Camper Van Conversion Kits Suck, Here’s Why

Published at 21:33 on 23 September 2023

I mean, one of the chief advantages of having any RV, even a tiny one, even a simple one, is that it shields you from the weather better than tent camping, thereby extending the camping season.

So kits like this one and this one are just plain stupid. Notice the kitchens. They slide out of the rear. You cook outdoors. Again, the whole purpose of an RV is that it should shield you from having to cook outdoors. Suppose the weather dawns rainy and windy and you just want that cup of hot coffee or tea. With an RV, that should be no problem, turn on the stove, and heat it up. No struggling to cook in the rain.

Yet you can’t do that with these RV’s. You get to cook outdoors in the rain and wind, just as if you were tent camping. Yes, I see that tail gate lifted up. Such gates do not provide very good protection from the rain. Anyone who has tried to use them as such when camping can attest to how they let water drip into the interior when left up. They are intended for briefly sheltering from the rain while loading and unloading, when a few stray drops are no big deal. That’s it.

But why, I wondered. Why do they have such stupid kitchens, when Westfalia showed the world long ago that intelligently-designed interior kitchens can fit just fine in a smaller van.

I think I figured it out:

  1. Making life easier for DIY’ers.
  2. Liability.

Both are related to propane and fire. If you don’t want to rely on a big battery, an RV stove is a propane stove. Now you have to permanently install a cabinet, a propane tank, and route fuel lines. Nowhere near as easy as assembling some furniture and plopping it in.

Worse for the manufacturer, what if those DIY’ers you encouraged botch the job of running gas lines or installing the tank? The result could well be a fire or explosion. What if the stove was installed with improper clearance and setbacks? Fire. In both cases, lawsuit time.

You can’t legally call it an RV unless it ships with a sink, stove, and bed. So you can’t simply leave a kitchen out of something marketed as an RV conversion kit.

The solution to the problem is to have a place where the user can put a portable camp stove. Propane line installation headaches, gone. Propane line installation liabilities, gone. Portable stoves are not certified for interior use, so the design has to be an exterior kitchen that slides out, getting the stove away from interior spaces.

Problem solved! For the manufacturer, at least.

End result this that conversion kits inevitably have designs that seriously limit their functionality as RV’s. Probably a big part of the reason why there aren’t many sellers of such things. Really, the only practical options are paying someone to customize a van, or doing it totally oneself from scratch.

Why Canister Stoves Suck

Published at 08:18 on 26 August 2023

Introduction

I have blogged about this before, but it was quite a few years ago, so I figure it’s time for a rehashing.

I prefer liquid fuel stoves. Most of the world prefers canister stoves. If you read a typical guide to camping stoves, you will see it recommend canister stoves in most cases. I do not understand most of the world. This post explains why.

The Waste

You cannot safely refill canisters. There are products sold that claim to let you refill them, but they are not safe. It is too easy to get a tiny speck of dirt in the one-way valve of a canister when attempting to refill it. Then you have a gas leak on your hands. Not good.

So when a canister becomes empty, you must discard it. And since it is virtually impossible to recycle stove canisters (virtually all recycling agencies forbid them), “discarding” means throwing it in the trash.

Not Refillable

To reiterate, canisters are not refillable (see immediately previous section). When you buy a new canister stove, you get to leave home on your first camping trip with a new, completely full, canister.

From then on, except on that rare trip where your canister usage and your outings happen by luck to align, you get to take a partly-empty canister. Or you get to add to your ever-growing collection of partly-empty canisters at home. Or you get to take multiple canisters on a trip where only one could have sufficed, adding weight and bulk.

You will virtually always be juggling multiple canisters, most of them partly full.

The Absolutely Lousy Cool-Weather Performance

Note I said “cool” not “cold” above. Canister stove fans like to act as if performance issues only kick in during wintertime conditions. Unless you limit your camping to South Florida and the coastal parts of Southern California, this is a lie.

Once a canister gets below the ¼ full mark, performance issues start kicking in around 10˚C (50˚F). A canister stove operating under such conditions can’t hold a full flame for more than about a minute. Output will then start rapidly declining, eventually reaching simmer levels.

A full canister can indeed offer acceptable performance down to about the freezing point, but see the previous section. You will almost never be operating your stove on a full canister. You will almost always be operating it on a partly-full one.

In my part of the world, overnight temperatures can drop below 10˚C pretty much any time of the year, even in the middle of the summer. In the mountains, they can drop to around 0˚C even in midsummer (yes, I have woken to frosty mornings in July and August). Cold mornings are exactly when I want my hot cup of tea and hot oatmeal most, and they are exactly when a canister stove will refuse to deliver same in a timely manner. Canister stoves disappoint, even in the summer.

The solution, of course, it to take multiple canisters on a trip, so you can switch to a full or nearly full one on such mornings. And again, you end up juggling multiple canisters in various stages of partial emptiness, and sooner and more often than simple unrefillability would dictate.

Liquid Fuel Stoves Solve All of These Problems

  • Less waste. Liquid fuel is sold by the gallon in thin-walled containers that use less resources than a canister.
  • Refillable. Just top off the tank before you leave on your weekend outing. No need to take extra fuel. No need to juggle partly-empty canisters.
  • Cold-weather performance. A liquid-fuel stove will operate at full blast until the tank is empty, no matter how cold it gets overnight.

About High-End Canister Stoves

There are some high-end models of canister stove that solve the cool-weather issues. They do this by operating with their canisters upside-down. Effectively, they are liquid-fuel stoves that use the pressurized liquid inside a canister, instead of highly refined gasoline, as their fuel. Many of them can, in fact, operate on gasoline simply by changing tanks.

This solves the cold-weather problem. Unfortunately, you are still stuck with unrefillable canisters. Given these stoves are as complex as liquid-fuel stoves (because they are liquid-fuel stoves), they are as expensive as them. Since one is spending that sort of money anyhow, why not just spring for a refillable gasoline tank and use the stove that way?

Where I Think Canister Stoves Make Sense

All the above said, there are some situations where I think a good argument exists for canister stoves:

  • Group campouts with the pyrophobic. Lighting a liquid fuel stove is not so simple as lighting a canister one. The process can intimidate some people. Many modern canister stoves even come with built-in igniters, making them even more like a kitchen stove.
  • Air travel to areas where canisters are available. It is hard to completely clean all traces of fuel from a liquid-fuel stove, and if there is literally so much as the faintest whiff of gasoline on one, airport security will probably confiscate it. Not a trace of gas remains on the stove part of a canister stove more than a few minutes after use. So it is easy to take the stove, provided you can procure a canister or two after you land. (You will probably have to leave a partly-used canister behind, but that is a relatively minor loss.)
  • Budget-sensitive, infrequent use. Canister stoves cost significantly less than liquid fuel ones. If you don’t go camping very often, the better performance of a liquid-fuel stove might not be worth the extra money.

They are simply not the default best choice for most as they are so often claimed to be, that is all.

There Will Be No Fast Recovery

Published at 09:00 on 22 April 2020

There is much debate among pundits as to whether we are now in a “V-shaped recession” or a “U-shaped recession.” The answer is neither, but particularly not the wished-for (short duration, quick recovery) V-shaped recession.

The reason is that this is not a typical recession. It was instigated by a pandemic, not by the more typical operations of the business cycle. There is no cure for the coronavirus, nor will there be for twelve to eighteen months at least.

The initial lockdowns will end, but that will not prompt a return to the old normal. The disease will still be out there, and it will keep flaring up from time to time, in various places. Each time that happens there will be a cycle of negative, confidence-sapping news stories followed by spate of necessary but costly social-distancing measures. Those measures won’t be so widespread as the present ones, but they will still be disruptive. There will be some recovery in the next six months (so, not U-shaped), but it will be only partial; the economic downturn will be far from over (not V-shaped, either).

There are whole categories of businesses whose models depend on large numbers of people congregating in one place that are not by any stretch of the imagination essential: sports stadiums, movie theatres, music venues, and so on. These are the last businesses that will be allowed to reopen; odds are that many of them won’t be allowed to do so until a vaccine is available.

By that time, the damage will have been done. Most of those businesses in the previous paragraph won’t be able to survive their prolonged shutdowns. They will fail, and after they fail, most will not come back. Cinemas, for instance, may become as unusual as coffeehouses once were in the USA: a cultural attraction that larger cities may have a few of, but which are absent from the vast majority of the country.

This is not a normal crisis that we are living through; this is a major crisis, on the scale of the two world wars. When you have a crisis this big, you don’t get the old normal back, ever. You get a new, different, post-crisis normal.

It’s not all gloom-and-doom, either. Two more likely victims of the coming permanent changes are urban gentrification and the decline of many small towns. Many of the professional class whose demand is responsible for skyrocketing urban real estate values don’t particularly even like the big cities their careers compel them to reside in. Widespread telework has been possible for well over a decade; the only thing stopping it was management inertia, and that inertia has now been dislodged. We’re unlikely to get the old normal of mandatory in-person office work back.

This will likely both take the pressure off urban real estate prices and act as an economic shot in the arm to many struggling rural areas, as formerly urban professionals relocate to them. (But not all of them, and not equally. Rural areas with abundant scenic and recreational opportunities will disproportionately benefit; Wyoming will fare better than Kansas. West Virginia, a scenic state not far from the Boston/Washington megalopolis, may be the biggest winner of all.)

Not just local economies will change in these states: politics likely will, as well. Those newcomers will take their politics with them, and will help their new home states become less right-wing over time. It’s already happened in Nevada, which used to be a reliably conservative state, and which now leans Democrat, thanks to millions of Californians moving to Las Vegas. (And if you think it far-fetched it might happen in Wyoming, check out how the county there most affected by people moving in for scenic and recreational opportunities, Teton, votes right now.)

The big cities, by contrast, will probably become affordable to many of those who have long been in danger of being priced out of them. This will happen at the expense of many real-estate speculators, who will find out that speculating in real estate is not a sure thing. Many of today’s upscale apartment buildings will become tomorrow’s downscale and affordable ones. It may become as much of a cultural trope for urban artists to reside in battered apartments that were once luxurious (possibly large funky ones created by knocking down walls from adjoining units) as it once was for them to reside in lofts converted from industrial spaces.

But, whether the changes are for the better or for the worse, they are coming. What is not coming back is the old, pre-COVID normal (and it is certainly not coming back quickly).

Another Road Trip

Published at 13:30 on 24 July 2018

Also to eastern Washington, also partially for botanical survey reasons, also because since I’m going on the long drive for the botanical survey, I might as well see and do other stuff on the way.

This includes revisiting a favorite campsite of mine, and hopefully checking out other campsites that might be of use for seeing upcoming the Perseid meteor shower. That favorite campsite of mine is on a very rough road; for the meteor shower I want to be on a road that any old passenger car can safely traverse, because it is going to be a group event.

Back from Wyoming

Published at 19:15 on 14 October 2016

More precisely, back from a nearly 2-week road trip that went as far east as western Wyoming. It involved seeing a part of the country I had always wanted to see, revisiting the place I finished up my college degree, helping a friend collect environmental sensors from the field, a quick swing through Yellowstone National Park, seeing a significant chunk of Montana for the first time, and visiting some of my companion’s friends in rural Idaho.

I had always wanted to see the Malheur basin ever since the area caught my eye on highway maps as a teen. Alas, it’s been a dry year, and the Federal government is still (understandably) jittery that right-wing extremists will try re-occupying the refuge headquarters, which meant that:

  • The area was nowhere near as lush as I imagined it; water levels were sufficiently low that many of the wetlands had dried out, and
  • It was impossible to see Malheur Lake itself, because the only road providing access to it passes through the headquarters compound, which is still very much off-limits.

Before we got there, I was studying the DeLorme Atlas of Oregon while my companion drove and noticed a place called Glass Butte that our route would soon skirt. I surmised (correctly) that the name alluded to obsidian deposits, so an impromptu side-trip was scheduled in the hopes that it might prove to be the place where one can find the rare red-and-black obsidian I’ve seen in collections from Oregon (as opposed to the more common plain black kind). Indeed it was.

I did then visit a real oasis in the desert: the Cache Valley of northern Utah and southern Idaho. It’s an area I’m very familiar with, having attended Utah State University for two years. It was a nice surprise that the valley was still very much rural and had not filled in with houses. The extensive wetlands in its bottom were, in contrast to the mostly dried-out ones at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, very lush and green.

The college campus had of course changed a lot since I had visited, but I chose to focus on what had not changed. The administration has done a good job of preserving the integrity of the more historical parts of campus, focusing on putting the new buildings where large parking lots used to be, so many campus views were precisely as I had remembered them.

It’s little-known except by locals, but that region also has some of the most spectacular fall colors in all of North America: in the surrounding mountains, the red and oranges of maples and the clear gold of the aspens contrast with the sombre green of firs. Nowhere else I can think of has all three elements (northern New England comes close, but doesn’t have the large numbers of aspens). Alas, it’s a short display that comes early, and true to form a storm and cold spell the week before had already left the trees mostly bare and blasted, despite it being the first week of October.

Then it was on to western Wyoming to collect the data loggers. That’s a place I visited a few times on day trips in my college years, so I got to see what Kemmerer (not much different) and Jackson (lots of new construction) looked like after about thirty years. That involved learning the hard way that my partner will call just about anything a “pretty good road,” even a rough track only suitable for four-wheel drive vehicles (my truck is only two-wheel drive and not suited for such routes). No lasting harm was done, and he did readily agree to cover the resulting towing bill. The weather was cold with snow flurries.

Then a short trip through Yellowstone. We spent a day watching geysers and saw about ten different ones erupt. They were all frequent performers. I can’t really be disappointed that it fell short of what I saw thirty years ago. That involved a simultaneous display of four major geysers (including Giantess, which erupts only irregularly) jetting hundreds of feet into the air.

I wish I had studied the maps more on the following day. Had I known we were going to pass through Butte, I would have scheduled a detour to some labor history sites, including the grave of Frank Little. My efforts at trying to do something impromptu were frustrated by it being both a Monday and a holiday; both the visitor information center and the labor history museum were closed.

We camped just east of Lolo Pass and that night were treated to the heaviest snowfall of the trip. That may sound dramatic, but even that just amounted to a light dusting. There was actually more snow at our campsite than there was at the summit of the pass! Highway 12 west of the pass has to be one of the loneliest highways in the lower 48 states; we drove for hours through forested mountains before we finally reached the small town of Lowell. Traffic was very light, maybe one vehicle every five minutes.

After spending the night with my travel partner’s friends near Riggins, we resumed driving west. It was a relief to see the sign welcoming us back to Washington as we crossed the bridge from Lewiston to Clarkston, even though it was the opposite side of the state and many more hours of driving lay ahead. It was nice to see things get progressively greener and greener with each passing mile from The Dalles to Cascade Locks.

My travel partner lives in Portland, where I had planned to spend the night. After hearing about the series of storms due to hit (high winds, heavy rain) I changed those plans and decided to rest a few hours then press on and try to beat the worst of the weather. I’ve been unpacking and tidying up since and after spending over a day doing so, it was time to type in this post.

It was fun, but it was also time to end when it did.

Red Huckleberry Jam

Published at 08:07 on 12 July 2016

I had planned on picking dewberries and blackcaps on the Toandos Peninsula last weekend. I know of a good spot for both there.

But fate intervened and ruled that option out, so I went to a revegetating clear cut where I have noticed a lot of berry plants before in the Green Mountain State Forest instead. That resulted in a different harvest, as most of the berries I found there were red huckleberries instead.

They’re a new one for me. Oh, I’ve snacked on them many times, but never set out to harvest them and bring a quantity home with me. The jam turned out great: I followed the “low sugar” recipe, using a tad more than the recommended amount of sugar because the berries are naturally tart. For the same reason, I opted not to add any lemon juice to the recipe, figuring there was plenty of natural acidity to set the pectin.

The result was tangy and flavorful, just like the berries it was made from.

Frosty Nights

Published at 22:01 on 2 January 2016

We’re having a spell of clear, dry weather and in the winter that often means cold weather, as the clear skies and long nights let temperatures drop. This time is no exception to the rule. Afternoons are still in the forties, but anywhere the sun doesn’t reach doesn’t thaw.

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Different than I Imagined, but Nice

Published at 18:36 on 30 September 2015

P9291828wThe main difference between how I imagined the North Fork Skokomish Valley (a.k.a. the Staircase area of Olympic National Park) and how it actually was is that I had imagined it as being much more broad. In fact, there really wasn’t much of a flat valley bottom at all once one got above the campground.

It was, however, full of mile after mile of intact lowland forest, pretty much as I had imagined. It wasn’t all huge old trees (natural calamities do “reset the clock” in forests), but there still were an awful lot of them.

I also did manage to successfully make a couple of PSK31 contacts operating portable, so chalk up another goal for the summer season as accomplished.

The campground was surprisingly well-patronized, given that it was a weekday in late September and the water had been shut off. It’s probably just as well I didn’t even try to get a spot there last summer.

A New Experience

Published at 21:04 on 1 August 2015

The best thing that happened on the Deer Park camping trip was the new experience of being on a mountaintop as the sun set.

I’ve been on mountaintops many times, but always as the part of day hikes that involved the goal of getting back to the trail head before nightfall. This time, the summit was only 1.2 miles from where I was camped, most of the route back was on a road, I had a light and spare batteries with me, and the moon was nearly full.

So it was easily possible to stay until the sun had completely set, which is exactly what I did, watching the colors change on the mountain slopes, the fingers of darkness creep up the walls of the valleys, and the sky turn colors in the west.

It was a new and magical experience, and the light from the moon meant I didn’t even need to use my light on the way back to camp.

Back from the Mountains

Published at 10:36 on 31 July 2015

Finally went camping at Deer Park after wanting to for over 20 years. Granted, many of those years I wasn’t much into camping in general and just kept procrastinating on it, by choice. And for a good chunk of the other ones, I was in either California or Oregon.

But for the past few years, I have been in this area, but I just haven’t had the time. There’s no reservations for the Deer Park campground, which means that a quick weekend getaway is impossible: if you attempt one, you’ll find that every spot is already occupied for the weekend by people who took a day or two off to get there early and secure their spot.

So it was a natural idea of someplace to go now that recent circumstances mean I might as well make my getaways on weekdays, when it’s less crowded.

It’s a beautiful spot, and I plan on returning, but it’s not quite as idyllic as I imagined, because even on random weeknights the campground completely fills up, so you don’t get the privacy you would at some spot with lighter use.