12 ACCESSORIES - We WISH we had from the start

good day Legends welcome back to the channel today we are running you through 12 accessories that we wish we had from the very beginning things what we've added to our setup over the last couple of years that we wish we had right from the start they've made our lives so much easier so we're going to split it up take six each and give you 12 accessories that we wish we had from the very beginning you going to help yeah I'm just going to go on the wood SL yeah one of us will take Liam on some water slides sounds like fun so we're going to countd down from 12 till one to the biggest game changer that we've found to have in our setup so far number 12 is our couch cushion covers so I ordered these off of Sheen about a month ago and I cannot believe it has taken me this long to do it so under these covers we have a fabric couch and you would have seen us in our other videos taking the whole couch cushion outside to scrub it because that's the most effective way to clean it um so we got these covers off of Sheen uh they cost me about $50 all up I'll get marked to put a little pitch up here so you can see which ones that I ordered uh the sizing is pretty good um I just got basically the closest size possible to fit our L-shaped couch so there's four different covers here we got 1 2 3 and four and they basically cover the couch really well they're really easy to fit and it's going to be really easy for me to just peel that cover off and Chuck it in our washing machine instead of having to scrub the whole couch cover so if only I had done this from the start it would have saved me a lot of cleaning and a lot of mess and lots of grubby little fingerprints on our fabric couch okay coming in at number 11 is a relatively new feature to the back of the car so when I before we set off traveling I used to have drawers and a full steel cargo barrier that lived in this section but I couldn't afford the weight uh of the drawers and the cargo barrier once we had the toball away for there and come on so they had to go and basically this was just spot for the dogs there was no storage back here whatsoever I've homebuilt this this is just like a Ply shelf so I can put the pram and stuff underneath but what I'm actually talking about today is the new cargo Barrett and shelf that I got from a company called um Kon they're Australian company Kon it's very good Australian made yeah it is very good isn't it um so I was really struggling to find the cargo barrier suitable for my car because I've got rear airons in here stumbled across these guys I think they're Queensland based um and it's super light I think all up it probably weighed 5 to 7 kilos it sort of bolts around the headrests over here and then up up here on my grab handles It Bolts onto that so it I don't think it's fully rated as a cargo barrier it's more of a pet barrier but that's all I needed it for and then I got the option for the Shelf up top so this has been fantastic for storage solutions so now like the first day kit lives up up there I've got like one of these bags are full of spare cables and conut and stuff like that for whenever I'm tinkering with cables I need to fix something I've got a couple of specialized tools up here uh we got the picnic rug and um my hoses and belts and things like that in another bag oh I got to help you do that they're a bit tough but yeah Kon uh storage apparently there's heaps of different options I've seen some like 76ers have pockets for like the side windows and stuff like that so definitely check them out it's been a bit of a game changer for us being able to store that stuff there and now the dogs can lay up here and look out the window that's right the dogs can sit up top and look out the window now can't they yeah so that Kon cargo Barrett and shelf made it to number 11 on their list because that has been a game changer for storage for us I can even sit under here my head yeah perfect fit isn't it yeah all right number 10 is our drop bear storage Pockets when we first left these weren't available on the market and Jonathan and Jonathan and Heather from drop bear storage have done a fantastic job developing these awesome products so we used to have a fabric storage pocket here which gathered Dusk and dirt and it didn't really hold our books properly and basically it just looked terrible um so we replaced it with these gorgeous um Square pockets they have been fantastic basically we use them for Liam's drawing things and holding books and brochures and things like that um we've also got these two next to our beds which are great for your everyday things um storing your phones and your glasses uh headphones um Mark's always got something different from me over there on his one and we also got some for the kids bunks as well um oh not up there sorry we've got he's books down here in this one and then we've got a water bottle holder for Liam and also we've moved his um one that was at the end of his bunk into there um so when we first left we got some fabric ones off of eBay which we just hung next to our bed but they were really terrible um they were saggy and they fell apart really quickly so when these came on the market we were so excited to get them um 100% worth it if you're touring and I to be honest I'd say 100% worth it even if you're not touring and you're just weekending a holidaying they just make life and storage in the vans so much better okay number nine in our list is a water bladder so we actually haven't used this yet this is brand new I got it for my birthday uh late last year the idea behind this is we can carry 200 L of fresh water in the Caravan and with the way we use water that can stretch out between 6 and 7 days off grid uh that's with drinking cooking cleaning up showers Etc uh we use that water for everything um and that has been enough on most occasions there's been a few times where we've end up crook um say crook little boys uh that tend to vomit on everything uh that we've had to do a lot more washing in the washing machine um and that's reduced those days very drastically and the only way that we were able to get more water is for me to Hitch up move the van go get more water and come back again which was quite painful uh so I've always said I wanted a water PL so Clen got me one for my birthday late last year the this is 105 L with a c center console hump so this will fit really nicely in my rear seat in the foot wheel um and then the kids feet should be above it uh this is will give us another 100 but the idea is if we are running low we want to stay in a place longer than that 6 days I can run off with the car fill this up full of water come back here and using a little inline pump we can transfer this back into the water tanks of the Caravan uh and in theory going by that map this will give us another 3 days then I could go again uh and get some more very conveniently our toilet cette usually lasts about 3 days as well so when I go to dump the toilet I'd like to go get water for the water bladder as well uh so really excited to use this once we finish our holiday here on the Gold Coast I think we'll be doing a lot more off grid camping again so I think this is going to come in handy quite regularly uh and it means we won't have to be so singy on the water when we are off R if I need water I can just go get it so very very excited to use this um it's from the FME store.com which stands for flexim mate e store uh so flexi make sorry um is the brand that based down in dandong down in Victoria so Australian owned company and it seems like really greator I've heard fantastic reviews on them so I am quite excited to use this and review it in the months to come yeah there you go that's number nine a water bladder and I think it's a bit of a game changer for anyone else out there as well okay number eight on our list is Sol blanket so we didn't have this for the first couple years of travel we were always relign from the 300 W of fixed panels that we have on the roof and they did do us fairly well but while we were down in Taz last year the days started getting really short and the sun sat really low in the sky we were just really struggling to chase that solar so Kings had a special on and there was a store just outside of L uh laun system devonport uh so I just went and picked up one and being able to chase that sun and get an extra a couple amps every hour for the whole day made a huge difference for us because we use a bit of power on like when CL was working so we're using the inverter laptops uh starlink Etc we were using power but just not getting it in so having this oil blanket helped heaps um because you can sort of prop It Up by this this is 9:00 in the morning you can get full sun on it um so yeah like I said I recom it's probably putting in about 3 amps it says it's good for 6 and 1/2 I've never seen that out of this panel there are better Brands out there check out some other YouTubers for reviews this one was just cheap convenient and it works for me so I'm not going to bother changing um we opted to not get the regulator so they can come with a regulator so you can just connect them straight to batteries or your car uh I don't need it for the car so we just run a blue Anderson plug and it plugs directly into this board here on our van which then ties straight into the battery management system and just acts like another solar panel on our system so really easy and convenient for us I've got about 2 and 1/2 to 3 m of length so I can stretch it out a little bit but I do have to sort of forward think where we park the van if I don't want to use this and get maximum so out of it yeah definitely consider a solar blanket just to be able to chase that sun a little bit better bark under trees run out of long cable and then you're still getting some sol coming in that's why I Sol blankets made the list all right coming in at number seven is our Soda Stream and who would have thought that this would have been a game changer but it has been for us so instead of carrying a whole carton of Diet Coke and purchasing one I say once every 10 days and finding somewhere to store it in store it in the Caravan we purchased a soda stream now all you have to pay for is the initial expense the post mix flavor mixes uh it comes with a bottle when you buy the first one and then all you need to do once your gas runs out is buy a or exchange the gas bottle so these are about $35 but if you take in your empty one you can get these for about $16 which is amazing um and each post mix flavor thing you get about 60 glasses of sof dring so you're saving money and you're saving weight and places to store things as well so we absolutely love love out s stream it's been really good can I say something what do you want to say babe do you like it do you like the bubbly water yeah and I we're also going to go to dream world tomorrow all right number six is our diesel heater now when we left in 2020 we didn't have one of these and we did the center in 20121 and it was freezing and we're still getting up to Liam overnight as well so we're getting in 1 to 2° and basically we had no way of heating the van um except for our oven so we had a lot of cooked oven breakfast um but basically we were just rugging up and stacking on the blankets and uh in hindsight it wasn't a very pleasant experience uh so in 2022 we decided to install a diesel heater now Mark and I bought this online and we installed it ourselves to save a bit of coin um we also built this box to go over the top of it to keep it protected under the bed and now we can still store stuff on top of it we're not using it so I'll open it up now so you can have a look so here she is uh we made the box to be easy to remove so that we could easily check it and maintain it as we need to um our control panel for the diesel heater is just up here next to Mark's bed so he can change whatever he needs to and we can put it on and off when we are asleep or overnight um and we've also fitted our diesel tank to the back near the spare wheel the back of the Caravan um we think that we get about two weeks out of our diesel heater before we have to top up the diesel but we don't run it all the time when we need it there was a time last year when we were coming through Victoria and I think we used it every day for about 3 weeks including for a few hours overnight and definitely in the mornings and evenings when it got cold so it's a really efficient way of heating the van it's a nice dry heat and it's also a great way to dry a washing and those cold miserable wet times as well okay number five is actually a very new one as well and it is a shunt for our batteries so we've always had an inverter that we got installed from the very beginning um but it is after the battery management system so this is our battery management system up here has everything fused off of it so when we're using items to hang off that it will show up on our track panel at the top here um but with the inverter because it's on the wrong side of the battery management system anything that's running off the inverter orange Dr up on that track panel so we always had to sort of guess B based on what solar was coming in versus how much was going out and battery voltage and all that sort of stuff I had to guess basically what we were using and how much longer we had to go uh so by installing the shunt now everything that hangs off the batteries including the battery management system and anything running off the inverter uh now goes through the shun I will take you outside and show you where I've installed it uh but basically now I can just open up the Fon connector app on my phone it'll connect to it this isn't a great example because we're currently connected 2 240 but basically I can see everything now coming off and it gives us a true accurate reading of how much time we've got remaining based on what we're using so now when we're running the starlink my laptop with its charger off the inverter and everything I can actually know what's going on instead of guessing so that's been a huge game changer for us and I wish I wish I did that from the beginning because there's been a few times where we've been close to running out of power but at the same time I was only guessed okay so here's our two battery boxes and up here is where I've installed the shun so I put it real nice and close to the uh batteries because everything that connects with the negative terminals of the batteries needs to connect to that side one side of the shunt and then the other side of the shunt connects to the negative terminal of the battery that way it can read everything that's coming in and out of the batteries so yeah nice and closed it is ip65 rated so it can handle being a little bit wet I wouldn't submerge it but it can handle getting splashed and stuff so there is working really nicely for us um and I do get enough reception inside the van and under the warning but the range isn't great after that all right coming in at number four we've got our Makita handheld cordless vacuum cleaner now you wouldn't think this would be number four but to be honest it's been such a game changer when it comes to cleaning the Caravan and the car so in 2020 when we left we bought a dust bust and we thought that was going to cut it but it it really doesn't so we ended up getting this awesome uh Makita vacuum cleaner now it just sits in its holder in the bathroom on the wall um but what I like about it is that it can also be charged by our Makita um this is just an 18vt battery and it goes with our Makita impact driver and drill as well so it all matches which is really great um you can also take this attachment off which is awesome for cleaning the car and you've got this little nozzle here which is excellent for sand and also dog hair so I think we must vacuum the Caravan at least once or twice a day with the dog hair and especially if you're somewhere that's super dirty this has been the most biggest game changer for Van cleanliness coming in at number three is our do35 hitge so our drop on 3 and 1/2 ton hitch so we had this fitted in 2021 4 to 5 months after we left basically when we left we had a toe ball set up and I was really unconfident with hitching up so to me this hitch has been one of the biggest game changers I can now hitch up confidently and help Mark when it comes to attaching the car to the Caravan I also find it's a lot safer to tow with and in the case of an accident or the Caravan were to roll uh the do35 hitch is designed to rotate so that would mean that the van would in the best case scenario rotate without rolling the car as well so we were really excited to get this fitted and I have become so much more confident when it comes to helping hitching up and I'm 100% sure that I could hitch up by myself without Mark's help as as well all right coming in at number two fridge fans so we've had a three-way fridge from the beginning and look it works pretty well but we were always very conscious of how hot it can get so we always made the effort of not opening it to regularly making sure it latched properly keeping cold things in there at all times and putting a shade on the other side of the fridge uh look at worked but we recently installed a fridge fan kit so there's fans inside uh that blow cool air across the fence stop them from ring up and there's fans outside in the top vent that extract the hot air from behind the fridge cavity I'll show you them now we've only had these in for about 2 months but they are absolutely brilliant so they are spinning at the moment you can probably hardly tell on the camera this is climbing up because we got the uh fridge door open but this fridge stays at roughly 2 to 3° now um regardless of what we're doing in there where before I reckon it was creeping up closer to the 9 or 10° so that has been an absolute Game Changer I'm even now only running out on the second option instead of the middle option which I used to so time will tell but I think we're actually saving gas now as well cuz the fridge isn't working as hard to keep our food cold and more importantly my beer cold all right we've made it to number one you've made it through that whole list of our top 12 accessories that we have changed along the way these aren't things that we started with from the beginning there are things that we have changed along the way uh now this one might be quite obvious to some it wasn't obvious to us in those early days but this last one that made number one on our list is lithium batteries we started our travels with 2 100 amp AGM batteries that's what came with the van uh and that was more than enough for the first 18 months of our travels um but in saying that AGM batteries only have um that you can actually only use about 50% of the capacity stated on them so even though we had 200 amps of capacity in the batteries at 50% we only we had about 100 so because we weren't really working on the road we didn't have starlink or anything back then um we could just manage really well and that was more than enough for us uh but then as we've grown started uploading to YouTube a lot more regularly CLM started working on the road we got starlink all that started to really creep up so we had a lot more power usage during the day and overnight about that same time I think because we were pushing those batteries a little bit beyond what they were capable of they carked it we're halfway up the wa coast and they just W put uh so like we still had power during the day thanks to the solar but as soon as that sun went down we were dead in the water so started doing a bit of research do we just buy two new AGM batteries or do we maybe look at upgrading to lithium the problem I had though was our our battery management system up here uh the BM Pro 35 Sr isn't compatible for lithium lithium batteries need their own charging profile uh and this system isn't capable of doing that so it started looking like a very big expense to try and upgrade our system to lithium then I did a little bit more research and looked at some other people's reviews we found those itch World batteries they're based in Perth and they claim to be a drop in lithium replacement they've got their own inbuilt lithium charging profile their own inbuilt battery management system to do that lithium charging profile so they claim they'll work with 90% of the Chargers out there so I rained them told them what battery management system we had and they said Y no worries we probably just won't get the full 100% capability of these batteries with this charging system uh which is fine cuz even at 90 to 95% um it's still a huge increase in what we had before with lithiums you actually do get close to the 100% of that capacity so these ones are 105 a um batteries so now we've got 210 amp of lithium uh which is huge so we've pretty well doubled our capacity even if we're missing out on a little bit at the top end um and then huge weight saving as well so the agms weighed about 30 to 35 kilos each so we're talking 60 to 70 kilos for the two batteries these only weigh 10 kilos each so now we're down to 40 to 50 kilos of weight saving as well by replacing to these batteries double capacity huge weight saving win- win for us um so then we've now had them in there for close to 2 years we're about a month away from having them in there for two years and we do a lot of off grid camping we went to Tasmania last year for three months and we were only connected to power for 4 days of that uh so we and we only went into connect power because Clen was actually quite crook so we wanted um you know water power all that sort of just refresh and clean everything but otherwise we stayed off bid the whole time that we were down in Tasmania and we did not have a problem so for us these batteries work really well some people stay away from them completely and I'm not sure why um there are obviously a lot of better lithium Brands out there but for us with our system this is a very cheap uh and easy alternative for us and they've worked wonders so they've got our big tick of approval uh we have no affiliation with them whatsoever I think we even use Sarah and Sarah and kean's discount code and they are affiliated with them so if you want to check them out head over there and have a look um big tick from us but there are heaps of other brands out there and pretty well all new bands now will come with the lithium compatible system as is just just beyond that time frame so anyway that is uh what became number one because it was added halfway through our travels and it was a huge game changer now we run laptops and starlink and TV and iPads and whatever we want during the day and then overnight we still got Heats of capacity so big big ticket for us uh changing over to with them so that's it we hope you enjoyed those 12 uh accessories we hope you got something out of them there's heaps of people out there with discount codes and affiliations with a lot of those products we don't these are all products that we've bought and really happy with that we've found along the way um yeah and obviously there's other things in here that we've had from the beginning that would make the list but we've tried to focus on things that we've changed and because we could talk about what we had before versus what we had after and saw the the change that it made for us so anyway thanks for watching guys we uh we got through it we hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you in the next episode

Channel: Our Whittle Adventure - Exploring Australia

Views: 11,343

Keywords: acessories, caravan, caravan mods, modifications, diy, travel, travel vlog, roadtrip, holiday, van life, outdoors, camping, caravanning, rvlife, rv, boondocking, overlanding, family travel, vlog

Id: gSyzwFOuZT0

Length: 22min 53sec (1373 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024