Here is my last post of this blog. My goal is to give you an overview, or summary, of the entire build. I think the statistics on the build will be interesting to you, and may help anyone who is considering doing their own van build in the future.
The timeline for the project was just under a year. I made the decision to build a campervan in mid-November. I started by reaching out to a builder to build the van I wanted, but they quoted an extremely high price because I wanted a custom build. I had done enough research beforehand to know what I was getting into, and I decided to build it myself. That decision was made in mid-December.
I went with a Ford Transit van. I wanted a new van, because I didn’t want to deal with any mechanical issues and I also wanted some of the latest safety features on the van. I ordered the van the first week of January. The van was delivered on May 6th. I took a couple of weeks to drive the van around and confirm that there weren’t any issues with it (there weren’t). While I was waiting for the van to be delivered, I did a lot of research to prepare for the van build and ordered many of the major components.
My first build day was May 13th, and over the course of 94 build days I was able to complete the van on October 20th. So over the course of 160 days, I put in 94 days of work to complete the van. I took blocks of time off to travel and other things, so I wasn’t killing myself to get the van built.
I spent 400 hours of my time to build the van, and had another 70 hours of help from others for a total of 470 build hours. So, on average I spent five hours each work day on the van (470/94), like I said, I wasn’t killing myself. Plus there was still a lot of time during the build to do research and procure the needed parts. My family helped me a lot, and I had several friends who offered their assistance as well. This does not include the time I spent researching how to build the van or procuring the components. I didn’t keep track of that time, but it was probably twice as much as the build time (i.e., upwards of 800 hours).
The processes that I followed were taken from several YouTube channels. I mostly relied on AVC Rig, Thrivans, Explorist Life, and Humble Road. I would watch their videos and then use my judgement on the correct path to take. In general, I over-engineered the van, but that is just me. 🙂
Overall, the van cost me $106,436 to build. Of this, $67,114 was the van itself. And $2,092 was for tools that I needed, but didn’t posses and couldn’t borrow at the start of the build. So, $37,230 was the materials cost to convert the van. Of the conversion cost, $15,969 was for the major components (refrigerator, AC, heater, alarm system, deadbolt locks, solar panels, etc.). $10,498 of the conversion cost was for the electrical system, which was mainly made up of the batteries and control boxes. The last $10,764 was for raw materials, which was mainly Baltic Birch plywood ($2,240), AL extrusion ($2,382), unistrut, hardware, flooring, fabric, insulation and sound deadening.
I won’t go into any more detail in this post, but am available for any questions that you have. I’d love for you to reach out and we can geek out on van build stuff!!