Great campervans make great use of the space available. Some T5 and T6 conversions we come across look great at first sight, but their owners complain that they are completely impractical to live with. It’s one of the reasons we have a hire van, so our potential customers can actually live with one of our vans for a short while, to see how carefully thought it is.

I was watching TV recently where it said that scientists believe there are over 400,000,000,000 solar systems in our galaxy and possibly 100,000,000,000 galaxies in the universe. That’s an awful lot of space. When you think that each solar system has a number of planets in it, even if there are only 5 planets per solar system, that would make over two thousand million million planets.

To me it seems obvious that somewhere in amongst all that, there must be at least one planet that has intelligent life on it (whether there is intelligent life on earth is a debatable point as far as I’m concerned).

So…. ‘somewhere in a galaxy far far away……’ there may well be someone or something writing a blog about camper van conversions as well as me. Weird.

Space is something we all seem to crave. When people use one of our vans they almost always comment on how much space there is in it. And I guess that’s down to careful design, so that maximum use is made of the space available. Over the years we’ve modified our designs as we’ve learnt more and more about what works well and what does not, and we make sure that as much ‘gubbins’ as possible is located in what would be otherwise wasted space.

Take something as simple as a double swivel seat. There is actually more storage space under the seat once we’ve installed the double swivel than there was before we started.

Want a leisure battery? They are fairly big and very heavy, not the easiest things to hide. Some conversion companies make a habit of putting their leisure batteries in a cupboard, taking up valuable space. We don’t do that if we can help it and we usually locate the leisure battery under the driver’s seat in a space that’s usually wasted.

What about an auxiliary heater? We usually put them under the passenger seat. Yes it will take up a small amount of room, but it’s a really effective place to locate it. This is fine if it’s a single seat, but what if the customer wants a double swivel passenger seat at the same time? This is a problem at first glance as the wiring and supply pipes can’t be installed in a rotating double seat base. However, as with almost every problem, we have a solution. We’ll put the heater under the driver’s seat and then put the leisure battery under the vehicle in a space that is otherwise wasted. It’s a bit more work, but the end result is maximum benefit for the customer.

Now what about a water tank? We could just put it in a cupboard, but that reduces usable storage again. So instead we put it in an area that is almost useless as a cupboard.

Of course the problem with hiding things away is that if any maintenance is required, the last thing you want to do is to have to dismantle the entire vehicle just to gain access. So although it’s unlikely to be needed, our careful design ensures that various panels can be removed if necessary to gain access to everything from solar charging units to water tank pumps. It’s little things like this that make all the difference in the end. Such attention to detail may not be visible at first glance, but it’s something we pride ourselves in and something that sets 8 Ball Camper Conversions apart from many others.

The end result? A camper that’s easy to maintain and that has loads and loads of usable space…..OK maybe not quite a galaxy of space, but at times our conversions can feel a bit like a Tardis when it comes to usable space.

Here’s a van we are working on at the moment…about to have some ‘gubbins’ installed.