Deciding What to Put in My Van Pt. 4 – Energy, Toilet, and Network Connection

    Hello! This is another installment in the blog post series of deciding what to put in my van! After this post, I have one more idea for a post like this, because I am running out of unique ideas for my van. After that post, it might be a while before there is another post of this kind. When I get my van however, I will definitely have more ideas for things inside of my van, because it will be right there in front of me. 

    Anywho, this post is going to be about three things: how I will get my energy for my van, where I will put the toilet and what kind of toilet I will have, and getting and maintaining a network connection while travelling. These things are all very important to me and my life in my van, and without any of them, it would be very uncomfortable or impossible to live in my van. 

    The first thing I will be talking about is how I will get my energy for my van. I am planning on having as many solar panels as I can fit on the top of my van to acquire passive energy while I am sitting or driving around. I need to do a lot more research about different kinds of solar panels, how much energy they provide, and how much energy I will need, but I think that this is a really good way to feel safer about not running out of energy and also having an abundance of energy at all times. 

    Another way that I plan on getting energy is having a long cord coming out from the back of my van that can plug into any outlet. I saw an example of this on another van a while ago and I really love this idea. I think this is really creative and a good way to be able to get energy from a lot of places. I know that there are a lot of people who have outlets on the outside of their homes or businesses who have outlets in the back of their stores. This would be a really good option overnight to get some extra energy or just to charge up when I know I will be in one place for a long time. I know this will be a bit difficult to do, but I know I can learn about energy connections and stuff to the best of my ability. 

    I am also planning on having a small battery/generator type thing to house most of my energy, or at least power the batteries I will have. I will be able to take this out of my van and charge it in any outlet that I can find. This is very convenient, because on rainy days or when I cannot find an outlet outside of a building, I can always just use an outlet inside of a business or inside of a house to charge my van as much as I need. 

    I think that all of these energy options combined will make it very easy for me to acquire energy anywhere I am, and it will give me peace of mind that I will never run out of energy. One of my biggest fears about living in a van is running out of energy for all of the things I need to keep my van up and running, including making money on the go. 

    The next thing I want to talk about is my toilet. I explored a bunch of toilet options for my van, and I found that the most practical kind for my van is a composting toilet. A composting toilet is self contained, and does not need any plumbing connected to it. It has a fan and a heating element inside of it to turn all of your waste into compost. 

    There are a lot of nice things that this toilet has, including no plumbing and the fact that it weighs a whole lot less than a regular porcelain toilet. The average regular toilet weighs about 88 pounds, and the average composting toilet weighs about 28 pounds. Weight is a very important thing in my van, because everything needs to be as light as possible to keep gas costs down and to make sure that I can put everything in my van that I need to. 

    Some of the cons to a composting toilet is that you have to buy peat to keep the compost composting, it costs a lot more than a regular toilet, and it makes noise constantly. A regular toilet costs an average of $500, and the composting toilet that I want costs almost $1,000. For the composting toilet, you also have to buy peat every once in a while to keep it working, so that is another expense. However, I think that these expenses make up for the lack of plumbing, dealing with all of the water, and the weight. One other con of this kind of toilet is the noise, because the fan has to be constantly, or almost constantly, on to keep the compost composting. 

    However, I plan on putting my toilet mostly in a cabinet on the floor, so the walls of the cabinet will hopefully block out a lot of the noise from the fan. This kind of toilet will be taller than a regular toilet, but I plan on building a cabinet around it in my van that covers most of it so I can still use the surface on top of the toilet as a seat or a place to put some things. 

    The last thing that I wanted to mention in this blog post is my network connection. Clearly, as I have stated in numerous blog posts before this one, I need a network connection to make money. I need a network connection to both upload blog posts, videos, and keep track of the art that I am selling. 

    I know that it will not be easy to get a network connection in a lot of the places that I am going, but I have two solutions for this. One, I plan on having a hotspot for my van, so I always have wifi no matter where I am. Since there will only be a maximum of two people on this hotspot at any one time, I do not expect to have many problems with it. Two, I plan on getting a signal booster. Even though I still need to do a lot of research about this, I know that this can exponentially boost your signal when your devices say that you have no signal at all. I think that both of these things combined could do wonders for my network connection while living in my van, and I am not really concerned about it. 

    This is the end of this installment of things that I want to put in my van! I will have at least one more of these kinds of posts in the future, and I hope you like hearing about all of these things! If you have any suggestions for other unique and creative things to put in my van, please leave them in the comments because I would love to hear from you. 

    Thank you so much for reading my blog post and supporting my journey! I really appreciate every single one of you!