VAN TOUR | Space Saving DIY Van Conversion With INNOVATIVE HIDDEN Shower And FLOATING Bed

Hi, we're on the Laura and this is a van

tour

of our self-converted Citron Relay. I hope you enjoy it. First, this is the cabin area of ​​the van and we decided to separate it from the living

space

since we only wanted two. separate areas and also for security reasons and because we have a lock on the front door here and we were able to close it and then people can't see the inside of the van either, so come and I will show you the living

space

for First things first, To my right, here we have our

shower

.

When we were researching

shower

s, we found that the general consensus was that they love showering in the van, but they take up a lot of space and end up getting used to storage, so what? We decided to do to overcome this: have a shower that folds, so let me show you how it works. First we unlock it here and then both doors open here and we have our shower tray that folds out at the bottom. So to do this you just flip these two areas over and then you just fold it down and we put these two doors together and they're held together with the pole that goes along the top and this shower curtain will come down and it will have magnets around the edge to prevent water from entering the van, we also have these two seals that are inserted on both sides just to prevent water from entering the van and the water from causing damage to things, so to store it we do the same but in reverse to for the shower tray to return. up and back into the holes and then we just closed the two doors and you would never know it was there so next is our bulkhead and storage area so this is actually the factory bulkhead that came with the truck we just cut out A hole. out of it to make a front door, like we said, split the front and the back, then up here we have the parcel shelf, which was also the factory one, we just keep the bedding here and the toiletries on the shelves that Ryan made above in In this back corner we have a deeper shelf where we keep our electrical connection Point connector and that is stored there and then we also have these reclaimed scaffold board casings just to put little things like toothbrushes and plants to make the place look. better too and above us we have our max air fan, which brings air in and out and is great for ventilation and reducing condensation in the van and then we have our wardrobe next to it so if we take a look here we both have a shelf each with a drawer each and we also have our longer clothes stored at the bottom and there is also space at the bottom for bags and such.

Behind the closet is our electrical closet and Ryan is going to talk to you for a little bit. a little bit about that now, so the arteries are under the driver's seat, we have 230 amps of Asian lead-carbon batteries and there are three ways to charge them, so one is you can connect up to 240 at 5 volts, which powers this fuse board. I have a battery charger underneath here that would then charge the batteries directly if you have our main way of charging the batteries, which is on all the time, is our model mppt solar charge controller. We have 600 watts of solar on the roof that I'll show you later, which goes through the charge controller and then powers the batteries and then we also have a Victron battery to charge the battery, so when we're driving and the alternator is on, the current also goes to The leisure batteries, our 12 volt system that runs throughout the van, come from these fuse boards, so we have the series, everything that runs on 12 volts here and then the 240 plugs volts that you can see at the top here in the At the time they are powered from the inverter which is just below this step, but if you connect to 230 240 volts, then this automatic changeover changes and then all the plugs are They feed from the connection we are in.

I could talk about the electrical system. for 20 minutes, but that's a brief overview of everything we have. If you want to know more, let me know. This is our block countertop with an insert that doubles as a cutting board and fits right above our seat. I think we have our faucet that runs hot and cold water and it also has filter points so we know that wherever we are we also have fresh, clean drinking water and that also connects to our 66 liter suspended fresh water tank, so We move on to our jump. a two-burner hob that works with our 38 liter LPG tank that is under the van and that also powers our oven and grill that we have, it is a perfect size to place the pizzas that we like and is enough for two of us Next to our refrigerator, we have a refrigerator-freezer.

We find that in the summer we need ice cream so our freezer section is perfect to put our ice creams in and then we have enough space underneath to store our food that we can store. Five six days worth of food for the two of us here so there's plenty of room for the things we need and yes a nice little refrigerator so there are appliances and Brian will now tell you about the rest of the kitchen. oh, overhead storage, we have our pots and pans to cook our dry goods and a generous amount of hot sauce.

Every cabinet or drawer, they all have this locking mechanism here, so you push it to lock it and what that means is you can't open it. It's so that nothing can fall out when you're driving, so you have this magnet and that allows you to open it if you park somewhere, push it to close it, it means you can continue opening and closing it. We have these against us. Re recovers scaffolding boards with a custom made stand that prevents anything from falling, I have one here and then one on that side, this side holds food and then that side just holds books and miscellaneous things in the center compartment, so that the one above acts. as extra counter space or cutting board, it also has a hole in the back, so what it means is that if you have food waste open in this drawer when you are cutting, your weight can go straight into the container, This drawer has a compartment. for cutlery glasses and plates all plates have individual slots all felt lines glasses and cutlery are also felt lined to minimize noise these are all our utensils pot handles scales knives and then a storage compartment felt for the bowls as well and then the last one in this section is just our bins with extra storage on the side to maximize as much as possible and then they move to the toe area again to maximize space, this is where we keep all of our spices and then under the refrigerator.

It's just where we keep sundries like nail lines and regret, this is our toilet. The initial plan was to try to have the toilet here, so I was going to have the oven, the refrigerator, but after buying both, I realized that was not possible, so the toilet goes here, it can be removed, so I you lift up and put it on the other side but that's where the toilet lives so the last thing we have in this area is our control panel our utility board so we have our solar screen our inverter on off the control from the propex a reading of how much water we have and then a series of buttons this one controls the light right underneath this one is free at the moment so if we need to plug something in we can and then we turn off the gas and then we turn off the water pump.

This is just a master switch, so if we want to turn off all 12 volt appliances, we can turn it off. You can also remove the key instead of preventing people from tampering. with it and we also have these remote controls so it controls a max air fan and then these controls, we have LEDs around the perimeter of the van so you can change the ambient lighting colors etc. so we have more storage space above the wheel arches. We have one here behind the couch that stores all of our camping gear, so our chairs, our table, and our camp kitchen.

This is also a storage box where we keep our laundry bag and other things like our hammock and stuff so they get stored there and then under the couch. We also have some drawers that store all the things that we don't need to access frequently because it's not the easiest to reach and here is our The couch is the perfect place to watch TV and now this one was designed by Ryan and his dad and everything that is works like a concertina so it can be lifted up and it forms our bed system and that just means that the end here is connected to These two metal connection points balance on the top and as it is also a concertina, it also means that we can fold it completely and have all this beautiful floor space to work with, so let's show it to you in bed. mode so this is it when the bed is up as you can see it's a lovely size we managed to keep it double wide we only lost two inches along the length but about six foot one and it can still fit so perfectly in there and There is also plenty of space underneath.

We've managed to get Ryan's sister to stay on a single air bed too underneath so you can sleep three in here and if you want to see a deeper version or a video of the bed, please do. just let us know in the comments and we'll put it together for you, but for now let's save this and show you the rest of the truck, so I'll quickly show you our table setup in the tailgate, which is currently open. It's a beautiful day in Turkey right now we have this, again, we're going up scaffolding and we've coated it on the inside, so what it means is that when it's on the wall, it doesn't stand out too much.

We have the lagun table system attached which means when it's attached you can turn out to see Campbell through the van and then whenever you want you can sit on the couch, have lunch, work etc. and then another feature where we have the cold plate is another mounting point for the leg so you can move this back and then you can have the table out. We have a portable stove so we can put this on. Here we have a barbecue in the back, we have a barbecue, a cut point underneath, um, so you can use this to cook with the knife.

Another feature that we've incorporated is just these wooden boxes here, so use a place to store shoes or someone. both sides of the van, so mine must be the top one, these are not mine and then we have the bottom one, which is for Laura's shoes, hooked to store the towels and then what we do is we go up to the roof. and we will also show you the exterior of the truck. To my right, here's our barbecue hookup point, as Brian mentioned, and our outdoor shower. The outdoor shower is great because it runs on hot and cold water and both items are perfect when it's really hot outside and you just want to be outside the van.

Another thing we tried to do was make it look as still as possible for Incognito, so we didn't want any water or gas connection points on the outside of the van. So we designed this board, you have your water connection here, your gas connection here, your gray waste and your cool little waist there so that it slides when you're not using it and then when you need to fill it up. up or down, you slide it down like this and then these locks hold it in position so it doesn't slide down while you're driving, it keeps it out so no one knows what some people know like it's possible that it's a camper. and then behind the passenger seat we have a telescopic ladder that allows us to go up to the roof, so this is our roof area.

We have it separated into roof deck in the front and solar panels in the back and this roof deck area is simply made of marine ply and then dyed and the color we wanted and it fits around our max air fan . This part of the roof deck lifts up and what we do is simply attach adjustable straps and to the four anchor points. that we have around and what that means is we can adjust how high or low we have this kind of rear area and then we can sit back and admire the view in front of us wherever we're parked and then again we just lower it back down. and we fasten it on both ends with velcro just to make sure it's secure when we drive around the back of the roof.

We have two 295 watt panels running in parallel, so about 600 watts total are connected through the Y branch below and then through the roof in the back and then go to the charge controller in the front, which which we showed you, they are a little dirty at the moment, we have been at the beach for about three days so I could use a little cleaning but this has been more than enough for our needs. NoWe have not had to log in even once while we were away. We've been away for about five and a half months so the solar panels teamed up with the battery to the battery charger the charges are driving this is more than enough around these so that's it for the roof and that concludes our van

tour

.

Thank you very much for watching our van tour. I hope you liked it and if you liked it be sure to give it a like and we would really appreciate a subscription as well as we hope to post more content from both our travels and our van, if there are many things we like the list is not It was rushed, but we opted to do it as quickly as possible to make sure this video isn't too long, but if there is anything you want to see in more detail, like the sleeping platform on the bed or the electrical system, please let us know and then we can expand it.