Halen Vans goes full off-grid
Custom caravans don't come much more self-sufficient than this fully-loaded 21 footerWhen you ask Halen Vans to build you a ‘fully loaded’ off-grid caravan, almost nothing is off the table.
The outer-eastern Melbourne custom builder recently showcased its capabilities in its latest 21ft Halen Van Bathurst caravan built to order for a fussy customer, and is preparing to build another similar one for a show model.
Custom building caravans is a fading business model these days, as the output is tempered by the skill of your workforce to adapt to new ideas and technology and your ability to extract progress payments from the buyer to keep employing them.
Halen Vans, run by Jason and Bec Francis from a compact factory in a Lilydale industrial estate, seems to have mastered this juggling act by the quality of their products, their ability to give customers exactly what they want and by refurbishing quality, older caravans.
Their latest 'highly specced' 21ft Bathurst off-road caravan, built for a buyer who wanted to spend more time off than on the grid, has few concessions to remote living.
The brief was a system that could allow a range of home appliances to function properly away from a 240v power point.
To do this, the van was equipped with a 800AH Enerdrive lithium battery with a 120AH charger fed by nine separate rooftop solar panels, that in full sunlight can potentially pump in 125AH.
With the aid of a 3000W inverter, the system can run its air conditioner 24 hours a day – handy on those humid tropical nights as well as hot days when you're relaxing at camp. You can also supplement its cooling by switching on its pair of Sirocco 12v fans.
All this is monitored by a Simarine battery monitoring system with large wall-mounted touchscreen that also reads the capacity of the van’s three fresh water tanks and grey water tank in litres.
Back to the kitchen. There’s also enough power to spare to run a juicer, boil the kettle, operate a pod or regular coffee machine and toast bread, as well defrost something for dinner in the convection microwave oven... all at the same time as you fry some bacon and eggs for breakfast on the electric induction cooktop.
Afterwards, if you want to wash the bedclothes or your towels, pop them in the 4kg under-bench front-loading washing machine and press ‘Start’.
For dinner you’ll probably want to cook outdoors under the stars and this is when can make use of the Bathurst’s outside kitchen, with its two-burner gas stove, or its Weber Q kettle BBQ.
If you need to send a few emails, the standard CEL-Fi GO Mobile Phone Extender allows you to work outside, while the van's Wi-Fi also allows you to automatically retract the van’s satellite dish and park its automated awning before you set off.
‘That’s not Outback camping’, I hear you protest.
No it’s not, but if you can afford the relatively modest all-up cost of $170,000 that Halen Vans charges for a similar 21ft Bathurst caravan, who cares?
Related:
Rise of the off-road, off-grid caravan
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