Hopefully you have read my previous blog, Taking the Van on the Road, so you will understand we went away in our van with a basic fit out a lot of which was temporary in order to understand how we will use the van in the future and see if there were any, lets say bugs, in the setup we had created. In this article I will explain what we identified and how they will be overcome.
The use of boxes and the stacking of the boxes to secure the load was a necessity for this trip as there were absolutely no storage space created in the van as it stood, just the large load area in the back. We had packed everything into the boxes from clothes through to food and also cutlery and tools, initially this all sounded like the best thing to do until after a few stops to make a cup of tea, making dinner and the getting ready for bed it starts to feel like the only box you require access to is always at the bottom of the stack. To counter this you start to leave a few of the more accessed items out, putting them on the floor when moving, but yes they tend to move around so causing issues of their own.
Now the van will eventually have storage cupboards so not a long term problem but for this trip we ended up getting wire baskets that could be hung on the exposed framework within the van, we put items like tea and coffee, cutlery dish cloths etc in these and it did help considerably, so will probably include so easy access holders in the final build.
I had purchased a set of switches to control the electrical circuits in the van along with a number of dual USB outlets so that we could keep all the electronics charged from the 12v electrical system and a nice little volt meter to show how much leisure battery capacity we were using up. All these worked just fine and during the day looked quite nice as all of these items had LED illumination for indication etc. which was fine during the day or evening when we has lights on but when it came to settle down to sleep! Let me put it this way there was so much light in the back I am not sure why we fitted the LED roof lights, the same problem was apparent with the USB charging outlets and the voltmeter.
The initial solution on the trip for the extreme elimination issue was to put some tape over the switch LEDs and to cover the voltmeter with a piece of cloth, ok it was a sock. The USB outlets were not used while we slept and the attached cover put over them, luckily one of the USB outlets was at low level so we could use that one at night when required to provide an overnight charge of our devices.
We really struck lucky with our two temporary beds, which were Jay-Be guest beds, fitted across the van just behind the cab seats, this meant that we did not need to move too much around at night to put them up, however saying that it was not the easiest of tasks but over the course of the two weeks we became quite proficient in the exercise. The added benefit of these beds was that they were very comfortable which was a bonus although they are not suitable for the final fit out most notably as we could not fit them to the structure as per the requirements to register a van as a Motorhome. The bedding was being put in the void above the cab area which was fine but it was a bit of an exercise to get it all pushed into the area,
Before leaving our bedding was packed into vacuum bags to keep it clean and while we visited a camping shop I chanced across some 12v pumps, designed to pump up air beds etc. but had the idea we could use one of these pumps to vacuum down the bags after we had packed up which provided us with additional space as the reduced the volume by at least half, we have yet to decide if we will continue to do this but if we end up short of storage space the pump could prove to very beneficial.
As I mentioned for our water, drinking and waste, we had been given some containers from a friend. The Aqua Roll for drinking water worked fine dropping in the pump when we had parked up and removing it to travel the minor issue is the weight of the container when full, lifting it into the van is not good for your back if you do have issues. The same can be said with the waste water carrier, neither designed to be lifted when full.
Initially we just had a piece of pipe running to the sink for the fresh water but found we were wasting a fair amount of water so we invested in a small tap which helped reduce the flow in a controlled manner. The waste tank also gave us a problem on this trip as; after a road trip going up and down a number of hills we found water had leaked out, the tank was quite full, but it was a bit of a surprise as all the caps were on. After a bit of a clear up, it wasn’t too bad, we found one of the caps was actually cracked which it was why water leaked, from then on it was a matter of emptying the waste tank at every opportunity to keep the level down and so reducing the chance of the water leaking out through the broken cap.
The plan for the water system in the van is to have underslung tanks from CAK Tanks so hopefully we should not have any of the problems identified above.
Another thing we put down for this trip was a plush piece of carpet, as we only had bear plywood flooring and no heating this bit of luxury helped keep the van cosy.
The cleaning of fixed carpet in a van is not the most practical so we are planning a lino flooring but will have a rug or two placed in the van, or so I am told?
That just about covers all the issues we had, overall really enjoyed our trip and can not wait for the next one with a more complete van. On that topic, the next blog will be an update on where I am with the fitout and I may also issue a Vlog as well for those who prefer some pictures. Until them I will say good bye and thank you for reading this Blog.