Hiya,
I'll again suggest buying Ulrich Dolde's book on how he did his own self build, as well as the follow up research he then did to help others follow a similar path. Available on Amazon for instance
- ISBN-10: 3981855310
- ISBN-13: 978-3981855319
or from his own website even just as a (cheaper!) download.
https://www.selfbuildmotorhome.com/...book_ENGLISH_incl_digital_planning_tools.html
I have no connection other than a happy customer. I think whether you might build your own, or to give a good idea of the depth of thought that's needed and what approach may suit you as a paying customer, the money spent on that is very worthwhile.
My wife and I were going to self build in about 2008 but a used camper came up for sale at less than half what our very modest build budget was so we bought it. Living in someone else's design was not hard, for us for three years continuously.
Now we have a new old truck on which we had built in Europe an empty box for us to fit out in part following suggestions by Mr Dolde, and at slightly lower cost than he suggested which was surprising. But still a lot overall. Insulated windows and doors are not cheap, for instance add up your possible costs on
https://www.outbound.eu/en/ then consider many German builders think all windows must be the KCT brand instead because of perhaps a slightly better quality but these are at least twice the Outbound costs. Mad.
I don't think you can sensibly multiply projected build hours by a rough hourly rate plus parts for something like this. How many hours has it taken any company to discover how to make something that hopefully works, and then you have to pay everyone in the company to back up the few people actually getting their hands dirty. Personally I have probably spent thousands of hours looking into what we might want to have and how to do it before Mr Dolde came along and helpfully summarised most of it.
As a for instance with some of what I've looked at, if you want a decent sized lithium battery bank you can buy lots of brands of batteries and lots of brands of chargers, all of which will probably say they are fine to charge lithiums. But since a lithium battery has it's own computing power built in, and you consider the mega cost of just one, maybe you would think that a charger made by the same company as the battery so both sets of software are on the same page would be sensible. And not many do that. Victron does but $$$$. Some chargers use the same charging profile as AGMs, but why would that be OK? Lithiums have yet to be available for long enough to back up their life cycle claims, so how would a third party charger know for sure it will be fine with any other companies lithiums? When you pay someone $300K they should have looked into all that to an extent that hopefully means they can back that choice up, not just one days labour to fit tacked on the build bill.
I would suggest buying used to get better value, and also bypass lead times. If you change your mind and want to sell maybe the hit would be smaller too? Look on Mobile.de, searching motorhomes with 4x4 should bring up something interesting even if it proves what you don't want. Unicat's website is also worth looking at for their layouts, and maybe an idea of where their fees go? I had a good look inside a Blissmobil 6x6 Zetros when they went to a London travel show and would say it did cost the money but was not value for me. But it had one tiny sink only (stupid, and they were not keen on adding another as they do try to keep to a standard plan) and the systems were controlled by an Ipad (also stupid. What's wrong with switches?!). I am currently sorting out the best way of storing and containing food and clothes in one particular area, and trying to be as efficient and robust but cheap as possible. My wife recently said that since our old camper was fine, anything I make will be fine too so I'm over thinking the whole thing way too much! Is that because the couple who built our old camper thought about it long enough to work well though?!?
Buy. Use. Enjoy.
