On the Road for the Longterm
What is Van Life
Van life is a currently trending way to take on travel. Generally it encompasses having a vehicle (preferably a van) which you live out of while taking on the road. Some vans are completely built out like tiny homes, other vans are more rustic. The point of van life is to have everything with you while you travel and explore the world.
What Inspired Us
My fascination with Van Life began after stumbling upon videos from Jinti Fell (Her YouTube Channel is here). She was traveling around Australia, living in a van with her family. The freedom and easy access to the outdoors she experienced was something I wanted for myself and my family. Michael had always wanted to explore the U.S. on the road so he was game to make this a part of our trip.
About Our Van
We purchased a 2020 Ford Transit 250 which is extended and has a high rood. We bought our van used with only 40,000 miles. We are having our van built out by Mango Vans (check out their website) and plan to have all sorts of amenities like a kitchen, shower and full bed.
How to Get Started with Van Life
Deciding to Build, Buy or Contract
Once you know you want to live Van life you gotta decide how you will make it happen. Are you a DIYer who wants to be a part of the conversion process for the van? Are you on a quick timeline and want to get into van life quick, ready to buy a premade van from someone else? Or do you have a specific vision of how you want your van to be, but lack the skills, time or tools to make it happen and need a contractor?
Michael and I rotated through all these options in our minds. Michael originally wanted to work on building a van then we realized we lack the time and the tools. We started looking online for vans to buy, but we always had some sort of critique. We also noticed a lot of the vans we were drawn to were on the more expensive end and realized why not pay the same price for a custom design. So we decided to find a contractor.
Finding a Contractor
Finding a contractor was no walk in the park for us. A lot of the contractors that pop up in a search are from the West Coast where most van life takes place. There are more contractors than you might think, but the problem is so many of them are already booked up for the foreseeable future.
Michael used the site explorevanx.com which has a giant list of van builders located in North America. He looked at each one of their websites for pricing and what their styles were and narrowed it down to a few builders that we thought would fit us best. After that, He contacted each one of them inquiring about their availability.
Unfortunately, many said the earliest they could take us was April 2022, but since we are taking off in 2021 that just isn’t going to work.
Thankfully I came across Mango Vans in January 2021 who had a slot for spring to take us in and work on our van. They are in Miami, so they are close by which is great and they allowed us to generate new ideas and create our own design for our van while providing feedback using their own expertise to help us refine our plan.
Finding a Van
With our contractor set, we had to get a van for them to work on and we needed to find one fast. We had very specific criteria - a Ford Transit High Roof Extended 250 with minimal mileage.
Michael took this criteria and saved them into a couple of well known vehicle search engines, like truecar.com, cargurus.com, or edmunds.com. Then he saved those searches and sites to his bookmarks bar. Since vans are in such high demand, the key is to check everyday, which is why saving everything to the bookmarks bar is what helps me the most. He became familiar with what vans were on the market for a long time, and would be able to act quickly on the new ones that popped up.
We also reached out to a national auto dealer to see if they could find a van since they have a national outreach. They did find a van with the criteria, but before we could get more information it was already purchased.
Creating a Design
We watched SOOOO many videos. Like I don’t even know if I can calculate the hours. We started by watching videos on van tours - to be honest they all start blending together because there isn’t that much space in a van and people don’t make a ton of changes to what I would call the classic designs. Even more informative was watching videos on what people regret about their builds. These were some of the major items I wanted to incorporate in my van design that I took from all of this “research”:
Bugs are a problem
Luxuries are usually things people wish they had planned for
Bathrooms
AC
Utilize the outdoors to feel like you have more space
Think ahead about things you want out of sight - trash, dirty laundry
You’ll need lots of hanging space for wet things
Swivel chairs are king
Our Van’s Design
Our van design (image from our contractor Mango Vans) is to the left.
We plan to have a dining area towards the front with both the driver chair and passenger chair swiveling and a second bench seat that folds up against the wall when not in use. The table pictured will be a lagoon table that can be taken down or put up depending on when we want to use it (or where we want to use it since there will be multiple ports).
Behind the bench seat is a stand up fridge in a cabinet and a full sized closet with hanging space, two drawers and a heater underneath. On the other side of the aisle is the sink which protrudes slightly into the sliding door space, but won’t block us from being able to get in and out. Next to the sink is a cabinet which flips up and becomes a shower using the sink’s faucet as for water and with a magnetic shower curtain.
Our bed at the back is lengthwise since we are so tall and next to the bed we are going to have a couple of cubbies for books and a slot where we can put out dirty laundry which we will be able to access from the “garage” under the bed. For storage we will also have upper cabinets on the driver side. Additional features will include an AC unit, a Laveo Dry Flush toilet, bug screens on the sliding and back doors, and a solar panel.
