After 20 years of having problems thrown at you enjoying this lifestyle you work out what to carry with you, how to deal with situations and how to protect your belongings and yourself. So we’ve put together some practical tips in the hope that these might help others.
(1) Use 12v as much as possible, use inverters least as possible. Get step up transformers to charge laptops. Use 12v usb sockets for tablets & phones.
Get a couple of usb power banks, one with AC socket and charge during the day off solar or when driving and then charge laptop or phones/tablets at night off the power banks if you’re low on power. Get a power bank that has usb, 12v out and can boost your starter battery.
(2) If you get stuck in sand/mud/snow let your tyres down 20 psi to see if that helps get you out, also get some grip boards.
(3) Get usb charged torches for the times you walk around at night, lighting fires or so on. Charge them during the day off solar or engine.
(4) If leaving the van for a few days get a removable isolation key, so no power will be left on and the leisure batteries won’t drain, some vans have an ignition key position to isolate the starter battery too in order to avoid drain.
(5) Breakdown & emergency kit. Tow rope, emergency beacons, fuses, marine duct tape, hi vis jacket, first aid kit, multimeter, basic tool kit, ramps – good sturdy ones for levelling and to get under your van for maintenance.
(7) Electric hookup cable and adapters for each country & polarity.
(8) Collapsible water container to get water into your water tank if you can’t get close to the water source or tap. Ours has a tap and I’ve cut a short length of hose pipe to connect to the water container and the pipe then goes into the water filler neck.
(9) Get raised fire pit for safety and leaving no mess behind from your fires.
(10) Convert all lighting to led, you can get different shades of white, dimmable and many different bulbs for older light fittings. This will cut your 12v power draw by more than 90%.
(11) Change your leisure battery is easy, you can get 130ah for under £100 but please make sure you dispose of your old batteries at the local recycling centre. You can always go for LifePo4 Lithium batteries, usually around 10x the price of lead acid, they last much longer too with an ability to provide all their power rather than the 50% limit of lead acid types.
(12) If you’ve got a truma boiler, after you fill your fresh water tank and turn on your pump, it will fill the hot water tank, which takes about 20 litres of water out of your fresh water tank. Then when you turn the tap on the trapped air in the pipes is under pressure and spits out water everywhere for a few seconds, usually resulting in a good soaked shirt or face. We normally pop a dishcloth over the tap to stop that then top up the fresh water tank afterwards.
(13) If you’ve got a chemical loo then get good quality chemicals that are safe for all sorts of sewage systems. We use onechem probiotic concentrate fluid which is formaldehyde free. So it’s safe to dispose of your cassette contents in septic tanks for example.
(14) The past 2 fiat Ducato Campervan see have had I’ve played around with the tyre pressures, to get the benefit of good mpg, ride comfort and road handling. 50 psi seems to work best which is very different to the 60 to 70psi suggested by the manufacturers.
(15) One worry we’ve had about owning a Campervan & Motorhome is the safety of them. These type of vehicles are stolen too easily according to some owners. So in a way to hopefully dissuade thief’s, or slow them down, we have fitted 3 security devices in our vans. 1 physical deterrent, 1 audible alarm with immobiliser and a final hidden safely system that offers tracking along with the ability to have audio & video streamed from the vehicle and stored in the cloud.
(16) Speaking of security & safety we always lock the doors when driving and also when parked in the van in an unfamiliar place. We double check all doors and windows are fully closed and locked at night or leaving the van. We also close all curtains & blinds when leaving the van so no one can see inside, insurance companies research says by preventing prying eyes seeing inside your vehicle, therefore not seeing any belongings, dramatically reduces your chance of being broken into.
(17) You never know when you might want to fasten luggage, shopping or last minute holiday purchases down in the van and we’ve had too many times when things move around in the back of the van so we carry plenty of bungee cords, webbing straps and rubber luggage straps but one thing that we’ve found to be really useful are carabinas. They’re something we have on our backpacks and in the van to fasten things down to tie-down points.
(18) If your appliances work on gas & electric, including fridges that get their power from the vehicle 12v power when the engine is running, we’ve found that the hot water/blow air heating boiler gets hotter faster when using gas rather than electric, similarly the fridge gets colder faster when running on gas. Even if we are on hookup we still get everything setup and at temperature on the gas and then will switch over to electric to keep things running.
(19) Things get dirty when you go out into the wild, whether you’ve got a dirty pair of shoes, a dirty dog or a dirty van you want to get an easy way to get clean and fit that we use an inflatable powered pressurised water container with handy spray head.
(20) I use a small window squeegee to clear the condensation off the inside of the front windows with a microfiber towel to catch the moisture and also have a bottle of water to clean the outside of the front windows in summer, using a wet towel to clean the windows and the squeegee to dry them off.
