Thanks for replying!
Is your dehumidifier inside or outside the van? Inside would mean it pumps heat into the van. And what happens to the water? If it pools inside an open container inside the van, the water will partly re-evaporate into the van. It’s obviouslly important that the hot air outflow and the water drip be outside the van.
I think most really good reliable cooling solutions are expensive. And they use a fair bit of electricity, which could be a problem if you need to be self contained.
As best as I could find out from asking around, RV repair is a specialty, so there aren’t as many mechanics who repair them as for cars and pickup trucks, and I was told RV mechanics can earn about twice the hourly rate of car mechanics. And some of the parts are likely to be expensive. Plus, if you look at RV repair places, their lots are usually quite large and are usually quite full, which is a hint there could be problems. Though I was told a lot of the RV repairs are collision repairs, partly because of size, and perhaps partly because of the age of the typical drivers.
In the case of the generator, you may have needed a small engine mechanic. I wonder if someone who worked at a lawn mower place could handle it.
Unlike a lot of people in this forum like yourself, I haven’t driven an RV, and have only done temporary car & pickup and van camping. But I rented a 21 or 23 foot moving van for a couple days. It seemed to me that it was wider than the lanes where I drive, especially if you included the mirrors, and that visibility was even worse than my Toyota Venza. I felt very unsafe driving it. Maybe it would have been a bit better if it had cameras all around, but it really didn’t seem safe to drive much. Fortunately I didn’t need to park in a low parking garage! But it did occur to me it was large enough to live in - as big as some rooms I’ve lived in. It was pretty basic - manual windows and mirrors, which I think are more reliable - I prefer them - though in my Venza, I sometimes take advantage of the electric mirrors to see where the parking spot lines are. Of course gas mileage was not great.
I’ve camped in a truck cap that had a long sunroof, that gave me really great ventilation. That worked really well, partly because “heat rises”, even though the truck and cap were red, which was a mistake. I also had sliding windows at the front of the cap. Surprisingly, most bugs didn’t come in through the sliding windows - bugs tend to go to high points, like the top of the truck. (In some ways I think a pickup with the capacity for a cap big enough to include a shower and toilet would be great. Especially if you picked a common Ford truck that a lot of mechanics can repair, even in rural areas, and a lot of used parts are available in junkyards. And if you have expensive repairs to the cap part, you can just replace it. Except - some RV campgrounds don’t like such trucks - they want real RVs.) Likewise I once had a car with a moon roof - it stayed pretty cool too. Had to be careful when it rained, but at least where I live, rain tends to be cool, so it didn’t need to be open during the rain. And the moonroof had a partly open setting that would block the rain if the wind wasn’t too strong.
I get that you might have trouble finding mosquito+no-see-um netting that is precut for your particular van. But you can buy netting material and cut it to size, with Velcro at the edges - and glue one part of the Velcro strip to inside your van. I bet there are a lot of people here who could give you tips on that, or you could hire someone like a seamstress. Of course, you’d have to be very careful not to rip the netting when you detatch the velcro. I suppose a lot of people just use window screen material, or maybe a combination of window screening and no-see-um netting?
But like I said, there are much more experienced people than me here.