We made BIG van upgrades after 3+ years of VAN LIFE! 🚐

Oh, I can't believe we're cutting another hole in the roof. We are just very, very nervous. After over three years of almost full time van life in our van brisket, it's time to make some updates. For those of you new around here, back in 2019, we bought a 2019 170 wheelbase Mercedes Sprinter van and spent seven months converting it from an empty cargo van into our home on wheels. Inside, we have a wet bath with a composting toilet and shower, a kitchen with a portable induction stove and a propane stove, a dresser and tons of cabinet space and a very comfy, larger than queen size bed that converts into a table and workspace. And since converting it, we have driven all around North America, visiting 42 states, including up to Alaska, plus a Canadian province and two Canadian territories, even making it all the way to the Arctic Ocean in Canada. While we still absolutely love our van and love living on the road and have no plans to make any major layout changes or sell the van and convert a new one, we have learned and experienced some things in the last few years that we could definitely improve on the van to make our quality of life more comfortable and less stressful. So while we're here in Texas, we're making some changes. And whether you've been following our van adventures for a while or are in the process of converting a van and are curious what someone who has lived on the road would do differently, we wanted to bring you along for this little renovation journey. And first up, we're upgrading our batteries. We currently have three 100 amp hour lithium batteries from Renogy. And while 300 amp hours may work well for some like those who are mostly traveling and not working from the road or those who aren't doing high power consuming activities on their laptops, for us, it just hasn't been enough. We work full time from the van and editing videos zaps our laptop battery, which then requires the inverter to be on a lot, which then reduces the batteries quicker. While we do have 400 watts of solar and an alternator charger to charge the batteries, we found that we can't sit still for too many days and work all day before running into power issues, especially when it's not very sunny out. We do have a couple other solutions to help with our power issues that we'll share later on. But one big fix to hopefully help with this is to double our amp hours to 600 amp hours of lithium. However, this proved to be slightly more challenging than we expected. The first hurdle was space before we had our three batteries plus water tank and inverter all snug in this spot. But unfortunately, with the larger size of the batteries, we couldn't fit everything. So we decided to get rid of one of our water tanks to make some space. We had two freshwater tanks in the van, a 23 gallon on the driver's side and this 13 gallons. So thankfully, this is the smaller of the two tanks. And it is a bummer to lose some water storage. But over the years, we've learned that it's easier and cheaper to find water than to charge the batteries. Plus, we shower a lot at Planet Fitness. So I think we'll be all right. At least I hope so. Worst case scenario, we smell really, really bad, but we get a lot of work done because we'll have tons of power. The next hurdle is what batteries to use. Our original plan was to add three more of these Renogy batteries right here. But unfortunately, Renogy no longer sells these exact batteries and we cannot combine them with their new ones. We then looked into getting three 200 amp hour batteries from Renogy since we really like the brand, but it was going to be very expensive. So we decided to try a new brand called Ampere Time, which sells 300 amp hour batteries. To be honest, we were kind of nervous to pick a brand that we had never heard of, but they have really good reviews and a five year warranty. So we feel pretty good about it. And we got these two 300 amp hour batteries for twenty one hundred dollars on a killer Black Friday sale, which is actually cheaper than how much we spent on our three 100 amp hour Renogy batteries back in 2019. All right. We adjusted the plumbing, took the old batteries out. Now it's time to put these new bad boys in there. I measured it about at least 18 times. So let's see if it's got an awkward seat here with these lips or molding here on the bottom. So it's not sitting level. So we're going to put something under there. And then also something to keep it towards this side. But it fits, but it fits. The batteries fit in here perfectly. So our next steps are to put some wood down here so that they sit level and also so they're secure in here while we're driving around and then just wire them all up. I cannot wait to see just how much this improves our life in the van. To be honest, we've had quite a few stressful moments behind the scenes where we have to get a lot of work done, but we're really low on power. So we either drive around aimlessly just trying to charge up our batteries or we have to pay for a campsite, which gets expensive real fast. So I have a feeling this is going to be a game changer. So right now I'm wiring up the batteries. So I've got these heavy duty for our cables here that I'm cutting to the right size and I have this tool here. Unfortunately, it's not very sharp. It's very dull and it's making it very difficult to cut these. This is so tough to cut. So I'll cut them to the right size. I'll take off a little bit of the insulation, put on the connector, crimp it down, and then I'll use this heat shrink that'll, you know, keep it all in place and protect it. Wire it up and then we'll fire it up and see if it all works. And now for the moment of truth, if I have everything wired correctly when I turn this big button, the light should come on. Yes, we have lights! First project done! Yeah, we got to get better at that. We do have another pretty big power upgrade we plan to make, but for the rest of the day, we're going to tackle a smaller power upgrade and we're going to swap out one of our outlets for one of these 12 volt outlets. When we were in the Yukon, we met a full time RV family and we were telling them about some of our power issues and they suggested that we get one of these outlets. Normally, when using our outlets, we have to have the inverter on, but the inverter drains our battery pretty quickly. Even just having the inverter on and not actually using it to charge any devices drains the battery. So what's nice about this outlet is that it will hook up directly to our battery. So we'll be able to use this outlet without having to have the inverter on. So if we need to charge our phones or our laptops, we can just use this outlet instead of our other outlets. Keep the inverter off and hopefully save a good amount of power. This should be pretty simple. I'll just replace the outlet, connect some wires and bada bing, bada boom. The green light is very encouraging that it will work, but we're going to test it out just to make sure. And you might be wondering, how the heck do you charge a laptop with a cigarette lighter? Well, there are a couple of different ways. And the first one is something that we actually do all the time in the front of the van. We have this car inverter that you plug into the cigarette lighter. Then we plug in the laptop charger into this end and we can charge our laptops and work while we're driving. Not both of us. One person drives, the other one works. Don't worry. But you can also actually get a laptop charger that will just plug in directly into this, which we plan to get later on. But for now, we're going to test it out with our trusty car inverter. Step one. Step two. Another green light. Green means go. And step three. There it is. Magic sound. It works. Holy cow. Another one. Oh, that was a better one. By the end of this van upgrade video, we're going to be nailing the high fives. Let's try another one. It's so hard to film and high five at the same time. When we first converted our van back in 2019, most van conversions that we saw did not have an AC. And at the time, the only ACs that we knew of were those traditional, really big RV rooftop ACs that consume a ton of power. And we knew that we didn't want that. So we just installed a max air fan and plan to chase good weather. And even though we have tried to chase cooler temperatures, it seems like every single year we get stuck in a heat wave, which makes being in this van extremely brutal. And while our max air fan does help a bit, and so does our T vent window on our sliding door, we unfortunately did not install any T vent windows in the back, which means that we have no ventilation in the back of the van and it gets really stuffy. And we have spent many warm days in the van. But if it gets too uncomfortable, we either have to get a hotel for the night unexpectedly, change our plans, or get a dog sitter for our dog, Kona, because if it's too hot in the van, we cannot leave her alone in here. So we've decided to get an AC. There are now a handful of lower power consuming ACs for RVs and vans on the market, most of which go on the roof. But as you can see, we have a fully finished van. So our original plan was to build our own AC unit similar to a cruise and comfort or undermount, which would go both under the van and in a cabinet. But we ultimately decided to do something that we weren't even sure was possible. We are going to put a hole in our finished van roof and install a rooftop AC. And we are just very, very nervous. We decided on a Dometic RTX 2000, which is a 12 volt rooftop AC with 6824 BTU. So it's not the most powerful AC, but it is a small space to cool. And we hear that it works great for vans. We bought a bundle for the AC, which came with this beautiful AC, a wiring kit and a hardware kit, which was twenty seven hundred dollars for all three during a Black Friday sale from RackUpGo.com. We also got a few other items from DIY Van for the install, including a foam seal, a one inch spacer and also an adapter, which was an additional three hundred sixty six dollars. So this adapter we bought from DIY Van is going to serve a couple different purposes. Basically, how it works is you order it for the specific spot you want on the roof and it has these notches in here to lay over the ribbing so it'll fit perfectly exactly where you want it. And so this ensures that the AC has a nice flat surface to sit on the roof and also ensures that you're cutting the hole in the right spot. Before we get started on this, this isn't meant to be a how to video. It's more about our experience with van life and why we're making these changes. There are some great how to videos for this exact AC unit on YouTube that we'll link to below. All right. Let's do this. Oh, I can't believe we're cutting another hole in the roof. I'm so scared to cut into this. All right. There's a hole in the roof. We're in this. No going back now. The hole is cut. There's a hole. Check that out. So Catherine's actually in Indiana visiting some family, so she's missing out on all this excitement. So I'm going to FaceTime her and see what she thinks. All right. Check out what I've got going here. Yep. There's a hole there. Stick your. Oh, my goodness. All right. We're just now gluing down the adapter and the foam seal. Let this set. Don't throw the AC on there and plug it up. It's not laying flat over on driver's side. All right. Check it out. We've got the AC in place. We've got it bolted down. It is there. It's not going anywhere. Took a little bit to get those lined up and get this right where we needed it to be. But it's there. We're getting so close now. All we've got left is we're running the wire to down down to the battery bank here. Our original plan was going to be to run the battery or the wires behind the wall here, one of the walls here and down this way. But we pivoted. And so it's coming from up here, goes back behind here. Coming out right here. And it's going to go behind this cabinet that's here and then running down that actual column in the back and then coming out under in the bench there. So we just got to get it wired up, give it a test, and that'll be that wired up should have power running to it. Let's give it a test. Oh, that's a good sign. It's making clicking sounds coming on. Need a now. Here comes air. It's kind of cold out right now. It's about 60 degrees, so I can't really tell how effective it is right now, but it feels cold coming out and it's blowing pretty strong. It's on boost mode now. And if I sit on the benches, you know, we're sleeping right here. I can feel a good breeze right here. This is going to be game changing. Catherine made it home really late last night, so it's time for her to finally see what the AC looks like. Make sure I don't run into anything. Oh, no, I think I'm going to be right. You're going right. I'll guide you here. Open my eyes. Yeah. Tada. Cool. What do you think? Looks like a true RV now. Our little homemade van. Nice. And now for the true test. We have an AC. I'm so stoked. I never thought we'd be able to have an AC in this van. It just always felt like something that we kind of regretted not having, but we didn't know if it was possible. Well, we have an AC and it's blasting me in the face right now. This thing is super powerful. It's not going to change our desire to chase cooler weather now that we have this AC. But man, this is going to it's like really hit me in the face right now. It's just going to make those unexpected hot days so much more comfortable. So we're not going to do a full blown test of the AC. There are plenty of videos on YouTube of people doing that that will link to below. Right now, we've got a full blast and just looking at its power consumption, it's taking about 42 amps or about 550 watts. And with our 600 amp hours of battery, it says it'll last almost eight hours, which is pretty crazy. We would probably never have it on full blast for very long, probably just to take the edge off, get the immediate heat out and then knock it down to eco mode, which only takes about 19 amp hours. And if you're curious how loud the AC unit is at full blast, it is pretty loud outside. People would definitely know that we're running an AC. But on eco mode, the AC is super quiet and you can barely even tell that the AC is on. And we're not completely done with the AC install. We're going to go ahead and add the one inch spacer we ordered from DIY Van, which will raise this unit up an inch and it'll be more flush with the ceiling here. We just couldn't do it when we were installing it because the bolts here aren't long enough. So I've ordered those. Those are coming in a couple of days. And then we're going to add some nice trim here. It'll look sleek and pretty and it'll be done. It took us four days and we had to build it twice, but I think it turned out pretty nice. But most of all, I am just glad it's over with. That was so much harder than I thought it would be. In order to fit the AC on the roof, we had to get brand new solar panels. Our current ones wouldn't fit on the roof with the AC, and we didn't want to remove one and lose 100 watts. So we just had to get brand new ones. While we did love our Renogy panels, they didn't have another option that would work size wise. So instead, we got these Costa panels, which are actually meant to fit perfectly on a sprinter, which is awesome. These are 200 watts each and we got three total. Two of them will go behind the AC. One will go behind the fan. So we're going from 400 watts to 600 watts, which we are super pumped about. And it should help us with power. We bought these brackets from Amazon, which we painted black to match the panels. We've already test fit them on the roof. So all that's left to do is wire them up and attach them. So it should be pretty straightforward. But those are famous last van project words. Tada! We didn't make this upgrade for cosmetic reasons, but I think these new solar panels look so much nicer than our last ones. They just fill out the roof so much better and they just look super sleek. All right. The moment of truth. Let's see if these solar panels are working. Hey, it's in the positive. So it's getting 15 watts, so. Oh no! An acorn just fell on our new solar panels. You better watch out. I'm going to chop you down. But yeah, it's in the positive. So they're working. We don't have very much sun beating on them right now because the house is in the way, but there's a little tiny square of sunlight on one of the panels. And they're working. Yeah, getting a little better on those. We're getting there. We're getting there. We have a couple more upgrades that don't require any construction, which is our favorite kind of project. And first is a moon shade. This is a portable awning that will allow us to spend more time outside of the van, but with shade. We always have this dream of just hanging outside the van, enjoying the scenery. But in reality, we never do this because the sun just makes it brutal to work and just kind of hot to sit outside. So this is going to be a game changer. We got the moon shade plus a large wall for more privacy, but we haven't tried it out yet, so let's do it. It's really small. Yeah, this is super portable. So we spread out the shade on the ground and try to see how far apart we need to set these anchors on the roof. These are pretty intense, sturdy looking anchors. They're just little suction cups. Yeah. I'm trying to find a good spot to put this suction cup and the place I planned on putting it up here is in between the ribs and the space is just too small for this to get a good suction. But it does suction really well to the solar panels. But that might hurt the performance of the solar panels. All right. Now it's sticking pretty well for the sake of this demo. Let's give it a shot. We picked a really good day to do this because the sun is beating and we desperately need a shade right now. All right. Next, you attach this carabiner to the anchor. All right. It's still stuck. Next step, you assemble and attach poles. Oh, no. I think it's mostly user error. I think in the future, we might put these poles on here first before we hang it up there. Nice. We have a shade. So you can use the moon shade just like this with the three sides open. But we wanted to get this wall because not only will it help us block out the sun even more, but it'll also give us some privacy. Kona really loves to bark at things, anything that moves, really. So we're hoping that this will help shield her view so we can actually sit outside in some peace. Oh, oh, this is what this is for. OK, so the wind was just trying to make our van fly, which is what I've always needed for those windy days where we could just fly places instead of getting blown around on the road. But I was wondering what this hook was here. And now there's a carabiner on this side. So I'm guessing I'll get in there. So now if the wind takes us, I'll go take the pole with it. I would say once we get the hang of it, this will take maybe 10 minutes. Definitely. Yeah. Right now, I think we're going on 45. This is our first run. So we didn't even look at the instructions before we did this. So to attach this bottom attachment here, you have to use a stake. And as you can see, we're on a driveway and those two things don't really mix. So we'll show you how this whole setup looks in a future video when we're using it for real. This is amazing. I think Kona likes it, too. If you would like to get a moonshade, we do have a $30 off code, which is A plus K. And just to be clear, this is not sponsored. We paid for this moonshade ourselves, but it is an affiliate code. So if you use it, you get to save some money and we get a little bit of a kickback as well. So it's a win for everyone. This is the life. I can get used to this. I will get used to this. And for our final van upgrade, we got Starlink. We have been using hotspots for Internet for the last three and a half years, including our Verizon phones, plus a hotspot device with both Verizon and AT&T. And they do work pretty well as long as we have cell service. But there have been many times we've been in remote places without any cell service and they do not work, which makes it kind of hard to get work done when your whole business and livelihood revolves around having the Internet. We've heard great things from all of our nomadic friends who have Starlink and how it gives you Internet in places where there is no cell service. So we're going to give it a shot. We got Starlink Roam, which allows us to use it all over the world, which is a big reason why we made the switch similar to last year. We're going to be spending a lot of time in Canada this year, and our current hotspot setup doesn't really work or give us enough data in Canada. So we're really hoping this makes our time in Canada this year a little less stressful. We'll try to share more about our experience using Starlink once we're actually on the road, because we can't really speak to its usefulness quite yet. But we did want to show y'all how we're setting it up in the van. There are two components to the Starlink, the router and the dish, and the dish has to be outside to speak to the satellites. And our goal with our setup was to not have the wire going to the dish, going through a cracked window or a cracked door. So I installed this bulkhead so I can plug in the wire from the dish underneath the van. And then this wire runs from here to the router. So all the windows and doors can be closed and can be weathertight in the van. And the Starlink is still plugged in. We had heard that the router takes a decent amount of power and it requires a hundred and ten volt plug, which would require our big inverter to be on. So to get around that, I installed a smaller inverter that's wired directly to the battery so the big inverter doesn't have to be on. And that'll hopefully save us a good amount of power. But that about does it for actual upgrades. We have also been working on a bunch of small things that needed to be repaired from the last three and a half years of use and some very bumpy roads. Got some new tires, deep cleaned the van and did some touch up paint. And if you're curious how much these upgrades cost, it ended up being $6,828.20, which is a lot of money. But we will say, had we done some of these upgrades from the beginning, it would have only been an additional $3,600 on our build. And we also sold our old batteries and solar panels to make some of this money back. If you have any questions about any of the upgrades that we made in this video, please leave a comment below or shoot us an email. We have also linked all the products in a new blog post on our website, as well as have all the other items from our van build on our website, too. But after five and a half months away from van life, as we explored Mexico, the Florida Keys and Vietnam, we are so excited to be hitting the road in a couple of days and try all these new upgrades out. We're getting back in brisket, baby. Reunited and it feels so good. You always do that. You just groove and you got to snap to that song.