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Planning Your Van Floor Layout In Advance | Live + Q&A
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May 2, 2025
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View Video Transcript
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[Music]
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thank you [Music]
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thank you [Music]
1:44
thank you thank you hey guys welcome back to the live stream
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uh today's live stream we're going to go over planning your floor layout so what
1:56
we're going to do is we're going to go through a video that I worked on this week but instead of uploading it
2:04
uh there's a couple things I wanted to change in it but we're going to go through this so I'm going to do I'm
2:10
going to talk over this video it's just going to catch you guys up on what's been happening this week and then from
2:17
that kind of came the title of this video so there's been a lot of changes made to the uh
2:24
floor system or the floor layout that I have in the van they were planned but I
2:30
thought a good stream for you guys to teach you how to overcome maybe some obstacles that you may have if you're a
2:36
first time diyer and you're just putting a floor system in there's a couple things that you may want to know you may
2:42
want to know what side to put the electrical on what side to put the plumbing on it doesn't even matter if you want to
2:50
have a more complex flooring system so for example I have an in-floor shower pan then we cut out a notch for a
2:59
robasto heater so a parking heater we also modified it to take up our battery
3:05
system and we modified it for our flip and fold so those are a bunch of things that are
3:10
happening that you may have happening in your van and I wanted to see if you guys had any questions
3:16
while we're doing a live stream so if you have any questions anything van related ask me doesn't have to be on the
3:22
topic that we're doing tonight but we're going to go through and we are going to talk about the van floor layout
3:29
so we're going to kick it off with the video and then I've got some notes right here
3:35
we're going to specifically talk about planning for electrical and then
3:40
planning for the plumbing side of the layout
3:45
all right so let's go to the video over here
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so this video again is just going to catch us up on what's been happening in the shop and then throughout this video
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we're going to talk about points in the video where we are modifying the floor
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uh and we're going to talk about why it's important to plan ahead if you can and if you can't we're going to show you
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when I ran into uh some things where I had to modify the Flatline vanco cabinet and stuff like that what I did and how I
4:20
fixed it yeah so this is going over the last
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couple days and we had FedEx come by uh drop off the Flatline vanco cabinet you
4:32
guys may have seen that come through you may notice in this video it's very
4:38
Overexposed so that's why I did not upload this video because uh
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if you guys are filming on your iPhone make sure you turn HDR off because it's going to do this when you export so if
4:51
you guys are making videos out there just a little quick tip but we got the Flightline vanco kitchen Galleon and after I unboxed it this was
5:00
the first unit that I got and I'll tell you how this pertains to the flooring system because this is
5:08
something that had to be modified in order to work so we're going ahead and we're taking a
5:14
taking it out of the box um fast forward a little bit here
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all right so I'll pause really quick let me back up
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so we'll stick to the topic of planning your floor layout now the flooring system if you guys did
5:37
not watch the previous streams we're using a template templating kit from AVC
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rig so ABC rig not only do they make a floor templating kit so you can cut out
5:50
your own pieces of plywood but they actually make full uh floor systems so
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let me pull up their website just to if you guys have not seen me talk about this
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so now we're over here on their website AVC rig we're going to come on down they have
6:18
other stuff they have Interior Systems roof racks stuff like that but we're going to go to the store
6:25
High roof 148 and we're going to look at the flooring system
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and again we talked about this in a previous stream but I just want to kind of refresh you guys memory
6:44
so right here they have a floor system uh it comes with the three floor panels
6:50
uh the little threshold here with some grip tape and some trim pieces that have been powder coated so you can get the
6:56
whole kit if you want to do a floor and you didn't want to pre-cut it out yourself but
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instead of doing the 2500 Route you can go and it's very nice that they do this
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but that you can buy the floor patterns So when you buy the floor patterns you
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can just lay down this huge basically piece of paper it's like engineering drawing you can trace and
7:20
cut out your own panels so I did that because I knew that I was going to be modifying uh
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you know you can almost say extremely modifying the floor to include the shower and the seat
7:35
and stuff like that so the first thing when you're planning
7:44
your van flooring system is you're going to need to make sure that you understand the taper
7:49
of your van walls so how your van walls taper and come down
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so as they come down if you have any type of kitchen Galley this Galley is
8:00
going to touch the higher part the mid part of the van first before it ever touches the bottom corner
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and so if you're planning on setting something in your floor such as a shower pan or you want to uh maybe do a floor
8:14
transition The Kitchen Gallery is going to be offset from the wall and it's going to
8:19
be touching the mid portion of the van so what I had to do there is I took what
8:25
I'm doing in this video is I'm I'm finding that out I'm finding how
8:32
aggressive that is so how much do I need to trim off the back side to allow it to fit
8:47
so let's get to this section here we go
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so later in the video there is going to be a part where I show you how this is mounted to the L track and then you'll
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see where I actually notched it out in order for it to fit so
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that is what we did with this uh Flatline vanco system we notched the
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back out to make it fit where the floor is because when we cut out the shower pan hole that shower pan hole has to be
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in one location and the offset of this kitchen Galley
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designates where we have to center it in the floor and so what I'll do is I'm just going to
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go to the drawing pad and this will make a little more sense if I draw it
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okay so here's our let's not do red
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all right so here's our floor layout
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and then up here we have this will be the driver's seat and the passenger seat let's just do this
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and then back here we're going to have our wheel well
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okay and then this line we'll make this line uh let's just make this
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kind of this neutral color so that is our transition from from where the uh the floor starts
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to come into the the van and so if you have the ABC rig system
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and I'm just going to reference that because it's just easier to talk about their the way they section it
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they section it out so that the reason it's in three sections is because if you have a four by each sheet of plywood
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that you're cutting this out of it's necessary to have that modification to
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where you get a full you know the full use of the 4x8 sheet and you don't have to make
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any secondary cuts so we have our first our second and our
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third floor panel and so in red this is where I'm going to
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talk about uh we'll do let's see here we'll do dark
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blue for actually we'll do what colors we want to use here
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let's use orange for the the cabinets and everything so right here if we look at our floor
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that tape line is the joint so right here this tape line is the joint in the
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floor so if we go back to our drawing it is right here that we have the
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kitchen galley and this is not to scale
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I'm gonna have it overlap just a little bit because I did have to move it forward
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but this is our Flat Line van Co 24 inch galley
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okay so right here we have it straddling two pieces of wood
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but the most important thing is this offset right here from the wall
12:09
because we need to make a cut out in the floor which is our shower pan and that shower pan is right here
12:24
and some of this stuff might be over exaggerated because it's just really kind of making a point for you to help
12:30
out but now we have this shower pan now if you're a DIY it's going to be uh
12:38
well even even a professional so it's going to be hard to the first
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iteration of when you go ahead and lay out cuts to be made in the floor it's going
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to be challenging because uh there's not a readily available map
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of the Ford Transit truss system on the floor
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so you do have to do a little bit of trial and error as far as going under the van and finding the uh appropriate
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offset to be able to locate the shower pan
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since we're on the topic of that right now and then where this uh this whole
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location is going to be because you can imagine this hole has to be in a place where underneath the
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chassis you can route the drain hose for the for the drain
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and not only that the hole has been a place where you can access it and it
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can't be in front of like a cross member right here
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so there's a lot of things to think about so my approach to planning your floor
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layout is just going step by step and you can do
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um what I've learned from doing Engineering in the past and then doing the DIY or the handyman type of stuff is
14:06
it's easy to be an engineer behind a desk drawn up plans that are perfect
14:12
send them off have somebody else make it and kind of doing it that way it's a different thing where you're trying to
14:18
do something new and you don't have all the information so that's really where this DIY
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um challenge is is that you're kind of putting a floor system in it may be your first time third time
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but you're trying something new that hasn't been done before so having a book
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or a cheat sheet to go to doesn't exist so what I did to locate this hole is I
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took a I went out of the van and I measured to get my offset and I got as close as I
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could to the center of the van and I drilled a hole and I'm going to show you where how I did that here in just a second
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so let's go back to the video
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and feel free to stop me and ask questions this video that I'm playing it
15:09
was pre-made and I try to do it as chronologically as possible but
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um we're just going to be going through here uh so we'll stick to this the drawing
15:21
today is going to be our kind of our home base so we're going to be coming back to reference this and we're going to build off of this so this will be the
15:27
where we kind of come back to to show you guys how to plan your van floor layout when I go to this part of the video
15:34
I'm showing you some time lapses of modifications being made
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chronologically so hopefully that makes sense
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so this is where the flip and fold seat Notch Was Made so
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again these this is this for the seat and these four bolts had to be located as well
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so they are over here
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so you got this little pedestal area and let's see if I can make that more
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Square more rectangle so it goes here and then you got one two
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three four five six seven eight technically you have nine and ten but I haven't drilled them yet
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so that's another floor penetration that you have to work on
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so I went ahead and measured found my exact location drilled the holes
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and this thing was spot on it was perfect so just one part at a time
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is how you tackle this
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and so next I went in the van I went ahead and removed the insulation cleaned everything up and so now that
16:59
location is good but here's the next part I know where my seat has to be in
17:06
location of the driver's seat and the kitchen galley but let's hop back over here to this
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so the new challenge is clearances so this is what's hard to plan for
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because even if you have the measurement for your seat and your kitchen galley
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now you have to found find out the relationship between them do you need to move the kitchen Galley back
17:31
um a couple you know eighth of an inch sixteenth of an inch
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because you can't move the the seat platform that you just cut out on the floor so that would kind of be the theme going
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on
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so I go ahead and pop the seat in and this is so I can start to make get the clearance for the kitchen galley all
17:57
right where it needs to be layout wise
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so I go ahead I flip it back I lean it all the way back so I can make sure that when everything is in place it's not
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touching and rubbing and scratching so once I do that I kind of find my home
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position and I can go ahead and draw it out on the floor so that I can make sure where it needs
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to stay so I'll make like a definitive mark on each side here and then that way I know
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exactly where this is supposed to be so let's do that in green
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so the next step now we put a kitchen Galley in we put the
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flip and fold seat and we put the bed now that what does it have to do with the floor well everything so in a van
18:58
everything is connected so everything has a relationship with each other
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and the bed system had to be put in place because it is fixed as far as the
19:09
railings go now you can see this bed is a really cool bed from Flatline vanco
19:15
system uh what you can do is you can take the panels out so there's three panels that
19:21
go in so this is just one of them but once you have that location now I can reference where that panel is to the
19:28
kitchen Galley and from the kitchen Galley to the seat
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so once we have all that referenced out
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we got our seat put in we've got our um better seat put in we've got our
19:53
kitchen Galley now we're going to go ahead and locate the shower pan
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and this one's tough because you have two kitchen galleys that are competing for space and then they're both going to
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make uh the reference point for where this shower pan goes in
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so now that we've found we've uh got our seat laid out here checked off we've got
20:31
our Flatline Vancouver cabinet layout right here and again red is where we're cutting
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holes out in the floor so once we have our 24 inch Galley we
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need to get our 41 inch galley because that is going to help us Center
20:50
up the shower pan
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so we've got a delivery man bringing in our 41 inch
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on the crate
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so this was interesting I've said this in the last stream but Flatline vanco went with a different
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um company that is doing the powder coating so the finishes going forward on the new
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versions of their stuff are going to be a like almost like a gloss
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uh it's not a very shiny gloss but glossed nonetheless and so later in this
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video you'll see that I'm actually going to have to modify and powder coat the 24 inch
21:43
but we've got our Galley in here and I need this in here so I can go ahead and locate the uh the shower pan
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so that's our next step
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so let's go over here now that we have our 41 inch Galley it's going to come across
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here
22:10
and so now that is going to allow us to Center up the kitchen galley
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so now we'll take these green arrows we'll show that we've located The Galley here
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and then I'll actually go back and and yellow and I'll make these rails
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this is for the bed system and we'll check that off
22:54
so one thing I wanted to explain is you really need to get your components
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it's it is a challenge to plan ahead until you get the components uh now this
23:05
has to do with if you're buying pre-made components to put in your van either to save on
23:10
time or you want to uh maybe your uh You're Building knowledge
23:17
or handyman skills or not up to par to where you can build you know a cabinet system
23:23
in your van which is completely okay that's why they make these pre-made systems so if you have that and you get the
23:28
pre-made system you're going to want to have it in your hands while you're laying this floor out
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and this is something I noticed with this band because when I did Thomas's van we did a pretty much a traditional
23:41
build where we said we did the floor we did the lawn seal we came up we built
23:46
the battery system built the water system we installed the kitchen Galley and we're building all these things
23:52
together or from the ground up and everything just started to fill in the space
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the reason we had to do everything by hand was because we had these fixed limits between
24:05
his wheelchair and paragofer driving in the van so their cabinets can only come
24:11
out this far and they had to stop they couldn't go any more this way and then uh in the van uh
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because the refrigerator and everything that just stopped us from building in certain directions so everything had to
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be a one-off design we couldn't do anything kind of pre-batched or you know
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pre-built cabinet it just wouldn't work with his ergonomics
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so we have our kitchen galleys in and this is allowing us to find out
24:43
where that shower pan goes but then the next uh thing happens
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so if we look over here in a Ford Transit we have these uh
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supporting members of the chassis right here and they're kind of a nuisance because
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they make it to where you can't really put anything in here straight you have to notch it out
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so what I had to do is I had to actually take the brand new kitchen Galley and I
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had to notch out the aluminum behind uh the 41 inch galley
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so this would allow me to still maintain the drawer function still use it as a
25:26
you know a refrigerator spot if I wanted to but if you look right here this part sticking out right here that's
25:32
covered with the adventure wagon fabric that is the one of the supporting members of the van chassis and this
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middle part just has to be taken out
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don't forget to paint even over aluminum
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and so now we have both of our let's go over here we'll do
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a little voice over so now we have both of the kitchen galleys in and we can start to
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plan out for that middle section so I'll step up here in just a minute
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all right so we have our bed system in we have our two kitchen galleys in
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so now everything is located to the walls and from front to back we have our
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clearance for our flip and fold seat over here and so that's helping us do is locate the shower pan
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so now we've gone and we've taken a shower pan let's see if I have that video real quick
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so in this video let's see here let me move my head over here
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if you guys have any questions while I'm doing this I know it's a little detailed this live stream
26:57
but I just wanted to get it out there while I'm in this process because we're going to be moving on to the electrical
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system and Plumbing in the next few weeks and we won't be going back to this topic
27:09
so in the middle here you guys can see I cut out this little spot and that's like
27:14
a little inspection window and so what I did is I cut this out because my measurement said that this was a safe
27:20
area to cut out and kind of inspect where I could drill a hole and I drill an eighth inch hole
27:27
through the floor and that allows me to go underneath the van find out where the drill bit is and then
27:33
measure off of that to find where I need to put the shower pan in
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uh I eventually landed on this little red circle here with a line
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and I drilled a eighth inch drill bit straight down the bottom
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and that's where I needed to be all right let me fast forward here
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uh glossier matte uh the new
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versions are glossy
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and the new versions are glossy
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yeah the new versions are glossy uh while the video is up really quick
28:47
as you guys can see here the reason I got these kitchen counties is they are Venture wagon compatible so what that
28:53
means is these bolts that you can buy these l-track bolts
29:00
bolt through the cabinet and the cabinet is physically bolted to the structure of
29:06
the van through the adventure wagon frame um so that's what I really like plus the
29:11
cabinets are pre-built and they look great
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and then on the other side you can see same thing we got two bolts going into
29:25
the L track uh and two just doing two bolts these two grade eight bolts into
29:31
the L track these things are extremely secure at the very top you'll notice that I've
29:37
notched out the aluminum this is for the bed system so I needed the bed system to be at a
29:43
lower height the feature owner of this van can still
29:49
move the bed system higher if they'd like to it's at a great position right
29:54
now for mountain bikes and for Comfort but if you wanted to go crazy and make
30:00
it even higher to fit maybe some higher stuff in the back you can do that these
30:05
cabinets are designed so that if you had to remove them you still would be able to there's going to be quick connect
30:12
fittings on the plumbing and you can unbolt these these cabinets
30:18
but getting back to Florida layout if you are making items in your van
30:23
removable make sure that you have enough room where they're laid out to actually remove them what I mean by that is for
30:31
example if you have a uh they for example we have the fridge
30:36
over here we've got this isotherm Cruise 130. and we have our 24 inch and we have our
30:43
41 inch kitchen Galley uh if we needed to take out the 24 inch Kitchen Gallery
30:48
we need to take out the fridge first out of the galley so you need to make sure that your hallway of your van is enough
30:55
room so that the fridge can come out and be slid out and then carried out the back and then you can remove the cabinet
31:04
um so again when you're laying stuff out on paper
31:10
what I'm talking about is imagine the fridge is right here so the fridge
31:16
is here and we need to move it out so it'll be out here in the uh the
31:22
hallway I call it but you need to make sure that there's enough clearance here and here for the
31:29
van for the the refrigerator to be taken out of the van if this cabinet for example was too far
31:36
in you probably noticed it when you're laying stuff out
31:42
initially when you're kind of walking around um if you guys ever watched humble Road
31:47
he does stuff out of cardboards he'll actually build his kitchen galleries out of cardboard and kind of get a very spatial feel for
31:55
everything uh in the van so you can visually see if something's going to be
32:00
a problem before you go ahead and do the whole entire floor but the shower uh but the refrigerator
32:08
that I was talking about that's something to think about when you're if you're making removable
32:13
cabinets get the space to take them out
32:25
all right so next thing has to do so while we're paused here this is this
32:32
height of the bed so we got 35 inches
32:37
the disability I wanted to know what that was um and so now we're getting ready to
32:43
talk about cutting this floor out and what we're doing is we found our
32:49
Center hole but we're trying to figure out our front to back measurement
32:55
the front to back has to do with the underneath the chassis of the van
33:01
you know there's exhaust system there's a fuel tank there's cross members
33:06
so if we shift it back two inches you know where is that going to land underneath the van if we shifted It Forward two inches where is that going
33:12
to land and then last is Aesthetics so you know at the end of the day what's it going to look like when it's in the
33:18
floor did you put it in a weird spot
33:25
so if you get the components and you start to draw a floor plan you
33:30
can build the layout and you can help yourself from making
33:36
you know big errors because if you think about it
33:42
you know once you start cutting the floor if you're putting down you know lawn seal flooring if you're doing like
33:48
you know wood like a waterproof like vinyl flooring
33:54
or even do like a click and lock like engineered type product
34:00
you really want to have everything locked in so that you're not changing it later
34:07
um if you if you made a mistake on measuring or laying something out and needed to change it
34:13
so I found that that was about the perfect location to put that
34:20
let's see we're talking about that let's fast forward here
34:32
yeah this is why I'm doing this live stream because the the video is blown out a little bit um I got to fix that later
34:39
but now that we have our location for our kitchen galleys and that we can move them out of the way and the next step is
34:46
we're going to actually cut out the hole for the middle part of the van
35:09
and while we're cutting this out one thing you want to do one thing you want to be aware of is
35:15
the Gap so if you drew a line and you trace it out on the shower pan and you're trying to be that precise to make
35:22
it for the thickness of the shower pan material you need to do that in your cutting uh
35:30
this is a situation where you want to cut more aggressively you know kind of
35:36
outside the line because if you cut two perfect it's going to be very hard to keep chipping away at that edge once
35:42
you've cut it to allow for the actual pan to fit in there
35:50
so let me pause here so since we found our hole in the center
35:57
and that was perfectly in the center of the van underneath we got all of our room for our hoses going to the gray
36:04
water tank everything looks good
36:09
our next step is to test the pan
36:28
and this is kind of uh this is kind of like a reverse process of building a van in a way because what we're doing is
36:35
we're taking all the components that go in the van we're putting them all in there you know the bed the kitchen guy
36:40
at the seat we're going to put them all in there make sure they fit then we're gonna take everything back out
36:46
and then we're going to cut the insulation put the support members in
36:53
there we have one inch aluminum tubing that's going to go and that's going to
36:58
make sure that our seams don't move and walk on us and create that little ripple effect in the lawn seal
37:05
and we'll show you how to do that it's another technique that I learned from Humble Road and he does that on his
37:11
vans but then once we do that we'll put the whole floor system in and then we'll put
37:16
all the components back in so it is a little different usually like I said earlier your doing the floor first putting your floor
37:23
coating on there and then building up off of that
37:30
all right so let's go over here the drawing we've now worked on our shower pan and the shower pan we can check that
37:38
off the list so it fits it's good to go we know our kitchen galleys fit they're
37:44
good to go the next step is to come over here
37:50
beside the kitchen Galley and we are going to put in our
37:55
parking heater um this one is a gasoline fired heater
38:00
but a lot of people have diesel especially if you're in a sprinter
38:06
and so we need to go ahead and cut out the intake and exhaust holes for the
38:14
system now you're probably wondering why did I not put it underneath the driver's seat
38:21
there's two reasons if I can put it over here I like that better because
38:29
if it's in that location it's got a different color here
38:39
if this is in this location you can remember the fuel tank is right here
38:46
and the exhaust system is right here
38:52
and if you have this heater in the Ford Transit the fuel line has to cross the exhaust
38:59
now there's a safe way to do it and every you know lots of people do it this
39:05
way it's nothing's wrong with it but uh Crossing that exhaust coming out
39:11
you don't have to do it I would not suggest it so what I'm
39:17
comfortable with at the current moment I'm not saying I won't do it in the future but that is putting it over here
39:24
so that one my controls go straight to my electrical system
39:30
and two my fuel line goes straight to the tank and I don't have to cross
39:36
the hot exhaust system so that might be a Pro tip for anybody that is worried
39:42
about you know there's another option so what I did is I went over here
39:49
and I had to take out the floor section so we took out floor section number two
39:55
right here so we took that out and what we're doing is
40:03
we're doing our math to find out where can we lay out uh
40:09
our heater now there's a lot of things that are going into play here we have our power system we have our Battery Systems we
40:16
have our controls we need to make room for them we know that we can't get any closer to
40:22
than where this dotted line is because that's where our 24 inch kitchen Galley is
40:28
we know that this black and red line is a cross member under the van so we can't
40:33
go past that and then this other red mark is another cross member so we need to go all the
40:41
way back into the inside right here and this is this type of fit that we can get and still
40:47
put our screws underneath the van to mount the heater and have room to put
40:52
our uh hose clamps
40:58
but this drill bit I'm using you see how long it is it's like 12 inches long
41:03
and it's an eighth inch and it's what I use to just make like a little inspection
41:09
drill bit I can drill through the van go underneath and I can measure it
41:15
earlier stream we talked about putting the the slide out for the bikes and that's how
41:22
we located the grade 8 bolts in the floor
41:28
so now that we know that we're going to go through here and we'll drill our two holes right in the
41:36
center and then that way we can just triple check go under the van and we should be
41:41
perfect
41:46
all right let me show you exactly what I'm talking about so we're going to go under the van
41:54
and this is uh when I fix this video it's going to come out uh the color and
42:00
audio is all messed up so that's why I'm doing this live stream to talk to you about it but this um
42:07
this video will come out and you'll hear the audio of me talking about the exhaust system and where the field tap is for the fuel
42:15
tank but if you look under here you guys can
42:21
see this is where our two holes are
42:26
so we got a bunch of room underneath this area and that's going to allow us to
42:32
safely have our intake and exhaust for the diesel system of course ours is a gasoline
42:38
but right here is the two holes underneath the van under the van so the M1 will be intake and one will be
42:44
exhaust so I put this on the opposite side of my
42:49
van that's how I know that this location is a good spot to uh to put it
43:05
so next we're going to do is Mark we're going to take our hole saw and we're going to go ahead and cut out the
43:11
two holes get them cut out clean everything up
43:16
we're going to test fit it and notice it is very close to the wheel well
43:22
so the angle of the camera let me back up here
43:30
so what I've done is right behind me
43:36
off of eBay I got a it's a six millimeter spacer
43:43
and what this is going to do is going to be an additional six millimeters of height to the gasket
43:50
and that way I'm gonna be able to clear the the wheel well and I'll still be able to
43:56
insulate it and put the Havelock on top of it
44:07
all right so we did that went ahead and cut our location that's what the gasket looks like let's see here there you go
44:14
so that's what the gasket looks like so we got plenty of room for everything to fit
44:22
um and went ahead and just painted the whole area got it all risk preventative
44:29
okay the next step is to move from the heater to the battery system because if
44:37
you guys saw last week we started working on the battery system over here
44:44
so there's a build and learn live stream episode where we go ahead and we talk about building this power system we're
44:50
holding 600 amp hours lithium iron phosphate with our 3000 watt renig inverter
44:56
charger so there's a ton of weight in this whole entire power system
45:01
but on this other side that you guys can't see we have two of these uh
45:07
they're pretty beefy rinergy 50 amp DC to DC mppt charge controllers
45:15
and we have two of them and then we also have a vitron lynx distributor so to fit all this stuff in here
45:22
we need as much space as possible so since we know where our our heater is
45:28
ending over here we can start measuring from where the
45:33
heater ends and the hoses need to be and we can measure out to our inverter
45:39
charger and start to find out how we can lay out and fit all these components into this system
45:50
so the first thing I do is I go ahead and get my offset for the width of the
45:56
battery so that's where my 80 20 is going to start and eventually be the foundation to my battery cage
46:04
then I'm going to go to
46:10
let me fast forward here then I'm actually going to go and put in
46:16
my slide tray for the bikes and make sure that I have I still have a
46:21
good clearance so I made a mark on the floor right there so once I do all that we kind of come to
46:28
this situation and that was the last live stream talking about how we are building this and sizing that
46:34
up so moving on we're almost at the end of this video
46:43
we end up modifying the
46:50
there we go let me get back to the video
46:55
so last on the live stream we had go and do one of our uh followers and they were talking about
47:03
you know can you fit the 130 into this 24 inch Kitchen Gallery and I didn't even think about it so guess what
47:11
with a little modification this isotherm Cruise 130 will fit perfectly inside of
47:18
this aluminum kitchen Galley so what we did is I went
47:24
ahead and taped everything off there's a little bit of a puzzle how Flatline vanco actually designs the inside of
47:31
this to get that piece out took the pieces of bamboo out and the next step was go ahead and
47:37
measure now believe it or not the bottom drawer of this system is the exact width
47:43
of the outer frame of the fridge now that's both good and bad it's good
47:49
because we know we had that much metal to take from it's bad because Metal's already been taken away from the drawer
47:55
but it's hidden by just a millimeter so it works out perfect so what I'm doing now is I'm scoring the
48:02
powder coat I have to use re-powder coated anyway but i'm scoring it so I
48:08
can get my whole the size that I need cut out so I went ahead and taped everything off
48:15
and I got a fine metal cutting jigsaw blade a fine cut helps you not go crazy fast
48:24
allows you to go uh it forces you to go more slowly through the cut and you can be extremely
48:31
accurate um I get I can get I can get really accurate with a jigsaw believe it or not
48:38
so you guys can see we cut off the left right now we're just cutting off the top part and in just a second the the frame
48:45
will come out I'll fall out
48:51
and then we are going to do the big reveal so let's see if the isotherm
48:58
Cruise 130 actually fits in here I'm going to fast forward a little bit so that's the piece we cut out
49:04
and I know it was it's an expensive modification uh don't have a heart attack if you go
49:10
to the website and see how much the galley that I just cut was but um it's about the vision guys we gotta we
49:18
want to use the isotherm Cruise 130 because it's an awesome fridge it's humongous for a van
49:23
and but we want to have the style of the Flatline vanco cabinet the good thing is
49:29
that this cabinet already has all the louvers in the back it's perfect so
49:34
now one thing I did hear differently is do you see me I just put that piece of half inch plywood in the bottom
49:40
I needed to keep that piece of aluminum so this aluminum right here I needed to
49:46
keep this bottom piece intact if I cut it out the thing would be wobbly it wouldn't be structurally as
49:53
rigid as I wanted to be wouldn't be safe because remember the whole point of my Vans is I am physically bolting
50:00
components to the chassis structure of the van so that in the event of an accident everything is held in place and
50:07
doesn't go anywhere so let's let's see let's see how we did
50:12
so go and do it if you're watching this is uh this is all thanks to you hahaha
50:18
this is your suggestion coming together in real life
50:23
so here we go so I go ahead and
50:31
I did add an additional eighth of an inch to the top for the hinge so I don't think I have an issue
50:38
with that when I'm putting this in here
50:44
all right here we go let's see does it fit oh go and do
50:50
[Laughter] awesome I'm glad you're here look look what do you think right it fits right
51:06
I was trying to put that drawer in there but I it just wouldn't fit there's just no way and then I thought about actually
51:12
putting in a like a butcher block or like kind of like a locking drawer slide for a
51:18
butcher block and um it was just too complicated
51:24
now it does go all the way in there the back right side where that little grill
51:30
for the coolant fan in the back that section right there I did have to cut out a notch
51:37
so but there you go there is your reveal
51:47
so how do you think it looks
51:55
I think it looks pretty good so yeah now we got the isotherm in there
52:00
that's all the metal that we had to cut out we do lose a drawer though I did want to keep it because now only I have
52:06
two drawers it's always nice to have more drawers in the van but um you know you get a bigger fridge so
52:14
another thing I could have done was cut the top one took it all the way to the top and then had a bottom section where
52:22
you know you can uh have a little cubby to put stuff in but
52:28
anyway that didn't work [Laughter] yeah 130 is the it's the best so I'm
52:35
happy uh you saw that and we could that little aha moment happen
52:42
um cool so that happened and you guys can see again it's got the louvers so really good breathability
52:48
this is that last modification I had to make and so that is so that the uh the
52:54
evaporator in the top could actually fit um but I was in a rush because I needed to
53:01
take it to the powder coaters uh it's going to take them three weeks to get to it so I just I didn't uh that's
53:08
the end of the video because that's the end of the video
53:13
um okay so time for questions
53:24
yeah Nick you're right uh RB components does make it for
53:29
um yeah I mean I you can actually buy it uh with you can actually buy it with the
53:37
the isotherm already in it let's see let me do the RB components
53:47
yeah Nick I know exactly what you're talking about I thought about going with them um they make cool stuff uh but just style
53:55
wise at the current moment that's that's the only reason I didn't choose them choose them
54:03
um but yeah if we go to Galley so this is what Nick's talking about wait I'm
54:08
not even showing you guys here we go so I went to rbcomponents.com
54:17
so this is what Nick's talking about how each one of these is made for that
54:24
so yeah I do like that the thing is um I'm already pushing the limits as far as
54:34
my build out goes I'm justifying it being pushed because
54:40
uh where's my video uh
54:48
I'll say it'll be fine give me one second I wanted to show you guys something
55:02
so I'm already pushing the limits because right here
55:09
where is it come on
55:17
uh you guys can see the opening here so the opening is like 22 inches I
55:22
wanted it to be 24 inches but that 41 inch kitchen Galley is just barely making it so
55:30
this is 42 48.56 this is stuff that you want to use on like an extended so like a 170 that sort
55:38
of thing uh but Nick yeah
55:43
really good uh comment because you know if you guys want to go a different way
55:49
um this is this is what it looks like
55:57
yeah looks pretty good
56:13
um just for me I'm just not a fan of that sink on top so because I wanted to change the sink
56:19
and the look of it yeah that's why I went with the Flatline vanco
56:28
go and do I'm looking for a cabinet so the fridge will be at eye
56:34
level and I haven't found one so I need to build you're probably gonna have to build one I mean I comb the internet all
56:41
the time and I haven't I haven't found anything like that
56:46
I mean that might be a good opportunity to do uh 80 20 for
56:52
making your own little cabinet because that's what I did what's nice
56:58
about the 80 20 is you can you can use this face
57:05
you can get the let me let's see I'm gonna show you this
57:14
you can get the smooth face right here and then just have that flange
57:20
of like the isotherm overlap
57:28
oh Nick you can't get it without the sink that's good
57:38
um
57:44
yeah but go and do they make you know this is the smooth face on one side and so that's what I've done Thomas's is I
57:51
took his drawer fridge and came up to here and then I just drilled and tapped a hole to bolt in the fridge and then
57:58
this became the whole entire fridge structure the nice thing is when I built his van I used 80 20 I used a
58:06
wood upholstered wood panels and bolted them to the 80 20 to kind of keep that clean line
58:14
um yeah 80 20 is just nice because you can uh
58:19
it's just kind of the just knowing that
58:25
it's bolted into something very strong and structural not that Wood's not structural but I
58:32
mean the fridges they're not light I mean that's the uh what is it ISO
58:45
let's see how much the weight is yeah 64 pounds that's it's 64 pounds uh
58:53
Weight Wise so it's pretty pretty heavy
59:00
um yeah keep the questions coming I'm going to finish up this drawing really quick
59:05
so this is just going to close out the topic definitely give me your questions keep getting those questions coming
59:11
through um but the kind of the point
59:16
or the theme of this video is just planning your floor layout
59:22
if you're doing a lot of components that are bought so like a complete forces four system or you're getting pre-made
59:29
cabinets it's better to have all that in-house and then just kind of play around for with how everything is uh
59:36
being put in the van before you start making adjustments to
59:41
the flooring but if you're going the opposite direction which is more typical of a DOI build and you're putting the
59:48
floor in first and then you're building up off of it um
59:53
that works too so here is the next part of this video
59:59
so this is where my notes come into play the
1:00:05
you want to you want to kind of pick a side it
1:00:13
doesn't matter what side there's no wrong answer to this one but you want to pick a side of where your water or power
1:00:19
is going to live and so we're going to do this in
1:00:24
what color do I want let's do purple so for example for me
1:00:29
my power system is going to be over here on the driver's side
1:00:36
so this is going to be my power it's going to be right here so that's my
1:00:42
power so I'm going to want to make sure that if I'm wiring anything so if I have my
1:00:49
wires coming from my driver's seat from the alternator if I have anything going to anything
1:00:56
I keep it on this one side and then I go in my flooring system and
1:01:02
I find a path where I can actually take it to the other side of the van and
1:01:08
I kind of stick with that it's like a place where I can go now when I did Thomas's van I had uh
1:01:17
the benefit of putting two Max Air fans in the roof what that did was
1:01:24
where it came down and then you had the the roof cross member the supporting member where you had that there was a
1:01:30
channel and Not only was it a perfect place to put cables but guess what you could take the fan shroud off
1:01:37
access the cables and then put the fan shroud back on and hide them and so that
1:01:43
that tended to be a perfect perfect option
1:01:48
um see another reason to put the heater in the driver's side is the exhaust is now
1:01:53
yes right exactly I don't know why I missed that but um
1:01:59
it's it is kind of silly that if you look at Van builds where they have that
1:02:04
exhaust and uh not judge anybody that's done this but I
1:02:10
think if you can do it put the exhaust on the driver's side away from the sliding door
1:02:16
these units are very efficient it's highly unlikely that that stuff's going to come in your van but it can
1:02:24
so if you can keep the exhaust going away on the driver's side because it's
1:02:31
you know sometimes in the winter time you can have the heater going but have the door open uh kind of have that
1:02:37
um you know outside but then you're kind of keeping it warm because those heaters
1:02:42
put a lot of heat but yeah I completely agree let me write that in there
1:03:33
yeah put that on the opposite side
1:03:38
all right I miss any questions in the chat okay perfect
1:03:43
so yeah plan to have a place where you're moving that power to the other
1:03:49
side so for example I might have a run coming over here by the water tank and that's going to power all of my
1:03:55
stuff for my kitchen Galley I have like a little electrical outlet over here I've got light switches over here I got
1:04:02
all this stuff so I've already kind of pre-done this run uh for the power system
1:04:08
so next for water let's just do green for water I know that doesn't make any sense but that's what we're doing
1:04:16
so the green okay we got the green here so this is my water system
1:04:22
the good thing about the water system is I'm not crossing over to the other side you don't want to do that
1:04:28
so my water stuff is just all going to be here all on this side so everything for the kitchen for the hot water heater
1:04:35
which is going to be here and then for the rear spray down shower that's out here in the back and for the water fill
1:04:41
so everything is on the passenger side of the van electrical is okay to cross underneath
1:04:48
it's not good for water because you know it is if you get if you really are
1:04:55
taking this van to extreme environments that water can be frozen up underneath
1:05:00
the floor because your insulation is up here so the heat that was heating your van
1:05:06
you know is can't pass through to the underneath the floor system that's the
1:05:12
whole reason you insulate it so if you do that that could be an issue
1:05:20
um but yeah I wanted to close this out we're going to go to uh some q a here so
1:05:26
get those questions coming through um but yeah if you guys wanted to
1:05:33
pause this and maybe you know you guys take a picture of it this is uh
1:05:38
just a reminder of where you want to start thinking about laying stuff out in your van I just realized I missed
1:05:47
my pull out tray that goes right here so this is my pull out tray for the
1:05:53
bikes this is the tray
1:06:06
so that way you have an idea of where everything is and if you want to
1:06:12
actually put some measurements down here once you get the van done if you ever have to access something in the future it might be helpful to know you know how
1:06:20
far the shower pan is from The Galley or the how far the seat is from the other
1:06:25
Galley because if you have to do anything and drill on the floor once everything is done
1:06:31
you'll be more comfortable doing that
1:06:38
uh so Nick says I'm torn about where to put my heater just got it today I would prefer the driver's side rear
1:06:46
uh I'm still unsure of layout
1:06:53
put it under the passenger seat is an area that I know that will always be out of the way no matter what I do
1:07:01
um so so uh you know Nick I'm torn too
1:07:08
because underneath the passenger seat it's just a good it is a good spot because you're
1:07:15
not dealing with anything in the back you can have that open for options later
1:07:21
um another reason so other than what going do said about the exhaust which uh
1:07:29
that's a perfect world scenario if you do pipe it out through the drive the passenger side
1:07:35
um secondly in the world it's gonna be okay these especially if you get like a wilbasto or S Bar
1:07:41
they're the air fuel ratio is pretty spot on so it's not it's not like a like I have a
1:07:49
Chinese diesel here diesel heater and it kind of you know when it starts up it's kind of smoky and then it gets
1:07:56
going but the higher quality ones um not so much
1:08:02
uh so just maybe this helps you but I didn't put it up there because
1:08:08
um I wanted it to be under the bed for comfort so I know in my van
1:08:16
I have the heater on the passenger side not under the passenger's seat but it's on the
1:08:24
passenger side by the sliding door going to do I know you love that
1:08:30
um I put mine where you're not you you technically shouldn't put it but
1:08:36
um the I did that if I had it could have
1:08:42
changed it I don't want to blowing out this way towards the front of the van obviously I would have changed it blowing towards
1:08:48
the back of the van a reason that I'm putting it where it was on this van today and this drawing
1:08:55
like right there right here is because uh underneath the bed the bed's really high
1:09:01
up and it's just it would be nice to have that warm air kind of underneath your bed area and not having to kind of
1:09:08
use it blasting in the front to get the heat to the back because if you have lived in a van or haven't
1:09:14
done it yet you'll know that when you wake up in the morning or at night having that heater
1:09:20
just kind of on just kind of puttering along at night time it's the most custom comfortable thing about van life it is
1:09:27
so cool to be 32 degrees outside and the underneath of your bed is just warm and
1:09:33
toasty or you wake up and you turn it on it's one of the best parts so if you can have that under your bed you're not
1:09:39
going to have to blast it from the front and get it to the back um
1:09:44
I don't know if that stuff helped but I have a lot of questions come through so let me let's see here
1:09:51
um
1:10:06
so go and do I'm gonna get that shower pan in just one second
1:10:15
Peter cool all right we'll do this in order we'll do go and do Peter
1:10:21
um and then we'll do the next one so go and do I got my shower pan from
1:10:27
it is Tetra Tetra van
1:10:33
it's tetravan I didn't buy it from their website you can but I think I went to nomadic
1:10:39
Supply I think that's where I got it uh so you guys have probably seen this
1:10:45
one this is um
1:10:51
this one right here is the one that folds down I like this one but it blocks
1:10:57
the access to the rear of the van and I didn't really like that
1:11:02
um let's see moving on down where is the other one
1:11:09
there it is let's see this pan on the right um and don't have a heart attack when you
1:11:14
see how much it costs but uh
1:11:20
so it's 8.25 but it comes with this uh the shower curtain and the plywood
1:11:27
filler piece that you want that so that is this filler piece you want that and
1:11:33
you want this custom shower pan um it might not be too much sticker shock because this you know this is what
1:11:39
the bambrel vanwell's light pricing wise but I got this what's important about it
1:11:45
is the pan is not stainless steel which will not allow magnets to touch so
1:11:51
if you guys want to Google that that's pretty interesting but stainless is not magnetic
1:11:58
aluminum it's not magnetic obviously so this is a steel
1:12:04
pan that's been powder coated so it's very heavy but the steel pan allows the shower to
1:12:11
actually magnetize to the pan and keep you keep that seal which is very
1:12:16
important so I've seen a lot of stainless steel shower pounds out there but I haven't seen a steel one that's
1:12:22
been you know powder coated like this the main reason I bought it is the depth
1:12:30
so where I put it in the van I don't really have that much depth to work with so this pan is an inch and a half
1:12:37
yeah it's an inch and a half um I'm sorry 1.31 inches
1:12:43
and that's a that's the max that you're going to be able to use in a Transit with a one inch
1:12:49
insulation half inch flooring
1:12:55
um yeah so that's where I got it uh
1:13:02
so I don't see any different drain positions I think it's just the center so when I did earlier in the Stream I
1:13:08
was talking about like locating it so I had to locate it where it was based on
1:13:14
the center drain and so I try to make it aesthetically pleasing and kind of keep it in the
1:13:19
center but that did kind of push me to the edge of a place where I was drilling a hole
1:13:26
Peter explores life ran 12 volt fuse boxes on both
1:13:31
sides of the van that is a good idea so if you're making your van or building
1:13:36
your van um
1:13:41
so maybe putting uh you know a box so say this cabinet right here let's just
1:13:47
say that you weren't using it for um the fridge like let's just say you
1:13:52
used it for I don't know storage or something you could put a little box in here a little fuse box
1:13:59
and that fuse box that would allow you to um
1:14:05
you know access it in the cabinet uh and I'm probably going to put one under here under the sink
1:14:10
another 12 volt box and that way I can
1:14:16
my light switches I have like a little foot hole like a a step light I've got
1:14:24
some other stuff over here that way I can Daisy I can daisy chain I
1:14:30
can wire it all to this this little subpanel box and then over here I have like a USB
1:14:36
charger for the flip and fold seat so like if you have people want to charge their phone right there and then like
1:14:43
some switches for lights to show off the power system that way I don't have to use
1:14:49
my Lynx distributor that type of thing so I think that's a
1:14:55
good idea all right next question when you do a phantom shower like that
1:15:01
do you need to vent or simply send the drain to your gray tank so what you're going to do is you're
1:15:07
going to vent the gray tank so do I have the tank where's the tank
1:15:22
yeah get this question in the guys because I'm gonna probably 15 minutes gonna wrap
1:15:28
it up um here we go so here is the tank
1:15:36
and where's my face there you go so on a tank you have one two three four
1:15:42
so this is the custom tank made for the underside before Transit you can find
1:15:47
this at uh agile off-road but Northwest conversions makes this tank they also
1:15:54
make the 40 gallon tank that I have in the van so one is going to be your drain it's
1:16:00
going to be this big guy right here one the other big guy is going to be your fill so depending on how you have
1:16:07
this oriented it's gonna be your fill and this little top one right here this
1:16:12
is where you're going to vent the tank so that when the water goes into it you know the air that it displaces has a
1:16:19
place to go so this will allow it to drain properly
1:16:24
um there's something you can do like you can do like a mesh screen like a cheap you know hose clamp
1:16:31
you can get fancy and have like a an inline check valve or you can go even more fancy and have a special like
1:16:38
Marine stainless brass tank vent uh for like a live well or
1:16:44
something like that there's a bunch of different ways you can do this um
1:16:50
this other one down here you can just plug it or you could use it for
1:16:58
uh like an electronic drain so maybe if you didn't want the big because the big ball valve that are
1:17:04
electronic they're very very expensive but like a half inch drain it's a gonna
1:17:10
take a long time for the tank to drain but uh actuated electrically actuated
1:17:16
like a solenoid that opens and closes it might be like 50 bucks on Amazon so this way you can touch a button on the inside
1:17:22
of your van and drain the tank without getting out whereas this bigger inch and a half is
1:17:27
going to be the mechanical uh automatic valve is going to be very expensive
1:17:34
um did I miss any questions
1:17:39
all right guys quick segue into the van build cheat sheet so I have put
1:17:47
together something called the DIY van build sheet sheet and it is uh it's
1:17:52
essentially an Excel sheet of all the parts that I've bought over the last three years
1:17:58
and what I've done is I've put it all into this one document that you guys can have completely free and it's going to
1:18:04
help you put your van together so if you're ever on the internet and you're trying to find all these van Parts but you have no
1:18:12
idea where to start this is a list that's going to help you get there quickly so I took all those parts that I bought
1:18:18
I put them on a list and then I organize them from electrical HVAC Fasteners Roofing solar security
1:18:26
and tools so tools just this tool section for
1:18:31
example is something that is very important to me if I could have just bought every tool on this list it would
1:18:36
have saved me so much time and money trying to figure out stuff that I needed didn't work and then having to buy other
1:18:43
things so these tools that are on this list are specific to what I use to build a VM I've got the revnet tool then I put
1:18:51
the Venture wagon kit in I've got the ferrules for putting in all
1:18:56
the fittings in the red Arc system I've got the propec expansion tool for the plumbing system the PEX tubing cutter
1:19:03
the solder station so Thomas's Marine One van all of his LED light banks in
1:19:10
the van were all soldered together using this kit the felt tape I use it everywhere so
1:19:16
stuff doesn't rattle the hole saw cutting out holes for the electrical
1:19:22
disconnect switches so everything on here I've used it's a great place to start and it's completely free it's
1:19:29
called the DIY van build cheat sheet all you have to do is click the link in the description below put your name and
1:19:35
email address it's going to come straight to your inbox it's really easy it's completely free guys so check it
1:19:42
out I really think it's going to help you not only save time and money but just
1:19:48
have the Peace of Mind of knowing that Nick bought all this stuff he used it and he's been pretty happy with it now
1:19:54
this is a living document which means over time this list will keep growing so
1:20:00
we're at 255 right now so I bought like 20 more things from Amazon that are not on this list
1:20:06
so I'll be updating that pretty shortly but yeah all you gotta do is click on this link I will put this link in the
1:20:15
comment right here so get your free
1:20:22
fan build cheap here
1:20:32
see if I can spell get correctly yeah so click that link it'll take you
1:20:38
right over to the page and you can just sign up for that and you can get this form and you can use it however you like
1:20:45
on the right are all the Amazon links to these products I'm talking about there's
1:20:50
electrical cable on there there's a lot of energy products
1:20:55
and yeah I really think it'll help you out if you don't know where to start
1:21:00
so once more DIY van build cheat sheet you can also head on over to Van
1:21:06
builderhq.com click on the link as well
1:21:11
all right so that was my Spiel do we have any more questions before I head
1:21:16
out here we got eight minutes and we'll be done for tonight I want to think of
1:21:22
you guys for uh joining me for the live stream tonight if you haven't subscribed get subscribed like this video share it
1:21:28
to anybody who you think will benefit from this knowledge
1:21:33
yeah I appreciate you staying with me this long because this is long-winded stuff but it's a
1:21:39
you know it's easier to kind of talk through it I use these live streams to kind of go back and gather my thoughts
1:21:46
on the best way to kind of showcase this stuff to you guys so the cool thing is this kind of lives on the internet
1:21:51
forever I can go back and reference it but like this drawing right here this is a good thing to bring up in future
1:21:57
videos so that if you have questions I can kind of go back and say hey you know this was a good thing that we
1:22:03
talked about we got Peter going to Nick
1:22:08
um Foreigner did I say that right
1:22:16
and uh yeah we got some good people on here asking good questions and it helps this
1:22:22
uh Community grow and if there's anything I can do to better improve the channel love to hear
1:22:28
that in the comment section below whether it be topics to talk about in future videos long form content or short form so maybe
1:22:35
a short doing more short updates about where I'm at on the van build ah what's going to be really exciting is
1:22:43
we're going to Adventure van Expos this year so we're going to go to a couple of them so you guys are going to see
1:22:49
footage those videos always do so well uh interviewing all the vendors
1:22:54
um the Florida van life Gathering uh it's gonna be uh
1:23:02
changing up this year I think it's gonna be the same time but they're going to have a new theme and I think that's
1:23:07
going to be really cool um so I'm looking forward to that that's going to be next year the Overland Expo
1:23:13
are the southeast adventure expo
1:23:19
that will be next year so those two are the new ones on the list that we'll be going to every year on top of the
1:23:25
adventure event Expos that we typically go to I'm not sure this year if I'm going to
1:23:31
Adventure van Expo Chattanooga or Overland Expo East in Arlington Virginia
1:23:37
it's kind of a toss-up between those two the cool thing is we're going to have a van to take to the event so I'm really
1:23:44
excited about that um yeah we got about six minutes do we have any other questions from you guys
1:23:51
tonight before we uh close out this live stream
1:23:56
so I'll be on here for a couple more minutes let's let it sit here for about five
1:24:02
more minutes
1:24:15
see if there's anything else I missed Plumbing tank water lines
1:24:23
yeah as far as the heater location that's uh that's tough I would say Nick if you're
1:24:29
still listening right now that maybe lay out your bed or some other
1:24:34
stuff and other components are and then just kind of sit in the van and say Hey you know where is the place I would like
1:24:40
for my heat to come from uh if I didn't if I could put it anywhere where would it be and then try
1:24:46
to see if you can get it close to that that might be more enjoyable for you than
1:24:52
putting it some way and just somewhere like I'm in the front and just kind of seeing what happens uh
1:24:59
I'm trying to do it underneath the bed because I think it's going to be the most comfortable keep the area nice and
1:25:04
warm but not having to blast the heater um although the heaters are very very
1:25:10
strong so even if you had it in the front you're still going to get um a bunch of heat there are some people
1:25:18
that say that you know it's not efficient because you're taking the cold cabin air and continually reheating it
1:25:24
but uh I don't think it's that crazy those heaters are very powerful just uh
1:25:31
by themselves
1:25:41
I do have some uh questions that I have not answered let me see if I
1:25:47
can really quickly go over the comments that I did not answer
1:25:55
um let's see here let me say can I pop over here there we go
1:26:02
all right so we have a question about the fog light kit from diodynamics
1:26:08
are both the white and Amber fog light distribution or is one driving beam
1:26:14
so they're both SAE lights which means they have that clean cut off so you're
1:26:20
not like blinding the next person uh one's fog one is a driving beam however
1:26:26
they sell them in just Amber and just white Thomas called in and got uh got
1:26:35
them paired separately so he asked them to do one Amber and one
1:26:41
white and another Amber another white so that was kind of a custom job but I think they can probably do it for anybody
1:26:50
um so Peter 30 millimeter T Cell flame for upper cabinets
1:27:01
I hope the eight millimeter slot addresses um
1:27:08
so I don't use cutting lubricant to cut the 80 20. I use a Diablo
1:27:14
uh uh blade so I use this that was random that I had this tab open
1:27:23
that was completely random but I use a high tooth count aluminum
1:27:30
blade so I use this Diablo blade
1:27:37
uh
1:27:45
you have a lot of suggestions good you can see uh so GM G and M Automotive
1:27:53
says I'm considering floor heating option as other choices um
1:27:59
watch your channel started to lean away from spinner towards the Ford Transit as of now I'm finishing my build in an older VW bus that's pretty cool
1:28:11
oh you're very welcome uh for offering so much info now uh yeah very welcome
1:28:16
thank you so much for that comment I really appreciate that uh yeah it's
1:28:22
hard to go before between you know Ford and Sprinter it's it's hard because for
1:28:28
me as a builder I may lean towards Sprinter because of uh the abundance of stuff out there
1:28:36
that's just easily readily available um but a couple years ago if you guys remember about two years ago is when
1:28:43
this whole thing started uh happening where you know sprinters were
1:28:49
almost impossible to get because I was specifically looking for the four wheel drive not the two-wheel drive and Ford
1:28:55
transits were very difficult about two and a half years ago defined and so I barely got one and luckily got two of
1:29:04
the all-wheel drive high roof 148s so yeah I'm not really specific on a
1:29:10
sport Ford or Transit but right now I'm very comfortable with a Ford as far as the layout where everything is where I
1:29:17
can cut all my holes where I can tap into everything you know the customer connection point
1:29:23
for all the power alternator all that stuff so it's very comfortable on the
1:29:28
floor it would be uh something to learn on the Sprinter but hey
1:29:33
I'm all down for learning all the time any recommendations on synth is a
1:29:40
smaller RV size drain necessary okay that is a uh so Tristan that is an
1:29:47
excellent question um
1:29:52
I like that question because what he's talking about is the drain for
1:29:59
I've got this RV where is the drain at
1:30:06
let me find the drain this is a good point to talk about
1:30:12
so we're talking about RV drains
1:30:19
so I have two right here so this is the shower drain okay
1:30:25
so you can kind of see this is a inch and a half
1:30:32
and then you have this Camco drain this is what everybody uses
1:30:38
um and the issue is this hole is very tiny and so I think that's what you're talking about
1:30:45
um so quick answer you don't have to use this tiny drain because it does drain
1:30:51
very slow so you see this for me this is it goes on here but I will not be using this for the shower
1:30:57
because it's not going to drain fast enough I've used this in my personal van because I'm just like washing my hands I
1:31:04
don't care if it takes a minute to to drain out into my Jerry cans I'm okay with that
1:31:09
however if you have this like ravati drain right here so this is for a nice body sink
1:31:15
that's going in there I'm still going to use this okay but I'm gonna be more aggressive with
1:31:22
the hose coming down to the uh tank the gray tank under the sink and
1:31:29
I'll make sure that that tank under the sink is vented appropriately so it doesn't have like a
1:31:36
like a vapor lock if you would say but I have if you go to Humble roads
1:31:43
videos he's got a really good video showing you how to get a a big
1:31:48
drain Uh custom fit into a like a 10 gallon gray tank and he uses a big drain
1:31:55
so um I think that'd be a good video to reference
1:32:04
but what you're going to find is this is like kind of standard so it fits on a standard sink but the
1:32:10
hole is very tiny and it drains slowly if you're okay with draining slowly and
1:32:16
having a quick install this is the way to go if you want to do something more
1:32:21
complicated and custom and have it more like a house drain it's really preference it's whatever
1:32:27
makes you uh
1:32:32
happy when you're using it so if it doesn't make it annoying
1:32:39
um yeah let me find that out here let me find that video real quick
1:32:46
give you some cheat sheet info so if I go to
1:32:53
so he's talking about the mini-me's
1:33:08
all right yeah I'm gonna link this video really quick yeah I'll be here for a couple more
1:33:14
questions guys so let me see here
1:33:36
I think this is the video
1:33:43
no he goes through here I'm looking over here
1:33:50
there's this video and then there's
1:33:57
maybe this one
1:34:06
okay I'm gonna link to this one and then just uh
1:34:12
where'd he go I just lost it
1:34:20
nope this is it this is the one yeah so in here he shows you
1:34:27
uh yeah it's that's see that's the hard part is
1:34:32
for ease of use that you're gonna have to have a big drain but for space savings you're gonna have
1:34:38
to have a small drain so right here here you go here so here let me share this video
1:34:50
okay so this video do you see where there you go so you can see where
1:34:57
um the drain comes down I mean it doesn't really take up that much space I would say if you're using a
1:35:04
gray tank underneath your sink you're pretty that's big as space is pretty much already taken for or spoken for
1:35:11
um so that might be the way to go
1:35:17
um the thing that I don't like about this so this may help you just my opinion
1:35:23
this is pretty fixed in here and I know George has
1:35:30
I see this humongous solenoid valve I know he loves these so he uses these to
1:35:38
get rid of the water so you can't you can take this tank out but you have to disassemble it I don't like that I want
1:35:44
a tank that you have it has a handle on it and actually here I just got the tank in I got it in like yesterday
1:35:55
foreign
1:36:10
look at this unboxing live
1:36:20
so Panther RV is where I get this tank from so here's the hose
1:36:27
and then here's the tank
1:36:35
there you go let's see that so this is a seven gallon gray water
1:36:41
tank the reason I like this tank so much is one
1:36:46
it has a hand it has a handle you can actually you can carry it out to this lid
1:36:54
um so this is new this was not on the last one I bought but this lid has a vent
1:37:02
you can hear that so this this has a vent so it doesn't create a vacuum
1:37:08
get your hand inside you can wash it out because Greg tanks get kind of nasty
1:37:17
and then right here they have a made in it's uh already made into the tank it's
1:37:23
a brass a brass drain input
1:37:30
essentially what I do [Applause]
1:37:38
[Applause]
1:37:44
this is why I have so many boxes in the shop ever throw this stuff away
1:37:49
but this is nice because you can see right here it comes with
1:37:55
something that you can screw on and screw off
1:38:05
uh here we go there we go now you can see me so here's the tank it's a seven gallon
1:38:11
tank uh if you guys want to know it's
1:38:17
nine inches by 15 inches and with the top of the lid
1:38:23
it's about 19 inches high but
1:38:30
yeah let me add a link to this tank now this tank
1:38:37
I think it's way too expensive but I cannot find anything like it
1:38:43
so whatever it cost I just get it because there's not I've never there's not a
1:38:50
tank you can't find a tank like this anywhere let's just go to Panther RV and you type
1:38:55
in Gray
1:39:01
water tank um and they've got a lot of options here
1:39:07
so is Panther artery products I like these guys they're kind of have
1:39:12
like a like an old school type setup you know somebody actually picks up the phone you can talk to somebody
1:39:20
I've ordered my awnings from them I've ordered uh these tanks
1:39:25
um but you can see the tank that I got is this one it's 192 dollars so that
1:39:35
I know that sounds like a lot but it's just uh what do they say it's a feature Rich
1:39:42
it's got a lot of features um
1:39:53
and they they sell out all the time so there's only four right now so I always
1:39:58
have to stay on top of this because you know maybe three months go by I can't get one
1:40:03
um but they're I don't know I don't wanna I don't order like 10 of them I'll just
1:40:09
order two at a time or something like that um but yeah this tank uh there's some
1:40:15
Dimensions like I was saying
1:40:22
but yeah so this is nice because
1:40:28
this is your drain and It's Made for This diameter
1:40:36
and so this fits in here now this is extra hose what you want to do
1:40:42
and this is where uh I love Hubble road but I think things get a little over complicated
1:40:49
um is that uh I don't know what am I doing
1:40:57
is that this run right here should be I think should be shorter so how I'm going
1:41:03
to do it in the van that I have right now is like this okay
1:41:08
this is going to be this like straight shot down in here from the sink now the reason I'm comfortable doing
1:41:13
that now is I disassembled this and it has it has its own little uh kind of
1:41:19
like P-trap technology so you can see this is above this
1:41:26
so the water actually comes down and then goes up under the bowl and then
1:41:31
comes out so don't get scared when you have your sink and it has like two or three inches
1:41:37
watering like why is this not draining as soon as this uh vacuum gets released
1:41:44
it'll go down slowly but it's just not going to drain like a normal household sink but here's your benefits your
1:41:50
benefits are that all you do when you need to drain it is you just unscrew this
1:42:00
you just unscrew this open your cabinet door and then just take your tank out and
1:42:06
then dump it and then just screw it back on the ease of use of this product is just
1:42:12
is really high so that's why I like it
1:42:18
um so uh
1:42:25
no I wouldn't so I wouldn't under mount it and here's why
1:42:32
if you want to go somewhere and it's there's like it freezes overnight you might get away with it the first time
1:42:37
but it's good to have stuff that you can forget about when it
1:42:43
gets cold Colder Weather and not have to be like oh man did I you know did I drain that is it going to freeze and
1:42:49
crack um so maybe in your van try to
1:42:56
find the room that you would need try to make room for this and then
1:43:01
the storage you're losing with this maybe think of like an overhead option or something like that to make it for
1:43:07
the space that might be a good idea
1:43:17
but it comes with a cap too so you know if you wanted to you can cap it
1:43:22
off and then just just carry it you know to a bathroom or something or
1:43:28
drain um to get rid of it
1:43:35
uh let's see why you guys have more questions coming in I'm gonna show you some stuff that
1:43:42
I got in that I'll be talking about next week
1:43:49
so what's exciting is next week we'll have all of our energy components so we got two of the DC to DC
1:43:57
50 amp mpbt charge controller those combos that energy makes
1:44:03
we got both of them I just got in
1:44:09
my Lynx distributor and believe it or not
1:44:15
even though that I'm using the renergy one system I still have some victron components in
1:44:21
there because I need to so the spec build is also going to kind
1:44:27
of be a test to see how the renergy one system is operating because the Reggie one system does not
1:44:33
come with a battery shunt so what it does is it communicates with the
1:44:39
it communicates with the renergy smart batteries and it talks to them to
1:44:44
find out what the built-in battery says
1:44:50
um so it doesn't actually have a shunt so
1:44:55
what I did is I bought a BMV 712
1:45:03
smart shunt so this one is Bluetooth so I'll actually have a shunt in there
1:45:09
that I can read and I can I can show you guys kind of compare and contrast
1:45:15
what the renergy one system says versus what the actual uh actual voltage is
1:45:26
uh and then next I've got the lynx distributor
1:45:39
and I always forget how big this thing is this thing is
1:45:46
that's how big it is as big as my head
1:45:53
um we'll talk about this in a future video but what's so nice about the lynx
1:45:59
distributor is that your power coming in all your Chunky fuses so your inverter
1:46:08
the air conditioning unit is going to be on here and then we're also going to have our uh
1:46:14
our DC to DC combo Chargers um connected to this guy so
1:46:22
uh pretty excited about that and I don't think this was in my last
1:46:27
one so it looks like there's a
1:46:35
oh so the sticker is so if you want to if you want it like this but you don't want
1:46:42
the words upside down you can put the sticker on it and make it right side up that's
1:46:48
hilarious um yeah but we'll be talking about this in a future electrical video
1:46:56
so Peter let's see what did uh sync with the tank line for winter
1:47:04
oh you're yeah you're in Canada yeah yeah yeah so yeah under yeah larger tank for the
1:47:10
shower under the body of the van because the shower under the bike van you can just you know maybe if you take
1:47:17
taking a shower whatever you can just pour a little bit of that RV antifreeze down the drain and keep the tank
1:47:24
um you're not it'll help it to not freeze solid
1:47:30
so that'll be really good um so Peter
1:47:37
I'll make sure I answered the other question really quick
1:47:48
yeah I would that like a small so this is uh for the other
1:47:54
small gray water tank inside the van I think is good just so you don't have to worry about freezing and then like the one for the tank underneath the van for
1:48:00
a shower I agree all right Peter says is that renergy DC to DC mppt charger a
1:48:07
new model or the same it's this it is the same one they've had for a while yep it's the same one
1:48:13
so this is the one that I put in my van like three years ago
1:48:19
there's nothing different um
1:48:25
but I bought the
1:48:31
hub so I could connect this to the renergy one so it's the Hub that stuff should be
1:48:38
in next week hopefully pretty excited about it um it's not that I don't want to use
1:48:44
renergy components it's a I have I had enough in the shop
1:48:49
I already had three 100 amp hour batteries and so I just added three more I already had one mppt so I just added
1:48:57
one more I already have the inverter charger so I just added the renergy one so I had a lot of the components kind of
1:49:03
halfway there and then I just finished the half but what I'm looking forward to
1:49:10
um in the next build is using the Eco flow
1:49:15
because once again one of our followers go and do
1:49:20
uh they let me know what air conditioning unit pairs with that one so
1:49:26
they already did the troubleshooting for me so I now am happy that I can get like the 10 case system
1:49:33
uh the 10 kilowatt hour system with that indel b AC unit and it's gonna
1:49:39
it's gonna work just right
1:49:52
all right couple more minutes guys I guess I gotta shut down get out of here
1:49:58
[Music] um I'll do one more unboxing here might get
1:50:03
you guys going with some questions so pin lcom
1:50:09
they make flight cases for
1:50:14
you know like for speakers amps stuff like that for like rock concerts or whatever
1:50:19
but what I like about them is they make these little vents right here so they make these loot these uh
1:50:28
really professional looking little vents and so what I'm going to do is this is
1:50:34
what I put on my battery case so it can draw in fresh air keep
1:50:40
everything nice and breathing but gives a nice professional finish
1:50:46
so if you guys want to look use components like this for example
1:50:52
Titan Vans gets these and they're used for uh like the water
1:50:57
so your hose goes here and this is your mixing valve
1:51:03
so you can imagine if you had this and then maybe this on top of it you know you can kind of see how gives a
1:51:09
nice professional look so
1:51:15
yeah so pin elcom
1:51:22
[Applause]
1:51:29
all right guys we are closing out here and just uh a few minutes
1:51:36
we'll be back next week with a new live stream um and hopefully I can get that video
1:51:41
fixed and that way you guys can go back and reference them
1:51:47
uh yeah let me link those plates so
1:51:52
go to pin
1:51:57
yeah I don't know how I found this company I was looking for uh
1:52:05
uh let's see here let me just type in vent
1:52:10
plate uh
1:52:32
yeah if I need the direct link because it's kind of hard to
1:52:58
uh so here's another thing they have these uh vent fans so they're you know thermostatically controlled
1:53:07
um I don't think it's necessary as long as you keep keep enough air space uh you'll be able to do that
1:53:14
so this is what I bought dimensions of the dimensions are about
1:53:21
five you know four and a half inches by seven four and a half inches by seven
1:53:27
so I'll go ahead and paste that in here
1:53:39
um but they have
1:53:56
so my chat disappeared on my computer I don't know why
1:54:08
huh did you guys get the link okay yeah my chat's gone now I don't know why
1:54:16
it's gone on my stream I still got on my phone
1:54:26
all right guys
1:54:34
okay all right you are very welcome guys thanks so much for watching the stream
1:54:40
tonight we will be back live next week um have your questions ready I'm happy
1:54:45
to answer them anything van related uh next week we are hopefully if the
1:54:51
rendergy stuff comes in I will be finishing this uh not connection wise but I'm going to
1:54:58
finish it so that I know where everything goes and then I'll do a test fit in the van to make sure I have my
1:55:04
clearances for my wheel well and then this huge thing right here
1:55:09
um we'll be able to go ahead and get it put in the van uh
1:55:15
it's very heavy but it's also very extremely low profile
1:55:20
and so we'll we'll catch that uh we'll catch it next week but um thank
1:55:26
you guys again so much for watching this live stream and uh put any further
1:55:31
questions in the comments uh I got to go through here and
1:55:37
uh I'm still working on answering these comments so give me till next week to
1:55:43
get through these there's a bunch of new ones in here that I haven't checked on yet but
1:55:50
I'll definitely get to them but thank you guys so much for watching this live stream we'll see you next week
1:55:56
don't forget to check out vanbitterhq.com and download your free
1:56:02
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1:56:08
to help you build your van very simply because it's going to give you a cheat sheet on all the electrical
1:56:14
components fasteners Hardware HV installation Roofing solar
1:56:20
all the components that I've used over the past three years all in one place
1:56:26
so you don't have to roam around the internet and try something else so all this
1:56:32
stuff's been vetted by me I've actually bought it and used it on band builds so I think it can really help you out if
1:56:38
you guys are interested hop on over to vampirehq.com Link in the description below
1:56:44
get your free DIY van build cheat sheet I really think it's going to help you out
1:56:49
with that being said let's end our stream and I look forward to talking to
1:56:54
you guys next week [Music]