What you need to know before starting your build
What is a mobile habitat?
Popular mobile habitats are RVs, van conversions, trailers campers, or box truck conversions. Mobile habitats have been around since people started traveling. Some of the oldest "mobile habitats" would have consisted of a pack mule or horse carrying your habitat set-up. In America, the prairie schooners wagons were mobile habitats used for long-distance travel, outfitted with some of the basic necessities needed for a long journey like a bed, kitchenette, and storage chests. In more recent times the VW Vanagon popularized by the culture and atmosphere in the 60s is a great representation of what mobile habitats have evolved into. Today we can make a mobile habitat that produces and stores its own power, has running water, a shower, climate control, and is customized to your lifestyle. Whether you need a rig made for off-roading or an adventurer rig for staying in cities and highway travel, we can customize a build to fit your needs.
Planning your build
- Do you need a four season habitat? This will dictate what climate control and amount of power you will need. For example, if you need an A/C you will need to plan for a larger power system .
- How long will you be staying in your habitat? Do you need have a large amount of water and food storage? If you're not planning on staying off grid for very long, a cooler and a smaller portable water storage system is a more convenient solution allowing you to fill up water and get ice at any supermarket. If you're planning on staying off grid for longer periods, then you'll need a larger water capacity and a fridge.
- What are your recreational activities? Consider how you will organize your equipment. For example a rock climber might need a drawer chest and a diver might need a wet locker for their gear.
- What is your power usage needs? Are you a photographer and need to charge a lot of gear? You might need a dedicated charging station with enough power and outlets for all you equipment.
- How much seating do you need? If you have people over where will they sit? The most common mistake is not having a comfortable place to sit inside your camper. We tend to prioritize counter space that doesn't get used as much and neglect comfortable seating.
Use our build survey form to plan your build
Conceptualize your design
With your list of build goals, we start with some sketches of your design. If you have a space big enough, you can place painters tape on the floor to create a floor plan to better visualize how much room you have to work with. Try different layouts until you feel comfortable with one. Submit your design to Habix and we will work with you to create working blueprintsa and drawings from your concept.
Use our grid plans to sketch your build
Choosing your builder
With so much hype around vanlife and van conversions there are a lot of opportunists looking to make money. Pop up business with no relevant experience opening up shop to hire the cheapest labor to throw together a camper that might not meet your expectations. We've seen it before; a couple came to us with electrical problems and as we started to dig into it, we quickly found out it was not built to professional safety standards and though it worked, it was a risk and liabilty to the owners. Without rebuilding the system to bring it up to standard, we had to shut it off for their safety. Choose someone with relevant experience and high quality and safety standards to build your conversion.
Here are some things that make a good builder.:
- Cabinet making experience. A custom conversion is really just a big built in cabinet. You want someone that understands cabinet making and installation industry standards. This is your main structural component, and you want it to be strong and durable.
- Electrical experience. If your conversion has a battery, solar, and power system, you'll need to make sure that your builder understands these systems and builds in a way that you are able to operate and trouble shoot it just like the system in a home. To many times have we seen systems built without a blueprint or with too much unnecessary complexity that the owner has no clue how to operate it.
- Plumbing experience. If you are connecting a water system or gas it's important that the safety standards are met. For example, plumbing should be ran in such a way that it is not hidden and can be accessed easily. When you are out on the road your vehicle will flex and move, even though it seems solid there is always some movement. If a plumbing connection is hidden inside a wall and starts to leak you will not know you have problem until it's too late.
- Automotive experience. The habitat is built on a vehicle, and the builder should know the basic operation of the powertrain and structure of the vehicle. If you are cutting holes in the body of the vehicle, you want to make sure it is reinforced properly. Most campers will tie into the vehicles power system so understanding the systems of the vehicle is very important.
