Hello, my name is Saga. I live full-time together with my husband in our self-converted camper van.
We are completely off grid and we just finished it, so today I thought I'd show you around.
And here in the entranceway we have this mosquito curtain that I made, and then we're protected from
sand flies, mainly, not mosquitoes. So here we also have a little shelf that I made. This is
basically our entire entrance way, we don't have much else here. So this is our kitchen
which is probably my favorite part of the van. We did actually buy another bench top to use,
but it was too heavy, so I just decided to go for a pine. And this is just oiled with hemp oil,
so it's completely natural, and the great thing about that is that if it gets like scratched or if
it starts looking dull you can just super easily sand it down a little bit, and then oil it again
and it will be as new. So the first thing you see here is our Berkey filter. We filter all of
our water since it's staying in a plastic jug. These were incredibly expensive to buy online,
but I just took the same design and decided to make one myself.
Over here we also have another little shelf that I made from plywood off cuts.
And I also have these, these are just two coasters I made from cut offs from the cork flooring,
so we use them for our two mugs when we have tea or hot drinks, and they fit perfectly in there.
And over here we have our sink. It's an old bar sink and it costs us $30 NZD, so very affordable,
we just had to change this plug in the middle because that had, yeah it was completely ruined.
For our water we didn't want to put electricity in here because it seemed unnecessary to have hot
water just to do the dishes, so we just have a foot pump for cold water and it works like
this. It's super easy, super easy to use, and it uses way less water. So we have a whale foot pump
and we have a whale tap that I think is normally used for boats. And instead of paper towels we
just have these Swedish dishcloths, which are very cheap in Sweden but very expensive in New
Zealand. We started our design process basically at the same time as we got the van. We weren't
quite sure of what we were doing, so we sort of designed it as we went, but overall the design
process was pretty straightforward. I designed the entire van myself including the plumbing setup,
and the electricity. We're very lucky since we're so minimalist so we didn't need that much storage,
so fitting everything in a van was actually a lot easier than I first thought. So in the
first compartment here we have our water tanks and our plumbing situation. So we have two 25
litre water tanks, one for clean water and one for gray water. That's also the minimum requirement in
New Zealand to be able to Freedom Camp legally. It also means we need to have this air vent that goes
out through the floor of the van. And also need to have this, I don't know if you can see it,
but this just trapped for odors in the gray water. We also keep our brush here, so this is how we
clean the floor and the front and the back of the van. So in here we have all our drawers where we
keep most of the food storage. In this first one, these are just cool out drawers made from plywood.
So we have spices, supplements, we have a wooden chopping board that's made from the exact same
pine as everything else. In the next drawer we keep our our plates and bowls. I guess that's the
benefit of minimalism, is that we only have two each, so we don't need more. This is one of the
other new things we got, enamel dish ware. And in the last drawer we just have our fridge. This is a
36 litre compressor fridge, that's absolutely big enough for us, and it runs off our 12 volt system,
so just off our solar panel. Anything that needs to be keep cool we keep in here. [Music]
And to keep our drawers shut whilst we drive we just use these bungee cords.
Super low tech and super affordable solution. So I just put one screw here on each side, I believe it
was a 32 millimeter screw, and then just hook these in like so and it keeps the drawers so
secure when driving. [Music] Super secure, less than five dollars, and so low tech and low cost
that I basically can't break, so really nice. And then over here is our last compartment. We thought
a lot about whether to, what to do basically with this random little space. But I'm happy we kept
it because this meant we could put my yoga mat just standing in there, which makes it very easy
to grab. And because it's so snugly fit nothing moves around on the road or anything like that.
And here I just put in a regular hook, another 32 millimeter hook, on that here we hang our onions
and garlics and some oranges, any fresh fruit or produce that doesn't need to go in the fridge.
So very easy to just hang it straight in there, and it saves space in the rest of the kitchen.
Building the van we were very fortunate to find a place where we could park it after we'd bought it.
Since we were living in an apartment and didn't have any family around we were able to park our
van at the same place that my husband worked, and where I used to work. So from getting the van and
hitting the road it took us a total of five months of just very intense self-building time. We had no
experience whatsoever basically, apart from my limited experience with sewing, but we learned
so much on the process and I am very proud that we did it ourselves instead of paying someone else to
do it. And that was a really important aspect for me, and also financially to keep the cost down.
At the back of the van we have my favorite part which is our sofa and our living room.
This is also our main storage area, our bedroom, and our dining/working area. Up here is one of
the only decorations that we have. [Music] And over here we have a swivel table in the middle.
This is just a DIY swivel table, and this is just all plumbing material which made it a lot
more affordable. The sofas are also our main storage area, as you can see we don't have any
overhead storage, so this is really our main storage. We keep all sorts of things in here.
I just have to move the pillow away to open it and then we just had a little handle here.
This is our main storage area, we open this a few times a day so it's good to have easy
access. We also have all my dresses because I don't wear them on a regular basis in the van,
so I keep them here, Documents, I have bulk shampoo and conditioner, toothpaste to last
for a long time, extra soap and stuff like that, and also a little tool box in a trash can. We
need to have a trash can to be legally certified to be a self-contained camper van, so that's why
we have that there. So this is our other storage area, it's actually, you can open them with the
cushions on, but it makes it very easy if you just pop that off. Here we just got a handle.
So in here we have our bed sheet, we just have one so we do laundry once a week,
So we have a five centimeter latex topper pad that goes all over the bed at night,
so just makes it into a really thick and comfortable mattress. [Music] And then
underneath here, hidden in the corner, is stuff we basically never touch. So the u-compartment is
the easiest one to open, so as you can see we just have one cushion here open just like so.
So this is actually just laminated plywood pieces, so I believe it is six and four
millimeter laminated together, and you can see here on the underside that there are lots of
different pieces. We were pretty minimalist before moving into the van, so basically everything apart
from a few small items that we had in our rental apartment we do also fit in our van. So we don't
have anything in storage apart from two empty suitcases that I did not want to fit into the
design. So we do keep them in storage, but they're completely empty and we would only
get them in case we want to travel abroad again. In here we have our electricity compartment.
So I made it into two parts so that the top half doesn't really have any of the battery
or any of the electrical stuff, it just has the solar charge controller and a fuse because our
solar panel is 340 watts, so pretty big. Then I also decided to put our light switch in here,
so this turns on and off the ceiling lights, simply because I thought this one was pretty
ugly and we didn't want to pay more for a fancier looking one, so I decided to
just put it in here and it's worked fine. And we keep all our toiletries in here as well. [Music]
And then below here we have chargers for both our phones and computers, so they just go
from the battery up, and then up here we have, keep our computers. So that's the top cabinet.
This is the last thing I built in the van. And down here we have the bottom cabinet.
So we are completely off grid, it's a super, super simple setup. So we have a 340 watt solar
panel that goes into our charge controller, down here we have 120 amp hour battery. So
it's a 12 volt system, which we have a fuse box, in here we also have a phone charger,
and for the 240 volt appliances we use a 300 watt inverter.
So in here we would charge our computers, my husband's shaver, and our camera. I think that's
everything we have that's 240 volts. All the lights, the appliances we use, the fridge, our
other lights everything in here runs off 12 volt. So the cost of the project for the van, just the
van itself, that was $13850 New Zealand dollars. So we got that second hand, and it used to be a
school van so luckily it was very well taken care of, but we had to get rid of a lot of the stuff
that was already in the van. The conversion itself then cost us an additional $7505 New Zealand
Dollars, given that we did all the labor ourselves and we were also able to keep the costs down a
little bit further. In front of our electrical compartment we also have our composting toilet.
We haven't decided a place to put it yet, so that's why it's here, and we attach it with bungee
cords whilst we drive, simply because the New Zealand regulation on composting, or on toilets
and off-grid vans is changing. So maybe there'll be new regulations in early 2023 which means we
might move it over to the other side. So we're keeping it there for now. It works really, really
well, we haven't had any problem with it and it feels so much more hygienic and cleaner than
a chemical toilet. So we really really like it. And then just on top there's another one of these
little latex cushions that I made, that goes right on top of there. So I'm right in front of the
kitchen and the electrical compartment, and on top of the driver's seat here we have our closet area.
And it's really nice to just have a place that's so easy access, so I don't need to
reach my clothes, all I have to do is simply just put it here and then I can take the clothes
I need out of the basket and then I just put it back. We don't currently have a hot shower,
but being in New Zealand we have lots of access to water, to fresh water, so we've
been able to make do and there's obviously of course also coin operated showers and gyms,
so we've done really well despite not having a shower. So this is the back of the van.
So you can access most of our storage
from behind as well. The only reason you can't access this compartment is actually
because it was an accident, I put the facing on on the wrong side, but we decided to just
keep it. So here you can see it's super easy to access the both the gas, and the laundry,
and you can see here's our topper, and here is like our hanging line for the laundry,
so very easy to access and very also easy to get in and out. The best part about building the van
was absolutely to not work on the computer, and work with my hands and my body every day,
and actually create something physical. It was extremely rewarding but also extremely
challenging, since we did it during winter here in New Zealand. At the end of the day I don't
really see any downsides living in our van. Of course we don't have all the conveniences we
used to have in our rental apartment, but we also don't have the worries, and for me in many ways
it was more difficult to live the lifestyle of a rental apartment in the city, than it is living
on the road like we're doing now. You actually don't need very much to thrive in a camper van
and being on the road, and it can actually be easier to have less things to care for,
and also carry, because at the end of the day it will be cheaper, and your van will be cleaner,
and your life will be simpler, which I think is one of the main benefits of van life.
So
the swivel table...
that doesn't
and in the last drawer, oops, so this is closest like so and in the front of, yeah
this is actually one of my favorite Parts in the van
it's not very gracious and it runs off our
so this is the front of the van
sorry we're gonna have to redo that for them
english............