Ain't that the truth. Once while on one of my veggie oil road trips (you can see some of my past trips here: www.nickpisca.com/wvo ), we had a cube leak in some small town in Montana. We have to unload our cubes, find the leaker, pour it into the tank (if there is room) or transfer to an empty container. The sooner we find the leak, the better, cuz it'll spread to the other cubes cardboard and it's just a mess.

So we find a spot that has almost no traffic (maybe one car per hour), but a few houses were nearby. It's probably a town of maybe 2000 people.

We unload a few cubes, find the leaker, pour the cube into the tank, and trash the cardboard cuz it's saturated with oil. As we reload the car (maybe 15 minutes of time), a cop shows up. Probably the town's only cop for all I know. He starts questioning us, and he was pretty cool about it. He found out about the veggie oil and gets more interested and in the end he was cool with everything. Then he drove off.

The deal is, some old person in one of those houses obviously called the cops on us. For pulling over, rearranging our ****, then reloading our ****, and then wanting to leave. As far as I knew, in America, you could do that without getting hassled. oh well.

 

i really like the 2nd heatercore idea ..

if built a dedicated camper then u could install a small 'fuel tank' type setup between a frame rail and the bed back there underneath .. and run the heat core into there .. a small 10 gallon tank should do nicely ..

then you could just let it warm if you were driving .. and no need to idle if had been run during the day .. it'd probably very hot water .. able to be mixed with cool with a 'faucet' extending to a nice long hot shower on the go ..

heck .. i might do this someday .. just to have hot water on demand just in case i want it for some reason

 

you have to be careful now adays ..

everybody mines everyones' business but their own ..

i've been cross country in a camper and in a truck .. and sleeping in a vehicle is always dangerous the law man be called and bangin' on yer window ..

it's not that they gonna bust you for something .. but it's a constant hassle if not at a truck stop .. and truck stops are loud and obnoxious ..

if i'm going on a road trip .. i use google maps on earth mode and find old disused roads near industrial areas are best .. where a little traffic isn't really noticed .. like said keep clear of houses .. some 'bored window lookers' are wanna be hero's ..

i have several 'safe spots' i have found around an hour or more from home in case i have to stop the night i know where i can pull off an old place and rest undisturbed ..

 

I was thinking more along the lines of a Wal-Mart parking lot, or there will be a Camping World about 10 minutes from our location. Both are usually very friendly to overnight parkers.

Another family on my sons team has an RV. They usually just park in the back parking lot (out of the way) of the hotel that the rest of the team is staying at. Then they can hang out and go swimming with their friends at the hotel. Never ran into an issue that I know of.

I am still hoping to get some black out curtains installed prior to the trip to help with privacy and to not draw as much attention if a light inside the van is on.

 

The walmart lots are a good place to crash out. They ahve some sort of company-wide policy to let people park their vehicles in the lot at night. I've done it a few times whenever I needed a place to sleep in a major town, becuase you have a convenient place to pee once the sun comes up.

However, the majority of our trips are in exceedingly remote areas, like northern Canada. On these remote roads, there are gravel patches every dozen miles where they would store machinery when they built the road. They are ideal for zonking out in the van and taking a camp shower. However, two major issues: mosquitoes and bears.

 

Mosquitos you can swat, or light a citronella. Bears, you can jump in the truck/van and lock up. Both still preferable to bed bugs....

 

IDK. When I was camping in Sequoia Natl Park, the rangers told us stories of the Black bears tearing cars apart like aluminum cans. I wouldn't even want to speculate on how much a Grizzley up in the Yukon would do.

 

The Air Mattresses I order came in today. Fit pretty well. I used a piece of carpet and a blanket to cover the OSB in case there were any splinters.


I cut some of these out of scrap foil insulation I had. Still Have to make some others for the rest of the windows. If I had time I would make some curtains, but this will do for now.


Tint is light enough you can see the foil insulation some from the outside. When I finally get around to curtains and darker tint it shouldn't be noticeable at all.

 

I've found winter van camping much easier than summer. It's hard to get a breeze thru those pop-out windows in the summer without attracted lots of mosquitoes. So my friend had a simple but ugly solution. We just bought a couple large pieces of plastic window screen. like 4' x 6'. Then wrapped the entire exterior of the rear door with screen. The whole door. Then closed the door with the screen tucked around the door seals. Then did the barn door, then did one of the front doors. Getting at least three doors allows for a cross breeze.

Granted, it would be nice to have a smaller screen that just fits into the window, but the door wrapping is a fast solution. With the pop-out release on the inset of the window bay, it would be hard to reach the pop-out without remove the screen, so wrapping the exterior of the entire door allowed us to access the pop-out release easily from the inside. Then you just roll it up, throw it in the back, and then drive to your next destination.

 

For curtains I plan on doing something along the lines of what was done with mounting snaps in this video.

As far as screens, my idea is that I would make my curtains 2 layers. The first layer closest to the window would be the the screen material and it would have the snaps. The second layer towards the inside would be the blackout material. I would use either velcro or magnets to secure the blackout material to the screen material. If I didn't want anything covering the windows the curtains would roll up and be secured above the window with a couple of straps. With this setup there are a couple of things that I question. First, like you said, I would have to unbutton the bottom briefly when I want to open or close the window. Second, are the snaps going to create a good enough seal around the screen edge to keep the bugs out. If it doesn't seal, I have thought about adding in some magnets to assist in holding it securely to the window frame.

 

So, I was at WalMart and they had 82"x42" blackout curtain panels for $10. 2 will be enough to cover all the passenger area windows. I have all but 2 cut out and ready to go. I will get more pics when I get them mounted. Speaking of mounting....I am trying to figure out a good temporary inexpensive way to Mount them for the trip since I don't have time to do a good permanent job right now. Any ideas? I was thinking about magnets, but for the amount I need I would have more in magnets than I have in the curtains.

I did pick this up since it is supposed to be in the 40's at night and it looks like we won't have electric for my small electric space heater:


And because I don't trust the "Certified Indoor Safe/99.99% Efficient" I got these too:

 

Good call on the carbon monoxide detector!

 

^^^^ +1; also, leave a window open when you use the Buddy. They work by consuming oxygen. Supposedly it's oxygen depletion that's the bigger risk with these heaters than CO. They do have an oxygen sensor shutdown, but to keep running, and for you and the guys to keep breathing, you need a constant supply of oxygen.

From what I've read on "urban boondocking" forums, you really shouldn't just leave such a heater on. Just turn it on to warm the space up, then turn it off and tuck in for the night, and let the insulation and your body heat keep the space warm.

 

I wouldn't use that heater. I've done winter camping in below freezing temps, and with a good sleeping bag, you will be plenty warm. Too risky using a heater in these vans.

I looked into heaters a while back. The best option was a British-made diesel semi cab heater. It tapped into the diesel circuit, was installed under the van, then had a exhaust system that allowed you to run the pipes up over the vehicle. But it was way too expensive. used ones on ebay went really quick.

If you want to have some radiant heat, why not warm up some bricks or other thermal mass objects, then situate them in the van. It gives you a few hours of residual heat. I've done that with campfires, but never with an engine. Too bad the van has literally room to store a few bricks near the manifold.

 

I would think hot bricks in the van would be just as risky as a heater, if not moreso, unless you have some sort of container with a grating to put them in. Those Mr. Heater Buddies have VERY sensitive tip-over shutoffs. And again, all you'd to is run it long enough to heat the space, BEFORE going to bed.