In 2021, I finished the conversion of a Dodge Grand Caravan into a lightweight campervan which I used to visit all 32 of Indiana's state parks and lakes. The original goal was to try out the concept and see how much I would or could use it and what improvements…
Ok, I have a good idea of what I want in a final electrical solution. It needs to be reliable, flexible extensible and it needs to have enough capacity that I don't have to worry about how I use it (within reason). Immediately, I knew I was going to go…
Ok, so the simple setup I started with fell flat. I'm a natural-born problem solver, and this is a problem I'm fully qulified to solve! So, what did we learn? We need much more capacityWe need faster charging, with more optionsSolar is unlikely to be successful as a single charging…
Back in Starting Electrical, I wrote about a simple solution to getting some power deployed in my van. This was excellent, as it gave me the ability to practically measure how I really used power with some test trips. What I discovered was what I needed wasn't necessarily a massive…
Disclaimer: You probably shouldn’t do it this way. This way of getting Internet on the road is complicated, expensive, and genuinely overkill even for my needs. For more information on what reasonable solutions look like, I recommend (and am a member of) the Mobile Internet Resource Center. One of…
You can’t sleep in it if it doesn’t have a bed… In a minivan conversion, you really can’t do anything until you decide on the bed situation. The bed is the dominant use of space. It seems like most folks build something custom, and that’s fine…
I’m not sure what size electrical system I need. Back of the napkin, and with my personality, I feel like 200W of solar, a DC-to-DC Charger, and 400Ah of usable battery banks would suit me well but… That also is an extremely expensive solution that I haven’t demonstrated…
I wanted, for both me and you, to sit down and write out what the goals in the first build out were. I talked briefly in Buying the Van about how the idea is to be a starter van to find out what I need and don’t need in…