Hello!
A change up for this blog......the ramblings will be brought to you by Pete! :)
In the last blog Kat shared her love of the design process and how much she enjoyed designing and planning the layout of the van. Time for me to step up!
One thing I do enjoy is a good rummage around the internet to find the best equipment / solution and the best deals for my top 3 and then weighing it all up to choose the right option for us. I say choose the right option but generally I will pull together a list of options and I then 'present' these to Kat for us to discuss which one we go forward with.
If you are thinking this all sounds very formal... you would be right, full business attire, powerpoint presentations all over a working breakfast served to us by Marble & Nutmeg the resident house rabbits here at the Presbytere in France.
Stick with me.... I did warn this blog would be rambling.
So once the design and layout had been sketched and the plan drawn to scale I had my list of equipment that needed to be researched, shortlisted and the best deals found.
My list:
Fridge
Toilet
Gas Hob
Sink
Fridge:
Let's start with the most important - we need somewhere to keep our wine and cheese chilled. We debated for a while about having a top loading fridge that slid out of one of the seating benches but after discussing the design in more detail with Matt we agreed that a front loading fridge would be best for the layout of the van.
The fridge we decided on in the end was a Dometic CRX50 in Black:
We settled on this fridge as it does give us the option of having a freezer compartment as well (a Gin & Tonic is just not the same without ice!) or that section can be removed to have a bigger fridge.
Toilet:
It's a toilet, what can we tell you about it?
Well 'urine' luck as I have plenty of thoughts to 'dump' here to tell you about the toilet and why we wanted one in the van. I can't guarantee no more puns in this section - I do love toilet humour.
There are a few different Porta Potti models but we opted for the 'bog' standard Porta Potti 365:
https://www.thetford-europe.com/gb/products/toilets/portable-toilets/porta-potti-365
There is always a lot of debate in conversion forums about whether or not to have a toilet but we decided it was a must have, we needed to have a toilet of some kind in the van - one of us (you can make your own decision on who that might be) generally needs the loo in the middle of the night and one of us didn't fancy going out into the dark to water the plants.
We looked into Compost Toilets but unfortunately the van isn't big enough to allow us to have a toilet permanently in place. We would have preferred a more natural toilet, however we have been researching more natural liquids to put into the Porta Potti rather than lots of chemicals that need to be disposed of in a certain way and are not great for the environment!
Gas Hob:
Behind having somewhere to keep your wine and cheese cool was the ability to cook meals! We discussed the possibility of having a full oven in the van but quickly decided that we didn't need one and a hob would be enough.
Now that was sorted - how many burners did we need? Did we want a caravan style hob and sink all in one unit?
We quickly agreed that we didn't want an all in one unit and wanted the sink to be stand alone.
After reading a few websites, forums and reviews the hobs by Dometic seemed to be coming out on top so we opted for a 3 burner version that would give us options.
A little insight on to how we decided 3 hobs should be enough:
Pete: How many hobs do you think we might need?
Kat: Let's go through it meal by meal - what would we need a hob to make for breakfast?
Pete: Ummmm coffee pot, porridge if it was cold and kettle to make tea for you?
Kat: That means 3 for breakfast, lunch?
Pete: We could be here sometime and end up with a lot of hobs, can't we just have a sandwich?
Kat: Ok, lets do a pasta meal for dinner
Pete: Sounds good, I am getting hungry
Kat: No, to figure out how many hobs we need
Pete: oh
Kat: Pan for pasta to cook, one to make a sauce / cook vegetables and possibly one for meat or fish if you are adding it to yours.
Pete: 3 then, i'm bored now so will look for 3 burner hobs
You may now see why it takes us so long to make decisions - go back to our first blog and you may now understand the conversations we have been having for the past 9 years about 'getting' a campervan!
I have rambled a lot so here is a link to the Dometic-Cramer HBG 3445 that we finally agreed on:
Sink:
When you thought we couldn't sink any further with puns I now need to 'plug' our local charity Emmaus ( https://emmaus-france.org/ or https://emmaus.org.uk/) where we purchased our fabulous sink. They haven't 'tapped' me up to promote them, this is just flowing out of me.
So, we had an idea about having a free standing sink and tap in the van and had seen a couple of vans that had used old Jam making pots as the sinks.
A quick look on ebay in the UK left us in a 'sticky' situation - they were very expensive. We have two local Emmaus charity shops near us that have everything from furniture, crockery, to garden stuff etc all for very reasonable prices and varying conditions. We buy a lot from them to upcycle here at the house so we popped along to our nearest one.
They had a possible pot for 25 Euros but it wasn't quite right - it was more of a brown colour and we were hoping for Copper.
Back into the Car and drive back past home and 20 minutes in the other direction to a bigger Emmaus where we generally have more success!
We got a little 'jammy' here as they had one - the perfect one that was in Copper. It may have been a little bigger than we anticipated but for 35 Euros we went with it and decided we could incorporate it into our design to take away some of its size!
Got it home, cleaned it and filled it with water - it didn't leak!
Job done! We don't have a link obviously but here is a picture of our soon to be Campervan sink!
Hey.....wakey wakey! You have almost reached the end - if you are seeing this last bit then thank you and a massive well done for perservering.
If you have any questions on the equipment we chose, how we decided on the types of appliances or the set up we wanted then drop us a message through the form on the website!
If you are in the process or thinking about converting a van and want us to look out for bargains for you from Emmaus in France then get in touch!
In the next blog we will run through some of the other equipment and 'things' we have ordered for the van.
The next post may or may not be 'equipped' with puns!
Much love
Pete & Kat (Meandering Campers)