DIY Campervan Conversion Breakdown
This guide is going to be dedicated to breaking down our second DIY campervan conversion thought process for you to gain inspiration. As always, we are here to equip you with all the information, and tools you need to DIY your dream tiny home on wheels. We are not sharing this so you can copy it piece by piece, instead we are sharing this for you to get a peek into our brain of how we break things down and make choices for converting our vans.
As this is our 2nd DIY campervan conversion, we have learned A LOT that we put into practice with this build. We hope you enjoy.
In This Guide:
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DIY Van Community
Before we get started, we want to do a quick plug for our DIY Van Building Community. This is a community supporter page where you can get any and all of your campervan conversion questions answered, as well as receive more “supporter only” content from us. We hope to see you there!
Meet Rover!
Rover is our 2nd DIY Conversion Van, a 2022 Ford Transit High Roof EXT Cargo van. We built this van with 3 principles in mind: redundancy, ready for anything, and all season ready. There are no single points of failure. It is built fully with extruded aluminum. And, it has everything we need, for any adventure we want to go on. Read on to learn all about the planning and execution!
Our Layout Logic
This was our second DIY camper van conversion that we lived in full time so we had a pretty great idea of what we needed for our lifestyle. That included: a permanently fixed bed, multiple ergonomic work setups, and a comfortably sized kitchen with a large farmhouse sink. We started our design by placing our bed sideways where we would install flares. The next big question was countertop sizing. In our first rig, we had 2 separate small-medium counters that made the living space tight and dishwashing hard as you would wash a dish in one sink, drip across the hallway, and put it down on the other counter to dry. For these reasons we opted instead for one large 72″ counter top. From there the depth of the countertop, and drawers beneath it, were determined by our fridge depth (25″).
Additionally, we knew we wanted a composting toilet and the option for an indoor shower. In our first rig, we loved our outdoor shower; however, we planned to spend winters in the deep deep cold so we knew we needed the option for some form of an indoor shower. Since it wasn’t going to be used often, we opted for a pop-up shower in a bench that stored our composting toilet as well. This meant we needed one seat that was 20×32″. Do you see now the importance of thinking about your priorities? The layout begins to well… lay itself out!
From there, we took the remaining room left and begun to scheme around additional ergonomic seating, and more storage. That ended up in the layout you see below.
3D Campervan Layout
We speak often about the importance of designing your campervan conversion from the beginning to the end. By designing your layout in a 3D software, it will give you the ability to look forward at things such as: where you can pre-wire or pre-plumb your lines, if your walking space is too narrow, where you should pre install plusnuts to ease your life down the line, and more.
We used the free SketchUp Desktop app to do this and have made our layout available for download as a starting place for you.
Our Electrical System
Our van electrical system is no joke, we decided on the components with the upmost intention of being fully self reliable during all seasons (more on that later…) It is relatively easy to be self reliable in the summer as solar power is abundant. Where the challenge is, is staying self reliant in the winter. To do this, we upped our battery capacity from our first rig from 400ah to 540ah. And added 2 DC to DC chargers that push a controlled charged into the batteries when we drive. Below is our entire system.
2 x 270ah LiFePO4 Battleborn GC3 Deep Cycle Batteries
2x Victron Lynx Distributor [ We use this to essential “extend” our battery terminals. What this means is that we have one cable coming off our battery terminals and then it separates in 4 different paths within this Lynx Distributor. This prevents us from unruly stacking on the battery lugs, creates a cleaner system, and allows us to monitor the paths separately]
- 4 AWG Copper Wire (red + black)) (red + black) 25 feet
- 2/0 AWG Copper Wire (red + black) 25 feet
- 6 AWG Copper Wire (red + black) 25 feet
- Battery Lugs
- 4 AWG
- 2/0 AWG
- 12 AWG Marine Grade Copper Duplex Wire (100 feet)
- 8/3 AWG Marine Grade Flat Triplex AC Wire
-> 3000W Multiplus II Inverter Charger
2x Victron SmartSolar MPPT 100/30
2x 370W Solar Panels
[While Driving] -> 2x Victron DC/DC Charger
3000W Multiplus II Inverter Charger
DC Fuse Panel
AC Distribution Panel
While this works great for us, we recommend using our Van Electrical System Guide to audit your electrical system requirements and size all of your components correctly.
4 Season DIY Campervan Conversion
If you follow us on Instagram, you know that we chase snow often instead of sunshine. In order to do this, we need to be comfortable for weeks at a time in below freezing temperatures. This is accomplished with impeccable insulation, and a darn good heater! We chose an Eberspacher hydronic heating system that gives us on demand hot water and hot air with automatic high altitude compensation. The altitude compensation is extremely important, and often overlooked. Many heaters are designed to work up to 5k feet and then require a manual adjustment to account for the change in oxygen levels above that. As folks who spend a lot of time around 10,000 feet, an automatic adjustment was 100% required!
Hydronic Heat System
A hydronic heating system was a non-negotiable for us. To explain what it is, let’s back up to what a standard campervan heating system looks like. Most campervan heating systems you will find work by siphoning drips of gasoline (or diesel) from your tank to ignite a flame that heats a chamber and air from the outside passes through to warm. This means that combustion happens inside your van and your hot air is limited to the one spot that the heater is placed which is typically under the passenger seat.
Hydronic heating works on the basis of a coolant loop. Coolant is heated and passed across heat exchangers to heat water and air. First, this provides on demand hot water, and second, it passes through blowers to push hot air into the cabin. Because of both the coolant, and hot water loops, our rig heats a lot quicker, and as long as the heater is on, we can have hot water in a matter of seconds. The third benefit of a hydronic heating system, that we did not take advantage of, is floor heating. Remember, the basis of this system is coolant and water loops, so you can simply plan ahead and route a loop through the floor.
External Upgrades
In addition to being comfortable in cold weather, we made several external upgrades to Rover to ease our minds when taking on winter condition forest roads. These include:
- Quigley Q-Lift + Sway Bar
- Bilstein B6 Struts
- Raptor liner across bottom few feet of rig and hood
- 30.5″ BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KO2 All-Season Tires
- Upgraded wheels
How We Work Full Time from the Road
We mention often that you should convert you campervan with your life in mind. For us, that means equipping for adventure, but also for us to maintain, and be comfortable, working our 9-5 engineering jobs. To accomplish this we needed 2 comfortable places to work, an external monitor, reliable high speed internet, and ways to stay out of each others way when one / both of us were on calls.
Van Life Internet
For high speed reliable internet, we installed a Pepwave Dual Modem Router, and an incredible MIMO antennae on our roof to harness cell signal better than our phones would. This is a very brief statement to summarize our in depth guide as to how internet works and how best to use it in a van.
Ergonomics + Workspaces
We planned for more than one comfortable place to work, and staying out of each others way, during the layout stage. Specifically, we knew that Colby often switched between standing and sitting during the day so we made sure both the counter, and the seats were at an appropriate height for her to maintain ergonomics during long coding days. We think these two things are often overlooked. It is so so important for ergonomics to be correct in your campervan. Also, don’t forget that seats in houses rarely ever have a straight back! Seats should have a slightly obtuse angle.
The external monitor was simple once everything else was built. We bought an articulating wall mount arm and expanded the two bolt holes to fit to two existing spots we had installed plusnuts and just bolted that right to the wall. When we drive, we simply wrap a ski strap around the mount to keep it in place.
Gear Wall Details
Did you notice that the back of our van was closed off? Yep! This was a HUGE decision for us. While airflow, and a view out the back are nice-to-haves. A “more-important-to-have” for us was ample, and EASY, storage for all of our backpacking, climbing, skiing, and rescue gear. So, we installed a gear wall. It was a relatively simple install. We traced 1/2″ plywood to the opening above the bed and held it up with 4 plusnuts into the beams. We did have to cut the wall into 2 pieces to finagle it into the space and then hold the pieces together with some aluminum braces. From there, the hooks are all installed with bolts straight on through and masked on the inside of the wall.
Finishing Details
Paperstone Countertops
We find countertops to be more of a struggle than we ever imagined. You need something extremely resistant to cracking, chipping, and splitting. This proves rather difficult as driving, especially on forest roads, puts a lot of stress on counter tops.
Butcher block is a common choice you will see on youtube, or instagram. However, in our first rig, our butcher block countertop almost immediately split, and it was high maintenance to take care of as it frequently needs conditioned.
After evaluating other choices out there, we settled on Paperstone which is made by compressing 100% recycled paper and petroleum free resin. We love it because it is environmentally friendly, require little to no care, has an extremely soft touch, and is very durable.
How to buy Paperstone
We found this to a be a bit tricky so figured it was worth spending a quick bit on. The best way we have found to source Paperstone is by finding a local dealer that you can physically pick up from as shipping is expensive. Additionally, the smallest piece we could purchase at 1/2″ thick was 60″ x 96″ so you should be aware that you will need to cut and finish it yourself. This isn’t difficult as you just need simple wood cutting tools but it does take extra time. We finished our Paperstone with 2 coats of Osmo oil.
The large slab of Paperstone wasn’t an issue for us as we ended up using it not only for our 72″ long counter top, but also for any other top surface (table, top of shoe box, small shelves, etc) and really loved how having it all over tied the van together!
Campervan Flooring
We have a floating cork top floor, on top of 2Tec2 floor, and a coosa subfloor. Let’s break that down….first up, the floating cork top floor. This might just be one of our favorite choices we made in Rover. It is extremely comfortable and smooth on bare feet, and provides us with additional insulation. Also, it does not collect dirt and warp like click-lock flooring, or LVT flooring, which is what most builds have. Installing cork floor in our van was really easy with this tool, and a table saw for cutting the tiles to size.
2Tec2 flooring is beneath our cork floor, and fully showing in the garage space. This flooring is absolutely incredibly when it comes to durability and ease of install. We LOVE it! Admittedly, our original plan was to only use the cork in the winter for additional insulation, and to expose the 2Tec2 all other months. However, we fell so in love with the look and feel of the cork floor, that we won’t remove it during off-season. For that reason, adding 2Tec2 across the whole van was probably overkill and we could have just placed it in the garage where more wear and tear is bound to happen.
Lastly, we opted for a CNC cut, drop in, Coosa Subfloor. We cover this in depth in our guide to campervan subfloor options.
DIY Campervan Conversion Final Thoughts
We know how overwhelming it can be to do a DIY campervan conversion. But, we also know how rewarding it can be. We truly hope this gave you a little peek into our brains of why we made the decisions we did because when it comes down to it, this is your tiny home on wheels and it should be everything you ever dreamed.
If you have further questions, we encourage you to leave them in the comments section! Additionally, we have a Locals community for DIY van builders where you can utilize the Q+A forum while supporting us!
Thanks for being here!
Eric + Colby
The Engineers who Van Life
If you found this useful, you might like our:
Electrical System Guide
Water System Guide
Building with 8020 Guide
Van Insulation Guide
The post Our 2nd DIY Campervan Conversion Details + Thought Process first appeared on Engineers who Van Life.
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