This shouldn’t warrant an entry in the build diary, but we’ve spent so long researching equipment to fit out the van that I need to get it off my chest.

We’ve been focusing on the electrical systems, so we can get all these installed before we do any more insulation, or start on cladding or furniture.

So in our front room, we currently have:

• 2 Solar panels
• Solar charge controller and monitor
• Leisure battery (now fitted)
• Maxxair Maxxfan
• Dometic Mini rooflight

… as well as rolls of conduit, insulation panels and the original plywood cladding we removed from the van.

I’ve just sent off an order to 12 Volt Planet, who, so far, have been super-helpful, and have a really good website for speccing out electrical components. So in the next few days we can expect poly bags full of fuses, crimp terminals, stranded wire, lugs, switches, USB sockets, LED lights and more.

It’s been an interesting process figuring all this out. But literally days of work just to figure out a shopping list. Working out all those details (What will be the voltage drop if we want to run lights all the way to the back of the van? What kind of terminals can we use on each component? How many USB sockets do we need? etc.) is a complex task, and every answer opens up more questions.

So let’s hope I bought the right stuff!