Flatbed Custom Camper | ep7: Lights, Power, Paint

I don’t know where December went; it just blew by us. The camper build has been progressing although slower than I imagined. There were a few parallel tasks going on last month that made wrapping up any one area a challenge. There were detailed plans to be made for specific areas such as the wardrobe/pantry. Then sourcing of the next wave of parts which in same cases is proving more difficult as we run into shortages. The good news is we did make progress and now that the interior has started, it will be able to continue with little interruption.

In this video we finished the interior walls and a shower area. The interior and exterior have been painted with a durable enamel paint applied with a texture sprayer. The electrical control systems, monitoring, and breaker panel was built and wiring has begun. There’s a false ceiling panel that was completed and installed. Lastly, the really cool roof hatch over the bunk is installed and operational.

The Electrial diagram

In the video we show the wiring chase access and the front control, monitoring, and breaker panel. The camper has to support both 12V and 13.8V DC plus AC powered devices. If you’re interested, here’s the electrical system diagram:

The power source for this camper will be our current solar panels and leaf battery used on the Lance Camper. The batteries will be migrated into the power cargo box shown in episode 5 and we’ll be adding an additional solar panel to the new camper for a total of 5. Here’s a post on the leaf battery setup on the current camper:

Episode 7 Video

What’s next?

With the flatbed design comes more interior space which we took advantage of to incorporate a large wardrobe and pantry area. After debating options for what that looks like with shelving, drawers or bins, we settled on a rack of bins along with a coat closet. We liked the concept so much that the area under the kitchen counter will also follow a similar layout for storage. As we post goes live, the storage is being built then the kitchen counter with sink, faucet, cooktop along with the dinette seating area and the table will be built.