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"Good afternoon!" "G'Day Dan! How are you, nice to meet you!"
"Yeah, good mate. Welcome to Tapawera."
"Yeah, the drive up here was beautiful, eh!"
"It's why we live here."
"Yeah, and there's other members of the GridFree family that live close by?"
"Yep, yep - they're about uh 10 minutes around the corner, and then another probably 10 minutes up the hill it's another one."
"Yeah all right we'll go check them out as well! So this is the bus?"
"This is the bus - my beast! So the lifestyle I'm in now, it means everything to me, cuz it's it's freedom. The freedom to do what I want when I want and not have the pressures of having to conform and getting up and going to work each day.
Hi I'm Dan, we're here in Tapawera, this is my bus that I live in and we got the GridFree crew here today.
Well I'm 45 years old, been working for probably 30 years on the tools as an engineer and a mechanic. Done seven years at sea as a factory engineer on the fishing boats and have just decided to take a bit of time off and enjoy the GridFree lifestyle."
"To be honest Dan I expected a smaller bus."
"Oh did you? Ah, don't do things by halves around here!"
"No, no it's quite the condominium!"
"Yeah she's 12.6 M long. I thought if I was going to do something might as well do it the biggest I can if I'm going to be living in a bus."
"What year is it?"
"It's a 1984 Volvo B10m."
"And so did you buy it as a bus and strip the seats out and do it yourself?"
"Correct, yep so I bought it, it was a coach when I bought it. It was in service and I got it from Nelson Coach Lines here, and then brought it home and then pulled all the seats out of it and then lowered all the floor and then took all the walls out of it and then made it as what it is today.
Yeah! I'm a bit of a bus nerd cuz my father was a coach builder, he built buses."
"Oh choice, oh cool."
"Yeah I'm always interested. I sort of expected - we've been to see other people with buses and I sort of expected it, to be a little bit smaller because a lot of them buy sort of old sort of 70s buses and not many people will get a big coach like this."
"No and it's a perfect runner - like the day I bought it I got a CoF on it. The motor's done 50,000 K so the motor's probably worth more than the actual bus. Yeah it's a good runner I can just open that gate up there and go for a cruise if I want to.
"So you actually keeping it as a runner?"
Oh absolutely, 100% just fully off grid I can just go cruising and do whatever I
want to do and yeah live life basically.
So the decision to buy a bus was something I've been pondering on for a couple of years. Um, I had some money there to buy a a house or good deposit for a house and I thought well do I keep working every day? I suffer from anxiety quite a lot, so I thought I'd just buy a bus and just get away from the grinds of having to get up and go to work each day for a while and just do that yeah.
So before I moved here I lived just around the around the road and built the bus in a shed and my landlord her son sold his house and he wanted to move back to the shed so I had to move on and my mate he just bought this house here out here in Tap so we put the pad down and put the bus there and I help him pay the mortgage and yeah, boys pad.
The community for the off-gridders around here is is really good! There's only three of us at the minute um and that's just because of your your guys stuff and the community in itself where I live here in Tapawera is is really good, everybody sort of knows everybody anyway it doesn't matter whether you're on grid or off-grid.
Welcome aboard!"
"Wow, that's a lot bigger than I expected."
"Yeah, well, it's made a good use of the space that I've got in here."
"And so you've insulated and lined the whole thing have you?"
"So it's all got PIR board, 50mm through here, 75mm in the walls. I took all the tin out of it and took all the polystyrene out of there and stopped them rusting from the inside out. And then put all PIR board in there, it's probably about 300 hours work. The floor used to be about that high.
"Oh yeah cuz they have a walkway in the middle ay?"
"Yup, they have that walkway so I lowered all the floor so it's all level and it's a good height for me."
"That's a lot of work."
Lots of work, hundreds and hundreds of hours and to look at it, no-one would actually know all the hours that I put on, yeah it's quite a quite a lot, it's all hidden."
"So that's the thing if you buy a bus that's got the seats and everything in it there's a lot of work to convert that into a space."
"Oh 100% yeah - it is easy and it's not easy, yeah it's a big job."
"What's with the DJ turntables?"
"Um well yeah that was my past life! I was a hard house hard trance DJ in Christchurch for many many years the early 2000's. Yeah so I'll always have my decks and always have my tunes and just part of me, who I am yeah and I'd rather listen to vinyl than just normal CDs and stuff."
"You need a window open up here and you can have a party."
"Yeah getting old now!
So if someone else was going to do the road that I was going to do with the bus there are many things you need to think about. The biggest one being the CoF for the seats, because as soon as you turn a coach into a motor home you have
to get certified seats in it and that includes engineering reports drawings and stuff like that. Even though I'm a certified welder, I still have to get a a certified drawing to do to get the LT400.
There's there are lots and lots and lots and lots of things to think about actually to be honest. But the price of diesel now is also making it a little bit harder to just want to go off driving. I had a friends that had a bus like mine they took it down the coast cost them over $800 in diesel. Their friends took another van smaller
and they paid $170. So they've now sold their big bus and bought a smaller one.
So the price of diesel and the CoF rigmarole is, yeah it's actually quite hard."
"What do you do for work?"
I've done the hop season for Hop Revolution as an engineer there, so run the shed there for 26 days. So I just do little bits of bobs - fix cars. Basically don't get up to an alarm."
"Yeah this is the GridFree culture right? Which is, do you want to be a slave to a wage? Or change your life a little bit and live a little bit differently and get get your life back?"
"Yeah and that's exactly what I've done here so."
"And how did you design the layout here what?"
"CAD was what I used, which is Cardboard And Ducttape."
[Craig laughs]
"Um so the solar panel cardboard that I got from you guys I used that and I made a cardboard bench and I made a cardboard shower and I made it all out of the cardboard from you guys actually to be honest."
"Ah right!"
"And I looked at it and I sat there and thought yeah that'll do and then just changed a few things and done it that way.
Since I've been living in the bus my life's changed - the fact I don't have to pay rent - as much as I used to have to pay - I still pay a little bit where I'm at now, but just the joy of being in something that's mine that I created and that I actually own and that no one can actually take it off me, is has actually made my life really good.
Would I recommend GridFree? Absolutely. I've sold two kits for my friends already through them, two guys that were looking for it I straight away put them on to GridFree. So absolutely would recommend GridFree and that's not being cheesy, no 100%!
Yeah so the kitchen bench I just got a big slab and cut it all up and made it sort of to fit and got a nice big sink. My friend she made an awesome backsplash it's one of a kind, they're all hand painted and it's um yeah it's one of the best features of the bus I think."
"Yeah it looks awesome ay."
"And full gas oven which is awesome great for cooking."
"Yeah! And so you built the cabinetry and everything yourself?
"Yep, made all that brought the ply and all the runners and just put it all together myself."
"Yeah I love that look, ay."
"And then obviously there's um some ply to tuck into here to finish off the roof and make it look tickety-boo so yeah, getting there."
"It's cool that you can live in it where you're working on it, ay?"
"Yeah, that's right that's that's the main thing about it and um and it is liveable, everything's function-able, so happy days!
Yeah, so the plan with the bus to finish it off would be yeah definitely be to finish the walls um get it to a point if I wanted to sell it um so someone come along and they go 'oh yes that's everything I needed', they didn't have to do anything, that would be the level that I want to get it to in the next year or two. I'm very happy with the layout and how it is at the moment. If I was to buy another bus I would buy one that had the engine in the back possibly just more spacing for the tanks, water tanks and that allows the layout of the bus over top. My bus is built over the shower and that's just because I've only got one space for my tanks.
Come through here this is the bathroom. So I've got a full size washing machine,
full size shower, um compost toilet."
"Wow, okay normally when we do caravans and buses the bathroom is a compromise, right? Yeah, not here!"
"Yeah, well to be honest the whole bus the layout is built around that drain. So where that drain is and where my water tanks are the whole build was that drain."
"Right."
"Yep so it all relied on where that was and that relayed where the kitchen wall is going to be where everything's going to be and also where that hole was in the roof there. So you can shower at night time and look at the stars or in the rain so you getting showered and rained on which is pretty cool, I think!"
"Right, so you put the show tray here and then went right that's it?"
"Cuz of the steel framing and because it's actually got to come through a pipe and then throw another pipe into a sump pump on the other side of the tanks and then get pumped back into the gray tank. It's actually quite a rigmarole to get full sized
tanks, yeah so it's all because of that drain.
So any tips or advice for other people would be just do it, don't be afraid, don't worry about anything, and just if you want to do it just think about, it think about it, and it will come it'll just manifest, and do it! It is actually worth it!"
"Is the toilet here working or?"
"Um, no it's just a compost one um but if you put a bucket in there then yes she's good to go, it's got a fan and that'll be there ready to go and stuff like that so, but I just use the toilet inside."
"Yeah, yeah so this is perfect for when you hit the road right?"
"Yep 100% yep and if I ever sell it and someone wants a compost toilet that's in there yeah, so this all works, I haven't got the drains in yet but this is all plumbed up. Basically Bunnings I built it from, so everything's basically from Bunnings. There you go, good ad for Bunnings. Yeah, yeah go Bunnings."
"So you've obviously been building this for a while what were the best moments in the build?"
"Some of my proudest moments would be when I had my first shower, just to turn that shower on is a lot of work. Pumps, tanks, heating, all of that sort of stuff, location. Also turning the lights on was a good good buzz and sleeping in it for the first time was pretty cool."
"Yeah, so it's quite a luxurious bus cuz it's got a big kitchen, it's got a big bathroom, and a big bedroom, proper bed with with a big flat screen TV in there, yeah perfect!"
"Yeah, well you know you only live once might as well have everything good, so yeah."
"Bus living is quite nice!"
"Yeah it is for me yeah and in this particular bus it is yeah I'm quite happy, I go to sleep with a bit of a smile, so yeah now I'm quite proud quite happy with it, it's good.
Having solar set up is definitely good for my mental health um because I don't have to pay the power bill every month, when it comes around. Um, it's just another bill that you go 'oh, gosh', you know and if you have a bit of a cold winter or something and you use more power then it's more of a 'gosh!', um I don't get those goshes anymore!
The reason why I chose solar power over mains power is because I can be Gridfree um and I can be anywhere I want to be, basically. Um and being in the bus and being fully self-contained, I could be in this paddock here and it's fine I'm happy I could go out and do welding or fabricating or just living basically.
So the best off-grid hack I would have would be: buy more than you need, as much as you can afford. Actually, if you can afford a bit more actually do it in the long run you'll probably be better off because you're not sacrificing having to watch what you're using, what power you're using when you're using it, basically.
I'm definitely an advocate for solar because I think that the power companies are a have. And it's, you become a slave once you get into the into the system and I think standing on your own two feet is absolutely brilliant and absolutely recommend it to anybody.
So this is the GridFree Freedom kit that I got from you guys and this is where I
store it. I found a good spot here for it and have the batteries above it so it's all nicely close together.
"Yeah, plenty of space in the back of the bus here for it eh?"
Oh, absolutely that's why I sort of went with that mid-engine bus, I don't think I'd do that again spacewise but uh yeah heaps of room to throw the toys in there."
"And what made you choose the freedom kit?"
"The size, because I'm an engineer and a welder and I want to be able to use my compressor or grinder, welder or if I go anywhere I can use my tools, being the 5kva kit allows me to do that."
"Yeah it'd be more than enough power for you."
"Yeah yeah yeah and that's what I wanted and the price was awesome and just to buy the whole kit was it's easy a no brainer really and yeah the wiring of it is simple, it's great, absolutely love it recommend it 100%!"
"Yeah and do you change the way you're living at all because you're on solar?"
"No, no."
"Cuz with with that kit you can pretty much just live normally?"
"Exactly, and that's why I did it, I didn't want to have to sacrifice, anything, so no no I don't, nothing so yeah to be honest actually it hardly gets used yeah for its full spec um but I have run my compressor on it and have run my welder on it."
"Yeah it's great to have that extra capacity in the solar kit if you want to run equipment on it."
"100%, I'd rather have more than less and not have it."
"Did you install it yourself?"
"Yes, I installed it yep the whole lot. And then I got a electrical certification on it, EWOF. That little purple instruction book that GridFree give out that's... if you can't do that there's something wrong with you."
"It's years in the making that book!"
"So my day-to-day usage for me varies on each day whether it's wet or dry obviously. Um but mainly I get up when I feel like it normally about 9:00, as far as power usage goes I might watch a bit of TV or jump on my turn tables or something like that but don't use much of it it to be honest. For me I don't think there's any sacrifices of living off grid with the solar system I have because it's so hearty I don't go without.
"So this is the water works, business end of things."
"Is that an instant hot water heater there?"
"Yep so that's a Suburban Nautilus, they call it, and it's just on demand."
"So you've obviously got a pump that you use to get water pressure? What's that?"
"That's just in here, it's a 55 PSI 11 litres a minute pump and then there's an accumulator there."
"And I notice all your wirings all clean and tidy in there. Good job."
"Yeap! Thank you. That way you don't get any surprises when you're running down the road, nothing rubbing on anything or something doesn't work or fire."
"And is that when you lowered the floor?"
"Yep so that's how far I've cut out of the floor. all of that there.
"When I was living in Motueka, for years I'd be driving through Tap and I'd be like 'who wants to live in Tapawera?' - I don't think I want to leave! I love it, it's awesome! There's no KFC, there's no McDonald's, there's no nothing, it's just a Four Square, a cafe, and no traffic lights, no roadblocks!
What I love most about this lifestyle is the freedom, just the freedom, basically. The freedom to do what I want when I want, jump on my dirt bike, and go ripping through the hills, get down the river with the dogs, and to just be me and enjoy life and not have to work for the man. I am way happier absolutely! Life is great, I have zero problems and yeah no life is good very good!"
We're back in Tapawera for the next episode of GridFree Living with Dan's neighbours, come back to check that out!
