How to Setup Your RV Campsite for Beginners - Water, Sewer, Electric and Gear PLUS Newbie Checklist!

we want to help rv newbies get all set up at their campgrounds so check out how we set up our rv in six easy to follow steps [Music] hi everybody mike here from rv blogger in front of the camera and susan's behind the camera and today we're going to be taking a look at the six steps that we follow to set up our class c motor home when we end up at a campsite now if you have a motorhome you can follow right along if you have a travel trailer the steps might be slightly different but we cover everything at least the basics so you understand how to do all the hookups at your campsite electric water and sewer also how to move into your campsite get yourself all leveled up and then of course the fun part is putting out all the fun glamping items so we really cover the basics of everything you need to do when you arrive at your campsite so you can get all set up for a fantastic camping adventure hey if this is your first time seeing us on youtube welcome to our channel thanks for being here and if you've seen us before hey welcome back we're sure glad you came back to see us again as you know we make tons of videos all about rving and we also have our website rvblogger.com where we literally have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of articles that we've written all about rving and if that's not enough we also have our facebook group called rv camping for newbies where you can join be a part of the community ask questions learn from other rvers and just have a great time sharing your experience so without further ado let's get into how we set up our class crv and you can follow along with our six easy steps we also have a checklist that we put together and all you need to do to get the checklist you can download it yourself is just go to our website rvblogger.com forward slash setup and that'll have the checklist where you can download it and keep it on board yourself it's a very basic checklist it's not like every single detail you need to know under the sun but it's enough to make you think okay what do i need to do now why am i doing it what do i need to do next you'll be able to use it get set up be in great shape so when we first pull up to our campsite one of the first things we do is just pull up and take a look at the campsite and then we hop out and we walk around our campsite a little bit because we want to get the lay of the land we want to see where the hookups are located we want to see if there's any branches that are hanging over that might be in the way we want to know where our picnic table and where our fire ring are and we want to kind of see where is the most level spot to park so we don't have to do as much work with leveling up now when we're backing into the space there are a couple things that you can do to make life a little easier when you're backing in if you have someone with you like i always have susan with me she hops out and stands behind the rv while i'm backing in and we'll each get on our cell phone so we can communicate easier instead of just winding down the window and then having to yell at one another and another great tool that you can use to help you to back up is to install a wireless backup camera now susan got me this one for christmas one year and i went ahead and installed it and now we have a beautiful view whenever i'm backing up so now i've got susan behind the rv and i have my backup camera which is a perfect combination to be able to back into any site so now that we're all backed into our spot we're going to walk around and see if we landed the rv where we intended to we don't always get it on the first try so let's walk around and see where we are first of all you'll notice we're pretty close to all of our hookups we've got our sewer hookup right here and then we have water and electric so everything's pretty much right near the back of the rv where it needs to be so we're in good shape on this side we don't have any slide outs on our rv but if you did have slide outs you know you'd want to make sure you had enough room on this side of the rv that you didn't hit any of this stuff or hit a tree branch or anything like that with your slide out so that's another important consideration so this side of the rv i'm not as thrilled with as the other side but on this side of the rv you can see how our side door lines up with the rest of the campsite and i don't know i kind of feel like when you come out of the rv you know i don't want to make a wrong turn and go tripping over this big thing so in my mind we should probably back up a little bit and get clear of that but we're in good shape as far as where the picnic table is located where the fire ring is located and another big thing to think about is that your awning can fit wherever you park as well and we have plenty of room on this side of the rv for our awning to extend not hit these tree branches above and everything should fit just fine so the only real adjustment i think i want to make to the camp to our camper on this campsite is maybe just to back it up a few more feet so that the side door is clear of the tree stump now it's time to level up and then put the chocks in place so on our handy dandy checklist that would be item number two now you can probably tell that we're not very level where we are right now but we found a pretty cool app it's just a bubble level that you can pull right up on your phone and then we can put this right on the rv and tell how out of level that we are and then that kind of gives us a rough idea as to how many blocks we think we'll need to go ahead and get her nice and level now there's a couple reasons that you want to make sure your rv is level first of all your refrigerator has to be pretty level for it to cool optimally for it to be as efficient as it possibly can be it needs to be as level as possible and the other reason you want it to be as level as possible is just so that you're comfortable when you're walking around inside it feels really weird in there when you're not level you kind of feel like you're always off balance or at least i do and then the last reason is a safety reason and that is if your rv's not level then that's a situation where it can roll and you never want that to happen now we always use chocks to make sure that doesn't happen but more level you are the less likely you are to have a problem with rolling in your rv so let's get started figuring out how unlevel we are how many blocks we need to install and get blocked and chocked so we're in great shape now some rvs have the luxury of having automatic levelers you push a button and it automatically levels up your rv and that is terrific if you have that feature we don't so we just do it by hand with our leveling blocks not a big deal just takes a couple minutes to do it now i what i need to do in this particular situation is the back wheels need to go up about three blocks and the front wheel needs to go up one block and i think that'll get us very level both front to back and side to side both matter in your rv for you to feel comfortable inside and again we want to get the refrigerator as level as possible as well so when you use your blocks all you do is kind of build a bridge so i have three blocks down then two blocks down then one on top and i have to do this twice because i have two wheels in the back of my rv so i just make one slide it in position all right now since we are so out of level on this campsite it's just a very unlevel campsite we have to come up three blocks now in order to come up three blocks i have to use six blocks because i'm building a pyramid so it's three on the bottom two in the middle one on the top i only have four blocks left so this is why it's important to carry two sets of ten with you when you're out and about so we happen to have two sets [Music] so there we go and then i'll just throw one of these under the front wheel and then that'll get this whole side of the rv up and it'll get the back up more than the front and that should help get us level in both directions a little more about a half inch that's good so now that we have everything blocked up i drove up on the blocks the first thing i did was i put the emergency brake on and the second thing that i'm doing to make sure we don't roll away is i'm installing our chocks behind the wheels now i can fit one behind the front wheel i can't get any behind the back wheel because it's up on the blocks so i'm going to use one chalk on my front wheel on this side and then i'm going to go to the opposite rear wheel on the other side and that'll chalk us in place so we don't roll anywhere at all now if you happen to have a travel trailer that has a tandem axle in the back so you have two tires in the back that's where you would use an x-jack between the two tires and it expands between the tires and it keeps the travel trailer from rolling that way and you can also use these kind of chucks with it as well so uh there's a couple different ways that you need to chop your wheels depending on what kind of rig that you have but those are the two predominant ways all right the next step on our checklist is to hook up the electric now that is the first thing that we like to hook up as soon as we get set up and leveled up in our campsite the reason for that is it allows us to go ahead and turn on the air conditioner and lights inside the rv a lot of times we don't even get to our campsite until after dark we're pretty much on the go all day long so the first thing we like to do is get the electric hooked up another great reason to hook up your electric first is if you have slide outs and so you can hook up your electricity and your slide-outs will work much better than they would if they were on battery power especially if your batteries are low if your battery's low and the engine's running or the motor is running too slow for the slide out that's when you could have a problem with your slide out so first things first we get the electric hooked up now we use a surge protector whenever we hook up our electricity and there are two reasons for a surge protector the first one i think everybody's aware of and that is there could be a lightning strike and then too much electricity comes through and it fries all your electrical appliances inside your rv not a good situation but the other reason to use a surge protector is one that's not as well known and that is that a lot of older rv parks are wired so they don't really get enough juice coming through the electrical system and so you can power all of your appliances but you're not powering them with the right amount of electricity it's just a little bit less than it should be and that lower amount of electricity causes your electronic motors and things like that condensers things like that to burn out much more quickly it takes time for that to happen but over time everything will burn out and it won't last as long as it should so those are the two reasons why you should use a surge protector on your rv now when we hook ours up it's a very simple process just make sure the breaker's in the off position plug it in next you can test it right now by turning it on and if your green and blue lights come on you're in good shape if the red light comes on you're not turn it back off and then go ahead and plug in in our case a 30 amp line and then you can turn the breaker back on and now everything is performing as it should and we have power to the rv and all of our appliances are very well protected do you trust the water at your campground well we don't and this leads us to step number four which is hooking up the water hookups for your rv now one of the very very first things you have to do in fact the very first thing you need to do when you're hooking up your water supply is to just simply run the faucet for a couple minutes before you hook anything up to it the reason is you don't want to blow all this dirty water right into your filter you certainly don't want to blow it into your rv and have it throughout your plumbing system so just take a minute any time on any time you're going to get water for your rv and just let the spigot run for a few minutes because this is terrible the reason the water looks like this is because uh sediment like rust sand silt and dirt all accumulate inside the piping system and so when you first turn on the water you get this dirty looking water that comes out now if you just let it run a couple minutes and we'll do just that you'll see it'll clear right up and so just after just after like less than a minute of running the water you can see that it's already much clearer it's just that initial burst of water that comes out is full of sediment and you don't want that going into either your filter or your rv if it goes in your filter it's just going to clog your filter way sooner than it normally would and you don't want that crap going in your rv at all so that's step one with the water system the next thing you want to do is just hook up a simple splitter and we do this because one side of the splitter is going to run to the rv and then we have the other side of the splitter that we can use um just with a regular garden hose we can you know wash things off if we're at the beach wash off the sand any of that good stuff so once you have your splitter installed and you're just going to go ahead and install your water pressure regulator now i've seen people install water pressure regulators right at the rv but one of the weak points in your rv plumbing system is the water hose itself and so the reason we use a pressure regulator is because it manages the amount of pressure that goes through the whole system we don't want it blowing out any hoses or any pipes within the rv so that's why we use a pressure regulator most rvs are set up to run somewhere between 40 and 60 psi we typically have our set right at 55 i do recommend the kind that has a gauge so that you can see what the actual water pressure is and then there's this little screw on top that you can adjust it yourself so this is the kind that we use and i highly recommend that you do the same the next thing we're going to do is just hook up our fresh water hose which is only used for fresh water we do not use this hose for anything else and that just screws right onto the pressure regulator now when the hose is in storage there is some water that stays inside the hose and so before i connect the hose to the filter system or the rv i'm going to run the water again just for a couple minutes to get any old water out of the hose just to be on the safe side all right so now that we've flushed out the hose real quick we're ready to hook it up to the filter system now we actually run a two-stage filter system with our rv those little blue canisters just do not work and we have another video all about rv filters and how they work so you should check that out when you have a chance but this is the filter that we use it's a two-stage water filter it fits in our storage compartment nice and easy and whenever we're ready to use it we just pop it out mount it on these two screws and then we're ready to hook the water line up all right now we just hook up our second water line to the other end and now one more time i'm just going to run the water for a couple minutes because water stays in the filter when it's in not in use and it also stays in our second hose i just want to flush it out really good before i connect it up to the rv the other reason that it's good to go ahead and run everything before you hook it up to the rv is because there's air in the filter and there's air in the hose line and we don't want to blast that air into our plumbing pipes as well that way we don't get the faucets you know with air and water squirting out like you do on that initial when you initially turn them on and then another thing we do is we have this elbow fitting on the end of our hose and this is what i'm going to connect to the city water supply the elbow fitting is nice because it just takes the stress off the hose this screws in and the hose hangs straight down and i'll show you that right now all right so that's it our elbow fitting is here the hose hangs down really easy there's no stress on it and everything is all set up and ready to go now for those of you that are really brand new to rving there are two different ways that you get water in your rv one of them is through what's called the city water connection which is what we just connected to the other way is to fill your water tank and then use the water pump in your rv to pump the water out of the water tank through all the faucets and toilet and all that stuff now when you're at a campground like we are right now and you have hookups you're going to use the city water supply and if you're boondocking or you're at a state park or a national park maybe where they don't have any hookups at all then you're going to need to fill your tank with water before you before you have water available because you don't have a hookup so those are the two ways and there are two different connections for it one of them is labeled city water connection and then the other is just where your water tank would be filled from okay when you use the city water connection this does not fill your water tank my tank is still you have a busted water pump unless you have a busted water pump which we also have a video about um but the water the tank should not fill with water if you have your city water connected and you hear your tank filling with water you have a problem so um they are very they're separate and they should remain separate and you should not drive around if you can avoid it with a full tank of water on board our tank is like 40 gallons that's 320 pounds of extra weight that we would be hauling up and down the road if we kept our tank full of water so if you need to use your water tank it's really best to travel empty and then try to fill up near wherever you're going to be camping because you won't have a water hookup in your campsite or or you would just use the city water connection itself all right so we finally made it to the fifth item on our checklist which is hooking up the sewer connection which isn't really as hard as it may sound it's really really pretty easy to do but i want to let you know you can download our checklist on the rv blogger website just by typing in rvblogger.com forward slash setup and you'll be able to download the whole setup checklist right off the website easy as can be also if you're interested in any of the things that we actually use on our rv i'll have all the links to the products down below in the show notes or you can also hit our gear page and i'll have a link to that down below as well where we only put things on our gear page that we actually use on board our rv so let's jump into the sewer setup and for that i keep a box which is just dedicated to sewer items and the reason i do this is because well it just kind of grosses me out when i see people keep their sewer stuff just in a compartment and they just sort of throw it in there and i'm like man i can't i can't do that so we keep a separate sewer box everything sewer related goes in there if anything leaks or you know there's always a little bit of leftover water in the hose and stuff everything stays in our sewer box so our compartment stays nice and clean and fresh smelling and all that stuff now first thing you'll notice right away is this little slinky thing and this is used to make sure that we have positive flow or you know a gravity flow from the rv septic output over to where the hose goes into the septic system we use the rhino uh system in our rv and there's a couple of really good reasons why number one is this is a super strong hose you can step on this thing and they last a really long time they're pretty tough so they're hard to break i've had sewer hoses break it is no fun but the other nice thing i really like about it is that it comes with caps on both ends and the reason i like the caps on both ends is because there's always a little bit of water that gets left over in the hose and you don't want that water splashing all around inside your rv so uh we make sure to cap both ends we don't even want that water in our box you know we keep everything tight dry and neat that way so anyway we'll keep the cap on there until we're ready but we'll hook up this end first now this particular type of sewer hookup you know that that could work okay we also keep a doughnut that you could put on board and then plug this into the donut you know that's another really good way to secure your septic hookup so we'll go ahead and hook that up now now this is a little unusual because our septic looks like it's running uphill and um you know if that's the case you can try to push some of the taller ones to the front but you know really we're probably going to end up having to lift the hose when we drain it to get everything to drain properly now one other thing that i use are a pair of belt weights over this connection here and the reason i like to do that is because when you initially pop that black tank there will be such a force of liquid coming through here liquid and solid that it can cause this to pop off and so i put some belt weights on here to keep it nice and secure and we don't have to worry about that ever happening so a question that we get asked very very often once you have all your hookups set up is should you have your black tank valve open all the time or not it's come up in our facebook group people email us and ask to ask us that question all the time we even get it as a comment on our youtube channel sometimes and here's how or what i think you should do here's what we do anyway we leave our black tank valve closed all the time if we're camping in one spot for you know two or three days or more then we'll open the gray tank valve because that way when we take a shower we use more water you know washing dishes things like that the gray tank won't fill up as fast as the black tank if the valve is open the black tank will fill up you know in about three days or so and you only want to drain your black tank when it's really as full as you can get it to be because you need all that force of the water to flush everything out of there so black tank valve stays closed until it's full gray tank valve you can leave open while you're camping however the day before we leave i have to remember to come out and close the gray tank valve because for your final flush before you take off you want to have a full black tank and as full of a gray tank as you can you want to pop your valve on your black tank first to get all of that liquid waste out of there and then you can pull your gray tank valve because now you'll just have soapy water and that's kind of used to more or less clean out the septic hose and all that so that's the deal with whether or not you should leave your black tank valve open or closed while you're camping so another reason we like to do the septic last in our little order of how we do things is i can take my gloves off and be done with that and moving on to other things so i also want to point out i love these orange gloves these are the best gloves i've ever used they're very thick they're super super tough like you can't puncture these things they have a diamond grid pattern on them and that helps you to to grip those slippery fittings on your sewer hose really really super easy they're by a company called glove works and we just love them i i've just never found a better glove so anyway i highly recommend them i'll put a link down below if you're interested in them and i also wanted to point out my handy dandy sanitation station that we built and all we did was take a clean clean xbox a clear clean xbox put our gloves in there got some paper towels and of course hand sanitizer so when i'm done with my septic setup i can sanitize be nice and clean and all done now i made a video about how to make this yourself and uh you can find that somewhere up top i'm sure susan will put a box up there somewhere all right so we made it to step six of our setup checklist and that is setting up out all the camping stuff outside that you're going to use step one for us is going to be opening the awning now it's been raining a bit lately it's nice and sunny now but we had some pretty heavy rain yesterday so i'm going to make sure i'm inside when i open the awning otherwise there might be some water dripping on my head we've already checked to make sure we don't have any trees or overhang branches or anything in the way so we should be good to go to open our awning [Music] [Music] now our camp's all set up nothing to do now but sit back relax and enjoy a nice cold frosty beverage cheers cheers baby those are our six steps that we follow whenever we set up our rv we hope they help you to set up your rv as well now every rv is a little different and if you use some different steps to get yourself set up drop them in the comments down below let us know what you do to get yourself all set up at camp and we hope you'll log on to the website and download the checklist as well and speaking of check if you would like to check out some of our other videos just click right over here and when you do remember to subscribe to the rv blogger youtube channel and hit the notification bell when you do so that you'll be notified every week when we come out with a brand new video so for mike and susan thanks for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: RVBlogger

Views: 77,394

Rating: 4.9100785 out of 5

Keywords: rv setup, rv basics, rv checklist, beginner rv, rv newbies, rv how to, rv newbie, rv hook up, setting up rv at campsite, keep your daydream, rv setup for newbies, rv setup checklist, rv setup for beginners, rv setup tips, rv hookup basics, rv tips for beginners, travel trailer set up at campsite, rv newbie setup checklist, rv water hookup, rv sewer hookup, rv electrical hook up, rv setup at, rv set up at campground, setup rv at campsite, rvblogger, rv odd couple

Id: _RRXgWyIOX0

Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 19 2020