What is this site about? Well it is about living in cars, vans, trucks or campervans on a minimum income. It is about both planned and unplanned vehicle living. That is living in a car or other vehicle by deliberate choice, or by having no other choice.
So why have I made this web site? Mostly because I want to help people who may find themselves in this situation. I have been homeless before. I've lived in a little shed I built in the bush out of scrap corrugated iron. When I was at university I slept in hidden roof spaces and machine rooms in the university. Later on I slept in my car overnight many times while road tripping. Finally, now I am living in a large campervan, a converted bus. I have some experiences and advice I want to share. I also wanted to do this on a web site of my own instead of one of those bloggs or freebie web sites out there so there will be no silly pop up adds and I have control over how it will appear online.
What is the aim of the web site?
The aim of this web site is to provide practical advice for people living in vehicles. Practical tips on how to manage living in your vehicle is what this site is about. There is also sections for details about my car living experiences. I am also including a forum so that vehicle dwellers can discuss aspects of car living, van living and other vehicle living. People can share information, make suggestions for information to be added to the web site and to request I create tutorials on how to do various car living activities. This is is a growing web site, new information will be added as it becomes available or as I learn new things.
One thing I should point out is that unlike many people who live in cars, I have a solid job that pays pretty well. So I'm willing to test some stuff and theories related to living in cars and write up tutorials and lessons on them. I already have a tutorial on installing a dual battery system. These are the sort of questions I've been wanting to find out the answers to myself. Like:
I am interested in testing ideas other car dwellers would like to know more about. Feel free to nominate ideas for tutorials on the forum. You can also send in articles to me by communicating through the forum. I will accept articles in plain text, or in Rich Text Format (rtf). Due to viruses being able to be contained in MS Word format I will not accept Word documents. I prefer that documents be spell checked using an Australian English dictionary or British English dictionary.
Lastly, I am also interested in hearing the experiences of other car, van, campervan and other road dwellers.
Am I qualified? How safe is my advice?
No, I have no qualifications in electrical engineering, none in mechanics, none in vehicle modifications. So it is reader beware! Most of the stuff here is not hard to do, because really I am pretty mechanically phobic. I fear cars, I fear mechanical repairs and to be honest I fear mechanics (long story but basically a mechanic put me in hospital through shear negligence and stupidity). I have had to learn to maintain my car though through financial necessity and lack of trust of mechanics. The non electrical advice on this web site is all common sense, and pretty easy to do. The electrical advice is dicey. Be warned, you can injure yourself using electricity, even 12 volts. If in doubt, seek expert help.
There are some things I never muck around with on my car, and always leave to an expert:
What's with that copyright policy?
The main reason I have the copyright policy in place that I do have is to keep the information free. Yeah, I know it sounds bizarre. The information here is free, the text however is copyright. This is to stop commercial web sites copying it and charging money for it. The reason why I've insisted on banning having this text copied on to Wikipedia or Wikibooks is to prevent rip off sites that mass copy Wikipedia text and offer it on sites with pop up adds or banner adds. The information on this web site is free to view, with no adds and no commercialism. It is written from one van dweller for the benefit of car, van and vehicle dwellers around the world.
While paid sites have their place, and add supported forums also have their place, this web site is free, the forum here is free. I welcome suggestions for additional forums or information to be added to this site. I don't have regular Internet access though, so please allow time for them to be added. Contact me via the forum.
So the text is copyright, but there is nothing stopping you from writing about the concepts covered here in your own words.
