COMMON RV SETUP MISTAKES TO AVOID | Things Every RV Owner Should Know

hey guys brian here from five to go we just made it through the 4th of july week last week so we had a lot of weekenders and you know holiday campers out here in this campground and beautiful colorful Colorado and I saw a lot of maybe questionable things I saw people struggling with different things and so I just wanted to put this video together for y'all so you can kind of have our recommendations what we've learned over the last 18 months and 150 plus campgrounds as to like our routine of setting things up and a bunch of common mistakes that you can avoid if you just establish a routine and do things safely and smartly the first thing is when you pull into a site make sure you have room for your slides to come out because there's a big tree right here our neighbor is a little close in this site there's a little bit of a hill on the other side so when we pulled into the site we kind of got out and looked around made sure we'd have room for our slides to come out and it's a good idea to know how long your slides are when they come out some people like to kind of measure by standing up against a rake and they put their arm out a lot of slides kind of tend to be that long about three feet we have a big one back there that's about that long so if you know how long your slides are you can kind of make sure you're in a good spot before you start doing your hole unhook procedure so after you know that you're in a spot where you can head get your slides out go ahead and do your leveling side-to-side we've covered that in other videos and another blog post I'll link to down below as soon as you are a level side-to-side put wheel chunks on we have Anderson levelers on this side so we put our wheel chocks on the other side we like these really big chunky black wheel chocks with those wheel chocks on this trailer is not moving so let's go ahead and talk about hookups when you pull into your site you are going to have hopefully sewer and electric and water and you want to make sure that you are close enough to those hookups so you can actually use them with the materials that you have on hand first thing I want to talk about is electric so this is our electric hookup we have a 50 amp rig and it hooks up right here which is kind of a little forward of the middle of the rig I only have this one 50 amp cable and I think it's about 30 feet and it has been plenty long for everywhere that we've been I think twice I've actually had to run the electric and I do this before you unhook the truck or start setting up and doing whatever like when you can keep moving I always hook up the electric just to make sure it's long enough I think I've had to move like twice sometimes the electric pole is like way off in the back or somewhere weird and then on the other end of the electric I have a surge protector let's go take a look at that so I did say that our neighbor is a little bit close our power pole this is actually a shared power pole this is the first time we've ever had a shared power pole so we got here second so we got the 30 amp plug our neighbor has the 50 and I don't know what he's running on that other one so this is our is our dog-bone this converts our 50 to a 30 amp to plug into this post but what we're here to talk about is this guy right here this is a surge guard I'll have a link to this in the description down below I never ever ever hook up to any electricity without this in place even residential electricity like I'll do a converter to get the best to a 20 amp extension cord I always always always have the surge protector first and foremost there are little lights on it so when you hook it up it'll tell you whether the power is safe we have encountered three campgrounds now where they had neutrals reversed not the end of the world and it's not going to destroy anything but I would rather just have green lights all over so in addition to letting me know if the power is good this also protects us from spikes we've never encountered one like these things are supposed to die before anything happens in the rig but we have heard stories about campgrounds with electrical spikes especially when there are thunderstorms or if you're on like an older kind of edge section of a grid or whatever it just keeps the power nice and steady and keeps everything inside all your sensitive electronics from getting fried if something happens out here so now we're going to talk about water real quick the water hookup for this campground is in a particularly awful place normally they'll be on a post sticking up out of the ground but I think these are way down low and buried does get below freezing for like half the year here so I always use a splitter and I always have a pressure regulator and I always have a water filter there's a first three things I have coming off the campground water spigot and we'll talk about hoses in a second but the pressure regulator we've been in campgrounds with really high water pressure and you do not want anything above like 50 maybe 60 psi going into your rig because those pipes are just not made to survive that water inside rigs is pretty much the worst thing that can happen so you don't want way too much pressure getting inside of blowing things apart water filter is king crabs aren't really known for having the best cleanest water supply I just saw a couple photos on Facebook the other day where this guy's filters were completely Brown after one day of use so I always always always have a water filter we don't drink the water out of our tap but we do shower in it we do like wash our toothbrushes in it it is going into our water heater and it is also going into our toilet so I don't want really minerally heavy nasty dirty water getting anywhere inside the rig so I always have a water filter first before anything else so let's go talk about hoses I have a variety of water hoses and I think total I can reach about a hundred and thirty five feet so we've never had an issue hooking up to water my primary water hose is this zero g one because it is super flexible and super easy to put away then I also have a couple different lengths these white cam coat no kink drinking hoses we used to just use these if you ever use these even though how much of a pain in the rear they are to spool back up and put back in your way so these are just my extras in case we're really far away this little 10-foot dude here is super handy because when my 0g hose is like just a couple feet short I just use this instead of unspooling another 25 feet of hose and I also have an orange hose that is dedicated just to the sewer flush because on our Nautilus system here on our reflection we have a what's Carla I think it's called a tank wizard that is in the black tank so I can hook up this hose to this and it sprays stuff that when I don't so I always have that hose it is bright orange is not drinking water safe and it is just totally separate and it only has that one job that's why it's bright orange and looks like nothing else that I have so let's go ahead and talk about sewer and then I've got a couple other tips to get to real quick when we first started but looking into Harvey is about two years ago I was completely afraid of having to be able to sewer and everything that comes out of the black tank and having to hook all this up and everything y'all it is not that hard it is not difficult and I think I've only gotten any kind of spillage maybe two or three times in 18 months however always wear gloves a lot of people don't want to be using disposable gloves because you go through them and creates a lot of waste I have these water resistant gloves that you can find at any hardware store and I always wear these whenever I am touching anything involving this system so when you're setting up your campsite and you want to make sure that you have enough stuff to reach your hookups you can see here I actually had to use all three of my hose sections and I think these are like 10 12 15 foot sections and they kind of accordion in and out but I had to use all three to get back to the sewer and the sewer isn't even at the back of the rig so depending on where your sewer hookup is on your religion bars again it's kind of up here in there power which is a little forward of the middle of the rig a lot of times so where hook ups are way in the back I've had to use all three five or six times so that you definitely need to make sure you have enough to reach a pretty long distance I love it when sewer is right here but that's a pretty rare case you need to make sure to also have all of the appropriate hookups and all the little adapters and whatnot I have a couple of clear sections here so I can make sure things are coming out you also need to make sure to have one of these little guys that keeps your sewer hose up off the ground and also helps you create a slope from a little rig to wherever the sewer hookup is and we've actually been in a couple states where these are required by state law to get your sewer line up off the ground there's a bunch of different versions of things like this but make sure you have some with you if you're going to be traveling some of the States okay and the last thing sewer related when you're done working with your sewer and you get your gloves off the very first thing you want to do grab your hand sanitizer I always keep some right down here in the bag and also after using that as soon as I go inside I make sure to wash my hands with nice hot soapy water you never know even if there's not an incident you never know right also if I a couple times that I've had a little bit of an incident and get something on my gloves I will leave them on and use my outdoor shower here to wash my hands in my gloves with hot soapy water and then get the gloves off leave them out to dry and wash my hands again right here the next thing I wanted to talk to y'all about is an item that we see a lot of people use improperly talking about stabilizer legs if you have like a big 5th wheel or if you have a Motorhome that has the big hydraulic leveling things I'm not talking about those I'm talking about these stabilizing legs we have power ones there's a little switch here that runs them up and down there are also the scissor style where people use like the hand crank or sometimes they'll use a power drill to run them up and down those are stabilizer legs they are not load-bearing okay when we set our stabilizing legs up we do two things you'll see that we have all of the leveling blocks under there that is to bring the ground up so the leg only comes down less than 45 degrees that gives you a nice strong angle and that keeps the rig from shaking a lot and also when we run these down we run them down until they contact the little pads and then like a click more to make sure they're nice and tight we are not lifting the rig you should never see your rig move up at all when you run these down if you do that you will destroy them you will Bend these if you have the big scissor jack ones and yet there's a lot of movement this way you will probably topple them over and you might do damage to your frame so these are stabilizing legs they are not load-bearing do not put the weight of your rig on these we see people do that way too many times both in person and on YouTube so don't do that the last thing I want to talk to you all about is establishing a routine if you want to be successful at camping and have a good time and not worry about the logistics of all of this stuff figure out your routine we have a routine Aaron and I have a routine so when we pull into a site we know what we're doing we level side-to-side we hook up the power we get up off the trunk we level front to back and then we do the X chunks we do the stabilizing legs and then Aaron goes in gets the slides out and starts doing inside set up while I stay outside here and I do water and sewer and that's our routine like we know it by heart we've done it so many times and I know it's difficult like if you only go out a couple weekends or a week or two here every year it's probably pretty easy to forget about things we've been doing this for 18 months straight which means we have set up and broken down a lot so it really has become ingrained in our heads but if you need a checklist make a checklist and follow that checklist every time have one for setting up and have one for breaking down make sure you don't forget anything the more you do it the more you will kind of feel when you forget something and it's funny whenever we get into a site and we don't have to unhook or if we were just somewhere for one night we're not doing like a full hookup the next morning we're like well something feels weird like we were getting in the truck and ready to move and something feels off because we didn't go through our full routine we know everything's fine cuz we didn't do it like a full breakdown and setup but you kind of get that feeling so the more you do it or if you have a checklist it will help you be successful and get everything done so here's to some great camping this summer and make sure to LIKE comment subscribe let us know down below if you have a routine or a checklist or if you found any of these tips useful we'll see you in the next video thanks [Music]

Channel: Five2Go

Views: 516,707

Rating: 4.8096809 out of 5

Keywords: common rv mistakes, rv camping mistakes, rv mistakes, rv mistakes what not to do in an rv, rv mistakes to avoid, rv mistakes youtube, rv trailer mistakes, rv newbie mistakes, rv beginner mistakes, rv setup, how to set up rv travel trailer, rv setup how to, how to set up rv at campsite, rv campsite setup, rv newbie, rv newbie advice, rv tips, rv tips and tricks, black tank, rv travel, rv sewer hose, fulltime rvers, rv sewer, rv black tank, rv campground hookups

Id: 88xXD-81Kkc

Length: 12min 26sec (746 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2019