I'll be honest and say I have totally lost track of what I've spent on my bus conversion. I have most of the receipts in a couple of boxes but I'm unlikely ever to add them all up. I did download all of my Paypal purchase data for the past few years and that came to $1540.22. That figure does include some clearly non bus items so I'll bring that down to $1,000 and say that the likely bus related purchases are around $1,000.
Mostly on eBay I've been buying funky things that I can't get locally such as the roof vent, the extraction fans, the CPU fans, the USB sockets, cameras, C-DVRs and some hardware such as my lift-on, lift-off hinges and other cabinet hardware plus rivets, rivnuts and so on. I bought quite a bit purely because either Radio Shack was way overpriced or things just were unavailable locally.
I know I spent about $50 building just the wooden frame for the toilet and that's not including the two $12 square buckets of cat litter. The buckets were the right size and shape and the cat litter will come in handy in the toilet. The 120v electrical system as minuscule as it was was about $200.
I don't know how much I spent on wood but a rough estimate would be around 12 sheets of $8 OSB and a ton of treated 2x4. So let's guess that one at about $300.
Paint - again I'm not quite sure but several gallons of paint in cans and quite a few of those spray cans. If I say $300 for the outside and probably the same for the inside, that probably covers it.
Plumbing - fortunately the toilet seat I've already accounted for. The 1.5" tubing was pretty cheap and the angles were's that pricey. The cement mixing tub that's the shower base was $20 and I already had the handbasin from the previous conversion. I'll say that side of things wasn't too expensive but I'll put a $100 on it just in case.
Window tint - again I'm not sure how much I used. I believe I bought it all on eBay but as Amazon isn't letting me into my account I can only guess that I bought possibly $80 worth of tinting film.
Tools are something I bought a lot of so we'll say about $300 on tools. The most expensive was probably my $90 arc welder. I haven't added in welding consumables such as welding rods but I probably have used a lot of rods and I've bought some steel for things that the steel left on the bus by the hillbillies wouldn't do. Having said that, some of the hillbilly steel allowed me to make a very nice workbench.
I'll just do a basic estimate that my actual conversion cost was probably in excess of $3,000. It might be a lot higher than $3,000. What with moving house twice during the conversion process, keeping records has been challenging. I've also redone several things a couple of times over in order to improve them. I'm not yet finished with the 12v battery system and I'm already up to two batteries and I'm on my 5th charge controller.
One of the things that has driven up my costs is that I'm a perfectionist and have also upgraded my requirements as I've been going along. Initially there was going to be no 12v system. Then I put solar powered ventilation in after removing the battery powered ventilation.
If I do another conversion then it will be quite different. Given the fact schoolbus conversions are completely uninsurable as anything but the base vehicle then I would probably instead go with what my first choice of vehicle would have been anyway - a step van. I'd wanted a step van initially but thought those I'd seen were overpriced. One of those would have been very easy to disguise. It could have had a white paint job with "Dirty Laundry Collections" painted on the side. Nobody would have given it a second glance! Solar panels could have been fitted to the roof and some skylights put in. Nobody would have been able to see - unlike the curved roof of my schoolbus.
Add in, of course, the basic cost of the bus which was $4,200 and then the recent $1,300 service and $500 tow that I had. Tires will be coming at some point at between $1,200 and $3,000.
Total expenditure so far is probably in the region of $10,000.
And remember - no matter what you do - you're not going to get any better than 10mpg even on diesel. Insurance will vary across states. Some states actually have insurers willing to insure conversions while others will not.
A lot of people claim re-titling will make a difference. I am assured it will - it will make it that much more difficult to get insurance. I have heard of insurers refusing to insure a bus that is titled as an RV, claiming it's a school bus when the previous (government) owner had titled it as an RV and used it is such. Just keep it titled as a school bus, do a minimal conversion - put in what you want and just insure the base vehicle. If it ever comes down to the insurance company saying "but it's not a school bus" you can point to the label inside that says "school bus".
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