying over they are welcome to join us and sleep here on the couch.

There's also another storage area because underneath, this drawer holds all of our towels in their box, just general storage. Up here we have the most important part that allows us to work full time while traveling, which is our Internet. This little device here is a mini router that has a SIM card and is connected to an external antenna that goes through the top of the closet and out the top of the van, but we'll show it to you when we're on the roof and it's very A carbon monoxide detector is important for safety. Now that we're in the bedroom, we opt to put in a fixed bed instead of one that we have to make up every night, because well, first, for two reasons.

Most of all we just couldn't have to do that, we are too lazy, we live it full time and don't want to have to do that every night before we go to bed and secondly it means I have a lot of garage space underneath , which we will show you in a moment. We also chose to place the bed lengthwise rather than widthwise and the reason for this is that it doesn't really fitin those shapes, so we have had to wrinkle it and that makes it much more comfortable for us to be able to stretch completely. We chose a standard size double mattress and decided to also put it on slats instead of just a flat board and The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, it is a little more comfortable because they have a little spring and also because of the ventilation from below and it is very comfortable.

We love sleeping in this bed. In fact, I spend probably about 90 of my time in this truck in this bed in this bed will never get me out of this, that's true, while it's winter, you're usually there working and I'm down here at the table, you might Have you seen this little friend lurking off to the side. From me this is romantic, he is really like me, we both have a full height wardrobe and we designed it so that it actually falls below the height of the bed which means we have enough space to put long clothes so Sarah can place dresses.

I can place shirts and they hang all the way down. We have a Here's a his and hers kind of thing, so this side is Sarah's side and this side is mine. I'll explain to you what we can fit in our closets in my closet. I pretty much only keep sweaters, jackets and shirts in the In the top compartment I keep all my underwear and again we keep them organized with these, what are caddies? I don't know, just keep it organized with these organizers, so that's all my socks and that's my box of shorts in the second one.

Downstairs I have all my t-shirts and my vests, roll them up to get a lot of space and as you can see, I mean I also have a lot of leftover space and on the bottom one I have some bulkier items and like my gym clothes and things like that, these doors covers on the bottom come completely from jay cleveland he made them that way because there's a lot of storage there, it reaches quite far down, like I was saying about the closets because the depth of them means you can go in there and search and grab your things, like that In my compartment here I have my underwear, socks, pants, stockings, pajamas, a couple of sweaters here, I have my blouses and gym things, it seems so.

I have a lot more clothes than Jay, I don't know why you would think they would take up more space, less space because my clothes are smaller, but oh well, and on top I have pants, jeans, dungarees, sweaters, all that kind of stuff. We deliberately placed this window just above the level of the bed so that when we are lying in bed we can see through it if there is a good view or see the sunrise now to stand out a little more. We actually decided to frame it in wood and then to make it practical we put in this shelf which is like a nightstand for me and I can also put my morning coffee on this mat because these windows are made of tinted privacy glass which in You can't actually see it from the outside unless it's dark outside and we have a light inside, so if we don't want anyone to see inside or we don't want the light coming in in the morning.

When we wake up, we have a small blind that We can place it here and it blocks everything that comes from the outside and gives us a little more privacy. We also have one that goes on this window here, that just pops out and sticks around the edges little magnets one of my favorite features of the bedroom area are these little reading lights and they have two light settings, but they also have two USB chargers Integrated on each side so we can plug in our phones or any other device. that we need to charge, you may have noticed our low beams on the roof and we have several of these throughout the van and we debated a lot which type to buy and in the end we went with the ones that are touch-sensitive so you can touch them, you can turn them off, but also you can dim them by holding it up and you can light them up again and what it does is we can create different areas inside the van so we have the bed area and We can dim it and keep it low if we want we can also make the seating area a little bit brighter and we can have spotlights on right above the kitchen if we want, so it's very useful, um, the reason we weren't sure. about them is because we thought maybe it would be a little annoying to have to go around turning them all off at night but it's such a small space it didn't work out like that at all now above my head we have our ceiling it's light and we really love it, not really We were planning on putting one in, but when we put the fan in the front we saw how much light it opened up in the space, so we decided we wanted one in the back too.

We love looking at the stars at night and this ceiling light allows us to do so from the comfort of our bed. It is also excellent for ventilation and when it is very hot we can open it wide, remove the fan from the front and it comes out. a good draft, it's a max air model and it has both a blind and a moznit and you can have them half and half too if you want, we don't tend to use the blind at all because we prefer We also wake up to natural light, but in summer we tend to pass the moznet just to give us a little extra protection.

What's up now with that dog running around covered in mud on the ground? Great, can you even make it? Zoom in, it's over there, okay, another feature you may notice behind me here is our security camera, which is great, it works with our Wi-Fi and it detects motion, so if someone comes through the door it's pointing toward the side door or even drive by, we get an alert on an app on our phone that tells us something has happened, so we can see it, we can save that video and if someone broke in and stole our truck, then we know who it is, so we don't Do it.

Don't even bother trying this side. I have my reading light and my morning coffee rack. This also comes out and is kind of a secret storage box for me so I can keep things in there and on this side Jay has a little bit of storage. area where he keeps his books, headphones, pieces and things like that that come back outside, we have a little storage area here for shoes, I think we'll probably keep it, we don't really have anything in there. At the time we thought about leaving it open so it wouldn't be wasted space and then under here we have some cables that run from the battery bank all the way to the back to the cabin in the front where we have our batteries for the battery charger under this seat.

There's more storage area here, so in this first compartment we keep our shoes and then in the second one is our battery for the battery charger, so what it does is it takes the excess charge from our truck's engine battery. . and puts it on the back of our leisure bank battery, we have to drive to run the battery to the battery charger, so we usually have to go between 40 and 50 miles per hour, you can't just do it while the fan is inactive. It's not our primary way of charging the batteries, we'll talk a little more about that in a moment, but I just want to show you here that we have a backup camera that we installed because the truck didn't come with one.

That was one of the first things we put in so that it obviously fixes there and the cables go through the back where the camera is near the rear door and this is the false ceiling that we put in to create the storage space that is accessed . From the closet door, just above this hatch area in the kitchen department, we covered the walls and this with carpet to match the rest of the interior of the cabin. Well, let's show it to you in our garage. Having a fixed bed means that we have a large storage space underneath where we can store all sorts of essential things.

There are some tools, a food storage box, spare toilet paper, toilet fluid, walking sticks, yoga mats, a recycling bag, folding chairs, various other useful pieces. okay let's take a closer look at this is our on off switch for our water pump this is the switch for our water heater that heats it to 50 degrees or 70 degrees and this is our fill point water where we put fresh water. Well, this side first of all, this is our water section. So we have our 100 liter fresh water tank right at the back, we have our water pump and the accumulator here is our water heater and then right to the side there are gas pipes coming out of the LPG tank.

I sat underneath basically directly where I'm sitting and that feeds this and the oven in the front and this little thing here is the gas outlet exactly the same as the one we were talking about in the front which is under the stove right here. We have our diesel tank for our air heater, just above the back is the fuel pump and lastly here we have our electrical system so we have our leisure battery bank that comes out at 330 amp hours. We have our 500 watt inverter that powers our main outlet in the living room. We have our 12 volt fuse box so almost everything goes out.

This is our refrigerator. The fan. The oven clicker. USB points. Turning on the diesel heater, turning on the water heater basically and then the power, it's the solar panels, obviously, I mentioned we have the battery to the battery that comes from the front, but that's our backup load for the power bank. batteries, the main thing is our solar panels. This is the MPPT that converts the electricity coming out of the solar panels into 12 volts so the battery bank can use it. This is just an isolated switch so we can turn that section on and off if we need to work on the solar panels.

In the middle, we have many different circuit breakers so you can isolate each part of the circuit. If you need to work on a new roof, we have 450 watts of solar panels that are the main way. from charging our accounting batteries, the other thing that's up here is our external antenna and that connects to our pocket wifi, we show you the inside and it keeps us online wherever we go, okay guys, that's our

tour

band finished, be sure to tell us what. you think about our house in the comments and if you have any questions we would love to chat with you there too and don't forget to hit the thumbs up button if you enjoyed the video and also subscribe because we're going to be producing a lot more content on how we actually built the van and that will be available coming soon.

See you and then goodbye.