College Student & Full Time"RV" Living

Grim_Knight wrote:

It's a good thing that you have some time before purchase to iron out the details of your van work. Hopefully, you will also have some time, tools, and materials at hand when you are doing the retrofitting of the van.

One large detail that you're overlooking is how you're going to get everything stable and roadworthy in the van. You can't just throw 150 lbs of batteries in a milk crate and take off down the road. Forget about bungees making this happen. At highway speeds, when the van would have to stop suddenly or (God forbid) there is an accident, everything loose inside becomes a cannonball. To insure against this means everything inside needs to be secured to the van chassis.
Also, because of the number and kind of things you wish to have in the van to support livability, instant conversion back to a cargo van isn't a viable plan.

I already thought about this… When I install the walls (plywood over the insulation), I will also be setting up mounting points. I will be attaching the plywood to the existing support structure of the inside of the van. So knowing where that support structure is, I will attach my mounting points for items on the outside of the plywood. These are where I will attach such things as the milk crate holding the batteries, propane tank, shelves and bed. I haven’t fully decided on exactly what sort of strapping system I will use but it will be strong. I tend to error on the side of overkill. One other thing I thought about that would save me a headache (pun intended) is if I can get a van that already has a bulkhead behind the 2 front seats. If not, I can easily get one and install it to the van body.

Since you're interested in the electrical side of van-living, here's a few things to think about: That open frame generator is going to be a bothersome noise maker. This will be especially true when you have to use it every day. It's also big and bulky. Do you want to lift it in and out repeatedly? I'd recommend a Honda 1000 for your purpose.
The electric heater you wish to run uses 25 amps. Assuming you buy two 100AH batteries, your typical usable capacity will be 100AH. You will be able to run the heater for 4 hrs. and after that, damage to your new batteries will be happening. If you use all of the capacity of the batteries more than a few times, you'll have two dead batteries and will need replacement.

The inverter-charger you've selected is of very low quality and may be injurious to your other electric devices and your batteries. Not all inverters or chargers are built the same. You should be shopping for a pure sine inverter and a charger that has three stage charging ability.

You will need wiring, circuit protection, and switching with your electrical system. I don't see it mentioned and cost/installation is not insignificant. When you start using wire sizes of 4 AWG and above costs will be above $1/ft..

The start of any electrical installation should be based on projected use. Here is a downloadable calculator that will help you define that use.

With current solar charging costing close to generator initial costs, the use of solar becomes more viable as a friendly way to charge batteries. You also won't need to transport gas, maintain a generator, or listen to it run for hours. You should investigate this.

You should want the van's house electrical system to be charged by the van's alternator. This will allow some charging while in transport mode. It involves a battery isolator and wiring.

Since your life is going to be dependent on the electrical system, you should do a lot of planning on how this is all going to work and work without hindrance. You should have a "Plan B" or even a "Plan C" so your CPAP is always working and your other devices have power.

You can check out the link in my signature line (Cowboy/Hilton) to see how some of these installations are done. I rebuilt my travel trailer from the ground up.

Based on my current choice of batteries for this build, LINK I won’t need to charge the it/them very often. With 190 amps per battery, a single one would provide me with more then enough power on a single full charge to last me for a few days thus I won’t need to even worry about the generator. I in fact won’t be needing the generator every time I need to charge my batteries either since I could hook up to “shore power”. The main purpose of the generator is for when I'm nowhere near an area where I can plug into a 110v AC outlet for charging my batteries. As for the heater, the one I picked out thus far is not set in stone and in fact, I’m not even sure I’m wanting to get a DC powered heater at all. It’s simply one option. By the time April comes rolling around, I likely won’t even need a heater for at least 6 month.

As for wiring, I don’t have all the details worked out on that either. I do know that I want to locate the batteries and charger/inverter right next to each other to limit the length of wiring needed (most likely near the back door to the van). I then will likely use a 6 outlet power strip plugged into the inverter to provide the AC power I need. As for the items needing electrical power, that’s a very short list. Laptop for school work, CPAP machine for sleeping, the fridge/cooler linked to earlier, 2 of the LED bars also linked to earlier and a fan/heater when the time comes. Maybe a couple minor extras such as some external speakers for my laptop so I can enjoy some movies or whatever.
As for a charger and inverter, again, those items aren’t set in stone. I was thinking about getting a Pro Series 20 LINK and a 1,500 Watt
CPI 1575 LINK. My only problem again is that I don’t have much experience regarding the electrical wiring aspect so I’m not sure how to wire up a separate charger and inverter. I just thought an inverter/charger combo unit would be a whole lot easier on me. I know I’m going to need to have everything nice and safe so I’m planning on getting a fuse block of some sort and creating a small aux 12v DC outlet panel. I do know that I do not want to deal with wiring the whole setup with the van’s existing wiring. I want to keep those items completely separate.

Please, don't discount the help available to you on this Forum. Part of the reason that you are being told not to do what you've envisioned is because others may have tried or have at least thought methodically through or own an RV and know the amount of cost and labor involved. What you're about to undertake is not trivial and to do it even semi-successfully is going to be a lot of work. All things considered, buying a used RV with everything in place is going to be cheaper than installing all the necessary bits. You don't have to make that YOUR choice, it's just a fact that makes it a more practical choice.

Get yourself familiar with AC and DC electrical. Here are a couple of links: 12 Volt side of life
Power my RV
Golden rules of electrical and solar

At a minimum, you'll need some type of AC load center with circuit protection to take the AC into the van. Just stringing out a cord isn't safe, there is the possibility of energizing the chassis with lethal voltage. You will need to connect the battery charger to this AC power.

For DC, you will have to get a grip on whats necessary for your needs and how it will be implemented, what the charging schedule needs to be and how much battery capacity is necessary. The battery to which you linked MAY have 110 AH of capacity. That is, conventionally, 55 usable AH's. I'm guessing that charging your laptop, running a 12V cooler, and the draw of the CPAP is going to put you over that 55 AH's. You'll need to do your own math. Replacing that 55 AH's with a 20 amp charger to 90% of the battery's capacity will take about 4 or 5 hours. Unless Walmart has decided to offer 120V service for overnighters, that means you'll be breaking out the generator every day for that charging run to make it for another night.

You've decided not to connect the house batteries with the vans charging system and, IMO, that's just because you don't know how to do it. It's easy and may svae you from breaking out the generator or be a good Plan B when your battery is dead and you need a CPAP machine or your cooler isn't running. Every van RV is connected to the vehicle's charging system.

You can, like a few others that have posted here, try to get all of bits to come together. All of them I've seen on here do not post about their successful finished RV. I'm guessing that they lose heart and budget in midstream. To accomplish this, you're going to be dedicating many man hours, will have to seek help, and will spend a lot of money. FWIW, I started with some of the basics in place and spent 6 months of almost full time labor and $5K to get it done. I have 40 years of construction experience and had most of the tools available. I also had some of the materials that I needed. If you don't have the above, you can add at least $2K to the budget.

I may be coming across as denigrating your ideas but I don't think you've thought all of this through. Just visiting a Cabelas store with a fat wallet isn't going to get it done. Screwing some plywood to the inside and attaching everything to the plywood isn't going to make it happen. The best advice I can give you is to draw explicit scaled plans so that you will know where all is going to be placed and that things don't interfere with each other. In a van build, this will be critical.

Good luck.