Living Off-grid in a self built tiny home on wheels

How did you come up with this idea to buy a truck? I said shall we live in a lorry and you said no. That was it. Whoops. So before you had a van? Yeah we had a little, we called it a Citroen Dispatch but I think you guys know it as a Jumpy. Yeah. Which we never really, it was kind of an idea that because we quite like camping so what we thought we'd do is sort of build this thing so that we could get all of our camping gear in it and then yeah because we had a big bell tent at the time and then we could kind of go away for weekends but we could go away a bit further because well we could sleep the one night and then get to, I don't know, get to Scotland or somewhere or whatever and then we went away on holiday you know and thought this is way simpler than putting up tents and stoves and things just sleep in the van. So yeah we then just did every holiday we just went away in the van because it was just dead easy. And then you came to ideas that let's get a truck. Lorry. Do you know what I don't actually know how that happened. I remember suggesting that. We really have no idea how it happened. Because we were going to sell the house and move somewhere up in the mountains and you know and just sort of live a little bit further away but in a nice cottage and then we didn't know where to go and then I don't know and then all of a sudden we just thought just move into the lorry. Yeah it was it got it it's quite it's really quite complicated we just had loads of stuff happen and so in the end we were like oh let's just build a truck and just do this and that was it really and generally generally is exactly what happened it it got very complicated and then we just went right okay let's just do it and that was it. Quick jobs. Yeah. But you moved out of apartment like you have no apartment back? No no no yes I mean no this is it yeah this is this is the only place we have yeah so it's. How did you find exactly this like you were going for MIN or you were just any lorry? Um I just started I wanted to do so random some of this because it's then like what van do you do so you think of a van so you think of like a panel van and then I kind of thought well things if I get if I if I buy a wrong one and it's rusty or it breaks then I've got a problem because my whole house now needs fixing whereas I thought if we bought like a Luton van you know or horse box Luton van if something went wrong with the whole lorry I could just unbolt it and put this on something else if it came to it so that was quite sort of yeah and I said we wouldn't live in a horse box yeah never live in a horse box that was another thing yeah so no lorries no vans no lorries no I can't make this up I really can't make it up yeah so we went and viewed this one the first one yeah she was close by where we lived because I thought I need to just get we need to go and see one and just see if it works space-wise or whether we want to go three and a half ton or whether we do want to go seven let's just have a look at one close by not very it was like 15 minutes down the road from where we lived and just thought you know have a look and we went there and went yeah it was it the same day you bought it or still had yeah sleep on it a bit but it was kind of like because we looked we then looked at other ones it's like well which one's a bit more expensive this one's another couple of thousand and you look at it and it was beautiful this other one but it was all it was all done out for horses and we thought well I'm gonna just tear all of that out so the extra money it doesn't buy us anything yeah we had a big wall through here we had the ramp at the back and oh I mean but this was a couple of grand cheaper but Maisy was because um inside this area which was their living area it was really bad it was really bad it was yeah you wouldn't you wouldn't at all which is why it was so cheap inside because it was just really bad whereas the other ones we'd seen online were a we were going to rip it out it's all coming out yeah how much was this one three thousand seven hundred I think yeah yeah maybe I've got a couple of hundred cheaper didn't we yeah three seven three and a half yeah pounds yeah yeah yeah pounds yeah so but she was all good underneath yeah the chassis is all rock solid and still good still good bit of rust on the cab but you know but it was all solid ram low mileage a couple she's up well she's on 160 something thousand kilometers now so yeah she was really low mileage so one of the first jobs obviously to do was to sort of just strip everything out and I hadn't got a clue what we were doing and everything was in here was really heavy you know they're like the the horse dividers they weigh a ton and there were two of them I mean they were just massive to get out I mean all the wall because they have like the dividing wall don't you that was all on box steel frame so angle grinding bits out and I thought I was stupid I thought take everything out how long is that going to take oh no we're working full-time thing oh I thought a week five days you think yes cool isn't it just take all those bits off yeah it took a month the floor was a nightmare because it's all bolted um it's all screwed through to the to the cross members and they don't just put you know sort of one screw two screws three screws they were all about you know every every sort of I don't know every 100 mil there's there's another screw and they all had to be cut out it was just a nightmare I remember when that last bit finally came up after weeks god so good and then you see that you know all the chassis and everything right you know clean all the because on the cross members there's little bits of like just surface rusted that's it clean all of that up and then paint all of that and that took ages I thought we'd have the whole thing done in two months not even close so how long it took to build it all well it's a bit difficult because we sort of then did some bits on the road but I thought we would we would park up we parked up on our friend's land and and did the work there and I thought two months later we would drive off that four months later we drove off it but without running water without eating without you know so it's like yeah but she was she was sort of more or less as it is now she is now yeah completely different but sort of done yeah you know totally and then on the road we got various bits done um yeah got the running water sorted got the all the plumbing finished I think the heater was in yes yes yes yes yes it was October it was um November 16th yeah and uh we had to have heating because we were in the UK so yeah talking about the build the about the interior design how did you have a layout like so you had the shower but did you have the layout on the paper or you just were doing well building deciding and what was the inspiration like did you look for somewhere like to get some samples to make some blueprints kind of yeah I mean we did a lot of searching on Instagram um and various bits on YouTube to look for people with similar vehicles and kind of how they've done layouts and then we originally didn't we wanted to try and do it on them there was some free software where you could kind of design and and make all little boxes and things like and started playing with that and I thought it's going to take longer to learn this software than it is we were just constantly up against time and that was our problem because we had lots of stuff going on in the background so we were we were converting our house and building a a little annex for our youngest son to live in and that was taking priority and lots and lots of lots of stuff was going on in the background very boring and it gave us really little time to think about Maisy so we started going what we what do we want and then we just basically in the day came in here with bits of paper and gaffer tape and just tried to walk and all we could do and this is where we got it quite wrong but all we could do is base the van on how we lived and when you're living it you when we're now in the van we don't live like that anymore so for me priority was a big kitchen and the shower it wasn't about sitting down because in my life I never sat down I was on the go all the time I didn't sit down until half past seven at night you know by the time I'd done the children and work and dogs and that so we we built the van based on our lives as it was and living in the UK and then when we started living in it we were like you know we only had those two little sofas there the dogs always sat here we and and then yeah because you yeah you just you get things because you base them I suppose on you try and make a house and yeah you you don't you want to make a van yeah because like with the uh with the shower there because we thought we walked the dogs the dogs get muddy you come in you think ah through the door put the dogs in the wet room perfect and we just never kind of did that it just didn't all sort of work out so yeah one thing we wanted to do is sort of go away in Maisie before she was built to to kind of understand her and understand that life but we didn't we didn't get a chance we were just constantly running against time you know so it was just like oh we think sofa should be this big we think that should be this high we think you know it's not until you then come away and also Europe's very different from the UK but for starters you have sunshine which is just you know does make things slightly different and you think oh we want to live outside a bit more as well so you know just sort of certain things not quite right but we've changed a fair bit around yeah hence why hence why you're now yeah there's there's still things i'd do and change her again but i'm yeah i'm 95 percent happy with her inside now there's a few little things but good yeah but there's some things you kind of because certain other things sort of set that design and i i didn't realize it sounds like but i didn't realize certain things so you sort of you know well you know we have a water tank down they have this tank here so i don't know how to get plumbing across so we do it all closer and actually some of the constraints i sort of put on could have been easy you know been that that locker there sort of that was an old tack locker it used to sort of come into about i suppose sort of like here and i'll keep that because i can put all the heaters and things in it now i probably would just go do you know what actually it's a bit awkward because it means certain things can't be in certain places i'd have just got rid of it whereas getting rid of it at the time i don't know how to how am i gonna you know close the door how am i gonna learn yeah because i've done ikea flat pack and then did this because you know it's the same and how is the downsizing process and uh how it's been working so far i mean is it exactly as you imagined it so let's start with downsizing process downsizing how did we downsize we threw everything sold everything yeah was it difficult to give up stuff to sell it to to decide which one you keep which what must go what must stay it's slightly easier for us first time around because we still had our house yes so uh we just basically kept quite a lot of stuff and it all went in the loft of our house and then my sister moved into our house so she lived there for a period of time so it wasn't too bad was it second time around yes actually it wasn't too bad we just no we just got rid of everything you realize that actually you might have 15 t-shirts in there but you probably only wear six or seven anyway so you know oh who cares just throw that away you get less materialistic i think yeah the thing was when i sold the sofa then that's when i suddenly had this oh my god i put it up on facebook i didn't expect it to go and i thought i wouldn't go and it went and i was like oh and then it was sudden that realization that oh my god it's happening yeah not when i gave up my job it was when i saw my sofa you know you just think oh my god this is happening you know this house that we brought our children up in and we've lived in for so long and all of a sudden it's like as that sofa went out the door i was like oh what are we doing what was it hard to make this decision to quit the job and to change your lifestyle completely no not that because even though i loved my job i didn't fit um you ask any of my ex-bosses um but no no it wasn't no it wasn't giving up the job no that that was fine but doing this we just wanted to travel and do things have time yeah yeah not being safe at all i remember you got asked a question once at work didn't you uh i'm gin camham sort of told me that they're sitting in the office and it was like if you won the lottery what would you do and and gina's answer to that question was oh you know i think you know i'd buy a van i'd travel around europe and they looked at it and went you're planning to do that anyway it's like oh yeah there you go so actually a lottery win would just i'd just do this so therefore it's easier you wouldn't have to worry about my neighbor and i suppose also i mean um i remember somebody asking you as well you know god can you imagine being here till you retire and it was something like oh really working in his office and and i there was a guy at the factory i was working at who retired after 44 years you think 44 years doing the same thing and now he's got free time and he's you know nearly 70. no no no no no i don't want to do that yeah so how do you sustain this uh lifestyle now uh we worked um well i was freelancing for a period of time which was good money two days a week well nice and that was enough money for us to live happily and it it was horrible it was i was saying i was saying earlier it was it was horrible we and especially when brexit happened because then the internet really became a thing but i just i just i just really struggled with it because any noises outside um i'd have to shut the doors and stuff because i'll be on conference calls or be doing whatever whatever so it didn't work for us at all so we work at a campsite for six months in the uk and then that gives us enough money to do this nice yeah so when you go back you go again to campsite or no not this year no no this year we're taking the year off we're not nice yeah yeah because do you mind that you move this to the very end i did wonder oh you're taking my place now oh yes she always does that yeah i'm not asking questions because you're a tangle yeah i could have moved it so and um how it works so far like it's working exactly as you imagined and better like when you sold the house and you were like you had something already in your mind how it will be like like something like it is on instagram yes yeah i'll be sitting there it's what the world's like and how it's been exactly the same yeah no um and it's really hard to tell you because we've done it through the three covid decided to yeah make it slightly different yeah so the first three months of doing it we were in the uk and uh well that's he's writing a book about that trust me everything went yeah oh my god um so we had that and then when we came out we had one month first we had one month in france trying to get used to living in france in a foreign country in the van and then covid happened so then we had three and a half months we didn't move we stayed on farmer's land and he let us stay and we just stayed there so um we were like the worst travelers ever yeah it was really cool though it got us quite used to living in the van that did um because as i said we were there for three months and you know there was a river running by so we're purifying water from the river washing clothes in the river and just just being used to this sort of being home yeah um so that was quite useful six mile walk get food and stuff because we'd taken macy up this basically we'd taken her up this road that got smaller and smaller and smaller and to a point i had to get out of macy and pull this tree so then hippo could get by because we'd seen the spot because we'd walked it and gone yeah yeah looking up yeah yeah it's fine we won't hear anything it's fine didn't think to look at the whip but we did it it was no drama it was fine so once we got there when you say no drama once we got there and done this stupid three-point turn where oh my god i thought the box was i thought she was gonna go the way she was wobbling so much yeah and yeah we got there and we were there that was it so we were like we're not moving her and we didn't three and a half if you would do it again would you do something different quit earlier no no we couldn't really you needed children you're not allowed to just uh i think i would have spent more time with the the design of maze okay because we did have to rip half of it out and start again so i think i would have i would have and i would have definitely have done that slightly different i would have done the kitchen a bit different i wouldn't have listened to your restrictions yeah i didn't understand plumbing the thing is you approach the job because you've got the skills to do some more things you don't have to defend yourself for being useless it's okay i'm only a bit useless but that's what that's what i do yeah i think that's yeah you do full will yeah but with no real reason other than they're just really cool but she can't hear that because she might not start in the morning now yeah that's it no i think yeah maybe a few bits tweaked here and there but that's about it so we'd still go yeah yeah i think so even though occasionally go you know like we said you know if it was a bit smaller smaller is only useful when i'm parking now there's four of us in here we've got loads of space we do want to do another one so we do a smaller one so that's cheating we're going to have two so but that's the way to do it and we're going to get bikes push bikes yes and a trailer for the dog and a push chair for the other for the other dogs and when we haven't got the bikes so outside lockers yeah outside lockers yeah but yeah i don't think we'd have done things that much different to be fair okay uh did you say that you're rating a book yeah yeah yeah slowly but surely because the first bit was just crazy just stuff went wrong she's got a really sadistic sense of humor yeah the van yeah she's amazing but she's dead but she isn't you see we had a blowout our tire blew our back tire we're driving along and we did hear a noise but it wasn't that loud it was only because the car behind swerved that we knew something could happen yeah i didn't feel anything on the wheel i didn't feel any of those no different nothing and this happened in france okay so this could have been anywhere but no she did it it happened going down um like a highway kind of thing and literally all we had to do was drive a teeny bit to get off of the road and there was the shop to fix the tire place oh okay cool and it all happens at all every single time everything has gone wrong things have gone wrong we've always been able to oh there's the place that then can fix it for us yeah she's yeah she's mean yeah but yeah but basically the whole electrics was the that was the it's like i'm saying earlier with the solar because the number of times she just refused to start because the starter batteries would be just empties oh no again you know trying to sort of trace wiring faults and things the indicators used to fill with water and then they'd overflow and they'd pour back into all the electrics in the cab so you'd be driving along and warning lights would be coming up and you think what's this i remember one of the big things was the glow plug light used to come on oh no something's really wrong with the wiring here and i remember talking to the guy who does our servicing it's like john you know glow plugs he's like yeah i said well you're like he's coming you know what's the you know what's the problem he's like you haven't got any it's like okay i can probably stop worrying about the light but yeah we just had to keep doing things she yeah this was the battery thing wasn't it there was one time we were we were on our way back uh to try and get things fixed um and the batteries weren't charging very well so i had to leave her running and i needed to get fuel you think you know i can't do anything so i had to we had to buy a jerrycan which you can do with the engine running that was okay pulled up a screw fixed engine running gina went in bought jerrycan and now i have to try and fill this thing up and the petrol station no you can't you can't leave the van running so i had to park that around so i had to carry this 20 liter jerrycan across industrial estates to fill it up with fuel and then come back and i got there on the third time and the woman said no you can't no two cans per person i've got i've got a lorry and i've got i've got 100 liters to fill you know and no you can't and there's this whole whole fantastic conversation where she sort of said said no you can't fit up okay look right okay can i can i bring the lorry around and leave it running on the forecourt no you can't okay right in that case just imagine that my wife comes in can she fill the container yes okay but it's going in the same way it doesn't matter it's a different person one person two cans that's it okay right let's say she comes round um and and she's going to fill it but but i'm going to carry it is that still okay because she can't carry 20 liter can halfway across you know industrial estate yes that's fine okay she's also going to use this card which is a joint card because we only have the one card is it yes that that's okay okay so you're telling me that that that she can go around i can fill the jerrycan i can pay for it you know but and that's okay yes that's fine okay can we do all of that but just i'll come no okay fair enough so we just drove off in the end and luckily we had enough fuel to get back but um but yeah it was just so there will be book yeah yeah yeah yeah i i have to finish writing it but yeah i think i don't know so it will be just about the life in the lorry yeah just about that that first bit that first three months yeah yeah i think so because because yeah the lockdown stuff was kind of fun and should we expect it oh no that's a very good question um oh you're typing up the first draft at the moment he's finished his first book but that's not about vans that's not about van that's about flea and i've still got to draw the flea yeah um that's a kid's book i've done it i'm finished that one's ready to go you said you'd like to have it done by the end of the year if i could get both out by the end of the year i'd be pretty happy with that nice yeah yeah please do one sale one each each that's that's nearly two pounds and uh you do what's crafting as well oh yes but not really well i was going to say not to sell we sold a few at the campsite and we sort of did okay yeah but uh yeah we'll come it's good fun i made mushrooms and i sold fairy doors yeah because you were doing the painting i was i do painting and stuff like that yeah might do something with that how do you see your future like first this year for example yeah yeah this year be good um get the van painted and then um and then explore really um we've got to do the 90 days shuffle thing which is a bit of a pain yeah thank you to everyone who voted for that yeah well done um but it's okay it's not a sore point so yeah but i think we're gonna we're gonna kind of you know we've got a bit got to go back to the uk then we're gonna do a bit of northern france maybe a little bit southern france and then we've got to go back again and then i think we're going to try and do a bit of a bit of the shuffling so we might explore like turkey croatia might go morocco yeah thank you for uh giving us a tour of your charming tiny home on wheels no that's fine thank you yeah looking forward to read the book yes just quickly need to write it won't be a second yeah yeah yeah we'll get it done thank you no no thank you