- Today, we are going to be looking at all the mods that we have done to our RV for full-time living
over the last two years on the road. We are gonna start our tour of the RV mods today by the door. Now, our RV came with what's
called a friction hinge, which means that it will
stay in whatever position you put it in. Now, most of the time
that works really well, even in light breeze like we've got today, but we found ourselves in
some pretty windy areas where the friction hinge isn't enough. So one of the mods that we've done is very simply to install a little latch on the outside that we can
then latch the door to, to hold it open. Very, very simple mod. But we found that when we're
in some really windy areas, this is what really
helps us get that through without the door slamming
closed all the time. Now, one of the earliest mods we did was to add these mesh
screens over the vents. We've got them here on, the furnace and also on the fridge. These are the stop insects, particularly paper wasps and
things from getting inside of these covers and building
nests that can best start blocking the flow and stopping your
appliances working properly. And at worst, they can be a fire hazard. We installed these almost
as soon as we hit the road and touch wood, we've had no problems with any insects since then. One of the mods that
we've done on the outside of our trailer is to add a propane quick connect under here. Now, the reason we did that
is because like many of us, we like to cook outside
when the weather is good. So we have a Blackstone, 17 inch griddle. Our trailer came with little
adapter kit that we could use to connect that the cylinders on the front but is a bit fiddly to use
and it was just a bit quirky. We didn't really like it very much. So for a while, we were carrying around a separate 20 pound cylinder that we used just for the propane grill. Now that worked, but again, it was just one more
thing to carry around. One more thing to haul out
the back of the truck bed every time we wanted to use the grill. So I decided to install a
propane quick connect under here. Now, a lot of people in the
past had struggle with these and some trailers come with them, Outdoors RV took it off theirs because people were getting confused that the gas line here is
a low pressure gas line. They were trying to plug into a high pressure gas grill, and obviously things
weren't working as expected. Our Blackstone griddle will accept, a low pressure propane feed directly. So for us, it was a dead easy mod. And now when we want to grill, we just plug it straight
into this quick connect. And it works really well. Overall, the insulation in
our trailer is really good. And even the storage bay doors themselves are thick and well-insulated, but we did an opportunity to improve the insulation even more. And that was to add some
insulation in this panel here that goes between the
storage bay and inside, and also in this section up here. Now, this is the underside
of the nightstands in the bedroom inside. And what we found was that
in really cold weather, those nightstands were just really cold and you'd roll over in
the middle of the night and your foot would touch it
when your arm would touch it. And it was cold. Since we
put this insulation in, that has really, really improved. It was a super quick, super cheap mod, but one that we've really enjoyed and Outdoors RV actually
liked that model so much. They saw our video on that
and they integrated that mod back into their trailers now. And we were actually at the factory doing the factory tour with them when we had a chance to
see the very first trailer with that mod built in,
roll off the assembly line. And if you'd like to see the videos, both from the factory tour, as well as the video for this mod itself, check the description below and we'll put the links in there for you. We're standing here at
the front of the RV, and there's quite a few things
here that you might notice are a bit different. These brackets here are what
connect to our equalizer hitch. And we obviously
installed those as soon as we bought the trailer, but
there's a few other things too. The first is this wire
that's coming out here. We installed this, this
goes to an electrical system that we have inside. And this is connected
to the portable panel that we deploy when we
get to a new campsite, because we did a major
electrical upgrade on the RV, we also added some lithium
batteries that we mounted inside the RV and that freed up a load of space on the tongue of the trailer. So we use that space to install this box. in here, we just keep things
like sewer hose attachments, nothing valuable, nothing,
that's going to be harmed if it gets too hot or too cold, but it's a really convenient storage space for a lot of those items
right here on the tongue. Our trailer also came with a toy block. The toy lock got broken
when somebody cut it to steal our old portable solar panel, which I was pretty gusted about. But honestly, that toy lock. If you have one in your trailer, just really think about what
you're using to secure with it. It's not very strong. We had some hooks added here
by a welder friend of ours that we can then use
to put a much stronger chain lock through when we want to lock
things up like our bikes or our solar panel, that's
been working really, really well for us. Still here at the tongue. In addition to this standard
seven thing connector, we also have this much larger connector. Now this is what we use
to connect to the truck when we hook up and goes
directly to a DC to DC charger that we have installed inside. We'll talk more about that when
we go through the electrical mods in detail, but this is
a much, much higher power charging cable than the seven pin connector could ever provide. The last change that we've done
here on the tongue is to add this little hook on the end here, this, we connect to an eye hook that installed in the license plate bolt on the back of our truck. A lot of people connect this to one of, the loops on the hitch itself. If that hitch ever failed, then we're gonna lose
both the hitch receiver and the coupler that goes on and the emergency safety
brake cable at the same time and the safety chains. So by attaching this somewhere
different on the vehicle, just in that very, very rare chance that we had a catastrophic
failure of the hitch, we would always have this as a backup connected to the license plate. At different parts of the vehicle also makes it really quick
to hook up, which I love. One of the other things that
we've done here as a mod, although not necessarily
on the trailer itself is to build this portable solar panel. We have 600 Watts of solar on
the roof, and that's great. And honestly, in summer that gives us more power than we need. But particularly in the winter months, when the sun is low in the sky, it's just not quite enough
power for us in the trailer. So last October, along with
Phil, from You, Me & the RV, we built this portable solar panel out of two, 100 watt Renogy panels. We did that because our
old 100 watt portable panel was stolen and we needed that extra power. This one we've been able
to build super sturdy, the legs on the back and
the brackets are really, really strong, we've been in some really, really high winds and this
thing has just not blinked. It's been absolutely perfect. So if you want to see how we made this, be sure to check out the
blog posts on our website. We'll put a link to that
in the video description. We showed you our front storage bay before this is where we keep a lot
of our outdoor equipment. It's also where we keep all of our hitch and our hookup equipment
when we are in a campsite. So our hitch is here, equalizer bars for the weight
distribution hitch is here. And what we found is that they are actually damaging the wall. Each time you put these in there heavy, they would kind of get
knocked as they were going in and they were damaging the wall here. So I installed some diamond plate on this wall here just to protect it. And also a few hooks that we
can use to hang things like our locking pin and things like that on there. That's worked out really well,
super quick, super easy mod, but let's just helped tidy
this area up a little bit. This here is one of the contact
sensors that I've installed on both the storage by doors
and the front door as well. These are wireless sensors that connect into our
home automation system. And while they could be used
as part of a security system, we did it just for our
own awareness so that we don't do what we've
done a few times before, which is we get a new campsite. We set up, we put everything in here, and then we go inside
leaving the storage by open, leaving open all night long.
That lets cold air in here overnight, potentially
animals and things to get in, or even worse, somebody might
steal something from here. So with this, now we can just
tell from our phones inside, if a storage space is open, which lets us go and lock
it before we get to bed. A lot of trailers come
with a slide topper. That is the awning that you can see over the top of the slide there, or dealers can install it for you if not. Ours didn't come with one. And we decided to install one ourselves. The installation was actually
pretty straightforward. We did it well, boondocking
in the middle of nowhere and really had no problems at all. Some people say that they
have problems with the wind whipping underneath and kind
of flapping them around. That's only been a problem for us once. And that was when Thanksgiving last year, the wind and Albuquerque was
whipping right from the angle where it's just catching underneath. And all we did is we pulled
the slide in that night and no problem. All of the
times we've had no issue whatsoever, but it does
help to keep a lot of the debris be that leaves and twigs and sticks and things
off the top of the slide, which is just one less
thing to do on moving days, we don't have to go out and check on the roof to make sure
the slide is clear anymore. And it's not just debris like
leaves and twigs and things, but also snow. You don't want that snow
accumulating on the top of your slide not only is it heavy, but it could start to leak in underneath
the seal and things. So this just keeps it
well away from the slide and makes it really
easy for it to fall off when you close the slide and it doesn't bring it
all inside. From here, you might just be able
to see the solar panels up there on our roof. We have 600 Watts of
solar on the roof here. We also have the 200 Watts
ground deployable panel. We don't have a generator. We haven't had one since we hit the road and this solar has been
working out great for us in conjunction with the charger
that we have on the truck, so that whenever we're towing, we got a good power boost there. We're gonna talk more about the solar when we do a bit of a deep dive
into our electrical system. So stay tuned for that one. Now, when we had some problems
with the black tank valve rod not sort of working
properly, it was bending when we tried to push it in, I installed a knife valve on
the end of the outlet there. This really helped us just as a backup in case the other one failed. It also gives us that nice
kind of extra peace of mind to know that there's another
valve at the end there. More importantly, it means that whenever I take that cover off to dump, I don't get that dribel of fluid, let's say, coming out
of the end of that pipe. And I really appreciate that. It makes dumping just that
little bit less, messy. So that's been a great model for us. Super easy, no tools
required for that one. We just picked that up at Walmart and it was dead easy to do. Couple the other things that you can see while we're standing here. The first is the camera. So up at the top on the back,
we mounted a rear view camera. This is an observation camera
rather than a backup camera. The difference being that
an observation camera is on all the time when we're driving and we actually made
some mods on the truck so that we didn't even have to manually turn on our headlights to turn that on. 'Cause it does take power
from the tail lights. Now, whenever we're towing, we do have power going to that camera. And that works really well for us because it's essentially a rear
view mirror for the trailer. The other mode here is the tire. Now our trailer came
with a spare tire carrier for a trailer tire that
would mount on the bumper. And that was great. Having a spare tire for the
trailer is really important. We also have the truck that
came with a spare tire as well. And what we found is that
we really enjoy off-roading and sometimes we enjoy off-roading just a little bit too much, and we want to manage to
pop two tires in one trip, but we only had one tire with us. We got very, very lucky that time. And one of the people that
we were off-roading with had an F-150 with a spare tire. And so we were able to
use both spare tires to get us back home safely. But since then we have decided to carry a second truck spare, just so that if something
happens in the middle of nowhere, we have that backup as well. So we had a welder friend of ours, a weld on a new hitch and
custom build a tire carrier to carry a truck second spare tire. This is something we did after consulting with Outdoors RV themselves to make sure the bumper was strong enough to take the weight of the wheel and the tire and the carrier. They had absolutely no concerns at all. And we're really pleased,
this is just an extra layer, of security. And just knowing that you've
got that extra backup, if you need it. The other thing we had to
take into consideration was the tongue weight, that extra weight pivoted behind the RV is gonna lessen the tongue
weight at the front. Fortunately, because of the
way that we've got things set up inside, we don't have any concerns
about tongue weight and the weight balance here
is really, really good. So that wraps up the mods that we've done on the outside of the trailer. But we've got a few more
inside that we wanna show you the first of which is right here. This grab handle on
the inside of the door. We installed a few months
after we hit the road. And we did that 'cause until then we were kind of opening the
door by grabbing the sides here. And it was just pulling the
mesh out of the doorframe. Adding that handle was super, super easy. And now just gives us
something to hold onto, to open and close the door. The area here around the dinette is really the main focal
point in our trailer. And it's where we spend a lot of our time either working or eating or just with friends and
things around the table. So we want to make this quite a nice area. And one of the things we
added was the Aerogarden. Now, if you haven't seen
the Aerogarden before, this is a self contained hydroponic system that we use for growing
herbs like basil and thyme and things like that. It's been going now for
just over nine months and it's probably coming
to the end of its life now, but that's nine months of fresh herbs that we've had from this, we
really, really like this thing. However, it takes power. Now the old Aerogardens would
have to run off AC power, 110 volts, and that just
wasn't gonna work for us. We don't run our inverter 24/7. Last year, they came out with a model that runs off 12 volts, which is much better for us in the RV. So we added some 12 volt
outlets here in the slide, under the dinette. And that gave us 12 volt power,
not just for the AerGarden, but also to run our laptops. One of the things that we
really tried to do in our RV is to conserve power as much as possible and to help with that. We run our laptops off 12 volt chargers. This one runs off a USB-C,
Diana's newer laptop, unfortunately cannot run
off of 12 volts just now. So we are running that
through the inverter, but otherwise we run the
laptop and phones and things all go through chargers
that run off 12 volts, which means they charge
when the inverter isn't on. To help those outlets on there
have made a big difference. That install was pretty straightforward. We already had 12 volts in
the slide to power the light. So I tapped into the wiring
for that underneath the slide, brought that up and put in
three outlets underneath. One of the things that you
might see around our RV is these rolls of silver
stuff above the windows. This is Reflextic, and it's kind of like a
foil covered bubble wrap. We've cut pieces out to
fit in most of the windows in the RV and we do that for insulation. So particularly in winter, even though these are double pane windows, we found that adding the
Reflectix in the windows overnight makes a big difference. We measured about a seven
degree difference between a window that did have
Reflectix covering it and a window that didn't. And that means that the furnace
doesn't kick on as much, which particularly overnight,
if you live in an RV, you know how loud that furnace can be. So we just find this just
saves power, saves propane, and also is a bit quieter overnight. We've also used it in summer,
so in very hot conditions, putting that Reflectix in, including in the skylight
can really stop that hot sun just baking down into the RV. So we do that, we have to balance it off 'cause obviously during the day we want light and we want
it to be airy in here, but when it's really hot, that
can be really useful as well. You may also see another couple
of things behind me here. So if we turn our
attention to the TV area, we have our Pepwave router on the wall. So we got this a few months
after hitting the road and it has been fantastic. The router has two SIM card slots. It can only use one at a time,
but it can also connect to, an external wifi hotspot
like a MiFi device. And it will then bond those together. So we have an AT&T unlimited
plan that we keep in there. And we also have a Verizon SIM card that we can plug into a MiFi. It will then add the collective
bandwidth of those together, bond, those two connections and give us a combined total
upload and download speed. In addition to that, just being able to switch
between AT&T and Verizon means that very rarely
have we been in a situation where we didn't have
good internet coverage. We don't have a weBoost. We don't have any external antennas that is everything that we've got. And it works really, really well for us. When we bought our RV, it came
with this 12 volt Jensen TV, 12 volt means that we can
watch TV without the inverter having to be on which we really like. It also came connected to
satellite and cable feeds so that if you're in an RV park, you can connect into a
satellite or cable TV feed on the pillar outside and
watch those channels on TV. We don't really watch that
much kind of live TV anyway, plus we're never really
in RV parks to begin with. So I removed those cables
from here completely just to tidy up this area. At the same time, I rewired
some things on the back to give us 12 volts in this area. So previously the 12 volts was only coming down to power the TV, but I've installed a fuse
block on the back of the TV that we've been used to
split that 12 volts out to power some other things
such as our Pepwave router. And also we have, we used to have an Apple
TV on the back of the TV. We were powering that through
the 12 volt system as well. That was a 12 volt modified Apple TV. We've since moved away from that, we just found that the remote
control wasn't as good. And I'm the only one with a Mac in the RV. So it just wasn't really
that useful for us. We're now using a Roku stick, which again is just plugged
into a little 12 volt USB charger just to, give it power. And that works really, really well. There's a couple of other
things on the wall here you might've noticed. The first is this. This is a Google Home Mini, and this is just our
voice assistant in the RV. We love being able to
set timers and things when we're cooking, check weather forecast and things like that,
it works really well. And at some point we are hoping
to integrate this into our home automation system. It does some basic things already, but we wanna have voice control over some more things in our RV. The other thing that you can
see here is our thermostat. Ours came with just a standard
Coleman Mac thermostat for controlling the furnace
and the air conditioning. It was super basic. It just had a manual slider
to set the temperature and a little toggle switch to switch between heating and cooling. We wanted something more elaborate. So I've installed this. This
is a wireless thermostat. Normal residential thermostats
will not work in an RV. The voltage is all wrong. So we had to go through
quite some extensive steps to install this, but this is now integrated into
our home automation system, which means we can turn
the thermostat on and off. We can turn the, we can set the temperature
all through our phones or through our laptops, which is great on those cold mornings. When you don't wanna get out of bed to go and turn the heating on, we can either set it to
programmatically turn on at a certain time, or just
control it through our phones. If you wanna read more
about that, then again, be sure to check out the website. We'll put a link in the video
description to the article we wrote about installing
our smart wifi thermostat. The last thing to mention
here is the vacuum. We have a Dyson vacuum that
we had before we hit the road, but it was a nice small compact one. So it survived the downsizing process. For a long time, we used
to keep that in a drawer until finally I persuaded
Diana to let me warm out that on this little gap we had here
in the corner of the slide and I popped on the wall here. That also meant we
could keep it on charge. So we have the gray power cable here, leading up to the plug
in the outlet up there, which just means whenever
the inverter is turned on, that outlet gets power and
our vacuum gets charged up. We can always run it if we
need to extra just to boost it, but we run the inverter
enough that overtime, that just recharges quite nicely. It's now tucked out of the
way, you don't really see it. And it's always charged
when you need it over here. Now in the bedroom, we've got a few more things we've done again on the theme of power. Because we try and use 12 volt appliances and 12 volt charges whenever we can. We had to add a couple
more 12 volt outlets. Our RV only came with one
over on the side of the bed. Just over there. We've added a second one over
on the other side of the bed. Again, just let us charge
things, using USB charges much faster than the USB outlets
that the trailer came with. They only charge at one amp, whereas we've now got high-speed chargers plugged into the 12 volt outlets, meaning we can charge either 2.4 amps or using a USB-C at a much higher power. I also added another outlet, 12 volt outlet and the
foot of the bed down here, which we had before we installed
the outlets into the slide so that we could run a charging
cable over to the dinette and charge laptops and
phones and things there. That was really easy to add because we installed our
batteries under the bed. So that was just a super
quick mod to install. Also on the theme of power, I just want to talk about some of the changes we made to some of our devices. A good example of that is the projection alarm clock we have, this actually ran off
of the whole barrel jack that you'd plug into a 110
volt outlet on the wall. But as I investigated more, I found that the alarm clock
actually runs off five volts. Even though it's five volts
going into a barrel jack. Now, if you know your electronics, you might be aware that five
volts is also the voltage that USB outlets run out. So I was able to buy a little
USB to barrel jack adapter, and that's what we're now
using to power the alarm clock. So no more 110 volt AC
socket, no more batteries. We have to change all the time, instead, we just have a USB cable plugged into the USB outlet
that was already there pairing the alarm clock. And that's been working
really, really well for us. Another mod that we've done in this area is adding the Maxxfan. Our trailer came with two vents in the RV, one here, and one in the bathroom. If we've got a slightly higher model, it would have come with
a MaxxFan pre-installed. And one of the things we really
liked the Outdoors RV does is even if you don't
get that mod installed, the accessory installed because of the trim level you purchased, the trailer is wired the
same way, regardless, which meant that it was
easy for us to add to the Maxxfan up here, because all we have to do
is remove the existing vent and the wires were there,
they were just taped off. So almost as soon as
we bought the trailer, we took out the existing event and we installed this Maxxfan. We really liked the MaxxFan because it can run even when it's raining so we can run it overnight if we want to. And it doesn't matter
if it starts raining. If we go out during the day, the same, we can leave it running. And it really helps to
keep the trailer cool. Especially with the two windows
opposite each other here, we get a nice airflow coming
in through the windows, and then all the hotter
going up through the ceiling. We also have a weather station
that is just Velcro attached to the wall back there. That
has three wireless sensors. We keep one in the truck. We have one in the storage
bay and we have one outside that lets us really quickly
see what the temperatures are in different places. And we also intercept the
signal from those sensors and feed it into our
home automation system. So again, on our phones
and on our laptops, we can check the temperatures
around those different areas. We used to just have
that screen just kind of standing up there, just
on the little ledge. Every time we moved, we
forgot to take it down and it would just keep falling down. So in the end, we just
attached it up there with some Velcro, very, very simple. The storage you can see above the bed here is a big chunk of the storage that we have available in the RV. And it came from the factory
with hanging rails inside that you can then hang clothes in. We didn't feel that was a
very good use of the space. And as full-timers every
cubic inch of space is super, super precious to us. So early on, we built some
very, very simple shelves. They're kind of freestanding, but just kind of like pressure
fitted against the side and that way they are easily removable. If ever we sell the trailer or we want to use the hanging space back very easy for us to do so. But in the meantime, it's given us a really
usable amount of space for keeping our clothes
and things in there. It's really important
that the trailer is level. Whenever we arrived at new camping spot. And doing that with a level, every time was just gonna get tiring pretty quickly. So we bought a LevelMatePRO
and installed that up here. The LevelMatePRO is a
little Bluetooth device that connects to our phones. So when I'm sitting in the
driver's seat in the truck, I can see exactly how level
or not the trailer is. Not only does that make
it really, really easy for us to level the trailer
using the Anderson levelers, but it also helps me to
find the most level area in a camping spot when we're boondocking, before we've even thought
about setting up there. And that way I can make
sure I know that we're within the range that we can
level using our levelers. The LevelMatePRO is really, really easy to install and set up. We do have a blog post
about that on our website. Again, we'll put the link to
that in the video description. The only requirement really
is that it's installed on a vertical wall, either facing that way or facing that way. With regards to the trailer orientation. We chose to pop it up here because it's fairly near
the front of the vehicle, giving it the shortest distance to travel to the driver's seat of the truck, but also it's tucked out of the way. We don't really see it, but we can easily get here to turn it on if we forget to do so before a travel day. You can attach it to the wall with screws. We just use command strips
'cause it was super easy. And that's now been up
there for about two years without falling down, so
definitely recommend that route. Super, super easy. One of my favorite mods in the RV and probably one of the simplest is what we did with the fridge doors. When we bought the RV, the fridge and the freezer
had thick wood panel doors and they were really, really dark. And all that light coming
in from the slide window just got sucked into
these dark wood panels. So we were really, really pleased when we were able to swap
them out for these dry erase white whiteboard doors. This mod was super easy. We bought some dry erase
whiteboard from Walmart and just using nothing more, really than a pair of
scissors and a sharp knife. We slid out the old doors and we cut these pieces of dry erase white whiteboard to fit in the doors here. They're magnetic, they're
super easy to use. And we use them for our grocery list. We use them for meal planning, definitely recommend
just for that purpose, but also being white and being reflective. They just made this space so much brighter and that has made a
massive difference to how lights narrow, the
entire RV feels in here. Here in the kitchen there are a couple of mods that we've made just to make this space
a little bit more usable. One of those is this
paper towel holder here. It's just held up with command strips yet it's survived the
entire time we've in the RV. It's on kind of like a
friction roller as well. So it's easy to remove a
sheet just with one hand, which we find really useful. The other thing we've added here is this little white button. This is a sort of wireless
remote button that we've got here that just magnetically
attaches onto the side of the stove hood here. We use this clever
little white button here for turning on and off the inverter. This is something that we've custom built as part of our home automation system. And we'll show you more
about that in another video. For the first 12 months or so on the road we were carrying around bottled water. We would refill about a half
dozen gallon jugs of water, either a good quality
of water sources, from, the national park campgrounds, or failing that at
reverse osmosis machines like you find it in a
Walmart, it worked fine. There was nothing wrong with it, but it was a bit of a pain
having to lug the jugs around and just move them in after the truck. And honestly, we've got a
giant fresh tank onboard here. One of the things we
loved about this trailer is that we have a 78 gallon
fresh tank on a 25 foot trailer. We've never used up all of our fresh water yet, here we are carrying around extra jugs of water just for drinking. Now we only ever fill our fresh tank from good quality
reputable sources anyway, but we just decided we didn't really want to drink that water just in case it's all
sitting there in the tank. And we just couldn't be
sure it was always as clean as we wanted. So in the end, what we decided to do was install a new faucet that has a builtin
cartridge filter underneath. So underneath the sink,
we have a fairly large ceramic carbon filter
that gives us really, really good quality drinking water that comes out of this
dedicated faucet spout here. And just regular water
comes out on this side. There's a couple of other benefits to the way we've done this.
The first is you'll note, there's only one single
hole in the countertop. We didn't have to drill any more holes, which is just one more thing
that makes the install easier, but also it doesn't waste any more space. It's easier to clean, so we
really liked that feature. The second thing was that this faucet, has the pull down kind
of a retractable handle and hose thing on the end,
as well as a spray pattern. And that was something that the old faucet it just wasn't really very good for. So we found this one makes
washing up much, much easier, especially with the two sinks. We can just pivot that between either sink and the same with this one, which makes filling the water bottles, like the jug that we keep in the fridge, really easy filling water
bottles to drink from really easy and just washing up in
general, much easier now. Here in the bathroom, we
haven't made too many changes, but one of the things we have
changed is the shower head. We have changed to the
Oxygenics shower head, which allows us to get the
feeling of much more pressure, but actually uses less water. And when we're boondocking and we're trying to conserve water, that's something that's
really important to us. Swapping out the shower head is dead easy. One of the things we did differently was we actually kept the original hose, the shower hose here that
came with the trailer. Although the color kind
of doesn't really match the shower head. We just found this hose
was just a bit softer and more support than the one that came with
the oxygenic shower head. So we decided to keep this one. I try not to spend too
much time squatting here next to the toilet, but this is one of the mods
that we've done in our trailer. We swapped out the Thetford
toilet that came with the RV and put in the Dometic 310 toilet. We did that for a couple of reasons. We found that the old toilet, the plastic lid was pretty fragile. We had a few things fall
out of the shelf above, during travel, and they broke that lid. We also found that it's
really hard to clean the underside of that plastic lid. 'Cause it had all these like
plastic reinforcement ribs and just overall the
toilet just didn't feel like a residential toilet. We
thought we could do better. So we upgraded to the Dometic 310 toilet. This has a slow close lid
here and a seat as well. They're much, They just feel better than
more durable, they feel solid. And it's a more pleasant
toilet experience, overall. When we installed the Dometic 310 toilet, we chose the model that
came with the cleaning wand, which we find just really
easy to help clean the toilet. We've also found that the
valve in the Dometic toilet is much more reliable than the
one in the Thetford toilet. That just never seem to quite
seal properly all of the time you'd clean it thoroughly. And within a few days it was
just staying slightly open, which would let all the odors
come up from the black tank. That is not something you want. We found this one to be much, much better, and we've had no problems so far. I do think it uses just
a little bit more water than the Thetford one. Fortunately for us, it doesn't use enough that it's a concern, but if you're really,
really tight on water, that's just something to
consider with this toilet. The install itself though,
was really elite, really easy. We did it while dry camping at the Albuquerque balloon Fiesta and believe it or not, we actually even managed to auction off our old toilet in a charity auction. I don't know why, but somebody paid $40
to buy our old toilet that we called the British throne. And that was $40 to a good cause. I've mentioned a couple
of times about both our electrical system and
our home automation system. Now the home automation
system is something that we've been building ourselves over the past year or
so of living in the RV. And the idea is to have
smart control over as many capabilities here in
the trailer as possible from our lights and our
environmental settings, like the air conditioning and the furnace. And be sure to look out
for an upcoming video when we step through some of the things that
we're doing in that space and some of our ideas in the future. In terms of the electrical, we haven't talked too much yet
about the electrical system that we installed here. When we very first hit
the road back in 2018, right now we have 600
Watts of solar on the roof. We also have a fairly
big electrical upgrade under the bed here. We've installed 300 and
powers of lithium batteries from Battleborn as well as
a Victrum 3,000 multiplus inverter charger. We also have a solar charger down here and a DC to DC charger. We'll be doing a separate
video to step through all of the details of the system and exactly how we installed it ourselves. When we hit the road. If you want to learn more
about the electrical system that we've installed in our RV, then be sure to check out our website. We have several blog posts on there. About exactly how and why we
made these electrical upgrades. When we went full time in our RV, also make sure to hit
that subscribe button. So you're the first to be
notified when our video all about our electrical modes goes live, and we will see you in the next video.
