There was a chap living in an old 20 seat bus some time ago in the Midlands, UK. No conversions, just basically sleeping rough in a bus.
I've seen much nicer converted railway carriages in Scotland, and there is at least one converted railway carriage you can rent for holidays. These are static of course.
This chap should do a line of those storage bed units for people in small flats!
When I was a kid, we lived regularly on a camping ground during the summer. There was an older couple with a beat-up bus they had converted - They drove happily through Europe with it, so I guess it's viable to some people!
> Its this kind of out the box thinking and guts to follow through with your idea that makes a true difference in this w
I'll be the first to say this is a sweet bus & transformation and kudos to Hank for finding something he wanted to do and going after it. BUT, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say it's going to change the world. Maybe Hank's got bigger plans for it - but is it too much to ask to just call this a "freaking awesome project" and congratulate Hank on his out-of-the-box thinking without saying it's "revolutionary", "world changing" or some other hyperbole?
Maybe the best thing to do is just run with the hyperbole, join in with songzme, and pray like hell that when the hyperbole reaches critical mass it will implode on itself.
Maybe it'll lead to a hyperbolic chain reaction, destroying everything in a hundred mile radius. That fallout will linger in the environment for decades, from molehills to mountains, killing all living discussions or grossly mutating them into beastly overstatements.
Fools, turn back. In 1908, Tunguska, my grand-grand father, at least so he tells, was involved in a similar happening. Two russian farmers in the area had come up with a new breed of cold resistant potato, and after sucessful tests, they took to a local inn to celebrate. Little did they know that the congregation had just a little too much liquid joy, and how focused the praise would be. After several days of nonstop praise, the hyperbolic density reached critical levels, and the russian authorities were alerted. Realizing the magnitude of the problem, they knew that they couldn't disperse it by themselves. They sent a letter to Prussia, world reknown for its somberness under Bismark, to send a congregation of the most straight faced military officers that they could find. My grand-grand father was within that troop. But alas, they came too late, as by the time they reached the village of Kezhemskoe, a flash was visible and loud explosions were heard, as the inn had reached critical hyperbole. You may not want to believe me, as all signs of the potatoes, the inn are gone, and all records were wiped during the cold war.
Marine plywood (ie, epoxy resin) if he has any sense. Well tested in these types of confined living applications, too. Resists the thermal cycling and condensation likely to be found in this application.
Holy hell. I'd love to live in that. Sure, I live in a rather cheap apartment right now, but come on. That's beautiful work, cheap, and probably could sell for a hell of a lot more.
The only stipulations coming to my mind that would stop me from rushing out and doing it /right now/, are
* What are the laws like, regarding parking and sleeping this somewhere? Do I have to find campground or something, or just live in Walmart parking lots all the time?
* What's done for cooling/heating? Does this require a pretty temperate environment, or is it relatively well sealed?
* Is all power generated by the bus? If so, does that make traditional tasks on the computer or other places hell, with the shaking, and if not, what generates it and how much can you support?
In general, I LOVE the idea, and the execution. That bus looks as roomie as my(once again, crappy, but still, a real) apartment.
What's done for cooling/heating? Does this require a pretty temperate environment, or is it relatively well sealed?
Vehicles leak like sieves unless you seal them up yourself, which could be a catastrophically bad idea if exhaust starts to find its way into the vehicle while it is running.
Aside from opening windows or bundling up and shivering, your cooling/heating options are either typical house HVAC appliances, or extending the functionality of the onboard heating and cooling and hoping that you bought a diesel, which are much more tolerant than gasoline engines of idling all day. Which brings me back to the risk of exhaust gasses when the passenger compartment is mostly sealed.
For electrical power to run appliance-type HVAC, you could use a small generator.
Shouldn't all mechanical areas be able to be sealed off from the living area, given enough insulation at the windows? I could see the driver area not being sealed off, but still having the living area be absolutely safe.
Not a chance. Vehicles leak everywhere. Through the firewall, the doors, the windows, the roof, the floorboards, the... everywhere. We aren't talking about the metaphorical submarine with a screen door. This submarine was built out of screen.
You can seal it! Yes, you can, absolutely. The question, remember, is what happens when you seal it and accidentally miss that one critical leak (of which there are many) through which the exhaust then hotboxes you in your nicely sealed cabin.
In many cases, this is why the trailer is still somewhat better if you're thinking totally mobile living area. Since it has no engines to speak of, the only worry about leaks is if you connect 1 or 2 LPG tanks. Need to keep an eye on the gas lines for vibration induced abrasion/breaks if you move about a lot to make sure they're still intact.
As an alternative, a heat exchanger ventilation system may work. This way, you can maintain a comfortable temperature indoors for a bit longer while still ventilating.
I use a squirt bottle with dish soap solution, or a cup and a paint brush. I also have a gas detector, which are not too expensive, but I don't always have it when I need it. Soap and water are almost always readily available.
Some people have the habit to use a lighted match or flame to discover small gas leaks. Simply pass the flame near the suspected leak source. It almost never results in a tragic accident, since gas has mercaptans added to cause the unmistakable (rotten egg) smell of a gas leak. There have been a few cases, however, where some fool either ignored the smell of gas, or couldn't smell, or whatever, and blew himself to smithereens, and/or caused a big fire.
Well, if it is a large leak, the smell should make it obvious when it is a really bad idea, and you'll have no trouble hearing such a leak. If you're trying to find a tiny leak this actually seems to work well and is relatively safe due to the speed at which natural gas dissipates. IMO it is somewhat less safe when using LP gas, since LP gas is heavier than air, and can pool near the floor. Remember, until recently, gas water heaters, and other appliances had a partially exposed pilot light, so any significant leak could potentially find that, but rarely did.
source: I've somewhat nervously watched old-timers do this. I've also accidentally discovered leaky welding torches this way.
Gas explosions in RV's and mobile homes are unfortunately not rare at all.
No, they are not.
It does not help that, as my brother-in-law found out the hard way, one of the effects of being exposed to the gas is that you become groggy and lose judgement. He's luckily still alive, but with serious scarring on about 1/3 of his body.
Therefore develop good habits. Be religious about it. It is only the fact that it IS a habit which will cause you to do the right thing when you need to and have impaired judgement.
Ai. I feel for your brother in law, I have had a very extensive 2nd degree burn (right arm, most of my back), no pigmentation there whatsoever which leads to the occasional weird look. Burns are bad.
I forgot to add one more thing in the list, which is that gas will pool at the bottom of enclosed spaces and it can blow up on you even when you think there is none.
It is surprisingly hard to seal the darn things. When you are driving at highway speeds, there are all sorts of eddy currents of wind around the thing and you get drafts from the oddest places. The rear is the worst.
Of course you can manage to improve the insulating properties. I'm not questioning that. I'm questioning whether it can be done safely with an automobile.
I know nothing of Hank, but it is funny how the canonically most-environmentally-friendly people, hippies, do that kind of thing all the time without a second thought. The ancient Beetle that puts out more smoke clouds than horsepowers, for example.
Hank certainly has other options. He can stay at RV camp grounds and use their hookups. He can buy massive banks of batteries. He can travel only in good weather in temperate climates. I'm just speculating assuming none of these are acceptable options.
Darren from Hak5 is touring across America to hacker spaces and the like, and he did something like that[0] which surprisingly was used to power more than I thought would be feasible. And this was on a sprinter van, so with a bus like this, one could get 4x the amount of energy.
Solar power would be great for charging a laptop or running a heater plate, but for HVAC? Air conditioning and heating both gobble power, and there is no sun to power your heater on a cold night.
In my eyes, there's no way one is going to get a traditional HVAC in something like this due to power consumption restraints that you mention. Though, if you watch the video's of Darren preparing, hes powering more than just a laptop or a heater plate (he also employs batteries to get over those night time constraints).
That being said, I feel like one would probably better off trying to solve the heater on the cold night problem by first approaching it from a fluid dynamics perspective (kind of like a glycol HVAC) and then using minimum energy for things like a pump. Though that is probably outside of the scope for this specific project, but it is probably worth looking into for those interested in building on what is going on here.
I just installed AC units at home that move around 2500 W of heat energy (in and out, heating and cooling), at about 800 W energy consumption.
If one of those units is enough for the bus, and it's on 30% of the time that would mean around 250 W per hour power requirement, resulting in 6 kWh over the day.
In a reasonably sunny environment, solar panels can get 100 W per square meter. Let's say there are around 15 sqm available on the roof, yielding a total of about 12 kWh over the day - that's assuming around 8 hours of sun. If that doesn't work out due to latitude, it would be relatively easy to design panels that can be unfolded, providing extra area and serving as an extensible roof at the same time.
If batteries and inverter don't swallow more than 50% of that yield, it should be enough to drive a normal AC, lighting, and a laptop, maybe even a small fridge. You'd need a backup stove for the winter though.
>If one of those units is enough for the bus, and it's on 30% ...
This is why some full time RV'ers are picky about what state they are in for a given season. If you're in Texas, or another hot climate in the summer in a large bus, you'll need two or three tons (24,000 to 36,000 BTU) of A/C capacity (sometimes more!) to keep it habitable through mid-day and late afternoon.
If you have a large (cover the roof) solar/battery/inverter system, you can run all night without having generators start (and interrupt everyone's sleep) in most cases.
I've been studying sailboats and living aboard them for the last year. You would be amazed on what tech is out there to be virtually self sufficient for energy, water and heating/cooling. A lot of this can transfer to a live aboard bus.
* Wind-electric generators
* Led
* Solar Panels
* Low voltage heaters..etc
Many of the comments here about cooking fuels being heavier than air are correct about the danger- nothing that proper ducting and a bilge pump could not handle. In order to live like this you must adopt a camping lifestyle. Everyday life activities, such as cooking and bathing, become more like camping and require more preparation.
edit-poor formatting, sorry. I meant the asterisks to be bullet points.
Slightly patronising there - however much you compare pollution and energy use over lifetime, the absolute worst thing you can do for the environment is buy a new car.
It's far better to run an old one into the ground.
You don't even need to go looking for the production "costs" of the vehicle. Just think of the distance that all the different parts of your new vehicle have travelled before they're put together... and then shipped to your country.
Do you have a source that gives estimates of carbon output from vehicle shipping? I'm wondering roughly how many fumey-old-bug miles correspond to pre-owner new-car transport.
Bob Pease used to make some pretty convincing arguments for driving his old beetle (vs buying a newer car). Actually, the more I think about it, Bob Pease might still make those arguments if he were alive today, despite the fact that he died in a crash in a 1969 Beetle, that might[1] have been survivable in a newer car.
[1] Past personal experience: Many of the elderly people I have seen go through car crashes in which the airbag deploys experience injuries from the airbag that often lead to their death or convalescence. Of course, they would have fared no better without the airbag.
While true, the average weight of a car is 4,000 pounds, of which the engine is 600, all of which is recyclable steel.
The best of both worlds is to ride an old chassis with a modern/freshly rebuilt engine. Both frugal and low pollution. There's no reason to run the chassis into the ground using an engine that's burning oil and choking on the gas.
I wish car engines were modular, where it was enclosed within a frame and only had 1-2 connection points for power/fuel. That way, you could swap the engine in 1-2 hours just by hoisting the old engine out and dropping the new engine in with a lift.
It was like that sixty years ago, but we sacrificed a lot of that for compactness and increased sophistication of the engine management systems (which wildly increase reliability, longevity, fuel economy, and power)
Partially agree! Modern engines, or a properly rebuilt & maintained engine, can do great things for an older chassis. That said, a rolling chassis can and will wear out. There comes a time where replacing all the failing parts is a losing proposition both for you and Earth.
But the new car is already here, sitting on a nearby lot, not being driven while I drive my clunker around. Your argument may apply to a future reduction of car shipments if enough people follow your advice, but that is hard to count on.
There are CARB pollution standards for generators today. Only California requires them AFAIK. There are also EPA pollution standards for imported generators, but I consider that to likely be a protective tariff in disguise.
You could install a webasto diesel fueled stand-heater.
They're cheap and you can plumb them right into the main tank, a bus would likely require several of them. If you insulate a vehicle besides exhaust fume collection you'll have to be very wary of condensation as well.
My experience is limited to converting a Fiat Ducato delivery van into a small RV:
On something the size of the bus in this article you could stuff the roof full of solar panels and install an inverter + a battery pack, then use that to drive a regular AC. A bit over the top maybe but with that much roof surface it is an interesting option.
Awesome conversion. Didn't expect the crowd here to get this excited about mobile living.
Myself and a few friends are working on slightly more 'extreme' motorhomes (based on military 6x6's), designed for unimproved roads and long-term travel.
We're all somewhat independently employed, so the transition to a mobile life is a no-brainer. Hope to see more people in our industry take advantage of their freedom, too!
Big is subjective. I have an RV I bought for ~$10K that I'm renovating to live in full time one day, and it has a 50A Onan gas generator, which I wouldn't call big. It can drive both AC units onboard at the same time.
Its pretty far away from being usable as a true living space. I give him credit for an interesting interior layout but other than that he skipped completely by the hard parts.
Those being fresh, gray, and black water, as he hasn't installed real water using fixtures. That takes a bit more knowledge than laying out some plywood and having a rats nest of wires. Which leads into the next point, I would love to see the electrical panel if any. A supplemental electric system would be good to have plus input for high amp electricity that many campgrounds offer and most appliances require.
Of course that roof has lots of possibilities, provided panels that can be secured for highway speeds can be found, let alone conform to the shape of the room.
School buses are interesting, most conversions are pretty bad like he said, you end up with a submarine effect which can make some people queasy when its rolling.
Modern homes wheels are at times better inside than many homes I have been in. They don't need to cost an arm and leg either. For anyone wanting to travel the RV style their best bet is to rent, as a lifestyle choice go buy a used one.
Technically he's got "black" covered, since he has a composting toilet. I do look forward to seeing how he solves the water problems: I hope that floor was loosely installed.
There's masses of DIY information on dealing with all these problems in yachts. Power, water, sewerage, heating etc are all solved easily with off the shelf parts available for this market. Practical boat owner is good magazine to find out about this kind of stuff in the UK. Insulation is a bit tricky because the water vapour generated by breathing and washing etc will condense on the inside of the metal shell
of the vehicle, potentially causing problems with corrosion, mould growth and rot in any organic elements. Ideally you would seal up the bus, put in plenty of insulation and have mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. Choosing the correct insulation and making it vapour tight or ventilating the cold side is the hard part. Hygrothermal simulations are becoming quite easy to do these days so this may be the way to go with regards to designing the insulation.
It's interesting, but this is more geared towards road tripping than living. There's no privacy really except for the bathroom, which if you are not living alone it would drive you nuts. If he added some walls to the structure, that would have given more privacy and provided a different layout than laying everything on the sides.
Well, Walmart's parking is a private space, so they could ask you to leave. But maybe they won't as it would attract people to come and see it - and buy something in WalMart along the way.
As for public spaces, I don't know about US, but in my country it's regulated by the law where you can park Buses and Trucks overnight.
Excellent question about the laws. I've looked into the RV lifestyle and I concluded that large class A motorhomes are pretty much limited to being semi-permanently parked in RV parks - with the occasional overnight at places like Wal-Mart when traveling. The exception being in more rural areas where no one cares if you boondock. However, don't let the cheap price of this bus fool you - it would be an expensive lifestyle.
In the SF Bay Area, it will probably cost a minimum of $600 per month to rent a lot. For about $200 more you could rent a room in an apartment with other housemates. Getting further out of the metropolitan area (about a 3 hour drive) an RV lot is going to run in the range of $300 per month.
RV lots are a luxury, not necessarily a way to live cheaply. For dirt cheap living, look into urban boondocking in a van or small RV or look at buying cheap rural land and parking something like this bus on it permanently (in impoverished parts of the country that setup could cost about $10,000).
This is a brilliant project - I really like the wide open feel - something you rarely see in a Class A motorhome (which is what this should be compared to). However, you would need something stronger than translucent screens to make this a go. You would need screen that block out all light and most heat flow. Otherwise, this thing is going to be hell to heat or cool, but honestly, that's a minor issue. The translucent screens look nice, but I am betting something completely opaque would be more efficient and hence a lot more useful. But on a temperate day that near-panaromic view would be amazing and something you don't see in class A motorhomes.
i would add the problem of movement forces on the storage space. he has open, flat shelves. open in the direction of the vehicle, so the first attempt of breaking harder will throw a bunch of stuff around, incl. that slide out keyboard.
RVs and boats need to be designed differentlty, a house rarely moves.
I hate to be a downer...but this has been all over the news and I don't get why. Bus conversions have been around for ages. From the most basic to the most space shuttle like...
It's a nice project and congratulations to Hank - I converted a van myself recently - but I fail to see the wow factor here.
He himself acknowledges that it has been done before, but he wanted to explore it further. I don't think claimed anywhere that this was somehow revolutionary or ground breaking. Why does it have to be so? Is there anything wrong with appreciating a well executed and beautiful project (with great documentation)?
If you want to some of the more 'rustic' end of the bus conversion world check out http://www.travellerhomes.co.uk - full of interesting traveller bus conversions, mainly from the 80s. My sisters bus is somewhere on the site, though she gave up living in it years and years ago.
Same as an RV. Varies from city to city. In mine, (in California) they try to prevent people from sleeping in their vehicles by posting signs like "no vehicles longer than x feet" or "no parking between 3am and 6am" on certain city streets. Fortunately, they allocate some parking spaces in city lots specifically for RVs. Also, some private organizations (churches, etc.) allow a few RVs to park in their lots during off times.
My dad did something similar back in art school. He bought a used postal delivery truck and it was his semester project to convert it into an RV.
Once completed, he'd take weekend trips. Leave SF Friday evening and drive an arbitrary direction until he was tired. He'd find a place to park and in the morning wake up in a new and unknown location to explore for the weekend.
I designed (but did not build, alas) a yacht in architecture class. Researching and designing the interior cabin was incredibly fun and challenging... I bet Hank had a blast designing this thing.
Ideas for the empty space currently being used as overflow storage:
* Water and/or fuel tanks (more necessary on a boat than on a bus)
* Shower
* Brig
* Pantry
* Rifle stowage
* Server room
(I went on to be a naval architect for a short while but never had a real project as fun as the catamaran design.)
Because there seem to be some people that have seen similar projects: Is there like a website for such cool conversions of vehicles and other places into living spaces?
Is it true that in the US you could drive this monster with a regular driving licence? In the EU you would need either a C class licence(if it's over 3.5 tonnes) or a D class licence(if it can seat more than 9 people). Both are rather difficult to get if someone is not used to driving large vehicles, and require completing additional 20-30 hours of learning, not to mention the fact that you can't get them until you held a regular(B class) licence for at least 3 years(in most EU countries, exceptions apply).
My American shoot-from-the-hip response to this would be to consider the road differences. Most American roads, interstate, state highways, and main city throughfares, are able to accommodate large vehicles quite easily. This is not the case in EU cities built for smaller traffic volumes. Many American vehicles are built to spec for these roads, and the difference between driving dad's F-250 and a garbage truck becomes less significant. Tractor trailers, farm vehicles, and heavy machinery are classed differently. But a petrol-driven bus or heavy-load truck is not.
There are a few places in Europe that you wouldn't be able to get to - the centres of some small villages, for example, or some smaller residential streets - but they're a definite minority. Don't forget we have buses and delivery trucks here, too!
Oh yes, certainly -- It's not a matter of the roads being incapable of supporting large vehicles period, but simply that many of those roads are not as accommodating to large vehicles as those of American cities. Thus it would require much more operator care to successfully navigate with those large vehicles.
In the US, you can drive a vehicle with up to 15 passengers on a regular license.
The bus has been converted and should be registered as a non-commercial recreational vehicle, so it would be the same license for that... probably a Class A, depending on gross vehicle weight rating.
It's a slight step up in training from your normal vehicle, and would probably require a health certificate, etc... but not as expensive as a CDL (commercial driver license), which would usually entail a few weeks of training and ~$2,500 in costs.
We're picking up the newer series of 5 tons, which get about 7 MPG with the latest revision turbo diesel. Earlier ones get about 4.
Little hard to swallow the fuel cost if you're planning on back-and-forth trips, but my route is a long, drawn out squiggle across north and south America, so we'll only be doing a few hundred miles a month. And, hey, no rent to pay!
Trucks, and everything else your tax dollars go to that the US government doesn't want, all sell at auction on http://govliquidation.com for pennies on the dollar.
I required a CDL Commercial Driver's License to legally operate a school bus, nearly identical to OP. I additionally had to have "Passenger Endorsement" to transport passengers (not sure limits on number and relation, like I'm fairly sure I could transport my sister w/o PE). PE also lets me operate limo/cab. There are HazMat and a couple other endorsements. A higher class of CDL is required to operate tractor-trailers, aka semi's.
My employer provided training and I had to pass written and operating/driving tests in addition to medical exam/requirements. This was in Washington state. Similar in the several other states I have lived.
Love the morphed school bus. I'd just take this idea to the next level and design a nice Volvo/Scania bus into a mobile living space. Would cost a hell lot more but this design is way way way better than any of the custom Scania/volvo designs that I've seen.
This is great, but living in vehicles is not a new idea, I'm sure there are thousands of people in the US living in buses/trucks/etc. Hank did a great job on the design though. It reminds me of the interior of a canal boat - they often have the same layout techniques.
Not even close to a new idea, I vaguely knew someone who did the same with a single-decker bus. (Sadly she had to get rid of it due to health issues that meant she couldn't drive it anymore.)
It was apparently quite popular in the 60ies. Where I'm from in Eugene, Oregon, there are even hippy busses that got permanently parked and added on to as they formed the nucleus of a house.
I've been considering a canal boat for a while, but the amount of restrictions on them in the UK is really confusing. If you want to live full-time on a canal boat, you either need to be a constant cruiser (never stopping in one place for more than 2 weeks) or have a residential mooring.
That doesn't sound too bad until you discover there are currently TWO residential moorings for sale in the entire UK. It's crazy.
I'd still be tempted to do it with a constant cruising license, if only for a few years. I need to start paying money into something I own rather than wasting it on rent, but it's not exactly cheap to get into the housing market.
re: residential moorings: I looked at canal boats in London. You can buy boats that already have moorings, otherwise you have to get on a 5-year waiting list. Actually buying the mooring on its own doesn't seem easy. Usually its either buy-the-boat-and-mooring or get on the waiting list.
But even with a mooring, you still pay rent for it.
Here's some example numbers:
Saw a lovely boat moored in residential moorings near Kings Place (really central london). Price was £90,000, which is a lot but when you compare it to flats in the same area it becomes attractive.
But ... the monthly mooring charge would still be around £600 a month, which is like paying rent anyway. Actual boat-on-its-own was valued around £50,000 which means you're paying an extra £40,000 for the mooring and then have to keep paying £600 a month to keep the mooring. A bit like paying a mortgage, but without any capital gain. If you give up the mooring, you're boat is instantly worth 40k less. Also bear in mind that its hard to get mortgages to buy boats.
I know a chap who's got a boat without mooring and its a lot of fun but yes he does have to keep moving it.
I want to see how self driving cars handle South American / Latin traffic... if it can handle itself through Buenos Aires, Lima, or Rome, it's a better driver than I am (and probably passes the Turing test :) )
Well, we're not equipped with radar and they are. Also, when self-driving cars become reasonably common, there is no excuse whatsoever to allow idiots to continue driving. Things like DUI should lead to a lifetime loss of privilege to operate a manual vehicle, and the penalty for violating should be reckless endangerment, not "driving with a suspended license".
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 229 ms ] threadI've seen much nicer converted railway carriages in Scotland, and there is at least one converted railway carriage you can rent for holidays. These are static of course.
This chap should do a line of those storage bed units for people in small flats!
My own grandmother actually lived in a school bus back in the 1970s while she built her home in Alaska.
I'll be the first to say this is a sweet bus & transformation and kudos to Hank for finding something he wanted to do and going after it. BUT, I think it's a bit of a stretch to say it's going to change the world. Maybe Hank's got bigger plans for it - but is it too much to ask to just call this a "freaking awesome project" and congratulate Hank on his out-of-the-box thinking without saying it's "revolutionary", "world changing" or some other hyperbole?
It's a horrid picture.
Overstatements are hell.
I sure hope he used Formaldehyde-free plywood though. It would be terribly noxious to live in if he just used the standard stuff.
http://www.epa.gov/iaq/formaldehyde.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanal
After smell of VOCs, etc. Fire is the other concern. Exits gotta be clear and plenty.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5432962
The only stipulations coming to my mind that would stop me from rushing out and doing it /right now/, are
* What are the laws like, regarding parking and sleeping this somewhere? Do I have to find campground or something, or just live in Walmart parking lots all the time?
* What's done for cooling/heating? Does this require a pretty temperate environment, or is it relatively well sealed?
* Is all power generated by the bus? If so, does that make traditional tasks on the computer or other places hell, with the shaking, and if not, what generates it and how much can you support?
In general, I LOVE the idea, and the execution. That bus looks as roomie as my(once again, crappy, but still, a real) apartment.
Vehicles leak like sieves unless you seal them up yourself, which could be a catastrophically bad idea if exhaust starts to find its way into the vehicle while it is running.
Aside from opening windows or bundling up and shivering, your cooling/heating options are either typical house HVAC appliances, or extending the functionality of the onboard heating and cooling and hoping that you bought a diesel, which are much more tolerant than gasoline engines of idling all day. Which brings me back to the risk of exhaust gasses when the passenger compartment is mostly sealed.
For electrical power to run appliance-type HVAC, you could use a small generator.
You can seal it! Yes, you can, absolutely. The question, remember, is what happens when you seal it and accidentally miss that one critical leak (of which there are many) through which the exhaust then hotboxes you in your nicely sealed cabin.
As an alternative, a heat exchanger ventilation system may work. This way, you can maintain a comfortable temperature indoors for a bit longer while still ventilating.
- make sure it is periodically inspected
- keep a hawk eye and a dogs nose out for anything suspicious
- get a fire extinguisher and a fire blanket, learn how to use them
- make sure the vehicle is very well ventilated
- always ventilate for a few minutes before starting / igniting anything
- if you suspect something is wrong check with soap, not with a match
Gas explosions in RV's and mobile homes are unfortunately not rare at all.
Would you mind elaborating on this point? I don't know what you're referring to.
source: I've somewhat nervously watched old-timers do this. I've also accidentally discovered leaky welding torches this way.
But if you're doing it with city gas, it's lighter than air and can pool between joists.
Really, just go mix up the spray bottle of soapy water. It works great for non-flammable gases too.
No, they are not.
It does not help that, as my brother-in-law found out the hard way, one of the effects of being exposed to the gas is that you become groggy and lose judgement. He's luckily still alive, but with serious scarring on about 1/3 of his body.
Therefore develop good habits. Be religious about it. It is only the fact that it IS a habit which will cause you to do the right thing when you need to and have impaired judgement.
I forgot to add one more thing in the list, which is that gas will pool at the bottom of enclosed spaces and it can blow up on you even when you think there is none.
Used this on a house with single-pane windows growing up.
Works amazing, simple and cheap.
I'm with you on that point. What's the least flammable insulation available for body filling, fiberglass?
Edit: ceramic or rock wool perhaps, but mind the dust and know which treatments were applied.
Hank certainly has other options. He can stay at RV camp grounds and use their hookups. He can buy massive banks of batteries. He can travel only in good weather in temperate climates. I'm just speculating assuming none of these are acceptable options.
Darren from Hak5 is touring across America to hacker spaces and the like, and he did something like that[0] which surprisingly was used to power more than I thought would be feasible. And this was on a sprinter van, so with a bus like this, one could get 4x the amount of energy.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kSX2j7MGT0
Sample window air conditioner: http://www.sears.com/kenmore-15-100-btu-room-air-conditioner...
1410 watts, AKA 2 horsepower.
Old fashioned space heater: http://www.sears.com/kenmore-oil-filled-indoor-heater/p-0327...
1350 watts
That being said, I feel like one would probably better off trying to solve the heater on the cold night problem by first approaching it from a fluid dynamics perspective (kind of like a glycol HVAC) and then using minimum energy for things like a pump. Though that is probably outside of the scope for this specific project, but it is probably worth looking into for those interested in building on what is going on here.
If one of those units is enough for the bus, and it's on 30% of the time that would mean around 250 W per hour power requirement, resulting in 6 kWh over the day.
In a reasonably sunny environment, solar panels can get 100 W per square meter. Let's say there are around 15 sqm available on the roof, yielding a total of about 12 kWh over the day - that's assuming around 8 hours of sun. If that doesn't work out due to latitude, it would be relatively easy to design panels that can be unfolded, providing extra area and serving as an extensible roof at the same time.
If batteries and inverter don't swallow more than 50% of that yield, it should be enough to drive a normal AC, lighting, and a laptop, maybe even a small fridge. You'd need a backup stove for the winter though.
This is why some full time RV'ers are picky about what state they are in for a given season. If you're in Texas, or another hot climate in the summer in a large bus, you'll need two or three tons (24,000 to 36,000 BTU) of A/C capacity (sometimes more!) to keep it habitable through mid-day and late afternoon.
If you have a large (cover the roof) solar/battery/inverter system, you can run all night without having generators start (and interrupt everyone's sleep) in most cases.
Most people that I know of use LP for heat.
Many of the comments here about cooking fuels being heavier than air are correct about the danger- nothing that proper ducting and a bilge pump could not handle. In order to live like this you must adopt a camping lifestyle. Everyday life activities, such as cooking and bathing, become more like camping and require more preparation.
edit-poor formatting, sorry. I meant the asterisks to be bullet points.
Natural gas would be ideal, gasoline in a good engine second best.
It's far better to run an old one into the ground.
You don't even need to go looking for the production "costs" of the vehicle. Just think of the distance that all the different parts of your new vehicle have travelled before they're put together... and then shipped to your country.
This has some interesting references: http://www.salon.com/2008/04/21/ask_pablo_cars/
http://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/readerschoice/4368147/A...
[1] Past personal experience: Many of the elderly people I have seen go through car crashes in which the airbag deploys experience injuries from the airbag that often lead to their death or convalescence. Of course, they would have fared no better without the airbag.
But from a pollution point of view not even close.
PS. Shipping is not really that expensive in terms of energy.
The best of both worlds is to ride an old chassis with a modern/freshly rebuilt engine. Both frugal and low pollution. There's no reason to run the chassis into the ground using an engine that's burning oil and choking on the gas.
Partially agree! Modern engines, or a properly rebuilt & maintained engine, can do great things for an older chassis. That said, a rolling chassis can and will wear out. There comes a time where replacing all the failing parts is a losing proposition both for you and Earth.
Your purchase of that already-extant vehicle will trigger production of another in today's very tightly-managed-inventory world.
Increasingly, even automobiles are made to order (c.f.: Tesla).
They're cheap and you can plumb them right into the main tank, a bus would likely require several of them. If you insulate a vehicle besides exhaust fume collection you'll have to be very wary of condensation as well.
My experience is limited to converting a Fiat Ducato delivery van into a small RV:
http://pics.ww.com/v/jacques/cars/ducato/
On something the size of the bus in this article you could stuff the roof full of solar panels and install an inverter + a battery pack, then use that to drive a regular AC. A bit over the top maybe but with that much roof surface it is an interesting option.
Myself and a few friends are working on slightly more 'extreme' motorhomes (based on military 6x6's), designed for unimproved roads and long-term travel.
We're all somewhat independently employed, so the transition to a mobile life is a no-brainer. Hope to see more people in our industry take advantage of their freedom, too!
Any link to your projects? 6x6 sounds interesting :)
j
http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/expedition-vehicles/955676-ma...
Naw, man. You need a _big_ generator.
source: I also bought a bus.
Next year I plan on going solar, when time permits.
What kind of Bus? Where are you starting out from?
If you hit the Bonneville salt flats at night, you might find fire-dancing on the flats near the rest areas.
The rest areas in Nevada have fresh drinking water, so you can save some weight by waiting to fill your water tanks.
Shoot me an email electrodynatronic von gmail if you like. I might have a few more tips if you're interested.
-Good luck
http://i.imgur.com/MLwif7M.jpg
Of course, not everyone even wants something that fancy, there are a lot of more utilitarian designs that are done quite well too.
Those being fresh, gray, and black water, as he hasn't installed real water using fixtures. That takes a bit more knowledge than laying out some plywood and having a rats nest of wires. Which leads into the next point, I would love to see the electrical panel if any. A supplemental electric system would be good to have plus input for high amp electricity that many campgrounds offer and most appliances require.
Of course that roof has lots of possibilities, provided panels that can be secured for highway speeds can be found, let alone conform to the shape of the room.
School buses are interesting, most conversions are pretty bad like he said, you end up with a submarine effect which can make some people queasy when its rolling.
Modern homes wheels are at times better inside than many homes I have been in. They don't need to cost an arm and leg either. For anyone wanting to travel the RV style their best bet is to rent, as a lifestyle choice go buy a used one.
http://www.vonslatt.com/bus-main.shtml
As for public spaces, I don't know about US, but in my country it's regulated by the law where you can park Buses and Trucks overnight.
In the SF Bay Area, it will probably cost a minimum of $600 per month to rent a lot. For about $200 more you could rent a room in an apartment with other housemates. Getting further out of the metropolitan area (about a 3 hour drive) an RV lot is going to run in the range of $300 per month.
RV lots are a luxury, not necessarily a way to live cheaply. For dirt cheap living, look into urban boondocking in a van or small RV or look at buying cheap rural land and parking something like this bus on it permanently (in impoverished parts of the country that setup could cost about $10,000).
This is a brilliant project - I really like the wide open feel - something you rarely see in a Class A motorhome (which is what this should be compared to). However, you would need something stronger than translucent screens to make this a go. You would need screen that block out all light and most heat flow. Otherwise, this thing is going to be hell to heat or cool, but honestly, that's a minor issue. The translucent screens look nice, but I am betting something completely opaque would be more efficient and hence a lot more useful. But on a temperate day that near-panaromic view would be amazing and something you don't see in class A motorhomes.
RVs and boats need to be designed differentlty, a house rarely moves.
Through some eyes, his website looks like freedom.
Can you legally sleep in a vehicle?
It's definitely a challenge though.
Solar panels are much better these days and a bus has obviously tons of space to put them.
AGM batteries are also the way to go.
If there were an raspberry pi + app to remotely report battery charge level on a mobile, that would be awesomesauce.
Once completed, he'd take weekend trips. Leave SF Friday evening and drive an arbitrary direction until he was tired. He'd find a place to park and in the morning wake up in a new and unknown location to explore for the weekend.
[1] http://www.hankboughtabus.com/a-tour-of-the-bus/#comment-508
[2] http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/
Ideas for the empty space currently being used as overflow storage:
* Water and/or fuel tanks (more necessary on a boat than on a bus)
* Shower
* Brig
* Pantry
* Rifle stowage
* Server room
(I went on to be a naval architect for a short while but never had a real project as fun as the catamaran design.)
There are extra restrictions for commercial driving.
A 15 passenger van requires no extra license, but that's about the largest you can go.
The bus has been converted and should be registered as a non-commercial recreational vehicle, so it would be the same license for that... probably a Class A, depending on gross vehicle weight rating.
It's a slight step up in training from your normal vehicle, and would probably require a health certificate, etc... but not as expensive as a CDL (commercial driver license), which would usually entail a few weeks of training and ~$2,500 in costs.
Disclaimer: I own an RV.
We're building military 6x6's into motorhomes, and as soon as they meet the requirements for a living space, there's no special regulation.
Little hard to swallow the fuel cost if you're planning on back-and-forth trips, but my route is a long, drawn out squiggle across north and south America, so we'll only be doing a few hundred miles a month. And, hey, no rent to pay!
My employer provided training and I had to pass written and operating/driving tests in addition to medical exam/requirements. This was in Washington state. Similar in the several other states I have lived.
Here's a UK couple that converted a double-decker bus: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-18651140
It wasn't supposed to be completely novel. As a senior project, I imagine it blows the lid off the school requirements.
If I'm not mistaken, this is one such example:
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Fox+Hollow+Rd,+Eugene,+OR,+US...
( I'm kind of amazed that I managed to find that - I haven't lived there in years, although I did ride my bike up and down that road dozens of times )
That doesn't sound too bad until you discover there are currently TWO residential moorings for sale in the entire UK. It's crazy.
I'd still be tempted to do it with a constant cruising license, if only for a few years. I need to start paying money into something I own rather than wasting it on rent, but it's not exactly cheap to get into the housing market.
But even with a mooring, you still pay rent for it.
Here's some example numbers: Saw a lovely boat moored in residential moorings near Kings Place (really central london). Price was £90,000, which is a lot but when you compare it to flats in the same area it becomes attractive.
But ... the monthly mooring charge would still be around £600 a month, which is like paying rent anyway. Actual boat-on-its-own was valued around £50,000 which means you're paying an extra £40,000 for the mooring and then have to keep paying £600 a month to keep the mooring. A bit like paying a mortgage, but without any capital gain. If you give up the mooring, you're boat is instantly worth 40k less. Also bear in mind that its hard to get mortgages to buy boats.
I know a chap who's got a boat without mooring and its a lot of fun but yes he does have to keep moving it.
edit: for fun, foxtons search of houseboats for sale in London http://www.foxtons.co.uk/search?search_type=SS&openhouse=&oh...
tldr: boats and stuff.
Now imagine it being electric and solar powered.
Is that the future of cities? On wheels.
And leave at least one window fully open (or the sunroof) for fresh air and the other cause (suffocation) is eliminated as well.
I'm not sure vehicle's AI would gracefully handle a case of meeting some idiot full-speed cruising through a red light.
Is each individual transporting herself in a massive land-yacht truly the future of cities? I sure hope not.
Of course you'd need to rent a truck to drive it around, but it expands similar to some RVs.