Hey guys, in this week's episode,
we're going to take a tour of one young man's awesome adventure schooly
he uses his bus conversion as a tricked out adventure home to visit some of the
Pacific Northwest most scenic parks
and with a full bar, this home is half party bus, half adventure bus.
So let's take a tour.
Hi, I'm Justin. And this is the Pacific Pioneer
I converted a school bus because I love the outdoors and I love road trips.
I grew up with campers and RVs and I wanted something of my own school buses are
cheap, much cheaper than sprinter vans,
and I could build it exactly how I wanted RVs are built, very cheaply,
everything breaks, everything rattles.
So I wanted to kind of have a blank slate to start with and make it exactly my
own with my own personal touches.
People definitely show reactions to the bus.
It's not like a sprinter van that you can kind of park and fly under the
radar anywhere it's big, it's blue. You're going to stick out.
It gets a lot of positive attention. People asking, you know, how I did it,
why I did it. And I always push them to do it themselves as well.
So I found the bus on Craigslist,
bought it at auction from the Seattle school district.
And it took me about a year and a half.
I was working mostly full time before quarantine.
So that definitely helped with the build because you know,
two or three months off gave me the end growth spread.
I needed to kind of finish all the major projects, put the deck on,
finish all my systems, things like that for the total budget of this,
probably around 15 grand. The bus was right under 5,000.
It's already had around two or $3,000 of repairs and maintenance just on
the bus itself. And the rest is all pretty much at Craigslist and home Depot.
So much of my stuff is secondhand use.
It's definitely trying to be creative and find different ways to buy things
other than buying things new. So now that it's finished,
I want to go down to the Southwest and then hopefully make it all the way to new
Orleans. And then back up through the California coast,
hoping for the spring time, cause I'm from the Northwest and I will melt.
So I built the bus with the idea that it wasn't going to be necessarily my fu
ll-time home, more of a kind of adventure rig. I can use it all winter.
It seats a lot of people for trips, you know, up to 11.
I can bring all my friends along and one day, if the opportunity was right,
I would love to.
To live in it.
Hello, this is my school bus. It is a 2006 international. Um,
has the six liter turbo diesel engine.
It is 24 feet long and that gives about 19 feet, um,
for the interior here.
So definitely a good size and seven and a half foot width, um, gives me lots of,
lots of room. So just getting to it. Um,
two captain's chairs I added, um, this is kinda my shotgun seat.
One of the main issues building my bus and doing research was that
people didn't like that they couldn't have someone right up there with them.
So I just have a pretty simple solution.
I just put industrial strength,
cabinet sliders under this little platform I built. And then,
so the whole chair will actually slide forward.
I wanted to kind of take advantage of this big
emergency door.
So the whole thing opens and I can tie back the entire door so I can actually
drive with the door open and this chair can swivel out.
It's the best seat. Definitely. All right.
So this is kind of the, uh, the cockpit or control center. Um,
most of this stuff I just left, I painted the dash, um,
put the new stereo, head unit in here. I added a backup camera,
which has been greatly helpful, but the visibility is so good.
It's really easy to drive and you sit so high. It's really comfy.
And the new chairs, the original bus chairs are incredibly uncomfortable.
I was really surprised the school districts definitely screw their drivers with
those, but this new captain and chair, I bought both of these.
I got on Craigslist for like 40 bucks and they are awesome.
Definitely comfier than any other car I've driven. This is my couch.
I bought it from an RV pull apart,
which was my best friend when coming, uh, to build the whole bus.
It's very simple and just folds down in about two seconds and
then just folds back up. These are all my tools,
which I always will keep in here because everything likes to break a
Dickinson. Think this is the P 9,000. It works awesome.
I used it up at Mount Rainier last week and it ran it elevation,
which I didn't think it would, all propane.
I ran a couple of different appliances off propane. I have a 19 gallon tank,
I think mounted under the bus. I also use a propane stove.
So I use this as my counter, but it's also hinge.
And then this just hooks up to the exit and my stove
is right under here can turn it on works great has
three rows of burners. So it has a really high BTU output.
And then this is really nice because it's just a hole in that I can keep like
all my prep ingredients here.
My bed is down in the back one or two people can sit on either side and kind of
use this as the dining room table,
which is pretty sweet and it is very convenient.
Just goes back and down. All right.
And then this is my sink.
I definitely just wanted to go with the stainless double Bay for ease of
cleaning.
Cause I usually will just fill this up a couple of inches with just hot soapy
water.
So I've 33 gallons of fresh water, um,
and a 33 gallon gray water tank mounted underneath the bus.
And then this is my Marie propane water heater.
And that also worked at high elevations, which a lot of them said they wouldn't,
which is awesome because I'm in the mountains a lot and you know, a hot shower,
um, after hiking is awesome. So for showering,
cause I don't have a bathroom in here. Um, I just have this shower head.
I can just turn this faucet on right here,
throw it out the window and shower outside. Um,
which is really convenient in this. Um,
will get almost scalding hot. And then over here, my pride and joy,
this is just a piece of Cedar. I bought unfinished Craigslist,
like everything else I bought and just sanded it for a couple hours
and finished it with polyurethane.
There are too many layers cause I was very bad at it.
I think there's like six or seven layers of polyurethane.
I just wanted it for the aesthetics and I like making drinks a lot,
always hanging out with bartenders and learning different drinks to make,
just gotta make sure all the kids are tucked in before I'm driving around and
all the Mason jars are just screwed in. I got this idea from another bus build,
um, which was great. You just screw in the tops and then you can unscrew, um,
the glasses really easily. So they don't jiggle around the whole time.
And then two fridges on either side here,
which is a little bit unnecessary. I thought I would be using both,
but I really only ended up using this one.
I keep ice in the top usually for making drinks and then all my food in
the bottom. I usually keep a cooler in here as well for, you know,
a bunch of the liquors or any beers or anything like that. Um,
and then this one I ended up just always using more food storage.
I will probably end up replacing it, um, with the composting toilet.
They're just expensive. So I want to wait until I absolutely need one, um,
to do it because that will definitely get a little more use than this extra
fridge. So not having a toilet is not great. Um,
I grew up using RVs and I hated the black water tanks.
I just decided to cut that all out. So, you know, stopping at rest stops a lot,
a lot of planning ahead and emergency, uh, toilet paper, if you need it.
And most of the places I go trail heads, things like that,
they all have good restrooms.
So I just got to plan ahead a little bit more than someone who has a actual
whole bathroom going to my electronics. Um,
so this is all off 110. Um,
this is off 110 all of the light.
These are all on dimmer switches for the front and then the back I have some
mounted underneath as well on either side. These are all 12 volt.
Um, I want to just to do as much as I can,
so I didn't have to use it to my inverter.
My inverters 2000 Watts battery wise, I have 440 amp hours.
Um,
I have two six volt interstate batteries that I wired together and this is my
bed. It is the width of a queen,
but it is seven and a half feet long. So it's awesome.
And usually I have a couple of dogs in here,
so there's lots of room for everyone.
And it also converts into a big table with bench seats on either side,
it is a little bit of a pain to convert.
I bought just big blocks of foam and cut it to size.
All right. And this is my big table.
This is just pieces of Unistrut that are on hinges. Um,
so I can still open this back door
goes up and then under, I just have these pins. Um,
they screw in on this side and then I use wing nuts on the bottom.
It is slightly difficult doing this with one person just because it is a
heavy table that just like locks into place.
You can sit three people here really comfortably two people on either sides,
we're playing games. So it's pretty sweet.
I was at the thrift store and I found this kind of inlay piece and
I just thought it was interesting. It was an old coffee table.
And then I built the frame around it. I put all brand new speakers.
So I have four JBL speakers,
I've tuned the back and then two up in the front as well.
The speakers and the sub is both run on their own amplifiers.
So it gets very loud. And here, this is kind of my charging station,
cause I usually am running around with a couple of different cameras and a drone
that I have lots of different things to charge and all of that just goes up in
here and I made them fold down. Um, so when I'm organizing,
I can just come pick stuff up, put it here, which has been pretty useful.
I have lots of things under both seats. So this one,
my water tank pretty much takes up the whole thing. Um,
I also have my water pump under there. Here's my inverter. Um,
I have an MPTT solar charge controller for my solar that I have
on the roof. And I've 300 Watts besides my solar.
I have it hooked up from the bus batteries all the way to the back.
So when the bus turns on and it's charging my front battery is charging my back
as well for the ceiling,
which is definitely one of the unique parts of my build.
These are just four by eight sheets of plywood,
ran and burned with AC neon sign transformer and some jumper cables and
nails definitely was the longest part of my build. And it took forever.
It is kind of sketchy. If you're going to do it,
I would do your research because you can seriously injure or kill yourself
doing it, but it looks really cool.
So I also have two roof vents,
which are like the emergency exits this back one does not have a deck over it.
So I still use this a lot. Um, most of the time it's just popping it up,
um, because it's a great vent. I do also have, um,
some mosquito netting that I can roll up with Velcro and I can put over the top
and this can go all the way up if I need to climb out for some reason,
but I hope that never happens.
All right, this is the outside of the Pacific pioneer.
I bought the bus off Craigslist. It's an 06 international
and it's 24 feet long and it's very maneuverable for its size.
The big buses are awesome.
Having a extra bedroom in a full size bathroom would be awesome,
but I definitely wanted something smaller with a little more maneuverability to
get me anywhere I wanted to go.
So on the other side of the bus,
and this is just the electrical panel that comes standard batteries. Um,
this is the water in that that I added. This is my gray water tank.
I have a little hose I attach and so I can use any, you know, RV dump station.
The deck itself,
I think is about 12 feet long and it's a little under seven and a half
feet wide. And then two leaves in the back.
I have two of them and then three solar panels for 300 Watts.
The deck definitely was a big part of the build.
I knew I wanted to do one, but attaching it securely to the bus,
took a while. It's all Cedar for lightweight.
And if I need it to be,
it can also be the guest bedroom because there's plenty of room for a tent on
top.
There's going to be so much that you don't know how to do,
but what's kind of encouraged me is that there's always a solution for a
problem. If I'm having a big issue on something, I skip it,
move on to something positive and you'll get energy back to come and fix that
problem.
But patience is definitely going to be the best thing if you decide to do this.
Thanks as always for watching,
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