100th Vaniversary
This weekend marked the 100th night we’ve slept in the van. Being a stats guy, I’ve kept some basic stats on it, some of which are interesting, some not…
STATS:
Nights slept in van total: 100
Broken out by activity category:
Skiing: 39 nights
Climbing: 30 nights
Other: 31 nights
Total ownership time: 16.5 months (500 days)
Thus, 1/5 of the nights since owned have been spent in the van. Not too shabby.
Total miles driven: 20,500
Miles driven per night slept: 205 (yikes)
COOKING FUEL:
Butane canisters: 14 (7 days of cooking per canister)
Jetboil canisters: 9 (11 days of hot water boiling per canister)
We use the jetboil for all water boiling and the butane for cooking. We go through WAY more jetboils in the winter as there’re multiple tea/coffee/cocoa sessions throughout the day.
Average MPG to date (only have data for 18k of the 20.5k miles): 14.92mpg
Assuming consistent MPG, total fuel used for 20.5k miles: 1,374 gal. Holy friggin’ crap.
Estimated total fuel cost (adjusting for 2k miles in missing receipts): $4,396. Holy friggin’ CRAP!
OVERALL THOUGHTS:
For skiing, it’s been a godsend. It makes ski weekends so much better, easier, are more fun. Totally worth it. For climbing, I could go either way on that. In remote areas I worry a bit about it being broken into by either people or bears at the trailhead. Sure, it’s great to take a hot shower after a long day of climbing, but that’s a pretty pricey shower…
Have voiced before that while the facade of the SMB is great, once you tear under the skin there's some pretty shoddy work in places, work quality that I would not expect for an $80k premium pricetag. There are no other options of course, so you take what you get. But still... and little QC on their part would go a long way.
But, they're pretty good people and are trying and no one's perfect, so in the end I'm fairly happy. If I COULD do it again, I would not have bought new, but would have bought one of the 60k miles used vehicles on the website and used the money I saved to make mods and changes.
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2006 RB50 6.0 Diesel
Flatplate water heater (mounted INSIDE), portable butane stove (no propane)
SMB 4WD
Amsoil
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