Van office

What's the question? 

A mobile office that you can also use for the school run? 

@alpin Yes your summary is right.

Get a motorhome or camper and get a 4/5g router. Used to use our Vw camper as an office sometimes if I’d been out on site and had some work to do. Made a nice change from the office etc. 

Not quite comparable, but I have been known to trot off with our caravan to somewhere and basically work during the day, ride in the evening. Not always on a site, sometimes off grid. Any van with a comfy set up seat > desk will do (The table needs to be good and stable). I have a Samsung monitor in mine that also doubles as a streaming TV with a remote, so I can get a second screen off the laptop or just watch TV.

Things you'd definitely want would be a good leisure battery, invertor (or battery / invertor combo like a Jackery) and a diesel heater. If you worry about signal you could get a roof mount antenna too and hook it to a 4/5g router. Once you have those things you're good to go. Oh, and some levelling blocks.

Ohhhh me me! Did my full first week working from my van last year and plan on doing it lots more this year, possibly even a month at a time. It worked extremely well, I've added in a 4g router hooked up to a puck on the roof so as long as there's decent 4G signal I'm good to go. I also added a decent sized solar panel on the roof so again so long as I'm in decent sunlight I have enough power to run my laptop all day as well as the router. It can be quite stressful looking ahead to make sure you pick spots with a good signal but if you're travelling to the same place, you'll get an idea of where will have good signal. I end up trawling reviews of spots and hoping someone mentions the phone signal being good or I have to get there the night before and check before panic moving to somewhere better.

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Two choccie biccies with your tea - respect is due GolfChick 😀

Before my son came along, we had a campervan and I often parked up to work for the day. <br /><br />one thing to note, business insurance, if you use the camper van for travelling to multiple locations for work, is very expensive if not impossible to 

I have done the same thing in my van. Its nice to get a change of scenery (literally) and helped me to focus on different work things (retired now) I tethered to my phone but what are others using as a router?

Yes, just use the hotspot from the phone for signal.

Teams, Zoom and WhatsApp backgrounds are permanently set with a photo of the office from behind the screen

Really interesting topic as this is something I've often thought about doing - especially to allow me to get away for longer weekends in the summer.

I've got a T4 VW so relatively small van but I do have table, leisure battery and large solar panel, inverter and electric hook up when available.

I could tether to my work phone but also interested in options for 4g router.

Couple of things have stopped me doing it:

1) reaction of work colleagues - have relatively senior position and not sure of view that would be taken if conference calling from van (I know I can blur background but as this isnt something I normally do it would be noticed)

2) Perhaps most importantly my van is my solace and way of escaping work and the real world. I'm genuinely worried about blurring the two. I'm pretty confident that once finished work I will be able to put laptop away for rest of the weekend so it's not that. It's just the concept of bringing work/my work persona into the van - dont know if anyone can relate to that or can provide any suggestions?

Isnt a phone just a small 4g/5g router? you can hotspot no probs. i often do this at home when the kids are killing the bandwidth!

I`d love to do this more (have van) but school runs etc limits time.

I`d be interested to know how much solar /leisure batt would i need? i have the vans part sorted.

you can get portable second monitors (not sure how good they are).

regarding calls etc people oftn move about so i've done calls from all sorts of places/trains etc. some companies have a set meeting background so just introduce a static background now and by summer no one will know! haha

Yeah, on the video call front - just use a background. Either use one of the standard ones or go all corporate and stick your company logo on the corner an appropriate photo.

Bet no-one comments.

But I wouldn't as a rule show your "true" background of being in your Campervan / yacht / Ski Chalet / beside the pool as that can be misconstrued as being on holiday / skiving. 😎

Thanks all! What about zoom calls when it’s raining, that might give the game away?!

Circumstances are such that my school run is a long way and so considering options of renting somewhere or perhaps getting/renting a van to use as an office. <br /><br />

Friend of mine does this two days a week, dropping his kids off at the forest school about 45 mins away. Parks up for the rest of the day nearby, and then picks them up at the end before driving home. Has been doing for about 3 years. He doesn’t have any particular special set up other than a half decent battery, makes sure his laptop is charged and has found a spot with decent signal. <br /><br />Like Golfchick I recommend a desk. I have done odd days, and just trying to work off my lap in the rotated drivers seat has screwed my shoulder. 

@golfchick looks like a great set up. have you got a link or more photos of the desk please?

I have worked from van, boat, holiday cabin thing, car even a tent few times. Have a little d-link router thing but tend to use my work phone these days. Colleagues don't seem to care. My boss's boss has joined calls from his VW T6 when he went to some music festival in Germany for the weekend.

Only issue for me was the ergonomics. Have been spoilt with a huge screen and standing desk for a few years now so using a laptop and van seats/table were not great. By the end of the day my back ached.

Don't over think it.

Tip - see if your laptop can run just from usb c connection rather than using an inverter to get 240v. Inverters are only c90% efficient so you end up converting from DC to AC then back to DC for the laptop which is waste.

Depending on your van, if its a full metal one like mine is, (ford transit) it will act like a faraday cage apparently and will therefore reduce the signal so the theory behind the 4g router is that it hooks up to the puck on the roof which is outside the cage. I've certainly noticed in the van with my phone that I can have signal and abolsutely nothing happens and when I tested it in scotland speed on my phone compared to the wifi from router it was significantly different. I also didn't want to continually have to worry about what charge was left in my phone as once the work days finished at 5pm I'm straight out of the van into the countryside and using my phone as my maps.

@mark88 no problem at all, the leg itself is from ebay but there's a MUCH more expensive version of it that also exists but I've had no issues with this version and didn't have the budget for the named version. That's attached to a wooden panel which is then attached to the body of the van and the table top is currently just a spare piece of wood we had lying around as I want to check the size is right before getting something more flashy/permanent. I've added some subtle reinforcing to the table top as was finding the weight of the screen and them my wrists leaning was making the tabletop bow ever so slightly so I'm hoping the next trial will have that cracked but I still might need to make it a little bigger.

That trip I used just my van double bench as we have a swivel base but the dog kept kicking me off (I kicked myself off) so he could chill on the bench and watch the world go by so I plan on picking up a nice fold up chair this year. It's pretty decent as it swivels out of the way so I can make my brew easily and open the sliding door for his freedom if the weather is nice enough.

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I end up trawling reviews of spots and hoping someone mentions the phone signal being good or I have to get there the night before and check before panic moving to somewhere better.

Use the ofcom signal map?

^ What GolfChick said - Vans kill a surprising amount of signal, even when there's plenty of glass. Having an aerial gains tons of signal strength; of course can't make a signal from nothing, but will transform a crop slow one into a workable high speed one, but you have to have a router to plug it into.

That said the Puck is good but the full size version does have better signal again, and with the right kit can do wifi broadcast/receive too, although thats a bit specialist I guess.

Have been living full time in the van now since September 2022.

GF has numerous customers and sits with the laptop (Windows Surface designer thingy with USB-C charging) on average 2 hours a day at the table. We've a swivel table, but fixed seating. She can spin the table if she needs more room.... Depends on the job. We've two heaters and she sits opposite the outlet of each. No idea how she doesn't melt.

I recently picked up an Italian sim card, 13€ for 300gb, and put that in my dual sim phone. My phone is set up as a Hotspot. It canes my phone battery, but we've enough charging points.

I`d be interested to know how much solar /leisure batt would i need? 

Not much if you're moving the van daily. Might even be able to ignore the solar and just have a decent sized battery rigged up to the alternator.

We've a 160ah lipo battery. That gets us through three or four cold, wet and grey days without any solar coming in.