OUR NEW 2023 LOTUS TROOPER WALK THROUGH! THE ULTIMATE OFFROAD & OFF GRID SETUP TO CARAVAN AUSTRALIA!
[Music] g'day and welcome to what have to easily be our most exciting episode we bring you guys each year we've bought a new Caravan we do it every 12 months we're entering our third year of traveling Australia full-time behind us we've got our brand new 2023 Lotus Trooper 19.6 foot we're so excited for this one this one away let's do it [Music] and as you can see we're stuck with a 19.6 true but this is kind of the perfect size for us our vehicle the two of us traveling around Australia full time it's just absolutely perfect now look everything we've done in here there's a couple of bit of changes some pretty exciting stuff and this is all available for you guys uh this floor plans available there's no little extra customized things that are the only way you can have and no one else can have always make sure that everything we do is make sure the Stock's available that sort of stuff so that so that you guys can I can option this stuff in as well uh on your new van going forwards which is uh which is Mega exciting for you guys but as you can see we've got the new uh 2023 decals on here they're a matte black they're a bit of a bit more of a stealthy kind of look they've gone for and trying to keep it a little bit more plain and basic and I really really like it so we're stuck with the darker the darker colors really really love that look yes it's naturally going to attract a little bit more heat but when you've got a battery system and air conditioner like we got inside 18 degrees is 18 degrees in my opinion so it looks super sweet hooked up to our to our y62 Patrol Uh something's exciting down here is we've changed the stabilizer legs have gone to uh the boss stabilizer legs now look uh the reason we've done this is they're Mega easy to use and you can also lift the van up uh with these legs as well which is pretty cool so you can sort of that people say you can sort of lift the whole van up on four legs like look which you can do but what they've sort of made designed to do is to you can lift uh lift one side up with the both legs to sort of go like a one or two inches at a time on each side and it's going to lift the van up enough so you can actually change your wheel and it actually does it really really easily now look you've got to be careful with these like you've got to use a drill not an impact driver so you've got to use your clutch settings on there as well if you just want wind little eggs up and down to use as a stabilizer leg uh you have it on the screw setting on your drill we've got a Makita drill but then what I found to go it's about to get the van to go up to lift it up I had to put it to the drill setting uh to give it a bit more go and easily lifted the van up uh from there and these Vans do sit pretty high so they actually come with two extensions you can Chuck under there I usually take a little couple of cut up cubes of wood as well in case I get sort of really stuck you need to need a jacket up a little a little bit higher but there's plenty of there I've done already done it already uh playing around with the backyard lifting it up got bloody birds flying us flying over is here everywhere but so far they've been uh awesome and they save a bit of weight as well which is uh which is awesome because we used to have the big trailer remote uh Jack that we had as a jockey wheel and to be able to lift out the van it was Bloody heavy so now we don't need that we can change the tire what do we need to do um anything under the van here with these legs we do also have a jack as well that would carry a bottle jack that we carry in the car just in case you needed something extra or just depending on what surface on or whatever so we can use that between the car and here so just there alone we've probably saved a good 15 20 kilos in the tunnel boot we've got the slide out Weber so yes we've kept gas we love our love cooking on gas and all those sort of things which I'll touch on a little bit more shortly uh today I think we've got a nice uh nice beautiful day here in sunny Mildura got the awning strap down with the Navigator awning buddy straps because uh last time that last run down a bit over 12 months ago in Perth did another thing uh didn't have the thing tied down as you guys would have seen and a big gust of wa Wind come over and took that baby over the roof for us so we're strapped down now generally I'll give I got probably usually three or four on here I've gone prettier I'm pretty anxious and nervous about that these days but behind us here I've got our drop down table we've moved that position from the last time on our Van Meter down here a little bit closer to the door near the Weber where we're sort of cooking just makes a bit more sense we moved the the light outside light generally they come above the door we put it above our window here on the side just for if there are bugs around the bugs are going to sort of instead of hovering above the door uh they're going to hover above the window as long as the window is closed already it's made a lot easier to go in inside and out without a heap of bugs following you inside got the Aussie traveler door which has been proven itself to be really really good in the dust conditions it really locks itself in so the door goes in nice and tight which is what you want when you're out in those in those conditions got the Checker plate sticker across here they've really tie that into my garage for the look of the van which really looks really really nice uh down here we've got our Navigator step again these Vans can sit kind of hard depending on what sort of surface you're on with the leveling and up and down and also got the brand new Navigator muddy buddy it's called so we've got a mat there as well got one right here and one in the step as well this car looks awesome it's our color it suits our interior of the van which I'm extremely excited to show you guys as well these are going to be coming out I know these guys have had this color me working on this for ages so about mid April is roughly when you're about to get your hands on this as well love the Navigator stuff that's our outdoor patio furniture I guess you can call it it's all Navigator stuff George's got a dog bed there the stools uh we use it every single day so it's an extremely extremely affordable for for everyone it's also made gear more important the whole crew Navigator just a such awesome people such an awesome team they're extremely passionate about traveling forward driving Motorsports all the things that we love doing wheels and tires we've got the 285 70 17 BF Goodridge came three muddies along with the 17-inch Lotus rims which are standard for 2023. this combination here looks absolutely awesome we've also gone with a little bit of a wider wheel spread on this as well to test it out we've actually moved the axles 100 Mil forwards as well to help accommodate ball weight having the motorbike in the front which is uh worked out to be absolutely brilliant so uh with this again it's moved the door forwards a little bit as well which has made a couple of different changes inside which I'm extremely excited to show you guys about that I've also got the disc brakes again once ago discs uh you won't go back trust me uh just compared to the drum brakes I just feel like if you're going we do a lot of uh you know corrugations Das bull dust water Crossings all that sort of stuff and that can easily sort of uh sort of build up in a drum break and getting water and stuff in there it can cause you know you've got a it's a messy job to pull it apart it can corrode things all that stuff in there look with the feel of this it's just like a car it's just it feels absolutely magic once you experience it uh you're not you're not going to go back so I've got plenty of plenty of my favorite things and this is uh this is definitely as you know is right up there this is the cruise Master uh level four air control and we've got the ATX expansion under there uh with a bit of a little bit of a something special under there which I I'm real that's probably one of my I keep saying probably my most exciting thing uh under this van so what we've got here again is you got your up and down levels you can do so when you go into a campsite it's as simple as this you know you can put one side down one side up level the van out and little within like 10 seconds your level and you can set up and crack a beer and enjoy what you come out there for so look even as simple as a caravan park or even being parked where I am right now which looks like the grass is level it can be the slightest bit off and you see people you see people you sit back drinking your beer and they're going back and forth arguing with the misses or whatever and trying to get the bloody wheel chocks under there to get the thing level just a slice a little bit so to me that alone it's well worth the money so you can adjust the van fully up and down side to side you've got your air outlet down here as well so you can pump your tires up under here comes with all the stuff to do that you can blow sand out the van like whatever whatever you want to do mega mega handy so what we do is when we pull up we hit it to manual mode again just adjust the van then when you're ready to take off you simply hit order level the van's going to go back to its ultimate ride height for all conditions uh level the van flick it back up to manual and you simply drive away that's Danny you've got your outdoor entertainment system which is really awesome you can simply bring your TV outside on a beautiful night sit out here watch the movies watch them watch some YouTube whatever you want to do we actually do that quite a lot got your outdoor speakers out here got some USBS there as well so just to try and you know get get yourself outside which is what you want to be doing on a beautiful day like this so we've got the full aluminum frame uh under behind here as well uh which we had that in our last van as well and look once you've got it you don't really know that you've got it because it fits Behind the Walls uh performed exactly the same we had absolutely no issues with our van last year taking up the cape York taking it everywhere and look like with there's a small suppose maybe weight saving benefits but you know not much like look Lotus actually do have one of the most lightest constructions anyway with their hybrid construction on their standard Vans anyway which is the aluminum front the roof and the rear and then the maranti timber sidewalls and look to me still personally I just know that because it's been around for so long and look if I was going to be doing like a hardcore now Ali Outback Adventure all years is going to be the roughest tracks full time for a whole 12 months honestly I still think that you know the the moranti timber construction you can't beat that for strength you can't beat that for flex and you can't beat that for mounting uh Furniture Timber to Timber for everything inside the event as well so I still think it's a mega mega strong probably the best construction for that but in saying that this thing's being bulletproof as well and just depending on what's uh what size van what size layout it's going to depend on you know weight savings and that but look the end of the day it's there if you want it it just comes down to a personal preference all right moving on to the back of the van now underneath here we've got some pretty bloody cool this has been the works it's probably mid last year since I knew about this and it's been been in the plans and look we're about to make it happen we've got the first set under here this is uh Cruise Masters brand new ATX Unleashed suspension which I now have a 60 mil adjustable mono tube shock this thing is absolutely bloody massive and you can adjust this from soft and firm it's got 74 more oil volume and a 78 percent more cooling area along with the reinforced stainless shock guards at the front which is what you're going to need when you're going on tracks like the like Gibb River Cape York those long Rocky corrugated roads Heats can always be your biggest uh killer for wearing out shocks and killing shocks you definitely see it when you're out there in the real world but man so far you know we haven't done any off-roading with this just yet but it rides so bloody nice and more importantly it just looks absolutely sick underneath we've got our Checker plate protection to help protect all the vital components under there our water tanks our hoses all that sort of stuff for rocks and sticks all that sort of stuff flicking up when you're out in these Outback tracks I've got a rear work light up here Dometic reverse camera have that continuously going up on the dash of the car so you can see what's going on out the back there got our wood cage on the back we do use this for for carrying wood like it's meant to any dirty stuff you want to Chuck on the back there as well and you've got your jerrycan holders there to Chuck Jerry cans on if you're going to be doing some remote Outback trips or extra water and also got the spare wheel mount on the back here as well for internet we stuck with the out there internet system we use this for a good 12 months last year absolutely loved it was extremely reliable other than up in Cape yorkman we're a couple hundred K's away from phone towers we had uh we had awesome internet connection every every place we went around Australia so we've stuck with this we've got starlink as well which has sort of been uh tested around which has been I found in big open wide spaces it's been working working pretty good but what I've found so far is sort of you know under tree cover uh not in the perfect weather conditions many obstructions which do happen even as simply as a caravan park it hasn't been performing that well just yet so especially for doing uh uploading uploading YouTube videos the speed seem pretty low and also do we do a lot of Zoom calls for our online business as well so from there it's been a little bit hit and miss so far but I do have I do have both there but it was really important we have uh to stick with bot works on here especially for somewhere up where we are right now uh in foam reception in towns I found this to be a lot better option so far all right moving on to the society as you can see there's no toilet hatch here so we've got something different going on inside there which uh which we'll show you guys in a tick got our RJ45 up here for the out the internet just simply plugs in there inside to the router all the routers are tucked up nicely into the cupboards there so it's super neat super out of the way got our 240 inlets here nothing too exciting got our Fort Water isolators uh water tank fillers and isolators underneath for our tanks we've got 395 liter tanks at 150 it's all fresh water no dedicated drinking water special tanks and there's also no gray water as well we found from our travels we'd much rather instead of having gray Waters pretty much not many places we go uh that we do there's a requirement to have it so we found we'd much rather for us just have more uh more fresh water on board got our outdoor shower which we do use quite a bit especially for when you're washing the dog or washing sand off you know water shoes and all that sort of stuff got our hot water system here again we've stuck with gas on this van I love this hot water system it's a garage continuous hot water when mccail spends an hour washing her hair inside a little Blondie in there it's no dramas at all uh this thing just keeps keeps ticking along so that was another good reason of sticking sticking with the gas as well moving on to here we've got our external tunnel boot on here which again this is on the other side now which you're going to see why in inside here but inside this gives us access to underneath our bed inside so it's all nice and clean just we sort of keep clean stuff in here got our styling stored in there I've got the airbag man kit like some shoes and just some sort of nice little neat things that we want to have in there and it's nice and quick and easy accessible to get through so yeah another tunnel boot over here is again this is for it's extremely neat as well I give it nicer nice and organized I've got all Navigator bags in there our sea gear mat it's got Solage hose bags in there for like our electrical cables hoses and it'll keep that all nice and nice and neat in there it's definitely my OCD kicking in there moving around to the front of the van I'm so stoked to have my Bunbury cadium 500 back on the back here had a little bit of a little bit of a mishap last year ended up snapping my knee in half and I had to have the push bikes on there which was nowhere near as exciting than having this baby on there definitely made me realize after not having on there for nearly a good 12 months that it's definitely what I need and what I want to do another look I do get a lot of questions of people asking whether I should take the motorbike with them or not look it's definitely a personal thing of whether you know I'm I'm mad for it I absolutely love it and just some of my most best memories of being get out there seeing exploring uh this beautiful country so look it just comes down depend on how much you think you're going to ride it and if it's going to work with your setup here so how we've done this we've extended the A-frame on here just gives a little bit more room on there as well again just to help accommodate with everything there with having this on the van this uh the bike rack here is a full Armenian buy crack made by the guys at local company here uh tub built Industries Mega lightweight it's so bloody easy to use it fits on the absolutely beautiful this is something you can option onto your van just depending on this floor layer 100 just depending as well like you know what size van what floor light you're doing what vehicle all that sort of stuffing if it doesn't make sense uh they're not going to do it for you if it doesn't make sense that way they're at all it's super easy to get on and off I simply just put the ramp down uh wheel it off I can do it by myself I can also put the jockey wheeler down here or even put the airbags down get the whole van right down Mega low so it makes it really easy to get off if you need to to get it back up on the van as well I simply start the bike have it in gear and just walk up beside it there get it up genuinely does help as well Michaela should be at the front there put the straps on for me and it's as easy as that some people naturally freak out and see a motorbike on the front think we've got like a 500 kilo ball weight or something again this van is made knowing that the bike is going to be there and look it's 100 Kilo bike so look it's literally no different it's generally even lighter than you know you see how you have people just load their toolbox is still a hill you've got a heavy toolbox that sometimes weighs 60 80 kilos they have a Weber fuel generator firewood e-bikes mountain bikes on the front whatever it's uh it definitely ends up weighing up weighing up more than this so some people do freak out about that but again it's made perfectly to be on here the changes we've made are with the axles and that stuff as explained before we've actually dropped uh we're under our ball weight in our last fan anyway this has actually dropped another 25 kilos off that which is always always accommodating got the brand new gas bottles on the front here all the regulations have changed there so again we have stuck with gas and there's a lot of awesome gas gasless options out there now for us it just makes sense we love about gas we love using that Weber we love using the Trimmer gas heater we love just cooking on gas as well so this makes sense to us as well and look at also the the hot continuous hot water system some of the diesel options I've seen out there the bloody big unit takes up a lot of room as well but look again end of the day we've got a big battery bank which we're going to show you guys in a minute and for us we generally like to use our Battery Source to be having the most important thing for us it was when we're out in hot days and having the air conditioner going got the stone guard on the front here this has been awesome to protect the front of the van and the bike as well people do freak out again is how to protect the van down the rocky tracks but look when I am out racing and riding the bike it's getting stones and [ __ ] flicked at it anyway anyway so it doesn't really matter yes for the front of the van you can get like your your stone stumbles and that which you're probably going to look into down the track for you know again your long long corrugated Rocky Roads got our boss jockey wheel on the front edge of something new as well Mega lightweight Mega easy to use again user drill settings on there comes with a nice little cover on there as well to protect it from the weather Gans are super easy to use also comes with an extension you can use that between that and the legs on the van as well so look this is an awesome combo thing just to make it Mega easy getting the van on and off the car go navigate a tow hitch buddy here this protects the front of the A-frame here especially from Sun dust if you're going to be out on beaches salt water getting your cables under here we've got a do45 cruise Master Dr 45 these come standard on the Troopers now also with your heavy duty change so we've got a we've got a three and a half ton Towing vehicle so our ATM has played at three and a half ton but everything is here good to go if you've got a four ton vehicle whatever it's going to be they can simply just play it up there everything's good to go [Music] thank you [Music] welcome to the inside of our van we are so so excited about this part we have made some tiny tiny changes compared to our last van but it's made the absolute difference in here yeah it's enough to make it feel totally different it's Jess absolutely love the what we've done in here so what we've got guys you can see in the background we've gone with the offset bed again now look what you can see this has actually gone to the opposite side now I looked offset beds are getting very popular now look the reason that we switch it to the other side is because as I mentioned it out outside there we need to with the axles we have to move them 100 Mil forwards which means the door comes 100 Mil forward so and obviously you can't afford to have the bed any shorter with Josh being quite tall exactly doesn't want his feet hanging over the edge yeah so we flipped it over to other sides okay there's plenty of room there opens up the offset bed really opens up the side down here right next to your bed so make suggest it just opens up the whole the whole floor plan uh of the van so we've got the double wardrobes on the side so there's heaps of room for us to open them right up grab our clothes out we can get change beside the bed if we want to and there's heaps of room for that yeah the bedside table down there as well again we've got some our shoes stored under there so it's a nice little storage nook under there on the side of the bed it's on the bedside Tower we put water bottles there our little little trees and little little diffuser on there to make it nice and comfy next to the bed as well we've also got the pillow top mattress and we've extended it just a little bit longer compared to our last van because Josh is six foot so the bed also lifts right up so there's plenty of storage underneath and it also gives us access to that external tunnel boot outside yes plenty of storage under there again I'm about six foot so the standard height the standard length beds are just a little bit too short for me so we extend that there and it just makes it absolutely perfect size for me so leather coals have gone with the gray Suave that's the color we've gone for in the background there and also the Lotus stitching is in Black so we wanted to do a bit more of a black a bit of a darker darker thing darker theme but not too dark and it's just come up bloody brilliant in my opinion so that's what we've got there and also on the sides there you can see the leather goes all the way up the wall this is a option I generally do in the off limits we've done that in here just again it does really closes that bed head in and just makes it feel really really cozy like a feature as well yeah a bit of a feature I haven't got the butt we've got black lights we've gone with black Scirocco fans as well with the fusion speakers up there as well in that black stitching also our bedding choice of here my color the color still she's still not still adjusting compared to our last room we had the bright orange but bright you know watermelony sort of color so now we've gone with a charcoal color so I'm still getting used to it I think it looks good though Michael got the shoes the cushion her special little dares cushion uh in the middle there though but I think it looks yeah it just makes it feel nice and nice and homey nice and luxurious in my opinion got our overhead cupboards above us there as well uh we'll put all of our clothes up in there plenty of storage in this van on the side there as well your little knickers drawers all that sort of stuff as well so beside the bed we've also got a USB and USB C ports on each side of the bed we've also got a switch into the bathroom light as well so that's just like you know through the night if you need to get up and go the toilet or anything you can just flick that on and it brings up the bathroom strip light and there's also a c-zone favorites board on one side you're going to touch on that very shortly pretty pretty exciting there also got our truma gas heater again so it's nice and quiet just works so good in our opinion so we've kept that there got a little controller to the side got our 32 inch smart TV we've got also got the king Jack antenna for the for the TV look we honestly never even like I honestly don't even need that thing there we personally just don't tune into TV we just don't know if we do it's like Netflix or YouTube or whatever we'll do on there but the reason we do that on the roof uh rather than the Wine Guard antenna so when the Wagner antenna sits down it's like it's pretty much a solar panel up there and look more solar to us is more important so we do the king Jack antenna gives you more roof space and we also delete the roof hatch in the middle here as well enough Lighting in here without it even though the windows close and it's it's nice in here but that also as well opens up to a lot more roof space for solar panels well we've also done in this van we've actually got TV points on both sides of the van because we honestly just couldn't decide where we wanted the TV to go yeah because like we we watch TV in bed but I'll have it up here beside us here is perfectly in bed that's generally what we've been doing at the moment but if you ask someone to sit down at the kitchen at your bench seat there and watch watch a movie or something while you're eating lunch we've got this point it's probably better have it over there it doesn't really swing around the whole way but again just for us personally we've been sort of been having it up there but at the moment we've actually got it set up beside us here as well but nothing no major plan to having two there's a little bit kind of couldn't really decide and like well let's just Chuck one that's it's a tiny little thing to do so with chuck on each side look it actually kind of makes sense as well because it is really nice to be able to watch TV up there have a ride in front out and then have the flexibility uh as well so pretty weird but um but there you go moving into the kitchen got our partitions on the end here we went with the matte black which come up so nice we're actually traveling around at the time we had to pick our colors and went up and saw the Legends at Lawrence RV up there they helped us pick the colors look it's definitely difficult picking colors for a van off little off the little display cards uh that they use but look it just come up so nice and Andy as he walk in it's the first thing you see all the little black things the background the fans the switches all that sort of stuff got our season display up here as well which I'm going to touch on very shortly it just ties in and looks so nice we've got our sink we choose to have no drainer neck so it just gives you a lot more bench space here to have appliances or to have a space for cooking up dinner and stuff like that because we did move the axles forwards actually gave us 100 Mil of a longer kitchen as well which is always always definitely accommodating a bench collar and splashback we went with Manhattan gray again along with the black it just ties in so well but what we did also do is instead of having it just on the kitchen side we've done the splashback on the same color on the other side as well behind the couch so without black fittings and everything around it it's just giving it a really really nice finish getting rid of some of that sort of white Caravan wall and just making it feel a bit more homey what we've got in the stinky next twist is an educate this is now the most amazing thing that's ever been introduced to our lives we're extremely grateful for it they're a Japanese medical certified water ionizer so look a lot of people have a water filter and think they've got a nice good clean water and it's the best thing which look is definitely step one so it filters your water then goes through our electrolysis process and then producing hydrogen Rich water also got seven different functions to seven different types of water on there uh just quickly one include an 11.5 pH which is a strong alkaline water which is amazing cleaning agent now look every single thing inside the van here outside the van windows everything we've literally replaced all the chemicals inside of our van including washing detergent you put a couple liters of 11.5 in your in your in your washing machine uh so back when
I was doing read or massage therapy we haven't bought laundry detergent in over three years so a lot of things as well like hand sanitizer there's tons of stuff that you can replace and look just in that we've uh we've actually recovered back our investment uh plus more just from saving on chemicals uh and our household items now magic is a direct selling company so these are only available straight to the consumer you're not going to find them you can't buy them in a retail setting we'd be in a distributor for just about three years now so extremely proud about that this is the product we sell this is also how we've been able to travel full-time do all the amazing things that we do look we do get a lot of questions about this so we've put together quite a fair bit of information on that on our website there's a bit of a process you can go through to check it all out yourself I hope you're enjoying today's episode we want to take a quick moment to let you guys know what we offer for you on our website got a full range of traveling campers merch we've got men's women's kids tees and we've even got some hoodies and stickers as well we've also got information about our setup and we've also got a full detailed rundown on there of how we've gone from back in the day if you've been following for a while to rarely travel into now traveling full time we share absolutely everything on there with how we've done it and there's an opportunity in there if it interests you to check it all out and maybe even the 2023 is a year to make a change for you you can jump on there go through a quick a quick process or jump in the DMS on our social media you've been contact with our personal assistants and we're about to help you guys out now we don't ask so much but take a quick second to jump on make sure you subscribe to the channel make sure you like also drop a comment below of what your favorite part of the episode was you can also turn the little bell reminder so you don't miss any moments of traveling campers thanks so much guys enjoy the rest of the episode got our soft close uh drawers in here it's also got interlocking Cabinetry in there as well so you can lock up all your drawers cabinets when you're going down the highway or also more so going down long corrugated roads like the Gibb River or something like that so you make sure no draws and that ain't crazy is going to go on there got our own color floor which ties in extremely well with all the other colors that we've picked here got the Thetford Topline hob up here again we're stuck with the gas cooking some people freak out and do a big battery system not have induction cooking induction talking it's sick but look we like the gas it's nice and easy and that we wanted to save again all of our battery bank and all that sort of stuff for our air conditioner now I know I said that every single thing that we have is going to be available to everyone else but there's just one one little thing here what we've got here is we've got a convection oven now that we've got no microwave which again saved us a bit of gave us some more space and also gave us a saved a little bit of weight as well this is a Panasonic convection oven under here now look don't bust your balls with the your dealers uh with this because uh with this one the stock levels was sort of extremely hard on the end to about secure it for a large range so this Panasonic one here uh in itself is is a little bit special we're sort of testing out for now but there is an nce option which is available which is pretty much the same thing now look this does all your microwave steam and oven and so far it's worked out to be uh to work extremely well got our cute little Smeg uh Smeg Kettle down here pretty pretty proud of that for my for my morning coffees gotta pull out bin down here which is super handy it's soft clothes as well but to storage under there we've put our vacuum cleaner and stuff under there as well we've got our floor-to-ceiling pantry down here Michael loves the pantry she goes on about it all the time so much room in there for for food all that sort of stuff we will do a separate video to show you guys I've just sort of what we've done for storage and how we sort of put things away because we are super neat and organized organized there and got some cool little hacks that we do there up here we've got our Dometic Harrier air conditioner this is uh there's a stand on the trooper range now then the old van we had the Ibis 4. definitely found it's got a bigger cooling capacity so definitely and you can tell it definitely does feel a lot better in here works a lot less also because of what we've done with our axle weights and that our old air conditioner was back here so we've been able to move it a bit more centralized which makes it easier to get down to our bedroom there as well look it's tick along here at 20 degrees and it's absolutely beautiful here on a 32 degree day got our Caravan up here use the Caravan again it's disproved itself to be extremely good got that place here as well nice and Central in the van we've got the 224 liter Dometic Fridge which is now standard across the trooper range we didn't realize that we needed this big of a fridge until we've got it and the extra room has just made an absolute difference and we're really happy with it so coming back into the bathroom in here it's pretty standard for a caravan ensuite not nothing too crazy going on in here we've got the three drawers down the side which as Josh mentioned about the kitchen drawers these ones are also interlocking so it just helps stabilize them and lock them in keep them secure when you're going off-road and things like that we've got our sink and cupboard underneath as well and then coming across here we've also got our washing machine I absolutely love the washing machine being a full-time traveler we need to wash out do our washing whenever and wherever we want to so that is super handy something else that's a little bit different that we've gone with in this van is a composting toilet so we've chosen the tiny by separate composting toilet and the reason that this one appealed to us is because everything is concealed within the toilet so there's no taking out the whole toilet when you need to empty it there's no adding sawdust or churning it it's simply just a bucket in the front for number ones and then a bucket at the back as well for your waist so all you do in there is you add a bag and all the smell there's a vent for the outside so all the smells all everything like that goes outside there's no smell inside so it makes it so easy for emptying all we have to do is rub the bag out and we can pop that in a bin or if we're using a composting bag we can legally dig a hole and we can bury that if we're out in the bush and then all you need to do with the front bucket is you simply just take that out and you can tip that in an appropriate place so this avoids us having to find Jump points every two three days I know some families are trying to find dump points nearly daily which I can only imagine on the road how stressful that would be it also takes away from the smell inside we do find sometimes with the chemical toilet it does have a bit of a smell lingering inside maybe just after you've used it so this avoids us having to find dump points and also having to find chemical because that's the last thing you want to be doing when you're out in the complete middle of nowhere moving across through our shower we've actually got the larger shower which gives us plenty of room in there and in there we've also got our Nest Bar which is our mineral iron Spa which is also created by enagic and what this does it removes almost a hundred percent of Chlorine along with other harmful substances it's got a ceramic cartridge inside along with three mineral Stones one of them being a two for stone which is taken directly from a hot spring in Japan so this is amazing for your skin and hair especially if you've got skin sensitivity it's literally like showering in our natural hot spring all right into what I think is one of the most important things if you wanted to keep all the luxuries of a house away on the road as you can see we've got a bench seat here and she's jam packed full of goodies underneath so we've gone with the 900 amp battery system again it's the three and the drive 300 amp batteries last year were the first ones to actually pair three of these up at the time no one really wanted to no one really wanted much to do with it when we did that but the guys alone is like no let's do it we wanted to go from again that's the now of transition of going from part-time traveling into full-time traveling and again we wanted to keep the luxuries uh and be anywhere and have the air conditioner and just sort of be able to do work watch TV you know whatever you wanted to do anywhere that we are so we've done that and now it's pretty cool because since we've done this it's been proven uh Lotus and the drive have worked together they've now created the Monster Power Pack which is what you see below here which is pretty bloody cool so what they've got now is they've got the new uh from Anna drive it's the 100 amp AC charger so that's when you're plugged into the wall it's going to give you 100 100 amps minus usually usage let's say for example using eight amps of lots or something inside it'll then you get in 92 amps so but pretty much uh you know that then plus solar on the roof as well so for an example just recently again like anywhere from sort of 160 to 180 amps while plugged into into power to get it back up so big battery bank again if you wanted to quickly charge overnight at a caravan park or at the house or whatever you can simply do that overnight onto our board here which is uh which is pretty pretty big so what we did is we actually angled it because I wanted to have everything sitting nice and nearly over the axles and underneath our couch here we've got our 240 amp mppt charges which is for gives us 80 amps total of solar so on the roof we fitted seven 200 watt Ender Drive panels on the roof here give us a total of 1400 watts of solar on the roof which is pretty crazy for a 19.6 foot van so we put one panel on the slope at the front there we weren't too sure about doing this for looks wise but it looked because they've done a nice and black around it it's actually fitted in really well look at this great really decide to get another 200 watts of solar at the front there with our 40 amp DC to DC charger and this one here is for when we're plugged into the car we're going to get 40 amps of charge instantly back into the batteries while we're driving along I've also got my external solar wired through here as well so I've got 600 watts of external panels as well which is absolutely awesome it's going to give you a lot more to be able to chase the Sun a lot more hours of solar as well so I can literally get about 30 amps out of those panels and anywhere from 72 to 80 amps again depending on sun conditions during the day off the roof that gives me a total of 100 to 110 amps so we can put this fill this big battery Bank up and come back go out for a nice day exploring come back have a full a full Bank ready for some air con for that night now this setup here is perfect for us for traveling full time again the reason we want to do this is to keep all the Comforts while we're going along having the air conditioners all that sort of stuff because this literally is our house now look if you're definitely just going for just a couple of weekends here and there I look there's maybe two batteries or 600 would definitely be worth it in my opinion having a big battery bank is amazing as well because no matter how much Soul you've got you don't always have soul we've been so many places where it's been rainy it's been overcast whatever uh for days on end with very minimum Souls so we can literally go out be in the bush for you know a couple of days have their inverter going all the time have the air conditioner have all the the you know coffee machines all that sort of stuff running and not there's nothing worse than having to be stress about batteries all the time so I did a bit of a test recently while we've been parked up here I just wanted to get a bit of an idea myself of you know how how long this thing would rough roughly last look I'm going to do a bit of a video uh going through that in more detail but to give you a bit of an Insight we had the aircon going uh all the time just using all we just we just use all the Comforts hair dryer kettles coffees all that sort of stuff just everything we'll just use on a day day we just we just pretended we'll plug in the 240s didn't think about batteries at all now having all of that aircon gone continuously all night all day we've got 85 hours 85 hours until the batches went to 20 which equaled roughly about 180 amps where the batteries left that's when I saw that buzzing at me telling me to to plug into charge so that is absolutely crazy again if you turn the air con off overnight if you uh you know we're going out for the day it would have been able to charge back up and you could stay in place of a lot longer so that is this total ideal again especially at the moment that was on the 32 to a 35 degree days as well so it was hot that was the sole off the roof solar on the floor as well so to give you a bit of an idea throughout the day we're able to run the air con then still be put in again depending on the sun you can still be putting back anywhere from 20 to 40 amps back in the battery Bank while having all this running we've got our circuit breakers and shunts all that sort of stuff there nice and easily accessible from the front they're nice and organized if there wasn't any sort of to go on there it's nice and easy to figure out what's going on got out any Drive 2600 watt inverter behind there again that's more than enough to run the aircon the kettle we can sort of run both at the same time as as well just make sure you're not having it on 16 and in full bore and the kettle as well sometimes just back the temperature down a couple of notches on the aircon brings to run the kettle and that as well so it's more than enough what we've also done is we've got a couple of computer fans in here we've got one up that end which is sucking air in this one here is pushing air out so it's really circulating the air through here and look the main reason we've done that is we can switch it on up there for when we do go away and you know so say we're going to leave George our dog in the van for a couple hours while we go and um explore somewhere that you can't be or whatever leave the air conditioner on we want to make sure this is keep it nice and cool in here because look there's a fair bit going on in here but we have had some 42 degree days here in Madura having this going all the time and I've been having a look under here and the temperature's been absolutely fine anyway but we can turn that switches on there because uh the last thing you want to do is when you go out get mega hot under here and end up cutting out the inverter and turning things off that would have been absolute absolutely nightmare but there's nice cooling system in there as well again we're just extremely happy with how this has come up behind me I've got our c-zone screen here this is all hooked up to everything in the van here now look it's got all of our function here all of our lighter controls we've also got your water tank settings on here as well so it literally tells you it's got digital so it literally tells you exactly how many liters you've got in your water tanks which is which is really really handy so again all your light switches on here one's a pretty cool thing is you can actually dim your lights up and down which is a nice little feature you can set for the mood for whatever's whatever's going down at the time you want to get different modes up top here which you can these can be customized as well to get like a fixed example Camp mode night mode sleep mode travel mode and storage mode for example of night mode you can have it set so like once you press that it gives you about 30 seconds so it gives you enough time to press it get in bed get comfortable on that all the lights are going to go down and ready for sleeping conditions now it's also got a little panel over next to your bed as well where you can press the buttons and and get these modes from there next to your bed as well which is super handy you've got your monitoring system on here for your lithium house so on here let's go shows up all your battery Banks so look it's really good because it shows it's got a true 900 amp battery system on over old system only went up to 800 amps it was always a little bit a little bit hit and miss you've also got your Bluetooth app you can go to to get every single individual battery to see what's going on there as well but so far this has been Mega accurate with the percentage it lines up to the total amounts of amps you got left which is awesome it's going to tell you you know how much time you've got remaining when you charge back in let's just say getting 50 amps of solar and whatever it's going to tell you exactly how long that amount of charge is going to take to fill your battery Bank back up well there you go guys there's an overview of our brand new home but we do call this our home because it is home for us and we don't really see it as a caravan anymore but yeah we honestly rather we've never really even say the word Caravan to me it's just literally our house and our home because that's exactly what it is but look again we do live in this thing full time we go out and see some amazing places we're so lucky to live in absolute beautiful country like Australia we've literally got way more than what most people think out there in our own backyard so make sure you stop watching people like us we love getting out and are sharing our adventures for a bit of fun as well but get out and make your own memories get out get a caravan if you've already got one get out set the dates and go out and make some memories with them and made some new friends and get out of the family all that sort of stuff it's time to get out and do it so make sure you guys again thank you so much for following along I really hope you enjoyed the tour through our brand new home look make sure you hit the Subscribe button so you don't miss out on a on one second of traveling campers and look we're extremely excited to see all you guys out on the tracks foreign [Music] [Music]
2023-04-01 20:29
