Converting a 2018 Honda Odyssey into a Family Campervan

A Honda Odyssey has 158.0 cubic feet of cargo volume behind the first row with seats removed, a 155A Denso alternator, power sliding doors, and enough roof rack real estate for 200W of solar panels, a hard-shell cargo box, and a DIY awning. It also fits in a standard parking spot, seats four in road mode, and doesn’t announce itself as a campervan.

Those constraints shaped every decision in this build. The goal: a self-contained living platform for a family of four — full-size beds, a real kitchen with running water, a 200Ah lithium power system with three charging sources — without permanently gutting a daily-driver minivan.

Build Specs at a Glance #

This is a writeup of every system — the decisions, the engineering, and what worked.

The Full Build Walkthrough #

The video covers every system in detail. The sections below go through each one in writing for reference.

Exterior and Roof Setup #

The roof rack carries two things: a large hard-shell cargo box and 200-watt Renogy flexible solar panels. The panels are mounted flat under the rack rails — they’re completely invisible from outside. From a distance this is just a minivan with a roof box. No obvious solar panels sticking up, no “campervan” aesthetic. It fits in a normal parking spot and can go anywhere — city, campground, trailhead.

The cargo box is where bulky gear lives in travel mode: foam mattresses, sleeping bags, hiking gear. Keeping it on the roof frees up the entire interior.

There’s also a DIY awning mounted along the roofline next to the solar panels, built from scratch. When you’re parked up and the sun is beating down or it starts drizzling, you roll it out and you have shade and weather cover over the entire kitchen and sliding door area. It makes a genuine difference.

Sleeping Setup #

The third-row seats stay in permanently. When we’re driving, the kids sit there like normal — it’s still a functioning minivan. The second-row seats are removed, and that space is where the platform lives.

Main platform: A wooden platform spans the second-row area. In travel mode it folds up into a table. In camping mode it unfolds and rests on top of the third-row seat, giving a full-size sleeping surface. Me, my wife, and our daughter all sleep on it. Foam mattresses go on top — cut to fit the platform exactly. In travel mode the mattresses fold up and go into the rooftop cargo box, so the interior is completely clear on the road.

Second platform: On the passenger side, a smaller raised platform rests on the hand rest above the wheel well on the third row. My son gets his own sleeping spot — right next to us but on his own level. Works well for him.

Privacy curtains hang on all the sliding door windows. Once drawn the interior is fully blacked out.

Microwave: Tucked below the main platform, accessible from the sliding door. Runs off the battery bank.

DIY Cooler Drawer #

The 12-volt cooler lives on the platform table in travel mode — but not just sitting there loose. I built a DIY drawer system that slides out through the sliding door opening, sitting on top of the platform. The cooler is secured inside the drawer with two ratchet straps crossing over the top.

While driving it’s completely locked down. When you pull over and want something from the fridge, you slide the drawer out through the door opening — cooler still strapped in — and you have full access without ever lifting it out of the van. The drawer runs on heavy-duty full-extension slides rated to 500 pounds. The platform has the battery box, microwave, and all the other gear sitting on it, so the whole assembly is solid. Even with the cooler full and the drawer completely extended, nothing tips or shifts.

No ice. Ever. That’s one of the best things about this setup.

Kitchen #

The kitchen is built into the rear of the van and deploys when you open the tailgate. It has everything you need to cook a real meal.

Counter and Sink #

A marble-look laminate countertop runs the full width of the rear. A stainless steel sink sits on the left side, plumbed to the fresh water and grey water systems. There is enough counter space to prep food properly on either side.

Induction Cooktop #

A NutriChef dual-burner induction cooktop sits in a custom wooden box on the passenger side. In travel mode, the cooktop is stored inside the box and the griddle is strapped on top with a bungee cord — nothing rattles. At camp, the whole door unit swings out from under the countertop and extends past the tailgate, so the cooktop is fully outside the van when in use. Heat and cooking smells stay out of the sleeping area entirely.

The box is secured to the kitchen door with turnbuckle hooks and heavy-duty shelf brackets. No propane anywhere in this setup — the induction cooktop runs purely off the battery bank through the inverter. Induction heats up instantly and works as well as a kitchen stove. One of the best decisions in the whole build.

Folding Side Shelf #

On the side of the kitchen door there’s a folding shelf on a heavy-duty bracket rated to 330 pounds. The door itself is three-quarter inch plywood, and the whole kitchen door assembly hangs off three door hinges connected to the main unit, which is tied to the van’s body using half-inch turnbuckle-style hooks rated at 1,500 pounds. The whole thing is genuinely overbuilt.

The shelf folds completely flat when not needed and flips out in seconds. Useful as extra prep space with the kitchen fully deployed, but also handy on its own — flip it out for a quick roadside stop without opening the full kitchen.

Under-Counter Storage #

A shelf underneath the counter holds cooking supplies — paper towels, spices, ingredients. Everything within reach from the tailgate.

Coffee and Appliances #

A Keurig sits on the counter. Morning coffee at a national park campsite — not compromising on that. A blender also lives on the counter for smoothies. Both run off the battery bank.

Water System #

Fresh water: Two blue jerry cans live under the sink. A 12-volt pump pulls water up to the sink faucet — proper running water for cooking and washing up. The system also has a 10-foot steel-reinforced hose connected to a handheld sprayer with adjustable pressure modes, useful for outdoor rinse-offs and muddy kids. The pump only activates when you press the lever on the sprayer, so there’s no waste.

Grey water: A separate container collects drain water from the sink, emptied at campground dump stations.

The whole system is self-contained. No hookups needed.

DIY Water Level Indicator #

One of my favourite small details on this build. Under the sink, mounted on the side wall of the kitchen unit, there’s a water level indicator I made from scratch — housed in a Lego brick enclosure. Inside is a column of LEDs wired to 3-pin diode contacts positioned at different heights in the jerry can. Green LEDs at the top (full), yellow in the middle, red at the bottom (low). It’s visible the moment you open the kitchen door. Simple circuit, costs almost nothing to build, and you never get surprised by running out of water mid-cook.

Power System #

All campervan power runs from a dedicated 200Ah lithium battery bank — completely separate from the van’s starter battery. The system has three charging sources and a custom control panel.

System Diagram #

Battery Bank #

Ampere Time 12V 200Ah Plus lithium battery. The reason for lithium over lead-acid: lithium gives you almost the full capacity usably. You can draw it down to near zero without damaging it. A lead-acid battery you can only realistically use about half of before damaging it — so 200Ah lithium is effectively equivalent to a 400Ah lead-acid setup.

Inverter #

Pure sine wave inverter. Converts 12V DC from the battery into clean 120V AC for household appliances. Pure sine wave is important here — the induction cooktop, anything with a motor, and sensitive electronics need clean AC. Cheaper modified sine wave inverters can damage these appliances or cause erratic behaviour.

The inverter has a dedicated on/off button on the power panel and should not be left on continuously — it draws power even when nothing is plugged in. The habit is: on before you cook, off when done.

Charging Sources #

Three ways the battery charges:

1. Solar — Renogy 200W flexible panels on the roof, fed through a Renogy MPPT solar charge controller. MPPT (Maximum Power Point Tracking) continuously adjusts to pull maximum available power from the panels depending on sun angle, cloud cover, and temperature — significantly more efficient than a basic PWM controller. The panels sit flat under the rack rails and are invisible from outside.

2. Alternator — Renogy DC to DC charger, 10A. Handles charging from the van’s alternator while driving. A DC-DC charger is smarter than a direct connection — it conditions the alternator output and charges the lithium battery at the correct voltage profile, rather than just passing through whatever voltage the alternator happens to be putting out.

3. Shore power — NOCO Genius 10A lithium battery charger. Kicks in when plugged into a campsite hookup.

Across three trips — Glacier, Banff, Yellowstone — we never ran the battery down. Not once. Between solar during the day, alternator charging while driving, and shore power at hookup sites, it just stays topped up.

A Renogy battery monitor is mounted in the front cockpit. During a typical morning breakfast cook (induction cooktop at 300°F, cooler running simultaneously), the monitor showed 192Ah remaining, 97% charge, and a net positive current of +0.47A — solar was putting in slightly more than the appliances were drawing.

Battery Backup Box #

All the electrical components live in a custom wooden enclosure in the van interior — the Battery Backup Box. It houses the battery, inverter, MPPT controller, DC-DC charger, NOCO charger, battery monitor, and bus bar. A large red master cutoff knob on the outside disconnects the battery from everything that charges or discharges it.

Power Panel #

A custom wooden power panel is accessible from inside the van. It has:

• Rocker switches for individual circuits — lights, water pump, cooler, USB bank, inverter — each independently switched
• Volt display showing battery state at a glance
• USB-A and USB-C charging ports
• 12V outlets
• 120V AC outlet (fed from the inverter)
• Shore power input for campsite hookups

The cigarette lighter output that powers the 12V cooler is on its own switch. Nothing draws from the battery in the background unless you’ve deliberately turned it on.

LED lighting: Three independently controlled LED strips — one for the tailgate and kitchen area, one above the counter for task lighting, and one inside the cabin. Bright enough to cook by at night.

One thing I’d do differently: cable management inside the panel area. Functional but not clean. On the list for next season.

Camp Mode Setup #

Pull into a campsite and the van goes from road mode to camp mode in about 15 minutes:

1. Open tailgate — kitchen is already built in
2. Swing out the cooktop door unit, unclip the griddle bungee, set up the cooktop on top of the box
3. Check water level on the LED indicator under the sink
4. Flip the water pump switch, confirm flow at the sprayer
5. Inverter on, plug cooktop into the 120V outlet via the green cord
6. Pull mattresses from the rooftop cargo box, lay on the sleeping platforms
7. Slide the cooler drawer out through the sliding door, unstrap the cooler
8. Lay out the ground mat outside the sliding door

My wife starts the Keurig while I’m still laying out the mat. No chaos, no circus.

Packing up is equally fast. Mattresses into the roof box, cooktop back in the box, griddle strapped down, shelf folded flat, kids in the third row — twenty minutes and we’re driving. From the outside it’s just a Honda Odyssey again.

Key Design Decisions #

Every build involves tradeoffs. These were the non-obvious ones.

What Worked #

The minivan format. Easier to drive than a cargo van, fits anywhere, and the sliding doors make the kitchen setup genuinely pleasant to use.

Induction over propane. No gas tank, no smell, no open flame. Works as well as a kitchen stove and runs off the battery system.

The cooler drawer. Probably the most-used convenience feature. Slide it out, grab what you need, slide it back. Not having to manage ice across a multi-day park trip is a significant quality-of-life improvement.

The DIY water level indicator. Cheap to build, immediately useful. Never had to guess whether we had enough water to cook with.

The awning. DIY build, but it earns its keep every trip. Shade over the kitchen and door area changes how you use the outdoor space.

Under-bed storage with floor hatch. Everything has a place. Nothing piled on the sleeping surface.

Privacy curtains. Simple and cheap, but they transform the sleeping experience.

What I Would Do Differently #

Better cable management in the power panel area. Functional, but not clean. Route cables carefully from the start.

A dedicated mount for the water jerry cans. They live under the sink but aren’t secured against lateral movement on long drives. A proper mount would fix this.

More counter workspace. The kitchen works well but counter space is always the constraint. A fold-out side extension would add useful prep space.

Is It Worth It? #

For a family with young kids: yes, without question. Three national park trips that would have cost thousands in hotels cost us campsite fees and groceries. The kids remember sleeping in the van as vividly as they remember the parks themselves.

The build is done once and ready every summer. The van is back to normal daily driver configuration now — school runs in September, Yellowstone in August. Same vehicle, completely different life.

And as the kids get older and want their own tent, the van becomes just mine and my wife’s. This gets more useful over time, not less.