Ask ten mobile groomers what they would change about their van and a good number will say the same thing. They would have thought harder about power and water before anyone drew a layout.
This is the half of the build that decides how many dogs you can do and how welcome you are in the street.
Start from dogs per day
Everything here is downstream of one number.
Decide how many dogs you want to do in a day. Multiply by the litres each one takes, which depends heavily on whether you run a hydrobath, because recirculating uses a fraction of what a running hose does.
That is your tank. Add a margin, because a filthy labrador is not an average dog and running out at two o'clock means driving somewhere to refill.
Then do the same for hot water, and notice that it is the tighter constraint. Getting cold water into a tank is easy. Heating several hundred litres in a vehicle is not.
Weight, which is the reason you cannot just fit a bigger tank
Water weighs a kilogram a litre.
Two hundred litres is two hundred kilograms before you have added a bath, a table, a dryer, tools and yourself. Payload on a van is finite and being over your gross vehicle mass is an insurance problem, not just a fine.
Put the tank low and over or ahead of the rear axle. A high tank changes the handling of the vehicle noticeably, and a tank behind the axle makes the steering light.
Baffles inside the tank if you can get them. Unbaffled water sloshing is unpleasant to drive and hard on the mountings.
Generator or lithium
A generator. The Honda EU22i is the Australian default and gets searched more than any competitor, for the same reason Heiniger does in clippers: it has been the trusted answer for years and there is a service network.
It is cheaper up front by a wide margin, it does not care how many hot washes you do, and it will run all day.
The problem is noise, and it is a bigger problem than people expect. You are working in residential streets, often in the morning, sometimes outside a house where someone works night shift. Inverter generators are quiet for generators and are not quiet. This is the most common source of complaints about mobile grooming, and in some places a council can act on it.
Lithium and solar. Quiet, no fumes, no refuelling, and neighbours never notice you. That is worth real money in this business.
The cost is a serious battery bank, a decent solar array, a DC to DC charger so the vehicle alternator contributes while you drive, and an inverter big enough for the dryer, which is the heaviest draw you have.
The hard limit is heat. Heating water electrically from a battery is expensive in amp-hours, so most lithium setups pair with gas hot water rather than trying to do everything electrically.
Both. What a lot of experienced operators actually run. Lithium for the day, a generator in the back for the days that get away from them.
Hot water
Instantaneous gas is the common answer. Compact, heats on demand, and does not carry the weight of a storage tank.
Gas in a vehicle brings its own requirements: proper installation, ventilation, a compliant certificate and an isolation point. This is not a job to improvise. Get it done and certified by someone qualified, because your insurer will ask.
Diesel-fired water heaters are the other route, drawing from the vehicle's own tank, and they are popular in the camping world for good reason.
The pump
A 12 volt pump with an accumulator, so you get steady pressure rather than pulsing.
Fit an inline filter and clean it. Fit isolation taps either side of the pump so you can change it without draining the tank, which you will thank yourself for in a car park at four o'clock.
Carry a spare pump. They are not expensive and a dead pump ends your day.
Where the water goes afterwards
This is the part that gets skipped and it is the one with legal consequences.
Greywater from a grooming van contains shampoo, hair and whatever was on the dog. Putting it down a stormwater drain is illegal, because stormwater goes to the creek, not to treatment.
The options are a holding tank you empty into a sewer connection at your own premises or an approved dump point, or a client's own sewer with their agreement. Rules vary by council and water authority. Ask before you build, because retrofitting a greywater tank into a finished van is miserable.
Catch the hair before it reaches the tank. A filter bag on the outlet is cheap and it stops your greywater tank becoming a felt factory.
What we would not do
We would not run a generator inside the vehicle. Carbon monoxide is odourless and it kills quickly.
We would not fit a battery system without a proper fuse and isolator arrangement. Lithium can deliver enormous current into a fault.
We would not run water lines where they can chafe on a moving panel.
And we would not let the greywater question wait until after the build.
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We have no affiliate arrangement with any brand or retailer named here, and we earn nothing if you buy. Gas and electrical work in a vehicle should be done and certified by a licensed installer.