Van Conversion: Insulation and electrics.
I hope this post will help you where I really, really struggled. I had to scour the internet for weeks before our build trying to decide what the best materials to use in our van were, and not only that, but which methods to choose within our budget, time-frame & space. There are SO many options & if I am being completely honest, some of them are either really crap, or really hard work, or both - and it is just so not worth it. I had to literally comb the depths of the internet to take out of it what I needed. So, fingers crossed you can learn from what we did (or didn’t do) and it will hopefully be informative (but not boring) & help you in your own conversion!
If you really can’t be bothered reading this (I won’t be offended I promise) scroll down to look at the photos, check out my van build highlight on Instagram or send me a message using the form right at the bottom. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the read!
So, after we finally finished clearing out and deep cleaning the inside of our van, we realised how much work we had to do before we even began to start putting up walls or build - well, anything. Like I said before, I had put hours of research into what I thought we needed for insulation & Cam had a solid idea of what we needed for the structural elements. I am VERY lucky that Cam is an electrician, so I literally did none of the wiring for our little bebe. I should also mention that we ended up getting really lucky as Cam sweet talked (as usual) the car trader we purchased the van from, into including the two leisure batteries that were already in the van into our purchase price. This was actually such a good deal as each battery easily cost GBP$600++ - cha ching!
Below I will sum up some of the more boring but still important jobs we did pre-build…
Measuring the surface area of the internal van walls:
Very important before ordering things off Amazon and going into hardware stores… trust me! We took measurements of the inside of the van, I think about three times before we were happy with the numbers & then worked out an approximate surface area for the walls, ceiling and floors - we added on another couple of square meters just to be safe. Width x length x height = surface area in meters squared, taking me back to high school maths class.Installing wooden beams:
This part is really boring too be honest. Skip through if you want and just look at the pictures. Our first step was to attach wooden support beams to the walls & ceiling of the van. These were needed to help us keep the insulation in place & also as attachment points for the walls. We ran three length ways along the ceiling, attaching them to the metal pillars of the van, using stainless steel (avoiding potential rusting at all costs), self-tapping screws. Seriously, who would have known how many different types of screws, nails, bolts, etc. there are in the world - hundreds, my mind was blown.
At this stage, we then attached three more beams length-ways along each upper wall. We quickly realised we had to have the flooring down before we could do any work on the lower walls, because we didn’t know how high the flooring would come up after insulating & putting down the floor boards (again planning and re-planning as we go). We also decided to put four more beams perpendicular to the ones shown in the photo below (as in going across the ceiling of the van), as we knew we would eventually hang our long board off the ceiling. We attached one at the front (see below photo) and one at the back, with two spaced evenly in the middle. We did the same for the walls too, running more support beams perpendicular to the ones we already had in place.
This was really just our decision at the time - we had barely found any information on structural elements of van conversions in our research and so we went with the idea that it was best to do a bit of extra work here in the long run. We had no idea what kind of support was needed for the walls to go up and not fall down or move, especially once we attached various shelves and other heavy items to them & we started driving around. I have to say, the walls now are SOLID. Haha. Anyway, here are some pics which hopefully show you what I have been rambling about…
Insulation time. SOS.
Our good mate Rob was doing up his flat in London & was an absolute gem, giving us some of his left over Isover acoustic & thermal insulation. This was made from 100% recycled glass, plus it was mould & flame resistant. Anything free for this build was such a bonus to us, especially once we realised how bloody expensive good quality building materials are - absolute budget killer I tell ya. I then went onto Amazon and Dodo Mat (a British based company specialising in all things insulation and sound deadening), and ordered everything else that I thought we would need to insulate our van to a very high standard. Sidebar here - I was meticulous about how we did this as I wanted to avoid rust and mould or damp completely. Cam got really frustrated with me over this (sorry Cam) but I just had this really strong belief that if you didn’t do this part properly, what was the point of spending all your hard earned money & time on making it look nice? Take from this what you will, but it’s what’s on the inside that counts!
So. In saying that, obviously insulation is important for a number of reasons; mostly to keep you from boiling in summer & freezing in winter, but it’s also really important for sound-proofing too. Without insulation, your van is basically a metal shed exposed to the elements and it will heat up in the sun to the point of no return (trust me, our tiny Previa in the US ended up like a sauna on hot days and nights). Rain noise is magnified too, for example, plus the noises from outside and the noises you make inside can be heard very clearly without any sort of sound proofing. Cat on a hot tin roof, anyone?
Look, I am going to keep it simple here by just telling you about my top reasons for insulating & the reasoning behind our decisions. If you want to get into the science behind insulation there is an extremely detailed blog post you can read here. I did (skim) read it and thank you so much for reminding me of my University physics papers, but that kind of detail sometimes just isn’t necessary.
Basically my top concerns (in no particular order) were as follows:
Moisture accumulation due to condensation on cold metal surfaces when the weather gets cold, leading to mould & rust. Actually, this was my top concern because mould is terrible for your health, rust is an absolute nightmare in your tiny home & a damp van environment is no good for anyone, or any thing.
Staying warm in winter & as cool as possible in summer.
Having a bit of extra sound proofing so that every man and his dog can’t hear what we are up to in the van, and vice versa. No one wants to hear your lastest Netflix obsession or ya know… ha.
Firstly, I decided against a lot of different options:
Rigid board insulation - I have seen a lot of people use this on their van floor and walls, however a lot of what I had read up on suggested that it allowed pockets of moisture to be caught underneath it, as (obviously) because it’s rigid, it doesn’t fit into the grooves of the van metal work, creating an air gap where condensation and moisture build up occurs. Condensation is your worst enemy living in a tiny home, ugh.
Spray foam - Correct me if I am wrong, but I feel like a heap of the American van conversions I have seen use this option. It’s quick, it doesn’t absorb water (less chance for rust or mould) & it is a relatively good insulator. But (everything before the but doesn’t count right?), it can totally warp the metal exterior of your van if it’s not applied properly (too thick) and you can also wreck your door mechanisms if you don’t apply it carefully enough. Plus, it is extremely messy - think full on haz-mat suits, goggles etc. and it will cost ya a fair penny. This one I will leave to you, but I didn’t want to touch it.
Recycled denim - look, do people honestly even use this?? I was stumped when I came across a multitude of blogs listing the pros & cons of this. Please, just don’t use it. Have you ever worn wet jeans? How long have they taken to dry out? Imagine - copious amounts of your recycled wet jeans sitting behind the walls of your van. Condensation. Wet denim, damp, mould, rust… I could go on but I won’t. Just trust me, this shit does not work.
Relfectix - don’t be a sheep. Just because you have seen 100 other people do this to their conversion doesn’t mean it works. When I first read about this on a number of blogs and internet sites I thought, hey, this looks super easy and it must work because every Tom, Dick & Harry has used it… Nope. I then read about the air gap you need for this option to even work. And this is something that you seriously just can’t do properly in your van conversion to make Reflectix an efficient insulator. Plus, even if you do, it sucks as an insulator anyway. Avoid this at all costs. You are welcome.
Thinsulate - if you can afford it, you probably wouldn’t go wrong using it. It doesn’t retain moisture, it’s easy and safe to use, it doesn’t give off any bad compounds into the air and you can rip it up and use it in all the nooks and crannies. But it is pretty expensive and near impossible to source in the UK right now apart from ebay. Also, there has been recent research which indicates that it is a much better acoustic insulator than thermal. This one is really up to you team.
So basically, we had been given free insulation, which we couldn’t not use. The Isover insulation we were given was very highly rated and also supposed to be mould and flame resistant (fingers crossed!). This was used on the majority of our walls & it was super easy to stuff into the back doors and siding door cavities, plus the metal pillars. We used face masks and gloves to put it in and actually it was super quick and easy. It is completely sealed from the inside of the van through our moisture barrier (which I will explain soon), so I was pretty confident that it should remain dry and we shouldn’t get any airborne irritants from it (we actually just checked a section of the wall having lived in the van for almost eight months & I am happy to report it is bone dry behind there!). I knew we would need more insulation however, and so I purchased what I thought to be the BEST option for our van insulation, this. Thermo Fleece from Dodo Mat made from recycled plastic bottles (sustainability people rejoice - finally a good use for all that extra plastic!). It also doesn’t absorb moisture and is completely flame retardant, plus (YAY) it does not support mould growth. I seriously rate this product. It was also super easy to use, you can pull it apart without gloves or use a craft knife to cut pieces to size & you can easily stuff into smaller spaces. We used this on the ceiling and the top of our interior van walls.
For the floor we used these Dodo products: on the very bottom, this fantastic sound deadening Hex roll and over the top this Dodo Super Liner which is recommended as a more sturdy, thick thermal insulation barrier. We removed the old flooring and rolled it out. As we were putting down proper wooden floor boards and would be walking over it all the time, plus building our bed base on top of it, we wanted a really sturdy option for the floor. It has worked an absolute treat if I say so myself.
I am almost finished, I promise. Before we finished insulating the walls, Cam cabled some wires for our lights and light switches, and we ran them over the ceiling beams and down the length of the van to the approximate location of where we wanted them. After this, we put up SuperFoil - a vapour barrier / water membrane / thermal insulation lining, to completely seal the ceiling insulation from the inside environment.
There is some debate online about the usefulness of a vapour barrier inside your van. We knew we would be doing quite a bit of stuff inside the van, and even if you cook outside etc. just your breathing during the night can cause a lot of moisture in the air, which could potentially permeate into your insulation causing damp. We decided to completely seal off our insulation to hopefully avoid this & I have never used so much tape in my life. We sealed up the holes for the down-light wires and all the way around the edges using SO MUCH of this Foil Tape, which creates an air and water-tight seal - yipee.
Here are a few photos of our insulation process which I have described so far. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be and all this probably took us about 10 hours in total, including much needed beer breaks!
You can see from the photos above that after we finally removed the old flooring & put down the floor insulation, we very quickly put down the back wooden floor board to protect it. Cam and his cousin Doug then had to sit down on the ply with some extra weight in the form of a box of beers (and a pot plant from outside our flat) to make sure that the parts of the floor which we glued down stayed there - not a bad job!
We finished up the last of the Thermo Fleece on the upper part of the walls and then used the Isover insulation on the lower part of the walls. I think the photos below describe it a lot better than I can write about it! You can also see how we decided to attach the wooden support beams too - some times a picture really is a thousand words…
Oh yeah, so then we had a ceiling… and some walls! I will talk more about that in my next post but it was a spur of the moment situation where once we had finished parts of the insulation we both just thought - let’s do this & whacked up our ceiling to begin with.
To finish off, I will get Cam to help me to explain what he did for the electrics in the van. Luckily for me, Cam is an electrician and so I didn’t have to worry about any of the electrical installation (except to choose what coloured lights I wanted haha!). I will describe our system below but if you are planning on undertaking this work yourself it is (supposedly) fairly simple and you can find many wiring diagrams for systems like ours and other similar set-ups online. Plus you can find all your relevant electrical components for these systems easily on Amazon or EBay. You can also find auto-electrical kits and most of it comes with cable sizing and fuse sizes that will be required for your leisure battery or solar system. Some of these are fully inclusive kits with batteries and solar panels and every single tiny component you might need to install your system. All this work can be done with basic hand tools such as pliers, cable crimpers, screw drivers and a drill if needed - have fun and Cam says don’t be scared!
We installed a simple, reliable dual leisure battery system. As I mentioned previously, Cam sweet talked the van dealership into including two Full River high output leisure batteries, which are a high quality USA-made battery. The basics of this system is that while the car is running, the van alternator charges the primary battery (engine starter battery). Once this battery has reached full charge, charge is then transferred to the dual leisure battery system via a 12v relay sensor. The alternator then charges the leisure batteries while the engine is running. Once the engine is turned off, the same voltage sensitive relay recognises this and disconnects the charge coming from the primary battery to the leisure battery system. This means that the leisure battery system is only ever charging while the car is running and the primary battery is at full charge - therefore the primary battery will always have full charge and our leisure battery system will never drain any charge from this - so our van will always start (thank god!).
The leisure battery system then goes through a DC voltage regulator, keeping the voltage output at a steady 12v DC. The whole leisure battery system is protected from the primary van battery and car electrics by a 100amp fuse and every outgoing appliance is individually fused after this. Our diesel heater is on a 20amp fuse, power sockets on a 10amp, the fridge is on 8amp, lights are on 5amp, the sink pump is on 5amp & our carbon monoxide detector is on a 3amp fuse. This ensures that each individual appliance is protected separately.
We have a 12v DC to 230v AC inverter for our power socket circuit. This means we can use all of our 230v appliances like charging our phones and laptops, plus I can even use my hair dryer (perks of a sparky boyfriend hehe).
Our Dometic fridge/freezer is a deep cycle compressor fridge which has a minimal energy consumption - once it has reached its ambient temperature it only has to turn on to maintain that temperature. In the height of summer (Spain in 40degrees) it probably turned on 15 times per day for approx 3 minutes at a time - thank god we had the fridge to keep all our beers icy cold (priorities right?!). While we have been living in the van in winter it only turns on twice a day, if that!
We installed LED down lights and a sink pump which both also have minimal energy consumption. It is important to stay as energy efficient as possible on the road! In the middle of summer after approximately a three hour drive, our system could last us for up to three days - even with watching movies at night and charging our phones & laptop. In winter its approximately the same (3-4 days) - depending on how much we use our diesel heater! We find that a two to three hour drive is suffice to charge our batteries from nearly empty to fully charged.
Because of our system and the way we travel we didn’t think investing in solar was necessary for us, but they are a great option to install for free energy, especially if you like to stay off-grid for longer periods of time.
I think that’s enough rambling from me for one day. I will put up another post detailing how we put up our walls, ceiling and flooring soon plus some of our DIY fails. We had never done anything like this before and the whole experience was such a learning curve. As always, send through any questions you may have below, it’s a beast of a job & I am happy to help however I can.
Thanks for reading!
G x