The Campervan Podcast

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The Campervan Podcast episodes

June 29, 2021111: What's the best mattress for a campervan?
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What is the best mattress for a campervan?
When deciding on the best campervan mattress for your unique conversion van build, Itβs important to keep the following in mind:
Do you need to customize the size of your mattress? If so, youβll need either a foam mattress, or a futon that can be cut.

If your bed frame allows for a standard mattress size, aka Single, Double, Queen, Kingβ¦, you can use any mattress style.

You can create the perfect mattress for your personal sleep needs by combing foam rubber, memory foam, futon mattresses, and wool or cotton mattress toppers.

Probably the number one issue for camper van design and build with regard to beds and mattresses is that it's very likely that your mattress size will be a custom shape.
So that eliminates the vast majority of manufactured beds that aren't basic foam. That is, foam that can be cut.
You'll find on our site an entire episode about how to cut a foam mattress. And I will link to that in show notes. So I won't talk about how to cut foam in this episode, but I will talk about which foam or which type of mattress can be adjusted in size.
But getting back to the best mattress for a camper van, my advice with regard to beds and mattresses in general, because I'm a very light sleeper, personally, the smallest sound wakes me up, and if I'm on an uneven surface or in some way, the surface is uncomfortable, then I'm awake and it's that simple. So beds are very important to me.
My advice, is always to prioritize your bed design and the quality of your mattress over just about everything else in your campervan design and build and that would include the size of course of the bed and the fact that everything lays perfectly flat and smooth so that when your mattress lays flat on the bed platform.
Getting back to specifically which mattress is best for your campervan, It's the one that is going to be most comfortable for you personally.
Okay. If you're one of the very, very fortunate people who can sleep through anything under any circumstances, that's wonderful. I'm so I'm so happy for you for first of all, and I'm also so jealous.
But for the rest of us, we want the mattress that works best for you personally. And so I'm just going to take this from the perspective of kind of the average sleeper. You know, your home mattress is probably going to be at least six inches thick.
Typically in this day and age, more like 10 or 12 inches thick eight would be the absolute minimum for a home-style mattress. And so to make a mattress really work well in a camper van, you know, we want to be in the eight inch range and if you're going with a six inch mattress or thinner, then you'll probably want to combine that with a mattress topper.
Mattress toppers, by the way, can completely transform a basic slab of say six inch foam from something that's barely sleepable into something that's wonderfully comfortable.
For example, a high quality wool topper will allow your
12 min
June 27, 2021 110: How to build a profitable Etsy shop: Part 2.1. Choosing the right products to sell
Details about choosing the best product niche to sell on Etsy .
π Get the FREE Campervan Essentials List for Outfitting and Packing
The best 12 volt refrigerator options for a minivan camper are as follows:
π BougeRV 53 Quart 12 Volt RefrigeratorΒ
π Dometic CFX3 35 12 Volt Refrigerator
π ICECO JP42 Pro Rotomolded 12 Volt RefrigeratorΒ
10 min
June 26, 2021109: Portable toilet for Campervan travel?
What is the best toilet for a campervan travel? A frequently asked question and one that really does need to be thought through carefully.
The best toilet for your campervan will depend on the size of your van:
The best toilet for a minivan campervan
Folding portable toilet

The best toilet for a low roof cargo van
Dry Flush portable toilet for campervan
Small portable cassette toilet

The best toilet for a high roof van such as a Mercedes Sprinter, Ford Transit or Promaster
Dry Flush portable toilet for campervan
Larger size cassette toilet
Composting toilet

You know, we've got a great article on best portable toilet for campervan travel over at and we talked about just how great it is to have a toilet on board.
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Some of the really obvious advantages are, if you have a toilet on board, you never have to worry about campground toilets or truck stop toilets, restaurant toilets, will they let me use the toilet, et cetera.
So, it's really great to have one on board. So the question of, should you have a portable toilet for campervan on board I think is pretty cut and dried; you definitely should if you can.
I think the answer is yes, unless all you're doing is boondocking and you can always go outside for most people.
Just the issue of being able to relieve yourself in the middle of the night is huge. But there are a lot of other reasons to have a toilet in a campervan.
What is the best portable toilet for campervan travel? It depends on your van and this is a very important thing. So you'll want to give some serious thought to this.
Now, if you've got a Toyota Delica mini campervan, you may not be able to use a toilet inside at all.
I'm running a mini camper right now and while I can relieve myself in the van, I prefer not to. So that's an issue. The smaller the van, the more difficult a toilet becomes. Probably the cheapest and simplest portable toilets for campervans are folding toilet bucket toilets.
And then what I call a full squat tray toilet. I actually prefer this method. A couple of years ago, Squaty-Pottyβs for home toilets were all the rage. They made it possible to, instead of sit on on the toilet, you could more or less squat over the toilet and it really is a much healthier way to relieve yourself.
Now, not everybody is physically capable of doing a full depth squat. I hadn't really thought about it until I started lifting weights and got into squatting for, for exercise. And then.
Yeah. Spending time in Asia, where people will sit in a full squat all day while they work. I've seen motor motorcycle mechanics that don't even have a stand they're actually squatting all day long and they can do it and it doesn't destroy their knees. That's a myth. It actually makes your knees more flexible and stronger.
But anyway, I digress, except to say that if all you have is a shallow tray, And maybe a plastic liner, then that can be a great portable toilet for campervan solution. If you have the physical flexibility, you just use your tray and you wrap up whatever waste you've created and take that out to the garbage, which is what most municipalities want that just dumped in the garbage and that's it.
So then moving onβ¦ There are also bucket portable toilet for campervan and that's just a toilet seat that fits on a five gallon bucket. You'll want to use plastic bags. Now you can get into a variety of mediums for that. You could do a homemade composting situation with the right medium.
You could use kitty litter and cover it up there. You know, there's a lot of ways you can deal with...
9 min
June 18, 2021 108: Best 12 volt Refrigerator for Mini Camper Vans
Okay today, we're going to talk about the best 12 volt refrigerator for a minivan camper, aka 12v fridge freezers for mini camper vans.
Iβm Well suited to answer this question at the moment, because I'm driving is a Toyota Sienna minivan camper.
The best 12 volt refrigerator options for a minivan camper are as follows:
π BougeRV 53 Quart 12 Volt RefrigeratorΒ
π Dometic CFX3 35 12 Volt Refrigerator
π ICECO JP42 Pro Rotomolded 12 Volt RefrigeratorΒ
And I love it, it's great. for a while, I was very much considering moving on to a full size, full height, sprinter van, and I will be doing that actually very soon, but, for now, my minivan is awesome and I can't recommend enough people building out minivans for camping because they're just wonderful. It's just great to be able to drive anywhere and park anywhere, but I digress.
We'll get back to the 12 volt refrigerator issue and I'll just talk a bit about what I think the best refrigerators are for minivans and give you some guidelines for your personal mini camper refrigeration needs.
Now, if you're more than one person, you need a larger fridge freezer. It's really that simple, unless you can manage to do all of your cooking or the vast majority of your cooking without having to refrigerate or freeze anything. And that's fine. I mean, if you can do that, awesome. If, if you can get by with just some milk and even then maybe you're into alternative milks and your milk doesn't have to be refrigerated.
That's great, but most of us want fresh food and most of us want some cool drinks and a cold beer now and then. So choose your refrigerator, your 12 volt fridge freezer based on, how many people you have in your van and the kind of cooking you like to do and the foods and drinks you want to keep cold.
As you know, as I've talked about a lot, I love to cook, especially at the campsite, and I want fresh food.
I want fresh want fresh vegetables and cheese and milk and cream and things like that, so that I can cook really great food at the campsite. Even if I'm cooking over the fire, not in the van, not on a portable stove. I still want all of the wonderful, fresh foods. So I sacrifice space because I want a larger minivan 12v fridge freezer.
As far as brands go. If you're in a minivan, you probably have less power supply. And so you might consider something like the iceo icooler, which I've done an episode on already. And I will go ahead and include that in show notes, you'll see a link to our 12 Volt Refrigerator and to the iceco icooler. The reason that I think that's a great way to go is because, A- it's a larger 12 volt fridge freezer and B- it has maxed out insulation.
You can run it less or it runs less to keep your food cold. Caveats to that, with regard to brand and design, you know, Dometic does a great job of building 12 volt fridge freezers in a multitude of sizes with a lot of different features that also...
11 min
June 16, 2021 107: What are the Best Everyday Carry Knives for Vanlifers?
π Western Active Honey Badger Drop Point Folding Flipper Pocket Knives
π Opinel Stainless Steel Folding Knives with Beechwood Handle and Safety Ring, Multiple Sizes
π Get the FREE Campervan Essentials List for Outfitting and Packing
A discussion about every day carry knives for vanlife
9 min
June 15, 2021 106: Can you use a composting toilet in a Campervan?
π Check out our full review of MANY Campervan toilets, including Composting
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A question we get a lot Vansage.com as well as one that I see all over the internet is, Can you use a composting toilet in a camper van?
Yes, but there are pros and cons, as follows:
β’ Using a composting toilet in a campervan requires a vent hose with an outlet through the floor or side wall
β’ An electric fan is required to vent the air from the composting toilet reservoir to the outside
β’ Composting toilets often need to be permanently mounted, not portable
β’ Composting toilets require a special medium that breaks down human waste
β’ You cannot put paper or other debris in the campervan composting toilet
Of course like so many things regarding van life and campervan design and build and outfitting, the answer is not cut and dried. It depends on your van and your lifestyle.
So we'll get into a few tips that will help you decide if you can use a composting toilet in a camper van. First of all, some of the advantages of a composting toilet that will help you decide if you can use one in your van.
Probably the biggest advantage is that you can go longer between emptying the reservoir.
So in that way, it's more like a βnormalβ RV or full-size RV toilet where they fill a black water tank over a long period of time, maybe a week or longer, and then they pull into a dump station and empty the tank all at once and they're done with it. They don't really have to think about it other than cleaning the head.
So that's nice to be able to go a bit longer. And one of the reasons you can do that is because the composting medium masks smell very well if you're handling it properly. We'll get into that in a second here. The medium. That is.
Then another advantage is that there's less environmental impact.
A lot of people are concerned with using a lot of plastic bags or nasty chemicals in a basic folding toilet or a portable cassette toilet. And so they like the idea of creating compost where basically what comes out is dirt, instead of this slurry of again, chemicals and human waste. So that's an advantage as well.
And then the fact that you have this toilet that is not too bad in terms of smell and requires less emptying. It means that you have kind of more normal access to a toilet in your van.
It's important to understand that a composting toilet requires some installation. So basically you can think of it kind of like an air conditioning unit, good air conditioning doesn't result from just putting a freestanding unit in your van and turning it on. You need ducting.
Well, it's the same with a composting toilet. It needs to be ducted.
It also needs a fan to be wired. So the way a composting toilet works is there'll be a fan that pulls air out of the reservoir and then pushes it out through a tube and that tube is connected to a hole that you've either cut in the floor or the side of the van.
There's both wiring and ducting to deal with in terms of installation, those aspects also limit the portability and location, obviously, of your composting toilet.
So you need to choose a spot in your campervan where the toilet will live more or less permanently.
And I say more or less because it is possible to install a composting toilet with some portability and you could even have it completely portable as long as you're willing to have a kind of extension cord and then to run your hose outside each time you use it or to have it where you can...
10 min
June 14, 2021 105: How to cut foam for custom campervan or RV mattresses, beds and cushions
π New snap knives on Amazon
π 6" x 40" x 82" Foam Rubber on Amazon
π Get the FREE Campervan Essentials List for Outfitting and Packing
In this episode of The Campervan Podcast from Vansage.com, we answer the questions:
β’ How do you cut a foam mattress?

β’ Whatβs the best DIY way to cut a foam mattress?
β’ What tools are need to cut foam?
β’ How do you measure and cut foam?
And this applies to us because so many of us are creating custom campervan mattresses and cushions and bed sections. There are a lot of people asking this question online.
I've cut many pieces of foam myself for custom mattresses, bed sections and cushions. And it's not difficult. You can do it.
The best DIY approach to cutting a foam mattress is with a snap blade knife because the long sharp, thin blade will easily cut through the foam while allowing you to maintain a straight accurate cut.
Conversely, the best professional approach to cutting a foam mattress is with a foam cutting tool. Well, here's the thing with foam cutting tools: They cost several hundred dollars. The only advantages to using a foam cutting tool are that the cut will be slightly more straight or clean, and you can make the cut quickly.
So just real briefly, first of all, there's no reason to spend several hundred dollars on a foam cutting tool, unless you're going to get into the foam cutting business.
Don't spend the several hundred dollars for a tool that you'll use once every several years.
And as far as the speed and accuracy of the cuts go, here's what you're going to find:
When you use your snap blade knife, or some of the other tools I'm about to talk about here, you'll find that the cut will be a little bit imperfect.
You'll find that cut is somewhat imperfect, but you're going to cover it up with a mattress cover or a cushion cover. And no one will be the wiser.
The only people who know that my foam mattress cuts are a little bit jagged are me and you. So don't worry about that. It's not a big deal.
Again, the, the characteristics you're looking for in a cutting tool for foam are
β’ The knife should be thin and long and very sharp.
β’ So it is possible to use something other than a $2 snap blade knife, such as a chef's knife or a bread knife, but that knife has to be very, very sharp.
Snap blade knives: The nice thing about them is that they provide a long, straight, very sharp, almost razor-sharp edge. And of course you would want your snap blade knife to be new.
So you extend it all the way. If you're not familiar with snap blade knives, the way that they work is the reason that they are called snap blade knives is because you come out maybe it's an inch and you use this section of blade for a while until it's dull and then you snap it off and then can slide the knife out, another click and there's another section of blade there and it's new and sharp.
Well, when you're cutting foam, you just extend the snap blade knife all the way, and it comes out four or six inches or so.
When cutting foam, the length of the knife doesn't have to be the same as the thickness of your foam.
In other words, if you have a six inch piece of foam, six inch thick piece of foam, your knife, even if it's only three inches long, that's fine because no matter what, you'll need...
14 min
June 08, 2021 104: Never Throw Out Lettuce & Other Greens Again
This episdode teaches you a simple method for cleaning and storing letttuce and other soft greens so they last for many days or even weeks in your Campervan refrigerator.
π Click here to see details and pricing on the OXO Salad Spinner

π Get the FREE Campervan Essentials List for Outfitting and Packing
π Get the Vansage Campervan Newsletter Click HERE
10 min
June 07, 2021 103: GET PAID! Create a Profitable Etsy Shop #1
A Vanlife guide to how to sell on Etsy for more financial freedom and control of your time.
We focus on what to sell and how to sell as a traveler and remote worker.
π Get the FREE Campervan Essentials List for Outfitting and Packing
π Get the Vansage Campervan Newsletter Click HERE
15 min
June 06, 2021 102: Adhesives for Campervan Curtains, Reflectix & Window Glass
πClick for E6000 Adhesive Price & Availability
π Get the FREE Campervan Essentials List for Outfitting and Packing
π Get the Vansage Campervan Newsletter Click HERE
11 min

About The Campervan Podcast

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The Campervan Podcast is an audio program featuring ideas for design and building, cooking, organization, gear and more for a better overall Vanlife experience.