YES, we decided to go on holiday in our unfinished project.
Although not complete, we had decided to take the van to Cornwall for its first outing as a mobile home/motorhome. I had two months to get it to a state that it was habitable for the two weeks we were going to be using it, luckily that was going to be in June when we were going so it was unlikely that we would have freezing temperatures. This was of course on top of trying to move the construction forward to suit our end goal, being able to use it full time.
- I wanted to get some of the insulation installed, to help a bit with condensation. The roof vents and side windows were in so these would help with making it feel like a living area rather than a black hole. I had also started on the electrical install, but what else was needed; this is the description of what we ended up fitting for us to use the van for the two weeks?
- Key to my wife’s wish list was the loo, we had already purchased that so a tick in the box for that one, there would not be time to build a wall to separate it off though, so an old sheet was utilised to partition a corner at the back of the van to give us a bit of privacy when conducting business. Water fresh and waste holding facility was supplied by a friend who had given up caravan life and was getting rid of a waste water tank and an aqua roll utilised for our fresh water needs. We did not want to buy anything specific as we are intending to under sling the water tanks in the future, therefore the supplied tanks were perfect for this trip. I did purchase a small pump that will be used later in the build but for this trip I rigged it up so that it could be dropped into the Aqua Roll to pump the water out as required.
- As by chance in the loft were two fold up beds purchased for the odd visitors to sleep on at home, so these would be used for our beds during this trip. The beds just fitted across the van where the sliding door is, which is where we are planning to have our convertible seat / bed in any case so it fitted in with our final plans and therefore allowed us to try out the configuration we were aiming for.
From our camping days and day trips out we had a number of gas stoves that we could cook with but were to use them in the van? A worktop offcut from a recent kitchen refurb was just what we needed; it was also big enough to also mount a small sink. We had previously identified a suitable model for the final fit out, an IKEA model, so we purchased that to be temporarily mounted in the worktop for this trip. see https://www.clivewphotography.co.uk/vanbuildpictures/zmhcf8tx0j2uzf5w58zxtfqmlgf5nf
The side windows were already fitted but we needed to be able to cover these up for privacy, a piece of plywood was cut to size to fit the sliding door and an opening cut slightly smaller than the glass opening, once screwed to the door a net curtain pole was fitted in the cavity between the glass and plywood. As it turns out this will not be removed and will form part of our final build. The other side I utilised two boards, fitted top and bottom of the window again with a pole mounted behind the top one. My wife cut up some old curtains to fit the apertures. As it turned out the curtains are not blackout material so I cut out some cardboard templates to mount up against the windows to give us blackout capability when sleeping. Pictures of the windows - https://www.clivewphotography.co.uk/vanbuildpictures/amy6ds79o9a9zz7zyp62whu8uj2i1u and https://www.clivewphotography.co.uk/vanbuildpictures/zmhcf8tx0j2uzf5w58zxtfqmlgf5nf
The van was yet to be fitted with any kind of storage and so our only option was to box everything up, stack it against the side of the van and tie it all in with bungees, these held the boxes secure but ended up being one of our frustrations on this trip as it felt like every time we needed something from the boxes it just happened to be in one of the boxes at the bottom of the pile.
Another item we decided to have was an awning, we had already decided that roof bars were going to be needed so that eventually solar panels can be fitted along with a mechanism to tilt them to optimise harvesting the suns energy more efficiently. The roof bar and awning mounting is a story in itself and ended up taking far too long, short version is everything needed modifying from roof bar brackets to the awning mounting brackets, they are on but I am not 100% happy with the results but it does all work so happy days. To see picture of mounted awning - https://www.clivewphotography.co.uk/vanbuildpictures/9a77f48zfzdwimz8gqx0wbxz81zh8x
In order to maintain connection to the outside world, the charging of our electronic devices was a necessity, to keep the leisure battery fully operational and topped up, not having solar yet, a split charge relay was purchased and installed along with USB outlets and 12V outlet for the cool box that we have had utilised over the years and was needed for this trip. I also purchase and installed a MiFi device to enhance our chances of getting a 4G data connection, the system utilises an external 4G antenna which provide much better signal gain than a standard mobile phone, in Cornwall mobile phone service are patchy we have already signed up to separate suppliers for our mobiles and a third one in the MiFi gave us more chances. As it turned out on a number of occasions it was only this MiFi system that gave us a usable 4G connection and we were never without coverage in the places we stopped. The antenna - https://www.clivewphotography.co.uk/vanbuildpictures/jczc2sen32d1y689635t21vlf5hw18 and the MiFi Hub - https://www.clivewphotography.co.uk/vanbuildpictures/4hdclc03qbncwnwr7qnzl8j4y9fay6
The front of the van came with the single driver seat and a double crew seat, our idea was to swap the double with a single at some point but decided funds and time were against us, however in stepped our son-in-law Nathan who had a friend that was repairing a similar van that had two singles, Nathan bargained a straight swap for our set for the set in the other van, an evening and half hour work and the seats were swapped and we had two singles for our trip, as it turned out we were glad this was done, which I will explain when I go into how we used the van in another blog. It ended up a bit of a challenge to get this entirely ready within the period we set ourselves, but we got it to a stage where we could use and very successfully as it turned out, was it perfect? No it wasn’t we struggled with some items and changed others and have also identified tweaks that need doing, but that was one of the reasons we decided to take it out so early and try it out as you can only tell if you can live with something by doing it. My Next Van Blog will describe the challenges of living out of a part, very small part, finished van. What we identified will not work and what we liked and a progress report on how we are getting on fitting out the van, see below.