8 Must Have Modifications to my School Bus Tiny Home

Today I'm going to be talking about my favorite additions as well as customizations to my school bus tiny home. Now I've been very blessed to start van life back in 2010. Since then I've had different iterations of rigs. I've had two camper vans, a class ARV, and now this school bus that I'm currently in. Throughout all that time and all those different rigs, I've definitely learned a lot of do's and don'ts in terms of design, gear, and overall feel of the rig. So today I'm going to be sharing with you the most recent additions to this school bus. So even though I've been on the road for a very long time, I did make design mistakes, I did make gear mistakes, and we'll go over that a little bit. The first piece of gear that I'm going to talk about is my entire electrical system. So I started out with a 3,000 watt 12 volt Victron inverter, 900 amp hours of battery, and about 1,200 watts of solar on the roof. While that first system was very robust, the panels ended up degrading over time, and the 900 amp hours I had of lithium was actually running at 12 volts. I actually upgraded to a 400 amp hour, 48 volt power bank, and that's been working so much better. I also upgraded the inverters. I now have 48 volt inverters, obviously, but I have two 5,000 watt inverters. Lastly, I did upgrade the solar panels as well. I went with Santan solar, and those have been working fantastic. The amount of solar that comes in now definitely compensates for all the power that I draw because as I sit here, the air conditioner is on, I do have an electric water heater, and so far I have not had to worry about power once. And yes, absolutely, that was a major investment. I did not get those products for free. I paid for all those products, but the upgrade has been absolutely worth it. Now I do not have to worry about power whatsoever. Next we're going to go from the most expensive upgrade to the cheapest. So this is my 1960s vintage oven slash cooktop that I got on Facebook Marketplace when I was first building the bus. And to be completely honest, it was mostly used for storage because for those that have never been on the road or have never cooked in one of these, they're really hard to cook in. The heat is very iffy in terms of how precise you can get, and also it doesn't cook things too evenly. So what I did is I got a pizza stone off Amazon. This has actually made the oven very usable, able to cook cookies, pizzas, all that good stuff. So the way that I do it, just a little trick here, is I will warm the bottom of the pizza, get the crust all nice and good, then I have another pan in here, and then I put the pizza on the bottom, and then that gets baked by the propane, and it makes a really good pizza. But cookies, bread, all that good stuff is good to go now because of this stone. And then just moving right over from the oven, I have the fridge. I started in this bus with a very large residential 110 fridge. I ended up switching to this 12 volt unit. It saves a lot of power, but to be completely honest, it was so big that by the time I got to food, a lot of food was going bad. I have a freezer section on the bottom, fridge section on the top. It's more than enough, more than adequate, and I've really been enjoying this Isotherm 12 volt fridge. So my school bus is a Razor Schooly. It's 40 foot long, and in this main part, it's about 8 foot tall. So it's a very long, basically it's like a hallway apartment. And what I've found is if I want to effectively heat and cool the area, a lot of times I need to block sections off. So I do have a full block off with very thick wool blankets in the front to either keep the colder heat out from the driving compartment. And then I also have additional areas that I block off. So I do have a drape right here that blocks off the bathroom bedroom. And then a little further back, I do have another heavy wool blanket that blocks off the bedroom. So what that allows me to do, so say it's a very hot day and just need to cool off the bedroom quickly, I can just kick the air conditioner on back in the bedroom. It's going to cool that area incredibly quick. If I want to sit at this area and work at this desk, cool this area all the way to the front. So depending on how hot or cold it is, I'm able to block off sections of the bus and just heat or cool those particular sections. And that's been working really well. So right now you are in the back of the bus. This is the bedroom of the bus. Before I had the bed going north to south. Now it's going east to west. Did that for a couple reasons. It actually saved a lot of space because the side of the bed, I was able to put things there, but things just got lost in there. It was just easy to throw large items in there and then I would just never use them and it just got cluttered and dirty. Just wasn't working too well. Also with this east-west setup, Kobuk has his kennel down here. Him and Akila will both be in there from time to time. And then over here on this side, there's two very deep drawers that I'm able to utilize now as well. So I've only been using this bedroom setup for about a month now and I really have been enjoying it. The only negative is it is high to get up here. Luckily the dogs are athletic and can jump up and down, but I did recently get a little drawer that I'll be able to move around in this area, store some stuff in there, and the dogs will be able to jump up on that, then up on the bed. And then further back in the bed, you can see the Mr. Cool mini-split. So the first AC I got was 110 and I think it was only 12,000 BTU. And like I just mentioned before with the hallway effect this bus has, it would barely cool the bedroom area. Like, it was good for what it was and I'm glad that I had it, but upgrading to this Mr. Cool unit, it's much larger. It's 240 volt, so it just puts out a lot more power, it's a lot more efficient, and it can actually cool the entire bus. I do have a little fan midway that will help push the air through, but as you can see the pups are up here right now. I didn't have them come up here for this video. It's a little bit of a warmer day and they like hanging out on the bed next to the AC. Another recent upgrade to the bus is this RecPro couch. This is a jackknife couch, so it comes up and out into a bed. Also it has this fancy little middle part for drinks. I have my IMAX set up right over there. Lenny and I both actually were just on this couch last night. My IMAX right across the way there when we were watching some Fallout, drinking our soda waters. It's just a nice upgrade. The couch that I had before I did really like, but it was starting to fall apart. I got it from Jim and Debbie from Life is a Joy bus, and I did have to cut out part of the couch to fit the wheel well, because basically right underneath me right here is the front wheel of the bus. Just using it over time, had it for like five years, it just really started to fall apart. This has been a nice solid upgrade for the bus. My last favorite upgrade is actually this underbase storage. When I first got this bus, it obviously wasn't a raised roof, and it only had these two storage bays. You can see the storage bays behind me, and it also goes all the way through the bottom of the bus to the other side of the bus where there's four more doors. So I had Wes from Transit Existence, he custom fabbed the underbase storage, and it's been a huge, huge help. It is easy to start stuffing a bunch of stuff in there that you don't really need. I recently went through everything and cleared it out, so it's a lot clearer than it used to be, but it's incredibly helpful with the bulkier items. I do have a propane generator and a propane stove, so I do have six propane tanks down there as well as all my outdoor gear and all my weightlifting equipment. If you're watching this video and you're in the market for a Skoolie, I would highly suggest just getting the full underbay set and ready to go when you buy your bus, because it is a lot of custom modification, it will be pretty pricey, and it has been a huge help for life on the road. So that is where the bus sits as now. I really can't think of anything else that I want to modify or change, and building these rigs or being in an RV or a camper van, there's always something that you might want to change. Something that after you get the reps with it and get to experience it for a while, it might change your perspective on what works and what doesn't. But like I said, through my experience through multiple camper vans, an RV, and this bus, I feel as though I have this completely set up the way that I want it, but who knows? That might change, I really doubt it, but that's just the way it works living on the road. So overall, just want to say thank you for watching. If you have any additional questions, be sure to put it down in the comments below, and I'll definitely get back to those, and enjoy the rest of your day.