24 May 2025 marks the two year point for us living full-time in our van (Reen says I have to get used to referring to it as a 5R!). As we did twelve months ago, we’re reflecting on how things are going; including lessons we’ve learned, things we really like/enjoy and things that irk us a little.
I guess that for me, the key thing that stands out from our second year is that our life is not anything like what I had imagined it would be before we started. I’d thought that perhaps our first year was a bit “out of the ordinary” and that everything would become more normal (whatever “normal” actually is). And perhaps that’s what has actually happened—and it’s my expectations that need to change to include regular “visits” back to wherever the grandkids are (Sydney at the moment!!).
For Reen (and related a bit to my comments above), her overriding impression from our second year is that she’s still been struggling somewhat with her overall health; recovery from her second knee replacement at the start of the year and then the nasty bout of meningitis and it’s slow recovery (she’s not as young as she used to be 😉). She has just had her six-month review with the neurologist—they’re very happy with how she’s going and cleared her to drive again.
Overall, we have actually had a fair proportion of our second year “out there” travelling, see our trip summaries for 2024 and 2025.
Review of last year’s lessons
The things we listed last year were:
- Driving in our truck is just like, well, riding in a truck
- This combo is big, really BIG!
- Plan, plan, plan and plan some more; but expect change
- Any cupboard door that can open will open
- Live small and live tidy
- Live a little slower
So, how do they hold up 12 months on? #1 is still there, but we don’t seem to notice it quite so much. Similarly for #2, I don’t think anything’s any smaller than it was, but we’re more attuned to the overall size (and see below also). While we’re on a roll of changes to our expectations and perceptions, #3 is still valid as per the opening couple of paragraphs of this post. For #4, I don’t think we’ve had any real “breakouts” this year as we’ve learned to secure cupboard doors better and changed a few packing/storage locations. #5 and #6 are still 100% valid for us (more related to #5 below) and we continue to stand by them as principles.
New things we’ve learned this year
Maybe the “learning curve” has flattened somewhat, but we could only come up with a couple of things from the last 12 months that stand out to us as things we’ve learned:
- Practice makes perfect (or at least a whole lot better) when it comes to hitching, manoeuvring and parking our rig. Reen’s barometer on this is how cranky I get and she’s happy that things have significantly improved. She has certainly learned a lot about how big the van is and how to effectively direct me into some quite difficult spaces.
- All our stuff weighs A LOT! As mentioned last year, everything we own is now in the truck and 5R (see, I remembered!). We’d made some effort to understand the overall weight of this when we’d packed up, but I knew there were certainly a few holes/gaps in our calculations, without really being able to quantify that. In October 2024 we finally put the rig onto a weighbridge with the result that the combo weight was OK (just), but the van was a bit over. Consequently we undertook some urgent transfer of heavy stuff out of the van into the box on the truck and had a good think about what we could dispose of completely. The engineer in me is *still* looking for some degree of quantification of that—without necessarily re-weighing—so watch this space 😐.
Cool stuff this year
One of the the things we’ve both become more interested in over this last year—possibly because of how much more directly it impacts us—is the weather. We’ve had an internal/external thermometer for a while, but used our “secret Santa” gift monies from last Christmas to buy more fully-featured weather station. It took a little fiddling and ingenuity to mount it to the 5R in a way that could be removed to travel, but we’re both enjoying keeping an eye on how things are going in our immediate environment (as I write, we’ve had 78mm of rain yesterday and another 68mm today, hopefully that’s about it for a while!).
Our second notable change for the year addresses one of our whinges from last year, that of the dreaded “dunny duty”. As the incurable romantics that we are, for our 46th wedding anniversary our gift to each other was a new composting toilet 😍. There’s still an element of “jury still out” on this as it’s only been a couple of weeks, but current indications are very promising (after a somewhat dodgy start1).
Ongoing annoyances
At the end of year 2, there are (still) a handful of things that we reckon could be a little better; some relate to design/build decisions and some are more the outcomes of general wear and tear.
- Solar panel and battery capacity: 2 years in we are of the view that our 5R would benefit from extra batteries (at least one, though most recommendations are that they need to be paired, so it would be 2 extra) and the companion solar panels to charge them. This is sorta on the “to-do” list for when we get “a round tuit” 😉
- Overall mains power design: One of the key design/build decisions we made was to be fully electric; meaning (for example) that we forwent diesel heating in favour of reverse-cycle AC and installed an induction cooktop instead of gas. At the time we didn’t fully appreciate the downstream ramifications of this, especially in relation to how the mains input, battery charger and inverter are configured. The impact of this is that we’re limited to 2400W (on a 10A cct) or 3600W (15A) at any one time. The 2400W limit in particular can be reached *very* quickly with the base load of ~250 (NAS, TV, electric recliners, phone chargers, etc) + AC heating (~700) + cooktop (1200) + microwave/air fryer (800). We cope by staging cooking with the AC off; it’s all doable but hardly convenient. Don’t really have a solution for this one as yet, but we’re keeping our eyes open for better answers.
- The large “lounge” slide-out: Reasonably early in the piece, we had a bit of an issue with our larger slide-out where it jammed and broke a vertical joining rod. Nobody’s ever seen that before and there was certainly no obvious reason for it. Anyhow, all fixed under warranty, but ever since has not operated 100% smoothly—both in and out movements have some weird “jumps” accompanied by not-nice gear grinding noises as the slide seems to drop a little (and therefore doesn’t seem to sit completely straight, especially when in). I reckon a couple of rollers under the inside edge *may* help, but haven’t had time to research/discuss this any further.
- Overall truck mechanical issues: While our Iveco has generally been overall fit-for-purpose and reliable, there have been a couple of “weird” issues that have left us feeling a little as if we’re waiting for the next shoe to drop! Fortunately thus far, all have been covered by warranty; but we are still a little apprehensive.
Overall then, is this still our perfect home?
As I concluded last year, I think it’s as close as we can reasonably expect. Sure, there are annoyances, but that’s just life. Overall, I (we) love it!