Built a MOBILE DWELLING While LIVING in a TRUCK
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Alyssa, her husband, and her dog Hailey decided to move into a cargo trailer that they converted into a full time home on wheels for themselves. Alyssa started off traveling on the road with just the pickup truck with a truck camper on top of it. It really wasn't the right fit for them because they're super top-heavy. With a cargo trailer, you can build everything yourself, so there's a lot less stuff that's gonna break, and for them that was a really big deal. The goal was to keep everything as simple as they could because they didn't need all that stuff. With a box you just put the things in it that you want. Luckily their pickup truck has a solar panel on the roof so they've got power tools. they just built this thing, while living in the back of the pickup. The entire build has happened on public lands pretty much. They did their countertops at a house so that was a place where they had shore power, but besides that the entire thing was just built on public land with their solar panel.
Their truck, affectionately named Jess, is a 2000 Ford F250 Super Duty. She has the 7.3 liter engine which is amazing. If you don't know about it you should look into it if you're looking for a truck of any kind because this truck is amazing, it's bomb-proof. They installed a front hitch on it so they have this rack. It’s really just for storage purposes most of the time when it's up there, but they can take it out and they can throw it on the back when they’re not hitched up to the trailer and then they have extra storage when they’re just in the truck, which is really nice.
They’ve got 190 watts of solar panels which charge 190ah of AGM batteries. These power a 300 watt inverter and so they can do computer stuff from back, as well as power 12v appliances. They built some storage in there, which is really nice, so they have an extra tall camper shell because they wanted to be able to have storage and then sleep back there and they would still fit comfortably and be able to sit up and all that. Right now is just where they keep their clothes. They have a crash pad in there that just folds out and doubles as a bed. That's huge on the road to just have something that does a lot of different things for you. It's nice to have two different options. You can be super comfortable and fancy with the trailer and then you could also be like, "okay, let's really, really downsize and do some roughing it."
Their cargo trailer recently has been named The Beast, because of what it was capable of. It’s been taken down some very rough roads that the trailer wasn’t intended for, and it’s handled perfectly fine. No popped tires, which is amazing. It's a 7x12 foot cargo trailer, but the nose actually makes it more like 14 foot. They really like having dual axles, as it seems to be better for off-roading. They heard that it was not as good, but because you have a second tire to be on the ground if the other ones are not, you kind of stabilize a lot better that way so for them it was good.
The back tire there is really close to the back end and so if you're doing stuff where you're off road that back end is not gonna hit the ground as easily. Another really big thing with this trailer is that they make them in like cool colors and like black and like silver and all these things, but they’ve found that when you go inside of those trailers the darker color absorbs more heat and makes the interior less comfortable, so they opted to stick with white. On the top they have the Renergy 400 watt solar kit, and then they also just have an antenna that connects to a cell booster, so if they’re in a place that doesn't have great cell reception they can still get a little bit.
The empty trailer cost them $4,700 brand new a year and a half ago, so they're really not that expensive, but the build out process was kind of expensive. All-in they’re probably just under $7,000. They found really cheap paint that was for a garage floor and so they just bought that and painted it like ten times with that bucket of paint. A feature that Alyssa really likes is the way the back door folds down to form a deck. The kitchen has a little sink, they don't eat meat at all so this makes things a lot easier, but it's really easy to clean stuff. What they do is just use a spray bottle with regular water and a little bit of Dr. Bronner's castile soap. This minimizes the amount of water that they use while doing the dishes. She can wash her entire three days worth of dishes with like five tablespoons of water.
For her shower, Alyssa has a stainless steel sprayer that is normally used for fertilizer or pesticides. It can be filled with preheated water and hand pressurized, which allows here to take hot showers even when completely off grid. It can also be used for the sink if she wants to. The hose is fed up through the countertop, with a nozzle installed on the end.
Alyssa was reading Walden and thinking, "I love this book so much, let's just make it wallpaper", and so she decided to use the entire book of Walden as the wallpaper of the sink, which she now calls Walden Paper. It really was super easy to do. It was just a big tub of Elmer's glue and sitting with a little exacto knife cutting out the pages. Each chapter is contained, you can read a full chapter from the wall, but it's put in places that are out of order from the way that the book goes. The sink area is wallpapered with the Ponds portion of the book, because this is their water area, and then the Bean Field is up above it, and then by the cooking setup, where Alyssa spends a lot of time she put her favourite part of the book Where I lived and What I Lived For. The sink is kind of interesting in how it's not holding up, but she loves that. That it's like deteriorating and it makes her really happy. It's like a fast paced version of what's happening all the time. They actually have two counter top heights because she’s 5 foot 3, and her husband is 6 foot 1, so it's nice to have a place where they’re both comfortable.
For heat they use a Wave 3 Propane heater. It's like a catalytic heater, so it doesn't produce as much carbon monoxide as like a Mr. Buddy. They work really easily at any altitude so that's another really big positive with these is that if you're up in the mountains and whatnot they still work totally fine. And they have just a Dometic fridge which has plenty of storage for all of their food. With the amount of water and food they can keep in there, they’re able to be completely off grid and not have to go to a grocery store or anything like that for about two weeks.
They have a big monitor because Alyssa works from the road so this is her office and it's really nice to have a big screen to do work from. She is a consultant in the energy industry and the big picture of renewable energy systems and saying, "okay, how do they take the resources that are available and connect them all in a way where you could actually produce the type of power that you want for a certain scenario?"
The bed is able to be easily converted into a couch, and also folds all the way up to the wall so they can store an ATV when they’re travelling. It is a twin extra long that is able to sleep both her and her husband comfortably. They use a ratchet strap to hold in place when it's a couch and it works really well. Underneath they throw all of their blankets and stuff so it's really super multi-purpose.
Fear is a place where you’re scared you're gonna be uncomfortable. That's a natural reaction. Allysa thinks that being scared is part of what makes us human. The things that they’re scared of are usually based on like how we've lived their lives and the world that we've grown up in. It's okay for it to be there, but to have the fear take over everything means you're gonna shut down and so if you let the fear take over and you shut down you can't move forward, and so it's this balancing act of saying, "okay, it's okay that I'm scared, but that doesn't mean that I need to let it control everything."
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