For the Skoolies

Being that I get a lot of e-mails from Skoolies (converted school bus people), I thought I would write a quick list of things that haven't worked for the Blue Daisy. Perhaps it'll help someone along in their conversion.

1) When we bought our bus, some of the conversion had already been done. One difficult to reach part, behind the fridge coming from the stove there was a piece of copper gas pipe put in. Steve wanted to replace it before we left with flexible tubing but we ran out of time. We ended up with a tiny gas leak, only recently. I'm glad we were in the States because it was easy to fix at a propane/BBQ store. So, advice given, only use flexible gas tubing for bus.
2)Every single drawer and cupboard magnet latch we have, has broken. Every single one of them. If we were to do this again, specifically going to Mexico, we would figure out another system. We used heavy duty magnets and they simply broke driving the roads of Mexico. They fell apart or literally broke in half.
3) We lost our hard drive in our laptop from all the jiggling around in the bus. We got lazy along the way and stopped putting our laptop in its comfy padded container and it ruined the computer. We had to replace it but lost nothing because we had just backed it up onto an external hard drive. Still, it was a lesson learned along the way.
4) Steve says he would have a better system for our inverter. The wiring for our bus was a little cooky when we got it and the inverter doesn't have enough supply power to charge much at the same time. You could be charging the computer and use the water pump and it buzzes telling you it's not working. Sometimes we're charging a phone, DVD player and computer all at once.
5) Find a quiet water pump. If you plan to free camp much, you'll use your water pump a lot. The sound of it drives me crazy and it's located right under the boy's bed. I would get a quiet one or put it under the bus.
6) I worried a lot about sunlight. I kept every single window that didn't need to be covered up. I think I would re-think that. Since we've been traveling, we have never actually opened up the back curtains. We have white curtains so light still comes through but honestly, less windows would do more for keeping the bus warm on cold nights. I wouldn't worry so much about it. I would also have made a set of dark curtains for blocking light when you're free camping under a street light or our current campground has a giant light next to my bed.
7)I would have included a washing machine. It really isn't that hard to do this and it would have been greatly loved in Mexico. I washed most of our clothes by hand and it sucked. We could have so easily had a small washer that hooked to our bathroom sink and drained into our shower. We are still planning on doing this sometime soon. Laundrymats suck. No easy way to say it. Their machines are unpredictable, costly and not a fun place to hang around. A washer would pay for itself, in my family of five, in about three months. Dryer is simply not necessarily in our lives of the endless summer.
8) Painted wood floors. Although this isn't really a mistake to fix, the paint (outdoor floor paint)hasn't quite made it. It has rubbed off, chipped ad it looks like hell. I cannot fix it without abandoning the bus for about a week so for now, we live with it. I believe I would replace it with perhaps something synthetic like marmoleum or have stripped the wood floors and varethaned them. I didn't want to do that in the beginning because I feared the used and painted wood flooring we got for free had lead in it. The sand from the beaches, the dropping of toys and the general traffic has simply worn it down, quickly. So, advice - have really great floors.
**Things that I love about the bus:

TV trays instead of a dining room table - we eat outside most of the time anyway
Garage space in back of bus for bikes, toys, boxes of books and cold clothes
Engine cover converted to sitting area