HAVING A CAMPERVAN AS A DAILY

As you might be able to tell, WE HAVE A NEW VAN!

This was a BIG decision, which happened really fast, but the time seemed right for a few reasons which I will go into a little later. 

We always knew that we would eventually need to upgrade to a newer vehicle, but we just didn’t think that it would happen this soon. We always thought that when the time was right, we would upgrade to a larger motorhome/coachbuild once we got #vanlife out of our system. This may still happen in the future, just maybe closer to our retirement age!

So, why the upgrade? 

Before the new van - we had a total of 4 vehicles: 2 ‘His & Hers’ daily driver cars, Our Nissan campervan ‘Urvan’ and a classic VW Beetle. My daily driver car (Dave) was a financed car on a PCP deal, which the contract was up for renewal - so I could either trade the car in for a newer vehicle or just end the contract and give the car back. 

As I was researching my next shiny new car, the van, unfortunately, failed its MOT - on quite a lot of stuff. With this being a Japanese import, parts can be a little tricky to find. This, unfortunately, puts mechanics off from working on him and so I spent around 3 months researching parts, spending money and getting my hands dirty and completing the work myself. 

Both of these incidents kind of made our minds up for us, so we decided to get rid of my car and put Urvan on the market to sell, which was not an easy one as he was like an extension to our family. We then found a campervan conversion company, that we really liked the interior looks and placed our order. A full tour of the van will be up on the site and our youtube channel soon, so watch out!

This little blog is just a quick review of using a campervan as a daily - practicality, Fuel consumption/Costs etc – so with out any further ado....

Pros:

• Mobile office/snack room
• Peaceful place to use a loo on the go. 
• Extra storage space for the whole family 
• Day trips on the whim
• You will instantly look cool!
• One less vehicle to Tax, insure and maintain etc
• More driveway space

Cons:

• Can be costly on insurance and your fuel costs may go up in comparison to a car
• You may struggle to park in tight car parks - I tend to park further away, build my step count!
• You will spend a lot more money on accessories that you definitely don’t need, but will definitely want!
• Your partner can't pack it whilst you're at work! 

And in more detail....

Overview

The Van is a 2016 VW T6 Startline - 2L Diesel - T28 102ps. 

The van has not been remapped and apart from the whole conversion, the van is standard. 

We have had the van for around 4 weeks now, we have been on 3 camping trips

and I have been using it as a daily driver to get me around for work too, so we have already racked up just under 1,000 miles already - which is a lot more than I would normally do in my old daily. Obviously, I am still getting used to driving the van (ashamedly, I have stalled quite a lot!) and I’ll probably update this blog a little later on once I break the van in a bit more.

Practicality

In terms of driving, I have not really noticed that much difference from driving my old car. I was a little nervous at first, as there is a clear size difference between my old car (Renault Captur) and the New T6, but soon settled in and honestly forgot that you are driving something so big. It also helps that the van has parking sensors on the front and rear as well, which gives extra peace of mind when getting onto the drive, or navigating cramped car parks. 

The extra room is brilliant! I work as a support worker for people in their homes and so I have to do quite some travelling. This also means that sometimes I have space in-between visits where I can’t really go anywhere and I'm stuck sitting in my car for an hour. With the van, I can put up the table in the back, get my laptop out and even make a brew if I want to! (It also means I can have a wee in peace rather than having to find a toilet…. Or a discreet bush!). 

Having the fridge also means that I can pop to shop and don't have to panic about getting the fresh food back home straight away. Now, I haven’t actually done this yet, we have only had the van for a few weeks now, however, having that peace of mind is great. 

Fuel Consumption 

I live just outside the city of Nottingham and a lot of the places I visit for work are quite built-up areas, so I do a lot of stop and start driving and spend a fair bit of time in traffic. It appears that I am averaging out at around 39mpg. Doesn’t sound that great, but the van isn’t light and this is a similar MPG to my previous car. On motorways or long country roads, however, the mpg increases to around 50/55mpg. 

Other costs

Obviously, there are other associated costs for having the van on the road, such as tax and insurance. There have been some savings with this, not even with getting rid of two vehicles and replacing it with one, their costs haven't really changed much. 

The insurance is more than I expected, but this is because it is bespoke insurance for a modified van and I wasn’t able to transfer my NCB over to the new policy. The new insurance was cheaper, but not much in comparison to both my car and the old van combined. The tax is about £240 - this is less than the van, more than the car, but quite a good saving overall. 

I won't lie, it's taken a while to adjust to, and I keep checking the MPG - but I really do think it was the best decision for us right now.