Can a Family of 7 Fit in a TWO STOREY AMBULANCE

We've converted this two-storey seven berth ambulance for our family of seven. And today we finally give you a full tour. We bought this Fiat Ducato 2019 ex-NHS ambulance because we needed more room in our new van. Eight months later it has seven travelling seats, full household style kitchen, an electrical bed and even a bedroom through the roof. This may still look like an ambulance from the outside. Where do we all sit? Where do we all sleep? And is it even legal? Let's show you around. So this van is a Fiat Ducato 2019. We bought it with 116,000 miles on the clock. It's a 2.3 multijet diesel. This ambulance came with two seats in the front. But being a family of seven, we required three. So we actually had these double seats professionally fitted. And actually now we have four seats in the back. It's absolutely perfect. This isn't our first van conversion. We converted a Peugeot Boxer extra long wheelbase, extra high roof into a seven berth camper van two years ago. And we needed to upgrade our space. This actually isn't that much bigger. It's more about the square footage inside the box. It's got straight walls. It's two meters by four meters the back box. So it gives you that bit more of a bigger internal space. Now the van is finished. It currently weighs three and a half ton. That's without any of us in it. So let's talk living spaces. We'll start with the kitchen. Honestly, I'm absolutely made up. We bought a flat pack kitchen. I think it's absolutely amazing. I do believe we're going to have enough space. Everyone's like, what about the storage for seven people? Honestly, we'll make it work. The sink and the tap are from Ikea. They were under a hundred pounds. We have running water by this switch here. And there we go, running water. All the tanks are under here. So we have a Montpellier 12 volt fridge. I love how we've already packed for Europe. We've got four packs of sweets in here and freezer. So our last van conversion, we had a fridge that was probably half the size and half the price. So I don't think it's actually bad for the upgrade. We've got more storage up here, which is just going to house plates, bowls, pots, pans, food, that sort of thing. Just look at my lovely shelf. So this does have more storage in. So obviously we're going to have our spices. We've got more boxes here. This is a beauty. It's called the Our Place Oven. I've only used it once so far, but it's a bloody belter. So we've gone for a single induction hob. Don't ask, I don't know why we haven't gone for a double, but I'll make it work. The brilliant thing about this ambulance is we bought it with air conditioning and a diesel heater. So the air conditioning comes out of here. Honestly, what a luxury. Our last van had no air con, not even in the front cab. So it's going to be a real treat in Europe. We also have the diesel heater. This is going to be brilliant for our sort of like UK travels. Our first night in our camper van a couple of years ago, we were in Dover without a diesel heater. It was freezing. So this is going to be a real treat. The most important area of the van when you have five kids is the coffee station. This area houses the coffee station. We are making barista coffees in a van in the middle of wherever we are, but it's not just the coffee station. It is the complete storage unit for the vambulance. Did you hear that? Vambulance. This has got storage in here. This is just to house all our stuff because when you've got five kids, there's a lot of stuff. This is the full area of where most of the stuff is going to be. Now onto the toilet and shower room. Now this is much bigger than our last van. Last van was very tight with a curtain. We've got a lovely shower door on this one, but it's a great space for you to do all your showering needs and whatever else needs to be done in the toilet. Wait there, okay. Round two. So this central area does three completely different jobs. So it's a dining area. It's a bed at night time and also these seats are brilliant for when we're on the go. So let's get technical. We got these professionally made by a metal fabricator. This has four three-point harness seat belts in it. So it's not like your average seat, but ultimately what it is, is these have a full seat belt mechanism in them. So when you're sitting in your lovely comfortable seat driving frontwards. Now this was a bugbear in our last van. So many people on social media said that our van was horrific because our seats were facing backwards. Well in this van, all the seats are facing forwards. Not that it made an ounce of difference, but these are a multi-functional use of the space. It's booth seating, comfortable fabric and it turns into a bed. But wait until you see the pierre de resistance of this van. And you may have already eagle-eyed it if you've seen one before. To fit seven people in here, it's not easy. Unless you have something special. Oh yes! And if you can see now, underneath here is all the seats and a king-size bed right here on the van. Now this is something special. Now I'm going to put that away, because we're going to show you the full night time setup later in the van tour. But look at that go. And just to let you know, when I built that, I could have cried when I finished it. Because that for me, as a DIYer, I'm not a mechanically minded person either. Making this bed out of wood has been one of the biggest achievements of this van. And now we're still on the subject of beds. I'm going to show you what makes this van completely different. It has a second floor. Let's go. So we have our telescopic ladder that goes to the internal hatch. And this is what makes it different and stand out. Most camper vans have their pop tops unaccessible from the inside. We cut a hatch on the inside and made it fabricated to our roof. So it's a fixed structure. It's part of the van now. So I can access upstairs straight from the ladders. I'm a full grown man going through the hatch. And then I'm going to the second floor of our ambulance conversion. And here we are. And this sleeps two comfortably with a lovely viewing platform. And this is literally where you have an extra two sleeping pouch. This one of a kind. I've not seen anybody else do this on an ambulance conversion. Cutting into a perfectly watertight ambulance roof was a nervous moment. But it's one of the main reasons this layout can sleep seven people without feeling like every surface is a bed. This upper level gives us another proper sleeping space. When it's open, the van becomes genuinely two stories. It also makes the whole build feel much bigger. So behind all the visible features in this van is the electrical system that lets everything work off grid. And it's all hidden in this special locker. Wow. We have a 628 amp hour Fogstar lithium battery. 700 watts of solar on the roof. And a 60 amp DC to DC charger. Plus a 3000 watt inverter. The solar charges us when we're parked. While a DC to DC charger adds power while the engine's still running. The inverter lets us use normal household appliances from the battery. So we wanted to be fully off grid while we travel as a family of seven. So that means we're going to be taking the mini oven, the air fryer, the ice machine, the coffee machine. It also means we can have all 17 LED lights on. There's just so much that needs to be powered inside this van. So with this bottom bunk, as you've seen it before, it was the dinette and the seating for when we're driving. How I've turned it into a bed at night time is very simple. And I've done this before in our previous van. The two wheel arches that are on either side of this van basically are square. I just put an extra lip on the end. And all I've done is got a 12 mil plank of MDF. Painted it white. And as you'll see underneath here, these are the legs from Ikea. They're office legs. They cost £5 each. I cut them down and that is it. It's as simple as that. It took about 20 minutes to make. It stores behind these seats behind me. And basically, at night time, it takes five minutes to whip that out, put it in the middle and you have a king size bed. Because the worst thing you want is to pull up somewhere and have to do so many different changes at the end of your day just to put the beds out. It's a nightmare, isn't it, Kimmy? It's not something that you want to be doing. That was the problem solving of this van. So this bed is amazing. But the price of it isn't. The motor for this electrical bed cost nearly £1,000. And when the box came, it was a tiny motor with a piece of metal and a few straps. And I thought, wow, what have I paid for? Now it's done. It's absolutely a game changer for the van. But I had to build this frame myself. Because this is a two metre wide ambulance, the bed frames you can't just buy. You can't just make a bed frame. Very simple. It's a very wide bed frame. So this had to be bespoke built by myself. It gave me a big headache to do. But now it's here. This is a massive king-sized bed. We have a king-sized bed down there. So that is basically two king-sized beds in the back of an ambulance. And above me here is the second floor that you can get two more people in there. But it's multifunctional. In the daytime, the kids can sit up there. We can use the Starlink so we can work on the road. Kids can play on the road. And basically, you can drive anywhere. You have a second floor. This build has took eight months, a C1 license upgrade and more problems than we needed to deal with. We've still got quite a few jobs that we want to complete. But the real test is when we head to Europe. That will be the first night all seven of us are in this van. We're not taking the easy road, are we? If you're going to try it, you might as well try it on the road. You might as well drive all the way to France, park up in a random car park and try it with five kids. Seven berth, two-story ambulance. And that is it.