in the POD - busy bees

living their best life....

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 SO you might be asking.... what the hell have you been doing for the past three weeks?!

Well we haven't been resting on our laurels and there is not any significant visual change to the van. We have filled the time with lots of little things, lots of decision making, a few changes and some waiting on various parts to move forward with. 

All good.

First, we finally got the running boards put on! It surely has made it much easier getting in and out of the van. There is one at the driver's side door and then this one on the passenger side - spanning both that door and the big slider.

Side running boards

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The 6 solar panels are now fully mounted and installed on the roof. We are using Renogy 175 watt panels which are directly connected to a Renogy Rover 60 amp charge controller. The controller is then connected to the battery.

6 solar panels on the roof of the van

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The panels are mounted on aluminum frames made from 8020 aluminum profiles. The panels along with the structure are secured with stainless steel screws.

you can see the main frame as well as the framed sections of panels

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Over the past few weeks a lot of time has been spent on the "garage" - discussions, drawings, placement of equipment, mounting systems, un-mounting systems, moving those systems to a new spot, remounting ..... you get the picture. Basically trying to find the most efficient placement for everything that needs to be there. 

Ultimately, the structure within the garage will be built out of the same 8020 aluminum profiles that we used on the roof. I suggested that we first do a mock up out of wood so we could get an actual sense of what fit where/best. This worked out great -  we learned a lot and changed the position of a number of systems all for the better! 

Now that the plan for the garage is set Tim was able to order the balance of the 8020 aluminum and has begun creating the rest of the wiring and plumbing lines that run into and out of here. 

mock up of the garage

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progress report on other systems:

Toilet and black water tank have been set up and the system has been tested. It works!

No pics yet..... because it has all been dismantled while we rebuild the whole bathroom frame from 8020 aluminum profiles.

Rear view camera has been installed. The Sprinter comes with a fantastic back up system: camera, and sensors that depict the whole backup experience on the dashboard video screen, and includes beeping if you get too close to anything. Very cool and very useful. That said, because the back doors have no windows, the van did not come with an inside rear view mirror. So we purchased a dash cam/rear cam that uses a rear view mirror style screen. Now we can watch our rear! with the dash cam full time, while recording both the dash cam and rear cam while driving.