Campervan Design and Plan
Building a campervan is like building a custom home. An empty cargo van you can customize to fit your needs. Before you start with your campervan design and build, it’s best to have a plan. Looking at the task as a whole can make your head spin…beds, tables, furniture, storage, kitchen, plumbing, electrical system, roof racks, exterior lighting and overall layout. With any large project it’s best to break things down into smaller tasks and tackle them one by one.
Before you start the design, you must establish some parameters.
During our campervan design brainstorming sessions we started with these parameters:
- Part time use – The campervan will be used for weekend or weeklong get aways. It’s not our primary residence another-words we aren’t living in the van.
- Who will use it – we designed the van for our family of 3.5, Mike, Shirley, 2 year old Carly and 90lbs dog Lucy.
- Budget – Our budget for the camper van is about $30k. We already bought the van for $19k so we’re left with about $11k for the buildout. It’s on the low end but we are doing all the work ourselves.
Step 1 : DESIRES
What do you want out of your campervan?
This is the fun part. Make a list of everything and every feature you want in your campervan. During this stage it helps if you’ve car camped or even just camped before. It will give you an idea of what you want/need.
Here are some ideas to help you brainstorm:
- Think of what you LOVE – Love campfires? Make a place to store and carry firewood. Love star gazing? Include a rooftop deck. Love cooking? Deck out your kitchen with a four burner stove with oven.
- Think of what you don’t like – Don’t like being dirty? Add a shower! Don’t like packing and unpacking? Include a lot of storage so your van is always ready to go.
- What hobbies or activities do you want to include? Love biking? Add a big “garage” to easily store bikes. Love Onewheels? Have a dedicated plate to store and charge your Onewheel.
- Who will use the camper – do you need a third seat with child seat anchors? Traveling with pets? How many people will it sleep?
You get the idea. At the brainstorming stage just write down all the features you want.
We’ve regular camped extensively, car camped, stayed in RV’s and owned a pop up camper before so we have a really good idea of what we want and don’t want.
Here are some of the ideas we thought of:
- Area for at least 4 people to sit down and eat
- Easy to set up bed
- Third seating area with child seat anchor
- Bike storage
- rooftop deck
- Air Conditioning
- Indoor Shower
- Outdoor shower
- Refrigerator
- Sound system with projector
- Must be at least 5’6 inside so we can all stand up
- Can go off grid for at least 3 days
- 400w of solar
- 200 usable AH (amp hours)
- Hot water
- Lots of storage
- fresh water
- Grey water tank
Step 2: DESIGN
This is where you start a rough design of your campervan. During this step you look at the features you listed out in step one and make three lists, MUST HAVE, MAYBE and GONE.
- MUST HAVE – these are the features that you must have in your campervan such as bed, sink, hot water, AC/DC power…etc
- MAYBE – these are features you would like to have and will think of a solution to incorporate it into your campervan such as indoor shower, rooftop deck, 360 video surveillance, projector with theater setup…etc.
- GONE – These are features that you would like to have but wont fit in the campervan due to size constraints, design, money or whatever. For example, if you have a medium room (interior height 5’7″) it would be hard to have a fixed bed with enough room under for bike storage. You could if you don’t mind no room to sit up in bed.
Here’s what our list looks like
MUST HAVE
- Third seat with child seat anchors
- Air Conditioning – we live in Texas so AC is a must!
- Refrigerator
- Area for at least 4 people to sit down and eat
- Easy to set up bed – the bed in our Aliner pop up camper was a pain to setup so it must be easy in the van
- Outdoor shower – this became a MUST when we took Carly swimming at Dinosaur Valley state park and she pooped her pants. We had to drive around with her in the car poopy pants and all while we searched for a place to wash her off. Also great for washing off the dog or cold showers in the summer!
MAYBE
- Rooftop deck
- Indoor shower
- Sound system with projector
- Lots of storage
GONE
- Inside bike storage
- 400w of solar – although we’d love to have more panels, with just a 148′ van and AC already on the roof, it doesn’t leave much room left for panels
- 200Ah (amp hour) of battery – Lithium Ion batteries are very expensive. We’re going to start with 100Ah. We could buy 200AH of batteries with AMG type batteries but it would take up a lot of space and weigh a lot!
Once you have the MUST HAVE and MAYBE list: you can start drawing the van. It can be as simple as sketching it out with pencil and paper or in CAD. This is an important step.
It’s like putting together a puzzle. You take all the features you want and figure out where everything will go. You may have to get creative to squeeze all the features you want within the specifications of your van.
SketchUp is a free online CAD program a lot of people use to pre design campervans. Using a CAD program is easier than pencil and paper because of the dimensions will be taken into consideration. You may have grand ideas for the design but once you add in the dimensions you may realize the plans inside your head won’t work. It’s also much easier to move components around than drawing and redrawing with a pencil.
Step 3: Build!
Before you can actually start building, you need materials and supplies. This is a big part of what this website will be about. As of this post, we are in the gathering supply stage and currently at a standstill. Before we can start building the interior we are looking for a single seat and having a custom roof rack manufactured.
So stay tuned as we will be blogging and vlogging our whole build process.
Our Campervan Design
It must be fate.
We lucked out on the van. The van we got was exactly the configuration we were looking for and met the criteria, under 100k miles, 148 medium roof with side and back windows. But even better! The person who we bought it from was an FBI agent who was building it out to be a campervan! He couldn’t finished the build due to his job. I know what you’re thinking, no the van wasn’t used to haul bodies or in drug stings. He purchased it from a normal used car dealership with plans of turning it into a campervan for weekend getaways with his girlfriend and dog.
This works out perfectly for us because the mods he already did were exactly what we planned on doing anyways! He already added the driver’s side CR Laurence window, backup camera, started on insulation, Maxxair Deluxe fan and Dometic 15,000 BTU ac unit with heat strip. Yes we live in Texas so AC is mandatory.
On top of the mods already done, he included a brand new Pioneer DVD head unit with all the needed parts to install it, two bails of rockwool insulation, window covers and two 8′ poly insulation boards.
The only thing he did differently from what we were going to do was the method of insulation. We were going to do Thinsulate. He used rockwool, poly boards and spray foam. The roof was already done, a lot of the walls and hollow cavities were already stuffed with rockwool spray foam. Thinsulate is very expensive and the van already came with all the insulation we needed, we decided to stay with his plan. We are paying cash for the van build so the insulation budget can go into the projector and sound system.
This is a rough drawing in SketchUp of our design. Not pictured are the windows, third seat or table top.
Dining and Bedroom
Initially we wanted a fixed bed with a “garage” to store bikes but with a medium roof van things will get cramped quickly. Going with a fixed bed we’d be giving up a dining area and ability to sit up in bed. Traveling with a toddler we need a place inside to sit and chill or eat meals.
We decided to go with a u shaped bench with a table top on a retractable pedestal. The rear bench will have the ability to recline. I figure this would be a good feature to have if we are parked on a hill we could elevate the back so all the blood wont rush to our heads. Also an inclined back would be sweet when we go in movie mode.
Our plan is to have a projector installed in the ceiling. We debated to add this or not. Camping is about going offline and enjoying nature but once again, we are traveling with a toddler. Adding a projector to this design would be simple. Pretty much just pre-wiring the ceiling with a HDMI and audio cable. How sweet would it be to watch a movie on a projector on rainy nights!
Bathroom
Mike and I both shower at least twice a day. Naturally we wanted to include an indoor shower in the campervan. In a 148′ medium roof van, some sacrifices will need to be made. We wanted the shower to be easy to use. No setting up curtains or elaborate ways to catch the water.
Based around an 24×32″ shower pan, the “shower” is built into the right side of the kitchen countertop. This is where the toilet will go also. Because our storage is already pretty limited we decided to not have a stand up shower. The “shower” is more of a wet area we can sit and wash off.
Kitchen
The kitchen countertop will have a fixed sink and the right side is the top of the shower. We decided to not add a built in stove. Using a portable camp stove will give us the option to take the stove outside and cook when the weather is good.
Electrical
Due to space and money constraints, we’ve had to scale down our electrical system by a lot. Ideally we’d like to have 200Ah of usable battery storage and 400 watts of solar panels but batteries are expensive and space is limited on our roof.
On a 148′ length van with an AC and fan installed, there really isn’t much room left for solar panels and a rooftop deck. Sure we could fill all available space with solar panels but we really want a rooftop deck for stargazing on cool nights. Realistically we can fit about 200w of solar panels and have 100Ah of usable battery.
After adding up power usage, 100Ah should give us the ability to be off grid for 1 day without being too Scrooge McDuck on electricity. I know this doesn’t sound like a lot but keep in mind we do not plan on living in the van. The campervan will be used for weekend and weeklong getaways. We will have several ways to get power – battery, solar, shore power, alternator and generator. We figure if we deplete the battery we could always start the engine and charge the battery via the alternator or crank up the generator.
75% of the time we will be staying somewhere with shore power like State and National parks and 25% of the time off grid like BLM land or rest stops.
As much as we’d love to be 100% off grid, it’s just not feasible with the AC.
Campervan Design Conclusion
Building a campervan is fun.
Most importantly don’t over analyze or think too much about your campervan design. This can lead to analysis paralysis and prevent you from starting. Take it one step at a time but most importantly start!
Stay tuned as we will be documenting our entire campervan design and build process.
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