How To Build Your Own DIY Truck Camper And Get Off The Grid For Dirt Cheap

The Purpose Of This Book (Don’t Skip!)

How Soon Do You Wanna Be Off The Grid?

By next year? Next month? By next weekend??

A year and a half ago... I decided that I couldn’t escape fast enough!

And I quickly came to the realization that having my own camper — whether it be a camper van, trailer, RV, VW bus, or any of a variety of pickup truck campers — is the fastest way to free the shackles and get on with exploring everything this amazing planet has to offer.

So after just a few months of web surfing, a few weeks of planning, and a few days of building — I was suddenly overjoyed to be camping in my own tiny-house on wheels.

Yes, it was really that fast! Getting off the grid is surprisingly easy... once you understand just a few ideas that your First World thinking may have hidden from you. And I can help you there.

Much more than just set of camper building plans, the purpose of this book is to coach you on your way to quick freedom.

Whether you’re reading this book as an RV’ing snowbird, outdoorsy camping enthusiast, off-grid gadget junkie, simple-life experimenter, shop class hero, pre-zombie-apocalyptic prepper, Instructables.com life-hacker... or maybe even just someone who somehow wound up at my website and subscribed to my mailing list (cool!)...

This book is written primarily TO INSPIRE YOU.

It’s by no means a comprehensive manual on camper building.

I mean... Although I have some experience and skill with Do It Yourself hackery and a sort of casual engineering background — (I went to MIT, where even my philosophy and psychology majors required advanced math and physics, which I’ve mostly forgotten by now) — I’ve up to now only built one camper (my own) and my sense of ethics suggests that I stick to recommending ideas from my own experience!

So while I’m happy to offer honest speculations about how I might approach this and that... The plans portion of this book is mostly based on what *I* did, based on *my own* interests and tastes, which happen to revolve around these themes:

1)  Keeping everything simple, intuitive, and immediately do-able.

2)  Frugally keeping costs as close to zero as possible

3)  Fearlessly experimenting with weird ideas in hopes of finding something that meets your needs even better, and

4)  Strongly favoring the most flexible plans that can evolve as your needs change.

In summary, I am at heart a D.I.Y. Life-Hacker!

And I have hacked my life, and am living the dream... at least the first part anyway. :-D

So Why Don’t You Just Go Buy One?? (LOL)

I’ll assume since you’re looking into D.I.Y., you’re probably already gifted with a healthy distrust of the Why don’t you just go buy one?! mindset — Congratulations for that!

But given the consumerist culture that’s constantly assaulting us from all sides, it’d definitely be wise to remind ourselves of some of the great reasons why D.I.Y. hackery is a good thing and listening to the egos is something to be very wary of:

1)  When you D.I.Y., you can customize your projects exactly to your needs. But businesses, no matter what they say, cannot make a profit catering to YOUR unique needs. They make a profit by appealing to an imaginary average Jo(e)... who has no idea what they want and just accepts whatever bundle of extras they package in at the asking price. If you buy retail, you will always pay for far more features than you need.

2)  When you have a D.I.Y. attitude, you can be comfortable gathering what you need by your own standards and values and nothing more. The saying You get what you pay for! (implying that quality comes at a price) is a marketer’s myth — unfortunately one that nearly everyone falls for and perpetuates. It’s only true if you buy into the seller’s very limited idea of quality. The simple fact is that personally subjective qualities like This one is fine, It totally meets my needs, and I can make this one work just as well are totally free features that they’ll never tell you about — You have to notice them yourself.

3)  When you D.I.Y., your costs are for materials and whatever you value your time in exchange for a custom end-product and the satisfaction of having done it yourself off the grid. But when you choose to buy a manufactured product, you are paying for far more than their idea of a product — you’re also paying for their marketing budget, their salaries, and the marketing and salaries of whoever they wholesaled them from, which is all part of the profit chain.

4)  When you D.I.Y., you also don’t need to pay for anyone else’s ego. The phrase Built By Professionals is again, nothing but marketing hype. A professional is someone who gets paid. When you D.I.Y., you can pay yourself for your own time and effort learning exactly the skills you need to accomplish your own unique goals, rather than paying someone else for all their years of trade-school, learning way more than necessary to do something simple that anyone can learn you from YouTube.

I suppose some of the above may sound harsh. The truth is, I’m not at all anti-business. It’s just that I recognize how business works. Because all businesses, no matter how big or small, 1) have to feed their workers 2) have to maintain their machinery 3) have to pay their rent, 4) have to market their goods, and 5) have to stay profitable all the while... the price of every manufactured product you buy is largely composed of a bunch of costs which have everything to do with them and nothing to do with you! So when I’m thinking of making a $100 item for $10 and sweat, and someone tells me I’m being stupid (LOL) ... I can laugh.

You can sum it up this way: People have been taught to auto-rationalize that higher-priced or professionally made items must be better or more difficult to make. Once you understand how to make things yourself, you can bust the illusion of an elite corp of All Powerful Creators and in a sense Hack The Matrix, allowing you to confidently feel the supreme freedom to assert more of your own choices! While it’s nice when you can consciously choose to pay someone to do something you’d rather not do, when you’re aware of what you’re actually paying for, you can fearlessly make intelligent buying choices, knowing that you’re buying what *you* want and need,  rather than what they tell you to buy (or else!!).

How Off The Grid Do You Really

Want To Be?

I often see people getting into weird arguments about off-gridding. Like If you’re really off the grid, you wouldn’t be using Facebook!

<< LOL, what?? :D >>

So let’s define our terms.

Being off the grid traditionally just means being free from the municipal utility grid. So if you pump your own water, or power your home with solar panels, or heat your home and cook with a wood stove, then you’re to a certain degree in certain specific ways off the grid.

Being off the grid doesn’t mean you use no technology whatsoever. (It doesn’t mean that you’re Amish! And even the Amish use technology — it just tends to be old world technology.) It means that to some degree, you’ve reduced your dependence on city-provided utilities. That’s all.

But beyond saving on your bills, there are obvious degrees of off-griddery.

So how off the grid do YOU want to be?

This book aspires to get you to the boondocker stage, at the very least. It’s really not difficult if you deliberately keep things simple.

Quickest Ways To Be Off-The-Grid In A Vehicle

I like to break down off-gridding into six major themes:

I’ll elaborate more later on, and I’ll probably write another book detailing numerous types of commercial products and D.I.Y. inventions you might experiment with. But for now, let’s describe some of the quick-and-dirty solutions I’ve used and/or imagined that’ll get you out the door most quickly.

(As a general rule, think what you would do if you were camping!)

1)  Cooking: You can cook just as you do at home with nothing more than a simple backpacking stove. If you’ll feel more comfortable with something resembling a range then something like an old-school portable Coleman propane grill will work really well for you. —— Personally I built my own range using a simple $20 propane burner with a $3 propane cylinder that lasts me 1-1/2 to 2 weeks. When the weather allows, I cook outside on a DIY smokeless wood-gasifying cookstove made from tin cans that burns just as fast as a propane burner. I fuel it with clean-burning wood pellets that come 40 lbs for $5. (Once I solve a few challenges, I hope to move it inside) —— For items like rice that require longer cooking times: I use a technique called thermal cooking.

2)  Electricity: Buy a small inverter 150W or so for $30 that runs off your cigarette lighter. If you can afford the gas, you can always run the engine, but that’s really inefficient. —— While the best solution in my opinion is solar panels (which I build for $50 per 65 Watts), a good quick and dirty solution that doesn’t involve running down your starting battery is to use a portable jump-start battery for things like recharging your phone. On long drives you could recharge it from your cigarette lighter, and if you’re stealthy you can recharge it at the coffee shop or plug it in behind a vending machine. They run about $50-70 on sale. — For easy Lighting, I got by for a while with battery powered tap lights, and I still use them to save power.

Water: I typically used to refill about five 1-gallon jugs at a purified water machine for 30¢/gallon, along with a 5-gallon bucket to use as bulk cooking/cleaning water. I’ve now switched to using a 5-gallon bottle with a pump accessory you can pick up at Walmart for about $12. That scheme allows me on average a week of water for just $3. (Allow 2 gal+/day if you’re camping in the desert or mountains.)

3)  Staying Clean & Disposing Of Leftovers: If you *have* to shower, there are all sorts of black solar shower bag gizmos available, and I also found an item called Simple Shower that’s a shower head you can attach to any 2L bottle. But I’ve since learned that all I need to get totally clean is a microfiber

washcloth/rag with water.  —— For hair washing (noting that I also have long hair), 1/2 cup of water and shampoo for washing and a cup of water for rinsing is all I need. It’s little enough that I can even do it inside over a bucket without spilling anything. —— Pooping: If you’re stuck inside and can’t just dig a hole and bury it (following the principles of Leave No Trace), use a bucket and a bag and cover it with sawdust or just

newspaper and it won’t stink (that badly). Peeing: Urine smells much worse, so do it in a separate container — I use a 2L water cooler ($1 from the thrift store). Baking soda neutralizes the smell somewhat. I believe women could use one just as easily. You might also look into a handy gadget called GoGirl so you can pee standing up. —— To replace trash service: I just reuse the plastic grocery bags which are small enough to throw in any trash bin at the gas station or supermarket, or ... you know, basically anywhere.

4)  Security: Leaving the secure walls of your apartment for good can be scary. If you want to get out the door and off the grid fast, maybe before your camper is fully-built, plan to leave your valuables in the locked cab. Camp only in well-lit areas close enough for others to hear you scream for help, or far enough from everyone that curious animals are your main concern. I’ve found that out in dispersed-camping country, people tend to be very respectful of your space per the golden rule, but if you absolutely want to avoid unwanted intrusion, don’t ever leave anything interesting in plain view of the trail.

1)  Heating / Air Conditioning / Refrigeration: This one is the toughest if you want to go cheap, but here’s how I’ve been doing it until I perfect my off-grid experiments:

•  You have wheels, so use them to go where the weather is better!

•  Cover the windows! I use leftover styrofoam boards with the foil film. When it’s hot, foil out; when it’s cold, foil in!

•  Use a cooler and double-insulate it — if you do it right, a block of ice can last a whole week (and you can keep using the near-freezing water, so don’t throw it out when it melts!) 

•  When it’s hot and dry,

use the science of water evaporation to your advantage: Spritz yourself and the camper with a water bottle, and chill food by wrapping in a damp rag and leaving it in the breeze in the shade. Chilling food before sticking it back in the cooler preserves your ice longer. I’ve also used this trick to make cold water for the cooler, leaving a wrapped jug out overnight — depending how dry the air is, a 50-degree night could get your water to less than 40 degrees.

•  Short of a roof vent fan, just get an ordinary fan from the thrift store to help with the breeze.

•  Without a refrigerator, expect to eat more nuts, grains, fruits and veggies. Vegans have it easiest, because most uncooked non-animal product foods don’t require full refrigeration.

•  You can easily vacuum pack leftovers without any special tools simply by filling your container all the way to the brim before screwing the lid back on.

•  The easiest solar heating system you can employ during the day is simply to open the curtains to turn your camper into a solar oven.

•  When it’s cold at night, besides wrapping up in your sleeping bag, turn on your little propane stove and heat a pot of water (water has the most heat capacity of any material), and wrap it up so it continues to leak heat into your little room for a few more hours.

How To Build Your Own Custom Camper For Dirt Cheap By Yesterday

Are you excited to make your own custom camper now?

Awesome! You totally should consider it.

Over the past three years since I released the first preview version of this book, I’ve received hundreds of emails from men and women all over the world who have been inspired by the ideas here to design their own custom