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You Wont Believe What's Inside This Incredible Camper Van! (Home on the Road #2)

Feb 27, 2020
(soft music) Hi, I'm Clare. I am 64 years old. I live full time in my truck, which is a Fiat Ducato Maxi, 2016, turbo diesel. I live completely off the grid with solar power and a lithium system. Come and take a look inside! This is my truck. And my truck has a name and it's called Mouse House. And there are a couple of little mice in there. Would you like to come inside? (latch creaks) Come in! Well,

this

part of the van is probably

what

makes it a little different from other vans. When the white doors close, it's just a traditional van, but when it's open, it's a beautiful little house, with windows that open, actually.
you wont believe what s inside this incredible camper van home on the road 2
This one opens in one direction, and

this

one here, opens in another direction, so I can get breeze from, oh, that's nice, actually, from

what

ever direction it's coming from. Behind that window is my office. In fact I kept it because I had it in my house and I loved it. And it's just a cabinet but it has a pull-out shelf, which is great for a keyboard because I really like working with the iMac standing up. There is a lot of equipment here. You could call this my office. You could call the first three drawers my office.
you wont believe what s inside this incredible camper van home on the road 2

More Interesting Facts About,

you wont believe what s inside this incredible camper van home on the road 2...

You could call the bottom drawer a tool shed. (laughs) I had a house and a mortgage. And as you know, being an artist your income is not much. So I thought, "Well, if I have something small and beautiful" that I own without a mortgage, "that will make me feel a lot better" than having four empty rooms and a mortgage, "and then the maintenance." So, I sold the house, paid the mortgage, bought an empty van and found people who would do what I wanted to do. I needed it to be beautiful. I needed it to be clever.
you wont believe what s inside this incredible camper van home on the road 2
I needed it every time I came in, I liked it and I do it. This little door, if you knock (knocker knock), takes you to Narnia, no, it doesn't really. Take you to my taxi. I can climb up there if I want, or I can reach whatever I need. And that is a heat resistant curtain to prevent cabin heat from entering here. It's really well insulated. I think I have double insulation in the ceiling, floor and walls. Everything is well isolated. That's good to keep whatever heat there may be that way. On this side, here we have the kitchen.
you wont believe what s inside this incredible camper van home on the road 2
I like to cook, so I have a lot of spices and knives. This is my pantry. This one here, the towel rack, can stay on. (laughs) So the drawer I take out is quite long. I have a lot, I have all the spices there, and I have all the sauces, olive oils and various bits there. And the one down here has a hot water system in the back, but it also stores things like coffee beans, a coffee grinder, and a fire extinguisher. The hot water system, I just flip a switch, the gas turns it on and it goes on until I have hot water.
A three-burner stove, an oven rack, and one or two pots and pans. They're probably really messy, but I live in my truck. I live in it, so this is what they look like when you live in them. A few pots and, no, a few plates and things. Oh, and there is a very large closet here. It occupies the entire width of the van. You can store many more things up here. So I spent about a year researching, reading, looking at tiny houses, looking at truck builds and picking up little pieces of them until I came up with this design.
I used these books and drew a lot. Ah, there you go. There's the photo of my truck. Can you see that? These, well, anyway, they are not very clear because they are in pencil, but that's how it happened. I think maybe three or four of these books, and I designed them to the millimeter. So every millimeter of this truck is my design. And I was lucky to find it. I kept looking until I found someone to build it. And I found a young couple called Roaming Wild Campers, and they're based in a vineyard in Mudgee. Well, I remember I paid 26,000 for the van.
It had 160,000 kilometers. I'm pretty sure everything inside, including bathroom, refrigerator, stove, extra insulation, maybe 45,000. So maybe around 70,000 or more. This is my sink. It was once a canning jar when I had a house, an old French copper canning jar. Taps that I found in the garden, on an old enameled sink installed. And this, I think is cedar, the whole bench, cedar wood with live edges. Water comes from a 70 liter fresh water tank below, and there is also a 70 liter gray water tank. Personally, I use a container in my sink and if there are dry patches in the grass, I prefer to dump the water out rather than store it in a tank, but I do have a tank.
Below that, we have the usual dishwashing liquid, wow, cupboard type of stuff. And then the Atomic lives there when I travel. Enough cutlery for an army even though I live alone. (laughs) I couldn't leave everything! Some of these cutlery are really lovely. Another drawer and another down there, a few more pieces. To know what I needed in the van, I wrote down what I did in each part of the day since I woke up, to make sure I had those things. I had a place to brush my teeth. I had a place to get up to work on the computer because I like to stand.
So I just thought about what I did and what I really liked doing, and what I would be missing if I didn't have it. This part of the bench is where I can cook things and have a lot of space. But underneath, it rises. Look, there are a couple of hinges. And this is actually my bathroom. So this will stay here. Here I can put a shower curtain, and inside I have a composting toilet, it doesn't have any chemicals. And I also have a shower that I can hang here. It has a trigger, so I don't use too much water.
May I, would you like to see some water? Let's see how the water flows. Of course, there is a drain hole there. I turn on the tap, taps quite moving. And... (water hissing) There, water. And the bomb of all this is under my bed. So it's underneath, around that area, and the pump goes through this and through the taps here. So that's a two-in-one thing. I have extra bench space, I have a bathroom, and I have storage. Living intentionally is definitely a big part of it. That's how it is. You know how much water you have on board, so you are water conscious.
You know how much sunlight has been on the solar panels, so you know how much power you have. So sometimes, like if I was parked here for a long time and there was a lot of shade, I probably wouldn't use the coffee grinder. I could do it by hand. (laughs) Maybe I'll drink tea that day. (light music) And here is the living room. I'll close this door and show you. Then I'll close the door here. Open the window, let in some air. Here we go. I guess this is my multipurpose living area. These things hang here, towels, a jacket.
I have a small library. And this, so that I can sit here, and I can take out this table and eat in a fairly civilized way. I can also invite a friend and put a folding chair there. And that's that part. I'm sitting in the refrigerator, which is, I think it's about 50, ah, there you go, it's Bushman 52 liters. Currently the temperature is three degrees. At the end of this part is... Well, this is everything related to solar energy, which, honestly, other than telling you that there is a 200 amp hour lithium battery, and there are other things. (laughs) There are other things and everything works.
Oh, now you're looking straight into the bedroom. (laughs) So, without moving much, we reached the bedroom. Up there, my clothes closets. Right now we have a disco in the glass, which is quite nice. My bed, although it looks big, is a single bed. Because behind this bed I have more storage space, so there are more cabinets behind it. (soft guitar music) This is a great skylight. I think at the time it was the biggest thing I could get. And I can wind this up so high that if I want, I can stand on the bed and take night photos from there.
I'll just show you how the cover of the two things, remove the disco. This can recede and this prevents the full moon from keeping you up all night. (laughs) The only drawback is when it rains a lot. And I think other people in vans will say the same thing. I'm lucky that I like to work a lot with photography and sometimes small films, so I'm busy. Single women living in a van, that's the first question, is it safe? Will I be safe? And a good idea is to have a way to get from the back of the cabin to the cabin and away.
It is a good idea. If you park in a spot you're not sure about, don't take out the awning, just get ready to go. I'll show you what's under my bed from the back of the truck. Now to start, on one side I have LP gas storage and I have two large cylinders one behind the other. When the first one runs out, I just turn the tap and run the back one until I change it again. That's really helpful. You don't want to run out of gas halfway through cooking. And on this side, this is another solar panel.
So I can put chairs, tables in these spaces. Even the rear doors are also insulated under these panels. And me personally, they're not the most ingenious things, they work very well. This van is only six meters long and has a bathroom, kitchen, living room, bedroom and storage room. (laughs) It has a six-meter plot. Buy a van, get a van, do it, plan it. Plan it, spend some time, draw it. Calculate what you want because I think it's a little difficult to keep buying and selling vans because you've made a mistake. Do it, life is too short to know, at some point in the track he says, "I wish I had." Test it. (upbeat music) - Thanks for watching episode two of Home On The Road.
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out the others in the series. And if you want to help me continue making episodes, consider supporting me on Patreon. There are pretty interesting rewards and you can contribute for just one dollar a month. So thanks again for watching and I'll see you in the next video.

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