Covering van progress from December 1st to December 31st
This month’s update is a short one (due to the holidays, the extreme temps, and the short weekend trip, very little work was completed), but a few key changes happened that pushed the build forward — and gave me a much better feel for what living in the van will actually be like.
Very early in December, I installed the Webasto gasoline heater. The install took about 6–7 hours of solo work, and while it was a bit of a project, it was absolutely worth it. This thing is a game changer. It pulls just 0.04–0.06 gallons per hour directly from the van’s fuel tank, and makes the space tolerable on freezing cold nights. I’ll be doing a deeper dive into this in a future post.
The Dometic fridge arrived shortly after, and I had it installed in the van that same day. It’s incredibly spacious and will be a huge asset for longer trips. For now, it’s running through the DC fuse block connected to the Apex — no issues there so far.
I ran into an issue with the XT60 port on the Bluetti Apex 300. Due to what I’ll fully admit was user error, the port looks like it overheated — possibly because the adapter I used wasn’t rated to handle the full power from the solar panels. It’s not a total system failure, but it does mean I can’t use that port anymore. This may push me to move toward a custom Victron power system sooner than I planned.
I’ll be picking up several sheets of baltic birch plywood early January to start framing out the bench seat, kitchenette, and desk support structure. These will be the first major furniture builds and should help define the layout moving forward.
PS: on deck is the first long-distance road trip update. Stay tuned for that and other exciting updates coming very soon...