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Yeah we found Totem Timber the best place to get all our wood! We're originally from Surrey but spent some time living in London, Bristol and now Devon 🙂

@@SelfBuiltStories Just looking for a Ford Transit L2H3 and found your channel. I've got building experience but the electrical side is a little daunting. I think I'll get over it though 😃

@@WestysGate cool, good luck! 👍

No problem, yeah our Internet in the van was better than in the house a lot of the time! And haha cheers, will do! 😀

Awesome, that's exciting! We have the L4H3 Jumbo, the biggest Transit you can get 😀 Glad you're enjoying all the videos and that's nice of you to say! We still have a few more from the build to release and then there will be plenty more travel ones after that, it just takes us quite a while to edit 😅 Hope the build goes well and no worries, we always try and answer questions if we can 👍 Abi says thanks!

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Can't argue with that, especially in Devon 😅

Yep we treated every bit of wood in the van except for the seat slats and bed slats (as we didn't want anything leeching onto the fabric). That was with varnish, paint or oil depending on what it was and how visible it was, as we wanted to reduce warping but also the chance of it developing any mould 👍

Hey! 👋 Glad you enjoy the animal shots, we like to put them in to break it up a bit from all the van building and technical bits! And nice idea, we would be very humbled to reach that level but you never know! We spent a month travelling around NZ a few years ago which was our first experience of campervan life and we loved it, so thanks to your beautiful country for inspiring us! 👍

Hey, we decided not to put in a vapour barrier at all actually. We're of the opinion that condensation and moisture is inevitable when you're living/breathing/cooking in a van so instead went with hydrophobic insulation materials and the approach of letting the van breath and adapt to the different climates and stress we put it through. We left some areas where we can get to the insulation behind the wall to inspect it and after a couple of years now we've had no issues 👍

@SelfBuiltStories well that sounds encouraging. I've been undecided on whether I should use a vapour barrier or not. I've watched and rewatched many of your videos on the van build and picking up some great tips. I and I'm sure many others are eagerly awaiting more of your content ☺️

@@woodside223 Yeah it's one of those things that has a lot of debate around it, we have a similar opinion to far out ride: faroutride.com/condensation-moisture-van/. Great, glad to hear it and hopefully it won't be too long till the next one! 🙂

@SelfBuiltStories thanks, I'll have a read through this. I hope your planning on doing some travel videos too 😊

@@woodside223 no problem, and yep, many in the pipeline! 😉😁

Cool, yeah these rails are simple but do the job perfectly 👍

As it happens that will be the next video video actually 😎👍

@@SelfBuiltStories hurry up im 2 days from fitting it all haha!

​@@user-st4hx7yn8p ah haha sorry, going to miss that deadline. It's mostly edited but we keep getting sidetracked by the scenery in Norway 😄

Hiya, yep it's held up perfectly with lots of use and we'd do it again in the same way. Really lightweight and quick to put up and down 👍

Cheers :) And because of the curvy nature of the Transit in some of the places with the thick 50mm rigit board pressed into the cavities the 90mm ones weren't really long enough to reach from the van metal and actually poke out enough to be secured. Knowing that we'd have probably just got the long ones for everywhere, as you can easily bend them down/cut them if too long but can't use them if they're too short 👍

Cheers :) And we deliberately choose hydrophobic insulation materials (recycled plastic bottle and PIR board) as condensation and moisture is inevitable when you're living/breathing/cooking in a van. So we went with the approach of having good ventilation and allowing the van to breath and adapt to the different climates and stress we put it through. We left some areas where we can get to the insulation behind the wall and after a couple of years now we've had no issues 👍

Thank you very much! It's been a huge project with lots to learn that's for sure 😃 Hopefully it won't be too long till we have the next video ready 🙂

The main wire bundle was just long enough to reach from the dashcam to the reverse cam which was nice, the only thing we had to do was crimp on a small extra bit of wire to the reverse light trigger wire 👍

Thank you I have a transporter so it should fit then hopefully 🙏

No problem, good luck 👍🏻🙂

Thank you 😊

The alternator output changes depending on the demand, ours can output up to 150A so can easily cope with a 30A charger. We're probably going to upgrade at some point to the newer 50A one which would be nice as we'd be able to recharge a lot quicker 👍

These are the ones we have: uk.renogy.com/175-watt-monocrystalline-solar-panel/ , we haven't measured them but presume the specs are correct. Yeah the two width ways ones side by side would be around 140cm of panel but don't forget there's brackets at each side as well which take up a bit of space. The two width ways ones end up sticking out a bit more than the third length ways one in our setup, you can sort of see it at 20:38 👍

We have 200Ah in total (2x 100), and 525W of solar to charge them. Whether that's enough for you really depends on your climate and how much power you need. Having more solar would obviously be nice if you can physically fit it on the roof. Our setup works pretty great for us as when it's actually sunny we're always topped up. In Winter or when there's no sun we can't rely on the solar at all obviously, so for that we have the DC charger which also works well for us as we drive a lot, but YMMV 👍

Hey, no problem 🙂 And we wouldn't have wanted to go with anything smaller, it's around 4-5m round trip but with a 12V system voltage drop can be an issue over that distance with something like the fridge. When the compressor kicks in there is a surge of power that will drop the voltage a bit, and with our model if it drops to below 10.4V it will trigger a cut out and shut it down and won't switch on again till it reaches 11.7V. If the batteries are low or there's lots of power being used at the time that could happen, and we've read numerous stories of others who have intermittently working fridges for similar reasons. As it's one of the critical appliances (we don't want it switching off and spoiling all our food 😛) the small extra cost for heavier gauge wire was definitely worth it to us, and is also recommended in the manual too 👍

Thank you very much, and glad you've discovered our channel! We like to get in as much detail as possible and try to find the right balance to be helpful but still keep it flowing. It's tricky sometimes as there's so much research that goes into each project! And yeah haha well spotted, we felt like leaving a good review as we had great customer service from them and we like the camera. Still going strong today! We actually use it predominantly as a rear view mirror, and are so used to having it now that I'm not sure what we'd do without it! 😃 Good luck with your conversion 🙂👍

Thank you 🙏 All the best for the rest of your build 🙂

Cheers! Having two people definitely helps, especially for this project as I (Tim) had the job of being tall enough to use my head to hold the panels up while Abi guided them into place 😅 Good luck!

Cheers! And yep we treated every single bit of wood in the van apart from the bed and seat slats (because we didn't want anything leeching onto the fabric).If it wasn't on show, like the backs of the cladding, we varnished it (just basic quick dry varnish). And for the visible parts it was either paint or osmo oil depending on what it was. We used the amber tinted oil to give a nice woody colour too, that stuff is great as it's really easy to apply and a tin lasts for ages. There were a few other niche bits too like for the ply floor we used yacht varnish around the edges as we wanted something with more extreme moisture proofing, but generally that was our approach. There should be links to the exact stuff we used in the videos where we did those bits 👍

@@SelfBuiltStories Perfect, all makes sense. Saw that you used the yacht varnish on the ply floor - I did the same!

@@thomaslittle9284 Cool, good luck with the build 👍🙂

Hey, yeah it's not needed for our particular setup as it would be redundant. We have 3 panels wired in series that from the specs have a short circuit current of 10.3A. Because they're wired in series, even if one of the panels developed a fault and short circuited, there is still a max of 10.3A of current flowing through the whole array. That is below the 15A max series fuse rating of the panels of 15A, which is the amount of current the panels can safely handle. So even in the event of a fault it is well within the specs of the panel. And a fuse would likely either never blow or nuisance blow under normal use. It's more of a consideration if you have panels wired in parallel. Much more info here: gnomadhome.com/fusing-solar-panels/ or explorist.life/how-to-fuse-a-solar-panel-array-and-why-you-may-not-need-to/ 👍

Hey, we got the majority of all our timber from Totem Timber in Plymouth: www.totemtimber.co.uk/ 👍

Thank you! They took a very long time, but we got there in the end! We wanted to get them all finished before we headed to Camp Quirky so after we'd made a couple and knew what we were doing we had a marathon 15 hour sewing and cushion making day to finish the rest... still didn't completely manage it in time 😅 Very happy with them though 😄

There's no issue with that assuming of course your wires and fuses are sized correctly and the battery bank can take the maximum charge current of them both combined, and yeah it's exactly how we've been running it for the last few years. Our batteries have a recommended charge current of <50A and we have two together in parallel so we can charge the bank at up to 100A. If we had the DC/DC and MPPT both outputting max power that would generate 80A, though in practice it's a lot less than that as there are never perfect conditions, but well within the specs of the batteries regardless. The Orion doesn't 'talk' to the MPPT, but they both use a similar algorithm so as long as they're configured with the same battery settings then once the battery voltage reaches the threshold they'll both enter float. It won't be at exactly the same time but that doesn't matter. Multiple MPPTs can coordinate between themselves as they support VE Networking but this model Orion doesn't. It would be nice if it had it so they're all synchronised for maximum efficiency but it's not a problem 👍

@@SelfBuiltStories thank you

@@MRL3234 No problem 👍

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We used Rustoleum kitchen cupboard paint for the cabinets and yep, we were really happy with it. Nice and hard wearing 👍

Cheers :) We have quite a few videos in the pipeline already so won't be something we'd do anytime soon. But assuming you have the same kit (Rut X11 and Mimo 3) then you should just be able to go to Services -> GPS and make sure it's enabled. Then you can set up SMS commands in Services -> Mobile Utilities -> SMS Utilities. You can choose what text you want for the command and what action to take, so we've added 'whereareyou' with an action of 'GPS coordinates'. In order to work you need to have an active sim card in the router and one that can send/receive SMS as well (not a data only sim as they usually don't include any SMS messages), then you just text the command to the number of the SIM and it should reply with the coordinates. You can get more advanced that that as well, we now have it setup with full GPS tracking and history. Good luck 👍

Cheers! And nope no issues with that at all, we're been using the bed setup full-time for a long while now and it's working out great, super comfy. The only tweaks we've done since this video is put a barrier at the front with pull handles, so it's easy to open and close and also stops the mattress halves moving around 👍

Haha thanks, water leaks are an absolute pain so being extra careful was what we wanted for peace of mind 😛

We used 70mm2 for the battery connections and to the lynx, 25mm2 for the inverter, 16mm2 for solar, DC chargers and fuse hubs, 6mm2 for the fridge and heater. And 3mm2 or 1mm2 for most of the rest. Those were good sizes for us working out wiring lengths, expected current draw and voltage drop, but obviously what works for us will vary depending on your own setup and what kit you're putting in 👍

@@SelfBuiltStories Curious how well the internet is for you too, im torn between that or Starlink

​@@user-st4hx7yn8p It's working out great for us, the only places we haven't had any Internet were a few remote spots in the Highlands where there just isn't any service. But if there is a signal to be had then usually we pick it up. Currently in Norway and it's been faultless. We considered Starlink but at the moment it's still too expensive for what we want. We'd consider it if/when it comes down in price, but only as an addition to the setup we have now as Starlink would only give us Internet, whereas with ours we're also getting GPS tracking and other stuff as well 👍

Hiya, nope they don't need to be in water, they're just a float that moves up and down that changes the resistance down the wire, so you should be able to set it up and test it on the bench like we did in the video. One thing that was a bit odd was the wiring colours. So on our gauge red is positive, blue is negative/ground. Then black should be wired to the sensor wire from the actual float sensor. The yellow and orange wires are optional and you can just also wire one or the other to the positive feed to have either a yellow or red backlight. HTH 👍

Yeah we would have considered using sheets of already treated waterproof/marine ply, but we wanted to keep costs down and use up all the scraps we had left. Cheers! 🙂

Haha cheers, you do end up spending a lot of time together in a van 😅 Glad you're enjoying the videos, and yeah being able to both comfortably stand up inside was our main requirement, as we figured that would be a deal breaker for how much we enjoyed it. Good luck with whatever you decide to do with yours 😊👍

Sure, and yeah there are quite a few models! We discounted the RUT9xx series pretty early on as they're the older generation, so won't be supported as long but also lack a few features, for example they don't support 5GHz WiFi. The X12 is nice as it's the only one that has dual modems, so can load balance across two different networks at the same time. That's cool but not something that we'd likely use, and we don't pay for two high data SIM cards. To make use of it fully you'd also want an antenna that has an additional 2 LTE connections, as the X12 is 4x4. The X14 would be nice as it's a faster CAT12 modem compared to the X11 which is CAT6, but we don't really need extra speed, and again would need additional LTE antennas to take full advantage of it. The X50 is the only 5G modem, but we are almost always in rural off-grid locations where 5G isn't around so that would be pointless for us. The X09 doesn't have WiFi so not one of the ones we considered. And the RUT200 is only a CAT4 modem so a more basic, slower unit. Essentially it comes down to how much you want to pay, and what features you actually need. And the other thing is you need to pair it with an antenna that has all the connections that it needs. The X11 has dual LTE, dual WiFi and GPS, needing 5 separate antennas plug in to make full use of it. And the MIMO3-15 that we have provides all of those. To make use of some of the faster units we'd need an antenna that provided 4 LTE antennas like the MIMO3-17, which is more expensive (and would also mean squeezing two more cables through the roof!). The X11 fell right in the sweet spot for us. It does everything we want and in active use has been great for us. We could have saved money and got a more basic/slower/older one but we're quite active users (having to upload YT videos on the road etc!). Or we could have spent more and got even faster speed, but we don't need that as it's more than fast enough for us already (parked up at the moment in rural Norway and getting >50Mpbs download on an EE SIM). The problem we have on the road is not the speed of the connection but making sure we don't burn through all our data allowance too quickly 😛 HTH!

@@SelfBuiltStories Thanks for your reply. Appreciate it!

@@93ct No problem 🙂

We were quite pleased with that one! There was some building work being done on the house at the time so we had a rare opportunity to mount the camera on the scaffolding and get an aerial view over the van, and the weather happily decided to play along for once too! 🙂

Cheers! 🙂

It's in this one 😄At 12:39 👍

@SelfBuiltStories so am I right in saying the once you batteries are full then you water is heated for free?

@@TheHiveOffGride Yep, if there is excess charge (either from solar or from driving) then if the solaris is on we can use that excess to heat the water 👍

Cheers, and glad to hear the videos have been helpful. Sure you'll be fine, the unistrut is a bit like meccano, so it's easy to bolt together and reconfigure it anytime you want. We finished the van quite a while ago now, the videos just take a long time to put together 🙂 Currently in Norway since a month ago, enjoying it a lot! We're a lot more up to date on Instagram 😎👍

Was it this one maybe? assets.bluesea.com/files/resources/newsletter/images/DC_wire_selection_chartlg.jpg 😎👍

@@SelfBuiltStories thanks, that’s it! I couldn’t remember exactly what it was as it’s been a fair while since I watched the pre-wire video you did…I’ve been binge watching your build videos…you two are awesome! Thanks for all the effort you’ve put into delivering amazing content for UA-cam…this has been without a doubt the best van conversion series I’ve watched. 👏😎

@@DamonG87 no problem, and thank you! Glad you think so 🙂

Cheers! Yeah it's a nice bit of kit, keeps everything really tidy and not that much more expensive than something DIY by the time you've bought all the individual bits to put it together. Good luck with the remodel 😎👍