Dia duit agus Failte – that’s Irish for hello and welcome – to this blog post about how to best design your conversion van. After all, it might just be your full time tiny home on wheels!
Most of this site is devoted to living a fantastic full life while also living with rheumatoid arthritis or another chronic illness. It just so happens that full time van life is part of my fantastic dream life and I wanted to share how we went from dreaming of converting our own campervan to living in our DIY camper van conversion in less than a year.
I decided to write this post as I have had many people ask about our design, why we made certain decisions and how I feel about the choices we made when living in a van was merely a pipe-dream.
We moved into our Freightliner Sprinter DIY conversion van in February 2021 and so far, we’re loving it. There have been several unexpected van-life lessons but the thing that has surprised and delighted me the most is how pleased I am with the campervan layout we settled on. Designing our own conversion van was equal parts frustrating and exhilarating but here we are, nestled in our new tiny home on wheels. We’re exploring the US, visiting our kidlets and grandkidlets, skiing and hiking and generally enjoying an abundant life.
Perhaps you found this post as part of your research for how to design your van conversion. If so, I hope to provide you with some solid tips to get you started. Or maybe you’re simply curious about how any campervan layout could possibly be comfortable enough for two adults, one large service dog and a yoga mat. Read on and I’ll share some of the highlights of our DIY conversion van design.
If you’re simply pondering van life and wonder if it could be the right move for you, check out this post to dig little deeper.
Table of Contents
Why a DIY conversion van?
When we first began the discussion about buying and converting a van, we spent countless hours watching YouTube videos, each with its own “best” campervan layouts. There is plenty of great information available and we found ourselves slowly developing our own DIY conversion van ideas.
Here are three of our favorite YouTubers:
We have done much of the work for six house remodels and felt confident bringing those skills to a DIY van conversion. There are differences – the electrical was a doozy and there is not a square angle in a Sprinter! – but the underlying premise remains the same.
If you have decided to jump into van life and are trying to decide how you want your van to function, feel and look, then keep reading. You may already know that you will do some or all of the work or perhaps you plan to hire a company to build your dream van. Either way, you need to know what you want and this series of questions will help you get there.
What size van do you want?
From the beginning we knew we needed a van on the bigger end of the size spectrum; we wanted to fit skis, bikes, ourselves and my 70lb service animal, Maggie the messy OES, comfortably. That nudged us towards the 170” wheel base Freightliner Sprinter. We considered the 170 extended which gives an extra 2ft of length but couldn’t find one when we were shopping and, in hind sight, we’re really glad we didn’t. Our 170 is relatively easy to drive and park, turning corners in a city is doable, though not always pretty or smooth. And, at 23ft, we slide in under the wire for what is considered safe and/or acceptable for many narrow roads, camp sites and more.
Questions to ask yourself when deciding on the best size conversion van for your needs:
- What size am I? Yup, simple question but if you’re over 6ft, head room becomes a premium and you’ll want to factor that in to your decision.
- How big a rig am I comfortable driving?
- Am I willing to forgo certain experiences to have a bigger living space?
- What are my must-haves (note: this list will change as the process evolves) and how much space do I need to fit them in?
- What is my budget? Include purchase price, conversion costs and maintenance, insurance and diesel/gas in your calculations.
What are the must-haves for my campervan layout?
We all have to make compromises, no matter the situation. As we began solidifying our van conversion ideas, we realized that all our must-haves were not going to make the cut. Tom thought a shower was essential and I wanted space for at least five plants. We have neither. Instead, we have what are truly our must-haves:
- Bike storage
- Ski storage (this comes with a crap ton of ski gear which we had not factored in properly!)
- A big fridge (Check out this fantastic “mini fridge”)
- An office/dining room
- Toilet
- Hot water, though we rarely use it.
Questions to ask yourself before you design your conversion van
Consider these questions when determining what you cannot live without or what will be essential when you design your conversion van to help make van life successful for you:
- What hobbies am I taking with me and how will I store them? Do you want to surf all day and play guitar all night? Lots of space! Or perhaps you are a runner and a reader? These two hobbies require much less space!
- What is your eating/cooking style? And what will you need to maintain this? Think food storage, including fridge, prep space and cooking facilities.
- How are you planning to live? Do you hope to disappear for weeks at a time? Then you will need more than a 5-gallon fresh water tank. If you need to dress well for a job, you might need more clothes storage.
- If you have an animal, where will you store their food, toys and other paraphernalia?
- Perhaps you can live without a shower but must have a loo, or you would happily forgo air conditioning but want a full oven.
These are just for openers; the more you work on how to design your van conversion, the better and the more personalized the questions will become. If you have essential questions regarding campervan layouts, please drop them in the comments below and I will add them to this list.
How to design my perfect conversion van layout?
By now, you have watched way more YouTube van-life videos than seems possible and with so many van conversion ideas, how can you possibly choose the perfect campervan layout for your van-life adventure? Well, of course, there is no “perfect” conversion van design; it is likely you will wish you had done your DIY conversion van just a little differently. Maybe you’ll discover a better way to make or adapt something during the van build. Or, once you hit the road in your new tiny home on wheels, you’ll realize a perceived flaw and make adjustments.
There are so many videos available on YouTube giving tours of vans and you should definitely watch as many as you are able before your eyes cross and you’re awake half the night pondering the options available to you. Quick heads up – almost everything has more than a single function. Our kitchen bench is also our loo, storage for Maggie’s food, coat and towel, and also serves as a third seat with seat belt if we ever need it. Yes, learning how to design your van conversion will push you to the limits of your creativity and you may well discover talents you never knew you had!
Fixed bed or convertible bed?
One of the big decisions is whether or not to have a fixed bed. We’ve all seen the time-lapse demos of making the bed from the couch in “just 2 minutes” and we all know they are mostly BS. With as much stuff as we wanted to bring, we needed a garage which automatically puts the bed at the back of the van.
We designed something we had not seen – a mostly-fixed bed! A typical queen mattress is 60×80 – we have a 60×60 platform and a 20” removeable support for the feet end. (The support rests on the edges of the two kitchen countertops which we routered out to our specifications.) We have a 6” mattress for the main bed and then a 3” mattress for the feet. Yes, we have to pull off the end mattress each morning, tuck the sheets under and make the couch and it rarely takes me just 2 minutes! But, for the flexibility, extra space and practicality of it, we are delighted with our design choice. P.S. the part of the bed I remove becomes our kitchen table.
What about the basic systems – electrical, water, heat source etc..?
Now that you have a place to sleep in your campervan layout, where will you stash all your electrical components? And how will the plumbing pipes run?
Before you settle on your plumbing or electrical, make sure you calculate your needs. We have several high wattage kitchen appliances – kettle, Instapot and two induction cooktops – which dictated how big our electrical system would be. We found the experts at Northern Arizona Wind & Sun to be extremely helpful.
What about lights, electrical outlets, monitors etc… Remember, it’s essential to run the wiring before you do any of the installation, so having a final van conversion layout before you start is important.
We elected to keep all plumbing on the passenger side of the van, including an enormous 30-gallon fresh water tank with fill access on the outside of the van. But we have a tiny 2.5-gallon grey water tank that fits under the sink which empties via an electrical ball cock. We installed an outside shower which meant more pipes and connections but we reckon we’ll appreciate the convenience in the hotter summer months.
The big items
Other large components of your new home need to be factored in early in the van conversion design process, consider where to place the following:
- Sink: We elected to place ours in the doorway for 3 reasons: the water reservoir sits on that side of the van; the faucet can reach beyond the door of the van if we need it to; and the grey water tank is very accessible.
- Toilet: Ours sits right behind the driver’s seat, under the bench which is really the only place it could go but it has a disadvantage – the loo is easily seen from the outside so we often have to hang the blinds so we can wee!
- Fridge: If you decide to use a chest-style fridge, it will likely slide under a bench. We have a typical under counter mini fridge that sits in the middle of the galley which suits us pretty well most of the time. Maggie, the messy OES, likes to lie in the middle of the galley which sometimes makes opening the fridge a bit of a pain!! We love our fridge – it’s huge by van standards and easily holds all our fresh veggies and other perishables.
There will be quite a few nooks and crannies and given how little space we have in 84sqft of living space, every inch is precious. As a result, our laundry is stashed in the awkward wheel well space beside the fresh water tank, while shoes sit on trays that slide under two of the kitchen cabinets and the Lagun table legs sit in the bench/toilet space. We also have hooks all over the place for keys, leashes, backpacks and more.
Final thoughts
One last piece of advice – take time to design the layout of your van conversion. Our finished tiny home on wheels is the fourth or fifth design I came up with; each time we watched another van-life video, we discovered either a great new idea or a reason why a certain feature just would not work or simply better DIY van conversion layout ideas.
We haven’t been in the van long enough (2 months at the time of writing) to have discovered design flaws that drive us bonkers. For now, I still love our layout; the large (by van-life standards) kitchen is great, the mostly-fixed bed works well for us though we rarely use it as a couch and there is plenty of storage for our clothes, hobbies, food and Maggie.
Update: We lived in our van for almost two years and loved the layout. In fact, if./when we decide to build another DIY conversion van, we will use the same layout and make minor changes to door fronts and cabinet-builds.
Leave a Reply