I Got a Van

So, as you’ve probably gathered from the title, I’ve bought a van. Or, at least, reserved it, I actually pick it up in a couple of weeks. It’s a 2019 Fiat Ducato L4H2 which means it’s long and quite tall.

There will be 3 of us using the van. Me, my wife, and our lurcher, Rumple. One of the biggest requirements we have is that the van is both comfortable and safe for him to live and travel in. We have some ideas and thoughts around this, but you will hopefully see what that looks like in future posts.

My plan is to convert this van into a camper. This first post is mainly a brain dump, for me as much as anyone else, about my current plans. Many will change, some may be scrapped all together.

We are not planning on living in the van. However, it would be nice if we can go away for prolonged trips in it. Maybe a month or 6 weeks at a time. Obviously, we will use it for shorter weekend breaks, but we don’t want to be limited to a week or so at a time. As a result, we should be able to work from the van.

We are in a very fortunate position that my wife and I both work from home for the vast majority of the time. As a result, as long as we have a reasonable internet connection and electricity, we can both work.

Obviously, if we are both working off laptops, and potentially with additional monitors, or power consumption is likely to be on the higher end. The electrical system in the van will definitely be a separate blog post, but at the moment, it looks like we’ll be going for LiFePO_4_ batteries. Hopefully with 2 or 3 solar panels on the roof, as well as DC to DC charging so we can charge the batteries whilst driving. We will probably also add a shore power hookup, but that may come further down the line.

For the internet side of things, I plan to mount a 5G antenna on the roof. Despite the name, it should pick up all the Gs. I will be on the look out for a router that I can plug such an antenna into, preferably one that supports the something like OpenWRT.

This brings me quite nicely onto my plans for the Van’s network. I hate WiFi. It will be available in the van for all my ESP boards (more on that later), but if I’m working on my laptop, I want it plugged in with a cable. So, I will be running Ethernet in my van, as well as power and water and whatever else I need to make it into a camper. I won’t be going overboard like I did in my house - weight is a consideration in a van and cables are heavy; but I will be running it to (as a minimum) the office space for me and my wife, and my van server.

Van server? Yes, you heard (read?) that right. I’ll be having a server in my van. I am not sure yet if I’ll be going down the Pi route, or something like a Nuc, but I will be having a low-ish powered server in the van. This will run things like Home Assistant (more on that in a bit), PiHole, AudioBookShelf, WireGuard and maybe a few other things. Importantly, I won’t be using it to run things that need a lot of power - think Jellyfin, Ollama and such.

Things might change. Obviously, with a server that can go on motorways, spinning hard drives are a no-go. So storage is likely to have to be solid state for everything. As a result, I won’t really be using this for a NAS. Storage of photos and videos will still go to my home server in my house. But things like audiobooks and podcasts that I am likely to want to listen to on the go will be stored on the local network.

So, I mentioned Home Assistant. I am a big fan of some smart home tech. For me to be a fan of it, it needs to run (or be made to run) locally. Being able to turn your lights on from your phone is great, but if the switch on the wall doesn’t work without an internet connection, I’m not interested. In my house, all of our light switches have been flashed with ESPHome. This custom firmware allows the switch to be controlled via Home Assistant, but importantly, even if my network has some catastrophic failure, the button still works. In the van, the chances of no internet are likely to be high - even with a fancy antenna on the roof. So, requiring the internet is an absolute no go for me.

That will probably mean a whole bunch of DIY devices. I should be able to quite easily make things like lighting smart. I would also like to think that things like water sensors for my fresh and waste water can be read by an ESP device. What will probably take a bit more work / experimentation will be plugging an ESP device into the vehicles CAN bus to see if I can read data from that. It would also be great to have things like celling fans and heaters controllable from Home Assistant.

Talking of fans and heaters, it is probably worth me mentioning that I will be trying to keep costs down where possible - or at least prioritising where money is spent. I would much rather, for instance, buy a cheap Chinese celing fan or diesel heater so I can buy decent electronics from the likes of Victron.

Of course, I’ll be taking things like the fans apart to see if I can stick an ESP chip in them and control them with Home Assistant.

With regard to cooking in the van, I’m currently undecided on the best course of action. I would like to go fully electric, with induction hobs and an electric oven. Obviously, this would mean I need even more batteries in the van, which will increase the weight even more. However, I think with the amount of driving we normally do, I should be able to keep batteries topped up from the vehicle’s alternator. It is possible that we will keep a gas camping stove somewhere so that if we’re caught out, we can still boil water and heat food. But I would rather avoid the added hassle of gas canisters and piping if I can.

With regard to water, I would like to mount both fresh and waste water tanks under the van. I don’t yet know how big they will be, and will probably be determined by weight restrictions. However, my plan is to fit a low powered immersion heater into these to prevent them freezing in the winter. I won’t be using this to make hot water, just to keep the temperature of the water above freezing - again probably powered by an ESP chip.

Hot water is a different story. I have seen many youtube van builders pipe their diesel heater’s pipe to a heat exchanger to heat the water. I may do this, but I would also like to try and heat the water from the engine’s coolant system. I haven’t seen this done in a camper (I’m not suggesting it hasn’t been done), but I have seen it done on other vehicles.

One thing I’m fairly sure I don’t want in the van is a full sized shower. At least, not an internal one. Space is a premium in a van, and in my opinion, the space a shower takes up is unnecessary. I will probably add something like the Bullfinch External Shower Point, so we can have outdoor showers if we need them. But most of the time, I think we’ll be able to make do with a flannel and a bowl of hot water. It does mean that the sink in the van will need to be big enough to wash our hair in. An added bonus of the external shower system is we’ll be able to wash off Rumple before he gets in the van when he inevitably gets covered in mud.

Only thing I haven’t really touched upon is the planned layout. That will probably be my next blog post, but I plan to keep it quite simple. Bed at the back. Undecided yet on the orientation, and that will depend if I can sleep width ways once we’ve added the insulation. If I can’t, and we end up making the bed go length ways, we will probably have an “almost” fixed bed, where the bottom foot or so is removable and is used as a back rest or something. This frees up some more space in the middle of the van during the day, but still means we don’t need to make our bed each evening.

The cab area will have swivel seats. This will make our main living / working area, and as a result, we won’t have a separate “lounge”. Again, space is at a premium in a van.

Between the cab / living area and the bed will be our kitchen and toilet areas, as well as a spot for Rumple’s bed. Importantly this will include a mounting point for his harness so he is secured whilst driving.

Before I finish up, it’s probably important that I clarify a few things. I will be learning as I go. I will be making mistakes and I will aim to share those with you. However, this “build log” will not be tutorials. I am not an electrician, so don’t take electrical advice off me. Same for plumbing or carpentry or anything else for that matter. That being said, if you spot something I could be doing better, or an idea you think I might like, or just want to say hi, leave a comment by emailing comments.new-van<at>jn.hn.