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Been lurking for awhile, so onto my build. I have some pictures of my stumbling process. Only having a couple of hours a night surely slows this process. Also a lot of the time is just spent staring at the van trying to figure things out. Can I say that the van is kind of a mindf***! Anyway my goal is to stay all 12v generally we don't stay anyplace long since our main focus is Mountain Biking. So I don't feel the need for a lot of power Since driving keeps the battery pretty charged, plus we only use power at night generally speaking. With that said I will be adding 200w solar panels to the roof in the future. We have a 100w portable one we use from my (sold) expedition trailer.
Major (if you'd like to call it that) power consumption would be my ARB 50qt fridge. We've gone 3 days on a Walmart Johnson Controls 120AH in my trailer with no issues, I never monitored volt readings though.Could have been close to 11.7v who knows. Going to try the Universal Power Group 45978 AGM for the van though. Good reviews and under $200, kinda hard to go wrong IMO.
Other power needs would be 4 to 6 LED puck lights current draw is 150mA at 2 watts, charging cell phones and probably some sort of 12v 17" TV DVD combo eventually
Cooking we just use a Jetboil burner and a Camp Chef stove all outside.
Insulation is Thinsulate glued directly to the van wall with 3m 90 and then ezcool glued to the back of my corrugated plastic wall panels covered in Interweave. I figured this would give the best air gap. The only disadvantage I could see going this route is not being able to tape the seams. We'll see when it's finished I guess. Also the van came with the plywood floor, I took that out flipped it over and screwed 2x4's around the edges and routed around the outside. I then added blue board and reflectix between the 2x4's. The floor is held down with the tie down caps and longer bolts.
Okay so some pictures:
The beginning:
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Fan hole and rattle trap:
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So until I add my solar I needed a way to charge the house battery, so I added this connected to a charger:
![]()
Comes up through here running through liquid tight from the big orange:
![]()
Major (if you'd like to call it that) power consumption would be my ARB 50qt fridge. We've gone 3 days on a Walmart Johnson Controls 120AH in my trailer with no issues, I never monitored volt readings though.Could have been close to 11.7v who knows. Going to try the Universal Power Group 45978 AGM for the van though. Good reviews and under $200, kinda hard to go wrong IMO.
Other power needs would be 4 to 6 LED puck lights current draw is 150mA at 2 watts, charging cell phones and probably some sort of 12v 17" TV DVD combo eventually
Cooking we just use a Jetboil burner and a Camp Chef stove all outside.
Insulation is Thinsulate glued directly to the van wall with 3m 90 and then ezcool glued to the back of my corrugated plastic wall panels covered in Interweave. I figured this would give the best air gap. The only disadvantage I could see going this route is not being able to tape the seams. We'll see when it's finished I guess. Also the van came with the plywood floor, I took that out flipped it over and screwed 2x4's around the edges and routed around the outside. I then added blue board and reflectix between the 2x4's. The floor is held down with the tie down caps and longer bolts.
Okay so some pictures:
The beginning:
Fan hole and rattle trap:
So until I add my solar I needed a way to charge the house battery, so I added this connected to a charger:
Comes up through here running through liquid tight from the big orange:
