2013 Seneca 36 FK One Year Fulltime Review

hi this is kurt with the cool odyssey coming to you today from our mooch docking spot at tony's sister's house in salmon Idaho and we're here today to talk about something that's been brought up a couple of times and asked of us we've been in our 2013 Jayco Seneca superseded for a year now full time living and we've been asked if we could give kind of a review of what we think of the RV so far and give everyone our thoughts so we thought what we do is kind of handle this in a walk-around style and we'll just kind of go through pros and cons as we go instead of trying to get everything all at one time so just to give you an idea this is our 2013 Jayco Seneca super see this is our third RV we've also had a 2006 Jayco Seneca and we've had a 1996 coachman Catalina so all of our RVs have been Class C and there's a few reasons why we choose the class C's one of the reasons is just simply the ground clearance as you can see these are built on a truck chassis so they have a little bit more ground clearance and we spend a lot of time boondocking and driving down forest roads and we like that extra ground clearance and it's made a pretty big difference for us this RV in particular we've also gone up to 22 and a half inch tires and wheels and we definitely notice a difference in driving on gravel roads with wash boards and things like that it seems to run much smoother down the road not as affected as the smaller diameter tires so that's something that we think is worked out very well for us and moving down the code something we weren't sure about but this coach came with a keyless entry on the front door and that has been awesome we love the keyless entry I don't even think we carry keys to the RV anymore so that's been something that's been a huge plus and we definitely like and something else different on this coach from our previous Seneca is the way the baggage doors open so these doors open sideways which gives us much easier access to all of our things inside the bins and we definitely prefer that to the bins that open horizontally where you have to duck under to get inside one downside of this coach is it does not have any pass-through basement storage when Jacob built these they wanted to be more of an all-weather setup so they actually kept the center portion of the RV closed off with insulated boards so that the water piping and everything can receive heat from the furnace and keep everything from freezing but the problem with that is we lose our cross through storage so in this particular bin I did modify the basement and create my own pass-through storage so we can carry a ladder and a table so that's something we had to do to make it work for us but the no pass-through storage is definitely a negative but the amount of storage we have in this coach is amazing there is a ton of room something else that I really like about this coach is the location of the mechanical systems and the batteries in particular so this bin actually houses our 450 amp our 12-volt AGM batteries and one thing that's excellent about the position of these batteries is as you'll notice directly above is the refrigerator so it was a straight shot through the refrigerator vent up to the roof to install our solar system so it made for very short runs on the wires and very easy path to get through so that's something that worked out really really well in this coach so now something that's kind of a sore spot this being built on the Freightliner chassis truck chassis it's an m2 it has to saddle fuel tanks a 40 gallon on the passenger side and a 35 gallon on the driver's side the bad part is these tanks are only interconnected with a small transfer pump system which means when you go to fill up the fuel we have to fill up both tanks individually if we try to fill up just one side all the way to capacity and wait for that little transfer pump to fill the other tank we timed it close to 45 minutes we had to wait at the gas station continually filling this side so one big downside to this chassis is having to deal with fueling both sides of the RV so when we are looking for fuel stations we already tell which makes it a little more challenging anyway so we really need to look for stations where we either have the ability to pull in between two islands where the pump hoses from each side can reach the saddle tanks or we have to pull in one side fill-up go out drive around the parking lot or around the block and come back in to fill the other side so that's something that every single time we have to put fuel in this thing is extremely annoying another plus for us is just the Class C configuration we really like the fact that we're sitting behind the wheels so it really drives like driving a big van it's not really like driving an RV if this it feels very comfortable and the seating position also is underneath the sleeping cab so we get a lot of shade in the driver compartment something I've noticed riding in a lot of Class A is is you have that huge windshield which is really nice for a panoramic view but the downside of that is you have the Sun blaring right into the window we have this overhang which works out well for us another thing I really like about the Class C configuration and especially this Freightliner m2 is how easy it is to maintain I like to do most all of our maintenance ourselves we're not fans of heading to repair shops and mechanic shops if there's something that can be done and I can do it that's the way it happens well this cab front cap opens very easily and we have complete access to our Cummins diesel engine fuel filters oil filters everything is extremely easy to work on and that's something that's made a huge difference another thing we like about this coach in particular as it has shocks that hold the hood up from slamming down so then all I have to do is come back latch it down and that probably covers the main pluses and minuses on the exterior part of the RV big plus in my opinion is I just think these type of rigs look very cool they look stand out they're a little bit different than what everyone else is driving and always like that so I think what we'll do now is we'll kind of move on and talk about the inside of coach all right before we head inside we thought of a couple more things while we're standing out here on the outside one of the things we also like is the placement of the door on our coach it's a mid entry so as you can see the door is just about in the middle underneath the awning so depending on the weather if it's rainy and the rain rain is blowing our awning still gives us really good cover and we can have the awning out and the door open and definitely like that about the coach one thing that I don't know if it's right now it's not a - but someday it could be but if you notice opening up this door it's kind of like climbing up Mount Everest to get inside this RV so we've got three electric steps on the outside and then three additional steps to get up to the inside of the RV so yes we have lots of great basement storage but the price for that is having to take a hike to get inside every time okay so now we've moved on to the inside of the RV which really is one of the things that we love about this unit when we were looking for an RV having a nice living area with decent space was very important to us our previous RV had two slide outs in the living area and it seems like a lot of people are very interested in having as many slide outs as possible one thing we found with our prior seneca was having the second slide out in the living area that contained the kitchen and all the plumbing and propane and those things it was a very big maintenance hassle for us we constantly were having to fix plumbing problems and we just had a lot of trouble with that kitchen slide so one of the things we are looking for is less slides and while this is still a 36 foot RV it only has two slides one big slide here in the living room which we love this opens up and gives us plenty of space inside this coach one of the things that we really thought we were going to enjoy was this whole couch dinette set up when we walked into this and saw it we were pretty impressed that's the way it looked and thought it was going to be the perfect setup a couple things that are problems with it number one all of our seating is all in a row so when we have guests come over there's really no way to sit in a conversation type area if you have two people sitting in the couch and two people are at the dinette you just don't have enough room so we ended up purchasing some small chairs that we keep here in the RV that open up so we end up flipping out some chairs and putting them out here in the living area so we can have a conversation along those same lines something else we did in this class C which is very uncommon as you'll notice our seats are turned around and as far as I know I think we have the only Seneca that has rotating front seats and I'll link to a video we did right up here that talks about the conversion of the Seneca seats to swiveling another problem with this dinette if you look at it you can just see I put a couple plates here on the table just to demonstrate the size of the table these two plates are almost touching so the two of us really can't have much on this table when we eat it's a very small table so that's problem number one and problem number two is these nice rounded cushions here you really can't seat four people at this table when I sit down at this table if like even if I move all the way to the side as you can see it leaves about half a cheek seat for someone else here on the outside and the other thing you'll notice is if you sit comfortably with your back against the backrest you're a long way from the table so what we find we're always doing is sitting up on the edge of our seat to eat at the table so that just doesn't work out well for us Plus that you know the overall size of the table is too small so one of the things that will be happening fairly soon with this RV is we're going to take out the dinette and we're going to put in a free-standing dining table and free-standing chairs and for the time being we're going to keep just the couch but we're probably going to eventually change those out to recliners as well so but the overall space we love just this design not so much so moving across the RV our previous Seneca instead of having sleeping area up here at a small twin size pullout bed and then the full entertainment center was up here in the front we weren't sure we were going to like having the full bed up here but we found it's actually great this bed is bigger than a queen plenty of space to have guests over and plus we gain a lot of storage space just a place to set things that we're using every day on a daily basis so this is actually worked out very well it has this extra 40 inch TV up here which is kind of ridiculous don't really care about that we don't really use it much but it's there something we definitely like in the kitchen is this refrigerator the four door refrigerator as opposed to the standard two door we had in our other coach tons of extra space so what that's basically meant is we were able to keep our icemaker our previous refrigerator and freezer also had an icemaker but the icemaker took up most of the freezer so we ended up taking it out so with this one we were able to keep our icemaker which we love and we have plenty of space for food and fresh fruits and vegetables and I can actually keep my beer in there which is nice so no need for a cooler to store the beer anymore so this is definitely a plus for this coach and something else when we bought this coach all it came with was a three burner gas cooktop it did not have an oven it has a convection microwave combination unit which we use for storing our bread but Tony really likes to bake and really likes to cook things in our ovens so we actually went to an RV salvage yard and I actually purchased an RV oven and we were able to remove a drawer and the oven combo with the cooktop was a direct replacement to put back in after I remove that drawer so now we have an oven so now it is very functional and we are happy with that the sink area and everything works out good there's a decent amount of counter space it's not huge but it's enough space for us and this the overall layout of having the forward kitchen really has been good as far as we're concerned and looking back towards this direction now our entertainment center is here on this wall so we have our 40 inch TV here which is we can see it from pretty much anywhere in the coach also have an electric fireplace which we actually have liked more than we thought we would for the few times that we are plugged in it is electric so we do occasionally use the fireplace but we like the look it makes the whole RV seem pretty homey so I think that kind of covers the whole front area here we'll move on and we'll talk a little bit about the back okay so now we're moving towards the back of the RV and this is the hallway actually a feature that I turned out to really like I think it's kind of neat having a hallway in our bedroom has an actual door French door type door the glass and it definitely makes it feel more homey for sure one of the things that we gave up to get this hallway was the separate toilet area from shower area in our previous Seneca we had that separation and I thought that was really going to be a big problem and Tony wasn't too sure about this as well but as it turns out we've really enjoy having this hallway in our bathroom here is actually very large in this RV so we have plenty of room for the shower and the bathroom and you can move around in the bathroom we don't feel closed in and we've actually been very happy with the layout so I think the change to the hallway with the one bathroom has worked out really good and if we move on back into the bedroom something that was very important to Tony as in our other coach was having good storage so this RV has huge closet on this side which has I don't know it's good six feet of closet tons of space so we have lots of room for all of our clothing this unit is also set up this cabinet could have a washer and dryer in it it's not something Tony's interested in having so we just have drawers which is fine a lot of extra storage space it has this useless TV that we never watch TV in the bedroom but it has a TV something else that was originally weren't sure if it was a plus or minus but this RV has a king-size bed so the plus is king size bed is amazing very nice having all the space lots of room to spread out since our dog constantly takes that most of the bed anyway but the bad thing is if you look right over here no nightstands my side has this little nightstand that's kind of off the side up towards the front Tony's has no nightstand whatsoever so we're very used to being able to keep our iPads and our Kindles phones and everything charging right at the bed so I was able to install 12 volt outlets on both sides but Tony's outlet is actually up in the ceiling and her nightstand ends up being the top of the headboard as opposed to having an actual nightstand so that's been kind of a downside but we've learned to live with it so it's not too bad and something else with the bedroom that is critical to us which we've always loved and we still love is our bed is on this slide so on each side of our bed we have Windows that we can open up and have cross ventilation between the two sides of the bed and this is a must for us there's no way we do an RV the didn't have cross ventilation on the two sides of the bed and something else that's a bonus we feel in this RV that's worked out really well for full-time living is as you know when you're full-time living you use your slides a lot more than a weekend camper uses their slides so this RV like Mini has storage underneath the bed in our 2006 Seneca the entire bed platform and all of the storage was one unit underneath and that whole unit would slide in and out as the slide-out mechanism and we had quite a bit of trouble with that becoming weak and we had to do a lot of reinforcing and rebuilding to keep that slide working well so this RV the actual platform that holds the bed and all of our storage is permanently mounted to the RV the bed platform itself with the mattress slides on top of that platform so it's much lighter much easier on the slide-out mechanism and the result is in a year we've had zero problems with this slide and really like the way that it works all right something else we thought was very important to cover being that we live full-time on our RV and we do a lot of boondocking not only in places out in the forest but there's often times we boondock in cities at visitor centers museums some part of its host location things like that where we're not able to put our slide outs out on our RV so something that was very important to us is how usable is our RV with the slides in so this RV we think it's pretty amazing so we're standing in here right now we've actually got our living room slide pulled in and as you can see here we have full use no problem two of us can walk by each other full use of the kitchen refrigerator everything in here full use of our table and dinette we can get to the front of the RV no problem with space here the only thing we lose with the slide pulled in is obviously our fireplace obviously this television and the top three cabinets here above our television we can still actually utilize this one cabinet but these cabinets are not used but that's really the only things that we can't access with everything cold in and we've lived comfortably with the slides in on many occasions so actually you know maybe the people who designed this RV what they had in mind with this front TV is this scenario so our slide is in we're sitting here maybe we still want to watch TV well this 40 inch TV is actually on electric swivel so it will swing out and actually aim right at the table in the couch so I guess we still could even watch TV if we want it to with the slide in because of the extra TV they have up here in the front not that critical but it does work but it was very important to us to have an RV that functioned with the slider one thing I felt was worth mentioning with regards to the entertainment items that were installed in this RV number one 36 foot RV with four televisions seems a little bit overkill I've got a 40 inch TV here 40 inch in the front 19 or something like that in the bedroom and a 32 inch TV on the outside of the RV love the outside one one of the things that we have an issue with is what they chose to put in here these TVs this 40 inch Jensen TV here believe it is an LCD style not an LED but one thing I can tell you for certain is this TV gets super super hot and normally I wouldn't think that would be too big of a deal but on a nice winter evening sitting in sides getting chilly out you're hoping your furnace is going to turn on because you have your thermostat set a nice comfortable temperature but one thing you'll notice if you come over this direction they felt that it was very smart to install the thermostat right here on the side of the TV compartment so what we found is it can be 45 degrees inside the RV we can have this thermostat set to have the temperature be 65 in the RV but if we're watching television and you come over to this side and you put your hand on this wood it's warm and if you look at this thermostat it'll say it's 85 degrees in the room so one issue for sure is that to keep the RV and watch television with the furnace we have to turn the thermostat up to like 90 degrees so that it'll actually kick on the heat so kind of a weird thing I haven't really figured out a solution I haven't figured out a good way to relocate this thermostat yet but eventually I think that's going to happen so that's kind of a weird quirky thing about this Seneca one thing's for certain within a couple months this TV will definitely be replaced with an LED style TV which we hope will number one consume less power and number two not give off as much heat as this one does okay so as you can see we kind of gave you a good walk through we listed some of the pros and cons a couple other things that kind of breezed over and forgot to mention big tank capacities we have 80 gallons of fresh water on the rig got 50 gallons 45 or so of gray and black so boondocking abilities are great overall impressions we love the Seneca we loved our first Seneca this Seneca is worked out really well for us we're extremely happy with it great weight carrying capacity we've been able to keep the weight down lots of room to spare I haven't had any issues with that at all so we foresee keeping this rig for quite a few years we have a couple other really cool upgrades coming up that will improve our boondocking ability beyond what we already have we've done quite a few upgrades already to the Seneca and we'll link to a couple different videos here about our solar system and thermostatic valve that we've installed in the shower and we've got some pretty exciting gray water recycling and hot water recirculation ideas that we're going to be working on over the next couple months and I'll be sure to cover those bottom line living full-time at a Seneca class c36 FK has been good for us we're very happy with it definitely feel that the pros outweigh the cons but we definitely love to hear what anyone else has to say if anyone has any questions that we didn't cover about the Seneca about our living on the road or anything like that please be sure and leave a comment down below and I'll address those and get back to you and if we need to make any further videos to cover any of those topics we'll certainly do that so until next time this has been Kurt with the cool Odyssey thank you all for watching be sure and check back often for new content and if there's any topics you'd like to see us cover be sure and leave comments down below and we'll address those in future videos

Channel: The Kuhl Odyssey

Views: 235,715

Rating: 4.8464584 out of 5

Keywords: 8-18-16, jayco, seneca, 36fk, fulltime, fulltimer, gorving, rvliving, rvblog, kuhl, superc, freightliner, classc, xscaper, rvreview, rvwalkthru, rvproject, rvupgrade, rvrennovation

Id: E1FkaVcD9Hs

Length: 23min 57sec (1437 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 21 2016