Van Dwelling in the Bay Area

TLDR; I built and lived in a van for six months. It was cool.

Here is a long, long brain dump of how I built and lived in the van.

People are seeking for alternatives to traditional housing more and more these days. People can live in mini or mobile homes (often made out of trailers or containers), RVs, or in regular vans converted to be an RV fit for permanent living.

Vandwelling (#vanlife #vantasy) has become increasingly popular especially in the San Francisco bay area recently due to the ridiculous rent prices. I jumped on the bandwagon to see if I was cut out for the minimalistic on-the-go lifestyle.

I considered parking the future van in San Francisco and waited for a spot to open up in an old hangar-converted-parking-lot (street parking would be cheaper but dangerous and prone to break ins). The temporary (but eventually permanent) parking spot would be on the streets of San Bruno where they have no limitations on large vehicle parking, save for a loosely enforced time limit. Mountain View is another popular location to park, but recently there has been a lot of pushback from the traditional-home residents and the government that Mountain View is not a great choice long term.

The ideal vehicle for conversion is the Sprinter van. Starting at $35k for the basic model, this is a hefty investment for someone trying to cut costs. On top of the cost of the vehicle, you’d need to pay for wood, insulation, electricity, plumbing, and furnishing the van. I went the complete opposite way of building the cheapest van that provided all the needs. On craigslist i found a van (high top, to allow me to fully stand up) for $2400! It had been a government vehicle used as an accessibility van. It was fleet managed (routine checkup every 3000 miles), with 200k+ miles on it, and a 90s kid. I went, I drove, I paid. My friend who had driven me there helped the seller of the car remove the wheelchair lift and extra seats — which I am extremely glad I did not have to do myself.

On the spot I called an insurance company, dealt with insurance and got the most expensive plan that covered it all. I looked at the engine, under the car, turned on the radio, deemed it worthy and drove away. It eats gas like lemonade on a hot summer day and the right side mirror was extremely shaky so I had a hard time looking at the right lane well, but other than that, the car was powerful and drove decently well. I first took it to Home Depot, and because I hadn’t thought all of this completely through, I had to google some immediate things i needed to purchase (heavens bless gnomadhomes). I needed everything from duct tape and drills bits to wooden panels and fiberglass. Needless to say, I made at least a dozen more trips to Home Depot/Lowe’s before I was done.

The first (and worst) step is to remove all the old things in the van. Because the car is from 1994, custom made by the government, and has been out of use for so long, this part took the longest time. Bolts were rusted or stripped, random poles had been welded in, and unknown car parts were added — like a heater fan thing. I tried to figure out the purpose of it, and the pipes led to the depths of the engine and the company who made the piece was long out of business. I took the car to the mechanic, who updated everything that needed fixing, and deemed the random heater in the back of the car unnecessary for regular use of the car. Nothing was particularly wrong with the car, but the checkup and minor updates gave me a peace of mind that came with a price tag of $1500. Minor fuck up on my part — I screwed the driver door shut while screwing in plywood, so it cost me $400 for the mechanic to figure that out.

A lot of screws and broken plastic later, the van was ready for the make-over.

I lined the walls with insulation boards, and the wheel covers were wrapped with reflectix, spaced out with foam.

I stuffed whole bags of insulation in the doors and filled with spray foam. The car had so much window space, and glass is an awful insulator. So I decided to desert the middle set of windows to make my life easier.

The walls, then, were covered with a thin plywood board — shaped with a jigsaw — and bent and screwed to fit the curved walls. This is one of the benefits of having a Sprinter van — the walls have very little curve to them, which makes this part way easier and manageable.

Then, I bought a dozen packs of laminate flooring from home depot — the cheapest kind — and used a jigsaw to shape the pieces to fit my floors, my walls, and my doors. Now it felt a lot more like home! And came the fun part of building everything out.

I bought a $60 camping manual pump sink, which is way cheaper than buying a sink and the water pump separately, if you don’t mind not having a stainless steel sink. I didn’t expect to cook much in the van, so I went with the cheaper and easier option. I bought a $5 collapsible water jug from Amazon to use as my gray water receptacle. I picked up some pallet boards from the shipping area from my company (confirmed that they didn’t want them) and disassembled and sanded them down to use as my kitchen counter. Instead of using wood (which is heavy) I decided PVC pipes would be a lot more manageable to use as the frame of the kitchen. I used a free drawer i had picked up on the street as half of the support for the kitchen counter.

Another use for the PVC was for my closet, which would double as the front barrier, behind the driver’s seat — which i spray painted gold along with a lot of other dirty details of the car.

Thankfully, I am decently short, so I was able to just perfectly lie down horizontally in my van, so I decided to make the bed oriented that way. I had a latex mattress already, so I cut it to fit the width of my van, and put a slit in the back so that it would fold in half. I luckily found bed slats that someone had thrown away, so I used them as my new bed slats. The bed would slide to become a futon, and expand to become a full-sized-width and less-than-full-size-length bed. I wanted this configuration to allow myself to create more room when needed. I would also raise the bed as much as possible to make room for storage below. I used the areas around the wheel (which is really annoying to build around) to be a shelf storage as well as the support for the futon when it was expanded out to be the bed.

The question that I got the most about the van was the bathroom situation. I would shower at the gym, and wash my face and teeth at the sink, but the toilet was a big question. I considered a few main options — having a single wrap flush toilet ($300, and $3 per flush), a flush toilet ($80, free per flush but need to manually empty. Needs chemical treatment for smell), or a compostable toilet ($20, no flushing, manual emptying, and needs peat moss to control odor and urine separator). I figured I could start with the cheapest option and move up when it was insufficient, and not having another unit would save a lot of space in the already cramped van. I had a cheap $3 home depot bucket that I could fill with waste and peat moss, but rather soon found out the effort to rid of the bucket afterwards was not worth the effort. I survived by parking close enough to my work to use the bathrooms there whenever I needed.

For ventilation, I bought a collapsible ladder, cut a hole on the roof of the car with a jigsaw, sprinkled asbestos all around probably, and installed the best fan I could find. The best feature was that it came with a raincover and I would be able to run it in the rain as well. For electricity, I found a deep cycle battery, 4 gauge wires, large alligator clips and wire cutters, bought an expensive inverter and had outlets for lights and charging electronics. The lights in my van ran well and long enough on just plain D batteries, so if it weren’t for the heavy online suggestions for a vent, I would not have installed electricity in the van, but I did. Turns out, I never had to use the fan. I used it a few times mostly out of the need to give the fan a use. I didn’t spend enough hours in my van to warrant needing it. To charge, I can connect it to the alternator and drive the van around, or I can just carry the battery itself into a building and plug it into a wall outlet and leave it for a few hours. I totally forgot the whole thing between AC and DC and blew out my lights. TWICE. but aren’t these nice circle cuts?

For overhead shelving, I cut a cheap $12 target 3 tier drawer up so that the ceiling didn’t have to support the extra weight of the clothes and the wood. I bought fake plants to cover the walls of the kitchen area to give it some more color. I bought macrame to cover the ugliness of the target drawers, and found a large world map in the recycling, which I attached to the ceiling to make my van look more homey. I used the remaining reflectix to make window covers/insulators. A carbon dioxide alarm, a dehumidifier, mini frying pans, and a mini portable stove make my van a bit more legit. The unnecessary mounds of clothing make it cramped.

I thought about painting my van, but refrained to keep the resale value as high as possible. As I wasn’t traveling in the van constantly enough, I grew a paranoia that someone could trace my steps to my van and find out a woman was living in the van alone. This, the toilet situation, and the lack of closet space confirmed that I would not want to stay in the van long term.

I had made a large mistake and built the bed too high. The only thing I worried about was headspace, when I should have been worried about visibility to drive. As soon as I put the mattress on the bed, half of the rear windows were covered. I used to pull the whole mattress off to drive in the beginning, but as I got more confident I just took the pillows and blankets off and that was enough. I would also have to tape everything down, because inevitably something has to slide or fall when I drive — no matter how carefully! I also had to remove some clothes from my closet to widen my line of sight. I used to take the mattress down as well to get full visibility, but after I had gotten comfortable with the car itself, I was alright with removing just the clothes and blanket to have some resemblance of visibility out through to the back.

The winter months of 2018–2019 were the coldest months I have ever experienced in San Bruno — independent of the fact that I was living in a less than a perfectly insulated space. It hailed and rained constantly, and the night air was so chilly that I needed to bring out my down sleeping bag that I use for camping. I had an electric blanket, but was afraid that it would eat up all of my battery power. As spring started rolling in with March this was so much more bearable. I think I may have started vandwelling at the worst possible point in the year.

I decided that I would use a compostable toilet (aka, a bucket and peat moss) which grew really gross visibly really fast. So soon after I just opted to using the bathrooms at work instead, which was the easiest in theory, but probably the most annoying part of van life. Turns out I use the bathroom really really frequently, and it sucks to have to get out of bed in the morning because you have to pee, walk 5 minutes to go to the bathroom, and be super wide awake and unable to fall back asleep. And the pressure of having to hold your pee really produces no good thrill.

The second most annoying thing was the lack of space, which I also fully expected. I tried to downsize my closet as much as I needed to, but I highly overestimated the space in my van. I was constantly having to organize my clothes and every morning my shelves would be covered in clothes and fitting a jacket back on the closet pole was a workout.

The minor inconveniences: Washing my dishes after I used them was so annoying in my little sink that clogs up and with the gray water bag that I have to dump out later (definitely not the worst thing in the world) that I often ended up eating microwavables in the microkitchen at work instead of cooking in the van. I did my laundry in the laundry room at work (free everything). I had to empty out my locker that I used in the gym once a month, and again, that was definitely totally bearable. I had to move the car every three days since I was paranoid about getting ticketed (though I have gone for a week+ without tickets), and it was always awkward when people were standing around my van when I was ready to leave. I wasn’t ashamed to be living in a van or anything, but it was just awwkward. And I didn’t want to necessarily broadcast it because there are some messed up people in the world. My van also leaked a little in the front by the steering wheel, and apparently the steering wheel is hollow and has a cavity that holds water. Whenever I would start driving after a rain, I got a real refreshing cold bucket of water dumped on my lap when I turned the steering wheel! Oh and all my hats would always fall off when I turned.

I would always have instant food that only needed hot water, or just go out for food. I couldn’t have leftovers because I didn’t have a refrigerator. I thought about buying one multiple times but I get most of my meals from work that it seemed too extra. I have definitely purchased pints of ice cream and ate it all in one sitting because I had no where to put it. Quite proud of those moments, actually.

I had a van warming, which was a picnic outside my van. I had a few people over a few times, but the cap is definitely four people — and that’s pushing it a bit. I also had a van cooling, which took place in, on, and by the van, named Frankie (short for Frankenstein, because if you look a bit too close it’s a hodge podge).

I spent $170 a month for my car insurance every month, and roughly $60 every time i filled up on gas, which was like four times ever in six months. I spent around $6200 on the materials for the van, sold it for $6500. I had been paying around $1400 for my rent before.. So I saved a bit more than $7000 in the last six months by living in the van! Time to buy a chanel bag! Jk. maybe. Sort of.

Now that I’ve done it once I would love to do it again, and do it much better. But I would also love to have a regular apartment and a lighter car, so there is that. I definitely spent more time at work, which naturally made me work more. I depended on my work for so many things for van life, that my additional hours seem fair. Though, the new change might now make me look like a slacker for working regular hours, oops.