Marcus Hopfe from Leipzig has turned his vision of combining a fully equipped motorhome with a sustainably designed tiny home into reality. Since its launch in 1979, his eye-catching US school bus has clocked up zero miles. Hence the slogan 'One Million Miles', under which it is available for tours or as an event bus following its conversion into an Airbnb. ACE industrial gas springs, among other things, ensure contemporary comfort and variety.

The public is familiar with the school buses, which are over 11 meters long and usually painted yellow, from many American films. A few years ago, Marcus Hopfe would never have imagined that one of these International Harvester Schoolmasters would change his life. He explains: "I had been seriously toying with the idea of starting my own business since 2018. When I went on my first van trip through Portugal during the pandemic in 2020, I was thrilled and found reports online about two Spaniards who offered surf trips for groups of up to eight people with a so-called 'Skoolie'. That gave me the idea of combining an Airbnb with a motorhome and an event bus on such a ladder frame." In April 2021, he found his Skoolie in Hamburg, derusted it with friends on a farm in Saxony-Anhalt and got his truck driver's license there at the end of 2021.

Success through teamwork

One key to ensuring that the former school bus not only continues to be used to transport people, but also accommodates them comfortably and offers them original extras, lies in choosing the right partners for its conversion. Marcus Hopfe found experienced partners in Chemnitz-based designer and art director André Herzog and the companies Vanleih by Mike Peter and Fine GmbH in Leipzig to plan and fit out the 11-metre-long, 2.4-metre-wide and 3-metre-high chassis. From November 2022 to April 2023, he worked with the event and trade fair builders at Fine GmbH on the conversion concept, with CS Fahrzeugbau GmbH from Neustadt an der Donau carrying out the technical drawings for approval by the licensing authority. As part of the structural renovation, the bus was given a 20 centimeter higher roof, which also has the necessary stability to serve as a 16 square meter terrace. Secondly, new side frames and extra-large panoramic windows including a generously sized hinged side wall were provided instead of the classic lattice sliding windows. During this phase of the project, Marcus Hopfe presented the open living concept to Airbnb and was then awarded a grant of 100,000 US dollars for the project, which has since been named 'One Million Miles'. In addition to the motivation boost, this also opened up new opportunities for further expansion.

The bus will offer much more than simple seating and sleeping space for nine people. According to the plan, solar cells will generate almost 3,000 watts of energy, and around 2,000 liters of service water will be available thanks to a mobile osmosis system and an innovative combustion toilet. A 10 kilowatt heating system with underfloor heating, ecological spray cork and hemp insulation will be installed to ensure comfort and sustainability. To ensure that there is enough fresh air and easy access to the interior depending on the location, destination or event location, an almost 3-metre-wide side wall can be opened up to turn the space in front into a terrace.

Industrial gas struts from ACE grow with the requirements

Marcus Hopfe and the fit-out team opted for gas springs from the outset to ensure that this transformation meets all safety requirements on the one hand and, on the other, that it can be carried out quickly and conveniently with as little effort as possible for the passengers without consuming electricity. These nitrogen-filled cylindrical components support the operator's muscle power on many hoods and flaps in vehicle construction. As the conversion of the school bus is an absolutely unique project, this chapter of the design also showed that only custom-made components could hold the oversized flap securely and open and close it easily and safely instead of standard products. The industrial gas springs of type GS-28-550-BB-1350N determined by Vanleih via Internet research and designed using the calculation program provided on the ACE Stoßdämpfer GmbH homepage had to be adjusted more precisely during the course of the dismantling work. This was due to the fact that the total weight of the side wall increased to 150 kilograms during the course of the project and the force of the two selected gas struts was no longer sufficient due to temperature fluctuations.

www.ace-ace.de/de/berechnungen/geschwindigkeitsregulierung/gasfeder-berechnung-online.html

In this situation, ACE's services and valve technology proved to be crucial for the rapid progress of the side wall construction, reports Marcus Hopfe. After consultation with Patrick Czeckay, application engineer at ACE, the gas struts were removed and sent directly to his headquarters in Langenfeld in the Rhineland. the two machine elements could be individually adjusted again using the valve installed on the body of the gas spring. Marcus Hopfe speaks of a very good end result, which has been confirmed in daily use during the conversion work and in test operation: "For our team, which previously had little experience of installing gas struts, ACE is a stroke of luck. This began with the immediate discovery and use of the interactive calculation tool on the Internet. And it continued with the fast personal support for the subsequent adjustment of the gas struts. So far, with these two components and ACE as a partner, everything has literally always worked out the way we wanted it to with the side wall." The team at 'One Million Miles' can only hope that this continues to be the case in all other respects.