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Living in a Van. Am I mad?
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I think if you want to try it, good luck to you.
FWIW I lived in a (self-converted) VW van for a long while in Ireland and around Europe, but I was travelling, not trying to study at the time, so I had it easy compared to you. I'd say from my experience that it's very hassly and surprisingly expensive to acquire a van, and convert it enough to live in and then - the hard part - get the tax, insurance, and so forth sorted out. Possibly the first thing I suggest you check is your driving license, if you haven't already. The class of driving license you have dictates the maximum weight and body capacity of the vehicles you can drive, plus whether or not you can pull a trailer (in case you decide to go for a caravan). You might not be legally qualified to drive the vehicle you want to drive.
Actually carrying out a simple conversion is straightforward. I made a bed base from wood, put a mattress on it, got a friend to put a small counter up with a camping sink in it that drained out the bottom of the van, and a camping cooker screwed to it, put some curtains up, and used oil lamps and candles for light. I didn't have any heat but I don't really feel the cold as much as normal people, so when I was in Poland in winter and it got subzero, I used to just go to bed earlier. I didn't have any washing facilities apart from the sink, which I had to haul water to, but that didn't matter as I used to shower at friends' houses or campgrounds or gyms or jump in a river. I didn't have any electricity (apart from the driving electrics) but that didn't matter to me at the time. I had a great time on my van adventure but the things that made it doable for me were that I was on holiday so I had all morning to figure out where to shower, all day to get water, all day find a new stealth parking space, including once in the customer's car parking space at a VW dealership in Belgium, and so on. I'm sure that it would be stressful if I were trying to do the same thing now with a student's schedule. Looking back, to save money I should have installed a woodburner for cooking and heating instead of the gas camping stove, and should have installed insulation. But live and learn. You can cut down on the stress of not having standard 'house' facilities a lot by doing a much fuller conversion than I did, but you have to have the space, time, and money, and the larger the vehicle, the less stealthy.
I remember it was a challenge to get a van that was taxed as a commercial re-taxed as a campervan. I tried to do this when I got back to Ireland with a view to keeping the van longterm, but it was such a faff to organise and changing tax categories (at the time - it might be different now) involved paying a chunk of the market value of the vehicle as a tax, just for the privilege of getting it re-categorised, not counting the actual year's motor tax on top. So I'd suggest you check the vehicle's documentation carefully and maybe ring the motor tax people to see if it's going to be expensive to get it taxed the way you want. Getting the van into the tax class you want may or may not be a prerequisite for getting campervan insurance, so it would be wise of you to double check all this before purchasing. That's especially important if you're importing a vehicle as there could very likely be significant import duties to pay. (Unless you had the vehicle where you were domiciled elsewhere and moved back - my aunt moved back to Ireland and didn't have to pay any import taxes as a result).
A lot of the problems such as heating and washing and laundry and so forth that you're going to come up against if you carry out your plan, could be solved by making a private arrangement with a farmer to park on their land, use their facilities, and pay for it with a set number of hours per week of babysitting or sheepshearing or whatever, and/or a small amount of weekly rent. There are farms near enough to Dublin that would be glad of the help if you were to devote some time to approaching them and discussing it.
Or, come to think of it, you could sign up for WWOOFing or for HelpX or Workaway and do the exact same thing, except staying in your host's accommodation and saving all the 'getting a van' part of the challenge. Be warned, though, that my little brother did WWOOFing in a Wicklow farm and was given accommodation above the stables, and woke one morning to find a goat nibbling thoughtfully on his toes. So there you go, it's a jungle out there. Even in Wicklow. But unconventional living arrangements can work - this guy lived in a tent to save rent money while studying, inevitably, astrophysics, for example. Could you put a caravan or a mobile home or a yurt in some relative's back yard or on some amenable farmer's land? The main thing about vans is that to pass the road worthiness state tests (depending on the vehicle and its registration papers, either the DOE or the NCT), they have to have money spent on them, plus tax plus driver's insurance, and you have to drive them around at least once a week to keep them ticking over. A mobile or a caravan are easier to maintain, have no state standards to be worrying about, and being simpler structures, have less that can go wrong. They do have the advantage of being drivable, and in fact they have the security advantage over caravans or any other temporary structure, that if you feel threatened, you can get into the driving seat and go, without having to exit the vehicle. I think it's a lot safer for a single person staying in a van than many think. Once you shut the door, to the outside world, there could be six serial killers and a chainsaw in there.
Having said that, I think if you have plans to go travelling in your van or stay living in it once your studies are done, it would be worth the time and expense of getting a good van set up the way you want. It would be an investment in your future, really. It depends on what your plans are, and from your original post, if you're aiming to make the van into a home, it could be a worthwhile project. If you haven't already, have a look at ukhippy.com's Nomadic Living section. It's a wholly different way of life, and although I only lived that way for a year, it was probably the best year of my life. So far.
I wish you all the best.0 -
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