Bare panel van, medium wheelbase high roof, bought in March, and I am at the point where the next step is irreversible. I have read the build blogs but those are all written by people who are pleased with themselves. I want the list of things you built once, lived with, and then tore out, and roughly what that cost you in time and money.
I built the whole kitchen and bed frame before I had spent a single night in the van, and I got the bed height wrong by about 12cm. Everything else was designed around that height, so fixing it meant taking out the bed, the garage below it and one wall. That was two weekends and maybe 180 in wasted timber, and it would have cost nothing if I had slept on a plywood platform on blocks for a fortnight first.
Cardboard for the layout, blocks and offcuts for the heights. Two weeks of that will change at least one major decision, guaranteed.
Mock up in scrap and sleep in it. That is the kind of advice the blogs skip entirely.
Electrical, in the order things actually go wrong. I undersized the cable from the battery to the fusebox because the calculator I used assumed a shorter run, and it worked fine until the inverter went on. I also mounted the fuse box behind a fixed panel, so every change since has meant unscrewing furniture. Leave service access to everything, run at least one empty conduit from front to back, and buy cable a size up from what the calculator says.
Rust. Treat every scratch you make while cutting and every bare edge, on the day you make it. I left a cut edge around a window for one winter and paid a bodyshop to fix what would have been ten minutes with a brush.
Weight. I built in 18mm ply throughout because it felt solid, and the finished van was heavy enough that I was uncomfortable about the rear axle rating with water and two people aboard. Second build was mostly 12mm with 18mm only where things bolt through, and it is stiffer than you would think and about 90kg lighter. Find your plated weights before you design anything.
The thing I would undo is the fixed bathroom. It ate a fifth of the floor, we used the shower nine times in two years, and the toilet did not need a room. Second van has a cassette in a cupboard and an outdoor shower off the back doors, and it feels twice the size.
@milkcratepress · 3w ago · 3 replies
Two ventilation mistakes are almost universal and they are the ones that cause the damp threads. Fitting a single roof fan with no low intake, so the air has nowhere to come from, and sealing the van so thoroughly that every litre of breath and cooking steam has to condense somewhere. You want a low inlet and a high outlet and you want them before insulation, not after, because cutting holes through a finished ceiling is a horrible day.
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@psu_paula · 3w ago
Ours has two floor vents and a fan and the difference in the morning is night and day compared to the previous build.
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@tenon_tuesday · 3w ago
So holes first, insulation after. That changes my sequence this month.
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