In this article, we will go into some pros and cons between a skoolie versus a more traditional RV like a Class A or B camper. The goal of this article is to compare apples to apples, so to speak.
Additionally, we aren’t going to include items surrounding vehicle and home maintenance since these are needed in both vehicles and can vary widely depending on care and construction.
What drives you to purchase one of these vehicles is the adventure and freedom to explore it from the comforts of your own (moving) home. Whether you choose to purchase a more traditional RV or break out of the mold with a skoolie, there is no right or wrong answer.
We will not dive deep into the skoolie topics that have a lot of misinformation surrounding them like the examples below. Instead, I invite you to read some of the blogs I’ve written to address those topics by following the links!
A skoolie is a custom motorhome or RV conversion. The name “skoolie” originated because these recreational vehicles are built using an American school bus frame. That said, the term skoolie can be used to cover a variety of other alternative bus conversions like mini-buses, ambulances, and police transportation buses.
What is a RV?
An RV is short for recreational vehicle. It is a broad name for liveable vehicles that are lived in usually part-time or seasonally, though many have taken to living in them year-round especially in more moderate climates in the south. Examples of RVs include pull-behind trailers like a fifth wheel and motorized vehicles like a Class A, B, or C motorhome or school bus conversion.
In North America, you will often hear the term RV used in lieu of motorhome, even for year-round vehicles though the name implies otherwise.
What is a motorhome?
A motorhome is a broad name for motorized homes. As the name implies, it describes a vehicle that carries a home. Examples of this may include school bus and van conversions, and Class A, B, and C recreational vehicles. The term motorhome is more commonly used outside of North America.
What are the Benefits of a Skoolie Compared to an RV?
Some benefits of a skoolie compared to an RV are the customization, affordability, and sustainability.
Customization
If buying a completed rig, your skoolie will be uniquely customized by the builder, whether a professional or DIY owner. If you’re building it or designing it yourself, it will still be uniquely made by you.
Affordability
Probably the biggest appeal to a skoolie is the huge price gap between the vehicles. Skoolies are wildly more affordable and therefore have lower barriers to entry for those that want to travel but are on a small budget.
Sustainability
“Reduce, reuse and recycle” is a phrase we all know. All three apply when downsizing and recycling a retired school bus into some useful – giving something old a new purpose. That feels quite good.
Engine Longevity
Our retired school bus had about 150,000 miles on it, and every diesel mechanic spoke with said that made it only an adolescent (young) bus in terms of mileage. It’s not uncommon to see these buses going strong after 250,000+ miles with regular and recommended maintenance.
Body Longevity
A school bus frame, ribs, and body is made of steel to make it as safe as possible on the road in case of an accident.
Safety
School bus are build to transport children, and are manufactured with strict guidelines in place to make them as safe as possible. This was probably the number one reason why we choose to build a skoolie for our family of five and you can read about that in this blog.
Amenities
The available amenities to living in a skoolie are on par with living in a traditional class A RV in many cases. Due to the custom nature of a skoolie, there really isn’t much you can’t have in it. For example, do you want a “toy hauler” but don’t like the $400,000+ price tag? Just build a skoolie toy hauler like this guy.
What are the Downsides of Skoolie Compared to an RV?
Some downsides to purchasing a skoolie are the length of time to complete a conversion, various types of construction small resale market if you decide to sell or buy, and no warranties on what you purchase.
Length of Time to Build
Unless you’re a professional tradesmen, you can expect a build with basic quality of life items such as plumbing (water, sewer, gray tanks, etc), electricity, and finer finishes such as kitchen, bedroom, and bathroom, to take you between 7 months to 2 years to complete with regular labor. If you’re hiring out or paying someone to convert your rig for you, there may be a waiting list and you are at the mercy of the tradesman’s schedule.
Small Resale Market
Plans change, so how will you sell off your rig if this isn’t the life for you any more? A private exchange will be your best option since most commercial dealers won’t know how to value your rig properly. That can mean many long months of talking with tire-kickers and low-ballers.
No Warranties
There is no governing body that regulates the building or design of skoolies, so each build will have a flair of its own. This disadvantage could also be an advantage too, because you may have a better understanding of the inner workings of your home then if you paid a lot more money on a Class A, and you don’t know how it was built.
No AC While Driving
There may be some work around to this, but our bus didn’t have great AC to begin with and the engine block is inside the bus, so it was quite warm while driving in hot climates, even with the windows open.
Loud While Driving
This may vary for vehicles that don’t have the engine block inside the rig; however, ours is located inside. That makes it very difficult to talk in a normal voice when driving because the diesel engine is very loud.
Is it Cheaper to Buy an RV or Convert a Bus?
It is cheaper to convert a bus than buy an RV, in most cases. The sticker prices of non-converted buses and even many fully converted buses are lower than the selling price of a new RV of the same size.
As an example, Thor Motor Coach sells gas 26’ motorhomes starting at $168,300. The cheapest 34’ diesel motorhome they sell starts at $344,250.
Our 34’ diesel school bus cost us about $50,000 to convert ourselves over 8 months. You can read our full budget here.
Is it better to live in a bus or an RV?
That’s a personal question and subjective depending on if you’re “team skoolie” or “team RV.” Included below are resources from people on either side of the debate.
Team Skoolie
In my personal opinion, we found that we loved living in our RV. My entire blog is dedicated to being pro skoolie, and here is a fundamental blog on why we purchased a school bus.
Below are some other resources supporting skoolie living:
We loved the freedom our skoolie gave us when the rest of the world was locked down and trapped inside their homes in 2021. We traveled to 14+ states over six months, and learned a lot along the way.
No matter which vehicle you chose to make your adventure in, just get out there and do it. You won’t regret it!
Is it Possible to Insulate a Completed Bus Conversion?
In short, no! It’s not possible to properly insulate a bus conversion after the construction is complete. Installing insulation in a bus conversion or skoolie works the same as installing insulation in a home. You’ll place it between the ribs or studs and between the outer and interior walls. If all your walls are closed up, then then you can’t add more insulation easily.
What are the Benefits of Insulating a Bus Conversion?
If you plan to live in your bus conversion or skoolie for a longer period of time, then you’re going to wish it was insulated for a few reasons.
Temperature variances lead to moisture and moisture leads to mold
Temperature variances like the cold exterior against a warm interior (or vice versa) will create condensation where the two temperature zones meet, a thermal bridge. You’ve probably seen this occurring in your own cool home or car on a hot day along a window sill or on the glass. Do you remember the steamy car scene in the Titanic between Rose and Jack?
You may even have seen mold or mildew in these locations. Imagine this happening throughout your entire tiny home! To make matters worse, if you have finished interior walls over uninsulated exterior walls, then this moisture build-up will occur where you can’t see it.
Adding insulation with a high R-value will create a thermal break, which is just a fancy way of saying a product that separates the two temperature zones.
Energy-efficiency
If you have performed an energy audit to determine how much energy you plan to use in your rig, then you’ll understand that trying to heat an uninsulated vehicle is like leaving the door open so the heat escapes. In this metaphor, the “door” is actually your uninsulated walls, ceilings, and floors.
It is worth mentioning that you can also replace your original windows with an insulated glass product, which will help with efficiency too.
What are the Cons to Insulating a Bus Conversion?
These are the most common cons to insulating a bus conversion that I’ve come across through forums and Facebook groups. These aren’t based on my opinions because I fully support insulating an RV for a number of reasons, which are highlighted in the Benefits section.
Cost
Insulation costs money and if you’ve got a tight budget this may not fit into it. To put it in perspective, we used spray foam products by Tiger Foam and it cost us around $1,000 to do it ourselves.
Health and Sustainability
You may not have access to environmentally-friendly insulation (like wool), and don’t want to place more chemicals around your home than necessary. My husband had to wear a body suit with ventilated mask to install the spray foam product we used. Fiberglass insulation requires the use of gloves, long sleeves, and masks as well.
Time Constraints During Construction
If you’ve got to complete your build quickly, then you’ll save time by skipping this step.
Occupancy
If you’re going to use your rig seasonally or for short-term trips like a weekend warrior, then maybe it’s not so important to insulate.
Mild Climates
If you live in an area where the climate is mild year-round and you have your windows open all the time to capture those perfect temperatures, then skipping insulation could be okay. This reasoning is why this couple in Hawaii chose not to insulate their van.
To insulate or not to insulate
What do you think about this topic? Would you ever build a bus conversion and skip insulation? What products did you use in your rig and why? Let me know in the comments below.
If you’re considering building a skoolie of your own and don’t know where to begin, check out these blogs to help get you started:
Welcome to the complete skoolie supply and shopping list essentials for our school bus conversion.
We noticed during our conversion that there was no to limited available information on how a single person or family built out their school bus conversion, and that’s why I created this list. If you’ve seen our skoolie walkthrough tour and think “oh, that’s a cute shampoo holder” or “I wonder what size mini-split AC they bought for a 40 foot bus,” then we’ve got it listed here for your convenience.
Our tiny home on wheels took seven months to build out for our family of five between 2020 to 2021. We purchased 90% of our supplies on Amazon, 8% came from the big-box stores like The Home Depot and Lowe’s, 1% came from our special order off-grid appliances (fridge and range) and lithium batteries, and the remaining 1% came from local specialty stores like plumbing and gas supply stores.
This is a long blog post so I’ve included a handy table of contents below that will take you to the section you need. If you need to navigate back to the top of the article, click the arrow in the bottom right-hand corner.
Table of Contents
Plumbing
These are the products we used to run our water supply lines (including pump), sewer lines, hot water heater, fresh and gray water tanks, compost toilet, and water filtration, and the finishes in our bathroom and kitchen in our school bus conversion.
We used a flexible pex tubing to run our water supply lines, and we’ve been very happy with the ease of installation and ease of repair, if and when that occurs.
I highly recommend drawing out a floorplan of your rig and its plumbing system to find any obstacles before you begin cutting holes.
Clean drinking water is imperative in an RV. Unfortunately, you often don’t know what quality of water you’re bringing into your fresh water tank and to the drinking faucet. We filter our water flowing into our fresh water tank using an in-line RV filter that simply connects to the hose. Additionally, we purchased a multistage water filter that installed in a few minutes underneath our kitchen sink – the “drinking faucet.”
These are the products that we used in our skoolie to filter our fresh water at two points:
the exterior water source
the drinking water coming from the kitchen sink.
Bonus: A metal filtered water bottle for when you’re on the go!
If you’re not sure what size fresh water tank you need for your family, read this blog. If you’re wondering what size gray water tank is right for your build, then this blog answers that for you.
We all love good-looking and functional kitchens and bathrooms, especially when living tiny. Here is a list of items we used to finish our skoolie kitchen and bathroom, specific to plumbing.
If you’re unsure where to start when tiling your skoolie shower, read this blog.
This is a personal preference but seeing our solids even with the coconut coir and a toilet seat isn’t a first choice in an expensive remodel. Instead, it would have been nicer to have an all-in-one system that was still diverting urine but looked a bit more like a toilet.
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Liquid propane gas
We installed black pipe for our exterior gas lines that ran under the bus. We secured them to the metal frame with metal zip ties. The fittings listed below reflect the shape and size of the products we used; however, they are not an exact match. We recommend you visit a plumbing or gas supply shop for these products.
Appliances
We purchased a 20″ propane range from Unique Appliances, which is made for off-grid applications. The one listed here is not the same unit, but a similar size and style.
My husband estimates we spent between $10,000 to $12,000 on our solar array, which is not a small chunk of change, and it allowed us to easilylive off-grid with solar power for electricity (and propane for cooking).
After we calculated how much energy we use in our energy audit, we followed the diagrams from Explorist.life to help us find a solar array that worked for our family of five living full-time in the bus.
We ultimately purchased the interior solar array elements like lithium batteries and inverter through Battleborn directly during a “cyber Monday” or “returns Wednesday” sale around Thanksgiving, and saved a little money there, and the exterior solar array elements like the panels from Amazon.
Being safe was of huge importance to us in this rig since our family would be living in it. My husband consulted with and hired three different electricians to review his work on solar and the 12V and 110V electrical systems. We recommend you hire professionals too! He spent at least 2 weeks prior to starting diving deep into electrical, solar set-ups, etc, and then purchasing the products for each system. He then spent close to one month learning how to install everything correctly.
Electrical and solar were the most complex systems my husband had to learn in order to build our mobile dwelling. He spent weeks leading up to the installation just researching and learning everything he could. He consulted with licensed electricians in our personal network and specialists within electrical and solar that have worked with skoolies or a mobile application before.
Additionally, my husband had licensed electricians perform inspections at the rough-in and final stages of our build. Having safe and sound electrical is paramount when living in any home, especially a mobile dwelling.
Below, you’ll find the products we used in our 110V and 12V electrical arrays. Check in the solar section of this article for products in that category.
We highly encourage you to budget for electrical and solar consultations and inspections.
The wood and sheet metal used in our framing and finishing came from either The Home Depot, Lowes and a local sheet metal company. As such, I won’t be listing out these supplies specifically since they were rather generic. Instead, I’ll list the supplies we used to assist in framing our school bus conversion such as tools, nails, etc.
We choose to insulate our rig and reduce thermal bridging with a few different products. We sandwiched thin ceramic fiber cloth insulation between the wood and metal bus frame.
When building the floors, we added rigid pink foam between the frames. Our subfloor and finished flooring were placed on top of that.
For the ceilings and walls, we insulated with a closed cell spray foam product (after the electrical and plumbing were installed).
Was this blog helpful to you during your build? Let us know in the comments.
Disclosure: Some of the links in this article may be affiliate links, which can provide compensation to me at no cost to you if you decide to purchase a paid plan. Thank you, if you do. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. This site is not intended to provide financial advice and is for entertainment only. Read our affiliate disclosure in our privacy policy.
To put it simply, skoolie life is affordable living and the freedom to roam and adventure on your own terms. The freedom to pack up and go while taking your tiny home on wheels and your most-loved belongings is unconventional but it often answers a calling or need to live outside the box and experience the world from a different perspective.
Living in a school bus conversion appeals to people from all walks of life who have a desire to travel and explore: families, pet parents, single persons, couples, retirees, digital nomads, and more. You can also choose to experience your skoolie life as a weekend warrior, part-time like a snowbird or be a full-time nomad.
Our family of five spent seven months converting a retired school bus into our dream tiny home on wheels that we lived and traveled in full-time for six months from Florida to Maine and back. Now, we have our school bus conversion parked in long-term storage with plans to turn her into a short-term rental.
In those six months of living on our skoolie, we reconnected with family and friends we hadn’t seen in years, visited so many new places, made new acquaintances, and sparked something we had been missing since the pandemic lockdown forced us into our homes in 2020. For our young children (1, 3 and 4 years old at the time), they still had a place they could call home and still talk about our adventures in the Hildebus to this day.
Converting a school bus into a dwelling has been around for as long as school buses have been around, and has really burst into the mainstream spotlight with a positive “glow-up” in the past 10 years as the tiny home movement has exploded.
Building a school bus conversion used to be a simple way of living and traveling, made memorable in the 1960s and 1970s as part of the American hippie movement. These days, you can find really basic and affordable school bus conversions all the way up to high-end custom tiny homes.
Are skoolies worth it?
Yes. Skoolies are worth it if you are looking for an alternative and affordable home that is customizable though assigning an actual dollar value can be difficult since each school bus conversion is unique. Some people spend months or years building out their tiny home on wheels before moving in at completion, like we did – 7 months! Others choose to demo the interior and build as they can afford to while living aboard. In both cases, a housing need is solved and adventure begins.
As far as assigning a value like you would for the purchase and sale of a traditional class A RV, that is a rather difficult assessment to make since every skoolie conversion is unique. In most states, there is no standard building code that applies to how a skoolie is built and it is up to the owner to decide what finishes they wish to install and the quality of work they will perform.
Hildebus skoolie tour
In our case, we built a mid- to high-range skoolie. We purchased our retired school bus for ~$4,500 in 2021 and put in $45,000-$50,000 between the demo, repairs, framing, electrical, solar, plumbing, paint, and custom finishes like quartzite countertops, tiled backsplash, vinyl flooring throughout, propane range, mini stove, 12V fridge and freezer, and more.
It depends if you’re visiting for the day or wanting to camp overnight. If visiting for the day, national parks will allow skoolies to park just like they would any tour bus or another RV. The park staff will direct you on where to park in the designated tour bus and RV parking area, if any. If you are trying to camp overnight in your school bus conversion at the national park, then you should review their booking requirements since national park campsites often have rig length restrictions. In our experience, the parks don’t mind the school bus conversion quality and age of the rig, but the length restriction is clearly stated as a restriction.
National Parks and skoolie length restriction
Many national parks restrict rig length to under 35 feet, some sites only go up to 25 feet. Our HildeBus skoolie is 40 foot long and we could not camp overnight at any national parks but we were invited to park during the day and visit the national park without issue.
Skoolie Camping in RV Parks
Fortunately, there are many RV parks surrounding most national parks that do accommodate school bus conversions. If you’re curious about RV park camping in your skoolie and what questions to ask before booking, then read our helpful article here.
