The Bus.

So how do you move a family of five a cat and a house from the mountains of BC to the States? Well the best way we could think of was a 40 foot converted School bus. The transition from 2200 round feet ( 40’ yurt living) to a 40’ rectangle took some serious planning and literal jettising of most of our belomgings!

Once we deciced on a bus and realized we did not have the time nor energy to convert a stock school bus into a tiny home , finding a fully converted bus made sense. After our friends, Stephen amd Marney, heard of our plight to find a bus little did we know thay started looking online for us. In a matter of a week, they sent a link to a bus for sale in Calgary , AB that seemed perfect for our needs: 40 foot long, converted to live in, diesel, veg oil , and enough bunks for all of us. We contacted Skye, the owner and began online discussions which eventualy led to us driving to Calgary and looking it over. Skye and friends did the conversion over the course of a couple years and named the bus “Dreamweaver”.

The biggest challenge we had, after Irene , my mother in law, offered to pay for it (thanks Mom) was to get it insured. I probably called close to 30 different insurace companies in Alberta to get coverage and not a single place would touch it. Mostly because of me not having an Alberta drivers liscence. Super frustrating ! People told us not to import it into BC, leavce it registered in AB if you can becuase of the inspection process that would be rigious and could cost a lot more money to get the bus up to code. So we tried every avenue till the road finiallty ened and we could go no further. Sad and hopeless we took a huge gambel. Inanna found out from our BC insurance that they would insure the bus IF it passed insection in BC from a cerified garage. So I asked Skye to do a Alberta inspection and send us the report to get a glimpse of what it might need to pass.. The report came back with a few items but nothing major. After talking it through we decided to buy it and hope for the best. I flew out to Calgary by myself and 30,000$ cash to buy a bus.

All in all the inspection went great! A few lights, a switch some air valves and a new side mirror and we were on our way. We just had to weigh it on trucker scales take the weight to the insurasnce folks and pay for a motorhome policy. Holy cow it worked, what a weight off. Now we coulod get down to the buisness of putting some finishing touches on Dreamweaver(DW) . She was in need a few things for really living in full time like : overhead storage, pantry, book shelves and some minor modificatrions to the 16 foot church pew. Oh and a new paint job on the exterior. Skye and crew did some nice mandalas on the bus and a cool mountain theme but we needed a differnt look for travelling across the country so we wenr with a bit more refined look and choose 3 colors .

Niow to the nitty gritty of this amazing machine. DW is a 2000 BlueBird All American rear engine bus. She lived most of her life in the Fernie, BC school district. Which is where Skye bought her, which he had to impport into AB !! The bus has a cummins 8.3 liter diesel motor, Allison MD 3060r automatic transmission, 100 gal fuel tank, 25 gallon vegetable oil tank, 50 gal. fresh water tank. We can run the bus on waste oil from restaurant fryers and regular diesel when we need. There are 6 , 250 watt solar panels on the roof, a 3000 watt sine wave inverter, 24 volt battery bank and led lighting system throughout. Also, there is a rainwater catchment system that allows an extra 25 gallons of rainwater storage. One of the biggest selling points for us on this bus was the veggie oil conversion. That means that there is another fuel tank underneath the bus that holds 25 gallons of used fryer grease. This tank has an auxiallry fuel pump that sends the oil from the tank up to the main high pressure fuel pump. Along the way it goes through a couple heat exchangers, filters and final heat element. On the dash board there is a toggle swithch that allows switching from the diesel tank to the veg tank, on the fly. So the sysstem works likes this: When we can get fryer oil from restaurants, usually from their big black metaal tank out back, we use a DC pump to tranfer the oil into 4 gallon jugs that we then have to filter through large heavy duty coffe filters before it goes into the veg tank on the bus. By the way, it is getting harder to find used oil now because most places have contracts with some bio-fuel coompany to come and get the oil. Now that the tank is full of filtered veg oil it needs to be heated before the engine can burn it. So that happens by having the enginre up to operating tempature before switching over to the veg tank with the toggle switch. Once the temp gauge in the dash shows its up to temp, usually about 15 minutes after driving around, than I flip the toggle and start using the veg oil. Now I have to make sure before I shut the engine off I flip the toggle back to diesel for about 5 minutes to clear out any veg oil left in the fuel system. This is because , one the veg oil is corrosive due to its high salt content and 2 because of being able to start it the next day. The bus starts easier on straight diesel , especially if its cold . We use the veg oil mostly on the highways and try to not use it in cities because that is what Skye reccomended .

Another big selling point for us with this bus was the off grid potential with the solar system. We knew we would like to be able to boondock when we could and not need to plug into shore power. Also, there are two fresh water tanks, one is a 45 gallons and the other is 30 gallons. The smaller one is fed either by garden hose or the rainwater collection system installed on the roof. Pretty cool. We can collect rain water while driving or parked and the tank fills up from the gutters mounted on the roof. The water is channelked into a drain that is plumbed into the tank undcer the bus.

Here is a list of the things we added to DW so far:

new composting toilet, propane plumbing from rear to kitchen, on demand hot water tank, new kitchen faucet, new curtins, roof top deck. new front tires.

Here is list of things still to do:

install 24 volt battery charger for solor , plumb outdoor shower, deck handrail and ladder, exterior awning,