Vanlife

A fridge, a fan, lights, a laptop and a pump: ≈ 900 Wh on an average day. That is a 200 Ah LiFePO₄ bank, 300–400 W of roof and two days of cloud before you have to move the van. Add air conditioning or a freezer and every one of those numbers doubles — which is exactly why you size the bank after you decide how you cook and how you sleep, never before.

⚡ The non-negotiable safety list, in the order things go wrong: a fuse on every positive wire within 18 cm of the battery terminal (a Class-T or MRBF on the main); a carbon-monoxide alarm if anything burns fuel, mounted at sleeping height; a propane detector at floor level if you carry propane; a 1 kg ABC extinguisher by the door, not by the stove; a battery disconnect switch you can reach in the dark; and correctly sized cable — undersized wire is the single most common cause of van fires. None of this is optional and all of it costs under $300.

Buy the drivetrain, not the paint. A tidy interior is two weekends of work; a tired transmission is $4,000. In order of what actually matters: rust on the frame and the wheel arches (walk away from anything structural — you cannot out-build rot), service history, then mileage — a well-serviced diesel at 350,000 km will outlive a neglected petrol at 150,000. Pay the $150–250 for an independent pre-purchase inspection every single time; it is the highest-return money in this entire page. And prefer the simplest emissions system you can legally register: post-2015 DEF and DPF systems are the number-one unplanned expense in modern vanlife.

100 Ah of lithium is not 100 Ah of lead. LiFePO₄ gives you 80–90 % of its rating, thousands of times, at a third of the weight; AGM gives you 50 % before you start killing it. That is why a 200 Ah lithium bank replaces a 400 Ah lead bank — and why lithium wins on price per usable kilowatt-hour over five years, even at four times the sticker. The one thing lead does better is cold: no LiFePO₄ cell may be charged below 0 °C without damage. In a four-season build that means a self-heating battery or a heated compartment — not a hopeful blanket.

MPPT, never PWM. A maximum-power-point controller harvests 15–25 % more from the same panel and the price difference is under $100 — it pays for itself in the first season. Wire panels in series for a higher voltage and thinner cable, but understand the trade: on most controllers a single shadow across one panel drags the whole string down, so a roof with vents, a fan and an aerial often does better in parallel. And the roof is only ever half the story: the alternator is what actually gets you through November. One hour of driving through a 50 A DC-DC charger delivers what a 400 W array delivers on a good, clear, cold winter day.

Compressor, always. There are three kinds of “12 V cooler” and only one of them belongs in a van. Thermoelectric (Peltier) boxes draw 40–60 W continuously and only manage about 20 °C below ambient — useless in summer, ruinous on a battery. Absorption three-way fridges need propane, level ground and ventilation, and were designed for parked caravans. Compressor fridges — a Secop/Danfoss BD35 or an Engel swing motor — cycle on and off, hold 5 °C in a 40 °C van and are the only sane choice. Then halve the draw for free: shade the fridge, never mount it against the sunny wall, leave 5 cm of airflow behind the vent, and remember the freezer setting roughly doubles everything in the table above.

❄️ Condensation, not cold, is what destroys vans. Two sleeping people exhale close to a litre of water a night, and every gram of it looks for the coldest metal it can find — behind your beautiful cedar panelling. Which is why a dry heater (diesel or sealed propane) beats any open flame, why the roof fan runs even in January, and why the insulation you choose has to tolerate getting damp: closed-cell foam board and sheep wool forgive it, fibreglass batts rot. Leave a ventilation path, cover the thermal bridges, and check behind a panel once a year.

Prices reflect equipment and typical used-vehicle values, June 2026. US-dollar figures are shown first; for non-US manufacturers, the approximate price in the brand's home currency is shown in parentheses. The used-van market is regional and moves fast — the same Transit is $8,000 apart between two provinces. And the broke build is not a lesser build: it is the same four systems at a smaller scale, and it is the one that leaves money in the account for the land.

💰 The three costs nobody budgets. Insurance: the moment it stops being a cargo van, most policies stop being valid — you need an RV title, a self-build declared-value policy, or a specialist insurer, and you need it arranged before you cut the roof. The breakdown fund: $3,000 untouched, in a separate account, forever — a transmission on the side of a highway is not a monthly-payment situation. The reality of parking: sleeping in a vehicle is legal in some municipalities, restricted in others and banned outright in a few; check the by-laws of the places you actually plan to sleep. None of this is legal advice — it is the list of things that end vanlife early.

Vanlife and the sanctuary are the same four systems. The 12 V bank and the MPPT on this page scale straight into Energy; the pump, the filter and the discipline of counting litres come from Water; the van is how you get to the eight due-diligence checks on LAND Buy in the first place — and in April, on a road nobody has graded. Then the Garden and the Animals are what you stop for. Put the whole thing on one timeline on The Price of Freedom.