Van Conversion Fan, Solar, & Ladder | Van Build Series

Raise the roof! Raise the roof! We finished the roof of our van! So after a month of being back in Seattle, I'm finally in Austin to work on our van again and I'm really excited to be here. We've gotten a lot done the past few days and I'm excited to share it with you. So in this video, I'm going to share everything on the roof and on the side of the van. So our fan, our solar panels, and our ladder. And since I'm going to hop between each one, I'm putting like the time codes below and in the description in case you just want to see one aspect of it. So before I begin, I wanted to just kind of give some clarity around what our YouTube channel is. We hope to not be confusing, but we feel like right now we're kind of confusing on like what our mission is. So first and foremost, we are a travel vlog. We want to share our travels with everyone, but since we're building the van, we really want to share that too, since that's kind of our our vessel to travel more in the future. But since we can't work on the van full time, we also can't travel full time, we're kind of hopping between travel and van videos. So please be patient with us. Once we're on the road, there are going to be tons of travel videos. We'll talk about life on the road in the van, as well as share all the cool places we get to go. So thank you guys for following along. We really appreciate it. I promise things won't be so hopping back and forth soon. So the first task we did on the roof was the fan. And having a fan is important to just have more air circulation, hopefully cool things off a bit. We got this Maxxair fan, which has a rain shield, a fan and a vent. It doesn't have a remote, but it has this little handle right here where you can open it and close it. Kind of see right there, it's opening up and then closing back down. This is what it looks like when it opens itself up. Lots of leaves, really great ceiling job. Whoops. We placed it in a spot because of all the kind of ribs on the roof. And this was the only flat spot. Kind of wish that we could have moved it back more towards where our bed will be, but too late now. So hopefully it works out okay. So Adam actually installed the fan our first weekend with the van. I unfortunately was working, so he had to do it by himself with the help of my dad. And unfortunately, we just didn't get the best footage of actually putting it together. We missed quite a few steps when filming it. So as we've learned, vlogging while building a van by yourself is very challenging. So instead of sharing our step-by-step process here, we're going to list all of the steps below in the description and we're going to link to a YouTube video that helped us a ton when getting the van all set up. The next big task was installing our solar panels, which just like everything with the van build, proved to be a little bit more challenging than we thought it would be. We have four 100 watts compact design Renogy solar panels. We got three right here and then one right here with the fan. We struggled to figure out the best way to attach the panels to the van. We had these rails installed when we picked up the van and unfortunately, we couldn't afford one of the nice racks to put the solar panels on. They're about four thousand dollars. So instead of getting one of those, we had to come up with our own homemade option. So here's what we did. We bought these stainless roof rack sliders, which is such a tongue twister from Euro Camper, and they basically just slide into the rails that we already had installed when we bought the van. And that way we don't have to drill into the van or drill into the rails, which is awesome. And then we bought these aluminum angles, which were obviously aluminum at first, but we sanded them down and sprayed them with black bed liner just because we think it'll look a little bit nicer from afar when you're looking at the van. And so what we did is we cut these to be the exact size we need to attach to the panels and then attach to the rail. And then we drilled in holes where we will be attaching everything. So there are some existing holes on the solar panels, and we read that drilling into the panels can void the warranty. So we were trying to avoid that at all costs. So we're using the holes that exist. So these two holes align perfectly with the holes on the panels. And then this hole lines up with where it will meet with the rail. So no drilling involved, which is awesome. So one thing that's good to know is the top of the van is not flat. It's kind of curved and there's kind of some ribs at the top. So in order to make sure the solar panels lay flat, we have added spacers to both the solar panel attachment and rail attachment. And this is what it looks like. So we use boxes to lift up the panels so we can start connecting the wires. And it's pretty self-explanatory. You just kind of connect the positive to the negative. Connect them like so. We're also using zip ties to hold the wires together. Our next step is to use this cable clam, which looks like this, to drill a hole in the roof. That way the wires can go down so you can wire everything on the inside. So first we're just going to mark the holes where we need to drill this little guy. And this is what it looks like when it's done. So it suctions it so much that water cannot get through here. It's actually made for boats, so we feel pretty confident that we will be water-free from the roof. And they're up! These solar panels will be powering the batteries inside the van, which will power our refrigerator, our outlets, and anything that needs power. We have two lithium-ion batteries from Renogy, which we'll cover in a later video when we tackle electrical. But these solar panels are going to be the way that we work full-time in our van and have, you know, our laptops charged, our cameras charged, and everything. So they're going to be awesome. And the final task for the roof is the ladder. So we got this ladder from Illuminesse, partially because we just like the way it looks on the van. It looks pretty cool, but also so we can get up to the top easily to clean the solar panels and just any other reason we would need to get up there in case something gets messed up. This task was pretty easy and quick. Here's how you do it. So the first thing we did was attach the bracket to the bottom of the ladder. For the next step, we secured the brackets for the ladder at the top. These aren't like the permanent attachments that we're going to use, but just to hold it in place. And this should be 13 inches apart. So next, we put the ladder up and put it in its spot and clamped it and are holding it. That way we know where we need to drill the holes. Something that's super important to know is you need to put these in the rails while you're putting in the solar panel ones. That way they're in there. Otherwise, you won't be able to get them into the spot you want. And it turns out Illuminesse sent us the wrong bolts. Since they sent us the wrong bolts, we're just using the ones they did send to hold this into place for right now until I can go buy the new ones in a little bit. And then we will get this thing all secured. So you drill all of the holes and then bolt them on in. Then we put the ladder on the bracket and secure it on up. So this is a cap screw, which is what was supposed to come with the ladder, but they sent us the wrong thing. So we're into Home Depot. Now we're going to finish off the ladder. We have a ladder. Now it's time to test it out. And that's a wrap on the roof of the van. It feels awesome to finally make some progress on this bad boy. It's been sitting here for a month, just untouched, waiting for someone to love it and work on it and turn it into a home. So I'm really glad to be here to get some major stuff done. Our next step is to spend the next couple of days working on the plan. So drawing out plumbing, electrical, how we plan to build the cabinets, the bed, the walls, all that fun stuff. So I'll save you from that boring video. And hopefully when I'm back next week, I'll be able to actually show you building stuff inside the van. So I'm hoping to actually get some stuff up on the walls next time. So fingers crossed. And in case you missed it, we named our van brisket, which rhymes. Poet and I didn't know it. So we named our van brisket for a few reasons. One, we love barbecue, especially brisket. And now that our van's named brisket, we want barbecue significantly more. So it's making us hungrier, which isn't a surprise. We also named it brisket because we are in Texas. We're building our van in Texas and it's going to be an official Texas van. So it's a very Texas kind of word. And then lastly, we named it brisket because cows are big and black and white like our van. However, we know that brisket doesn't come from those kinds of cows. We want to make that clear, but it's a thought that counts, right? So that is the end of our roof vlog. We hope you enjoyed it. We hope you learned maybe a thing or two and I'll see you next time. Bye. Okay. I'm ready. Hold the shaft. There you go. That's what she said. Yeah.