Living in a Motorhome.

you guys have been asking for this video for a while now so I'm finally doing it what you're looking at right now is my 1996 Winnebago adventure and it's my home [Music] I've owned this now for about nine months I've been living in at full time for about three months and it's in the wintertime so I want to talk about some of the learning curves that I had and some of the misconceptions some of the goods and some of the Bad's so let's get right into it of course the big thing that I was worried about and was quite challenging is living in the wintertime in a motor home not so much because of the temperature inside here because the furnace can keep it quite warm in here but the temperature of the water that's the one thing you have to be cautious of and here in BC we had about a week that was like minus 40 but I'm very fortunate because well you can see around me the windows are all closed now this isn't very typical in a Motorhome because you're parked somewhere beautiful and you can look outside for me I'm fortunate but at the same time it's a bummer I am I'm actually parked inside a shop now this is great for me because I can just heat the shop we have a big boiler outside and that's how I heat this it takes a tremendous amount of firewood which sucks but at least I don't have to ever worry about my water freezing so that's a huge plus for me and what makes this lifestyle possible for me that might not be possible for other people depending on where you live if you live somewhere south of here like Oregon or California something like that it's not a problem and my original plan was to drive this to Arizona for the winters but then I priced out winter tires and they're like six thousand dollars so I'm just in here in the shop for the winter time and then summertime I'm gonna be hitting the open road some of the things that I have learned while living in a Motorhome my first month living in here was quite a learning curve not so much that it's difficult it's just there's a lot of little things that you need to pay attention you you learn where you want to go to the bathroom that's a big one and I have a schedule now where I go to the gym and that's where I shower I'll show you the shower in here it's much bigger than I thought actually this is my shower and it's actually tons of room more than enough for me in here still Headroom and then this of course comes off and while you're showering there's an uh little switch right here and this is to turn off your water so you can start it get your temperature you wet yourself turn the pump off and then shampoo soap turn it on rinse and you're out of there so little things like that you begin to learn and it gets really easy after a while of course now when I'm somewhere that has a really nice big shower I take my time and I really enjoy it because in here you're limited to like one minute showers just so that you don't have to fill your water tank all the time of course you can shower as long as you want if you have somewhere where you're either hooked up to water or you can fill your water tank all the time for me it's just wildly inconvenient to pull out of the shop and fill my water tank and dump the black water and while we're on that topic that's another thing that was a huge learning curve for me and what makes it really difficult in the wintertime is feeling your water and dumping your black water and this is why now you're probably thinking to yourself why did Dustin go from talking about his motorhome to the skating rink because he's Canadian good guess but no this isn't a skating rink it's actually my driveway look at this my driveway has been solid ice now for a solid week almost now I'd like to see you take a 36-foot Motorhome with summer tires down this to dump your water still smarter than a cow other things that I have learned a big one is don't get lazy this is very comfortable in here for me it's more than enough room for myself and if I have people visiting or somebody staying with me it's more than enough room it's quite comfortable but it is a small space so as soon as you get lazy and let it get messy it gets uncomfortable quickly so every time after I make a meal I do the dishes little things like that and it stays very comfortable and very cozy in here another thing that I learned is be crafty because you can't just go into a regular store and buy something that fits a Motorhome and if you get it from a motorhome dealership like chimo RV or something like that it's very expensive so I've been building most of the stuff that I have in here this motorhome is kind of a weird setup because there's no table it's this sectional wraparound so I built this table here it's not great for eating but it's a nice comfy little table put a rug underneath it I have the top section here and then underneath for books and stuff like that and this up here this is built in 96 so it still has this old square television this works by the way but it's not great and you can't just put a flat-screen in here because it's custom-built for this television so I built my own little TV stand here and I have my flat screen in between it's not ideal but it's still nice I can watch movies play video games do whatever I want and if we go back here I needed somewhere to organize all my camera stuff so in this cupboard here I built this shelf I got my camera's up top laptop here and then some lenses assorted things and everything just stays nice and organized so that's the key when you're living in a motorhome is staying organized this is kind of a cool thing this was here when I bought it but this opens up and then a little television actually pulls out of here a little flat-screen right there it's funny this is a small TV but when you're in laying in bed watching you would never know that it's that tiny little television it feels like it's a full sized screen right in front of you but maybe that's just me getting used to it I don't know another thing is if you're building stuff make it dual-purpose or make it so it hides somewhere so I have my desk where I do all of my editing I had to build it because there's no space in here to do that so this is my desk it goes on the couch armrests on this side and then just a leg I built on this side and my laptop everything can go on here super nice and when I'm not using it it goes nicely right behind the driver's seat right there like that so that's good another common misconception or concern that people have when they're thinking about motorhome life or their asking me about my motor home life is storage people are always worried where are you gonna put all your things in that tiny little motorhome well I mean this is a 36-foot motorhome so it's pretty big but there is so much storage in a motorhome you will never run out of space I have pretty much everything that I own in this Motorhome I've downsized a lot now because I realize I just didn't need that much stuff but all of my essentials are in here and I've hardly filled up any of the storage in this thing take a look at the front we have this storage this storage and both of these that has a DVD player other than that completely empty most motorhomes have storage underneath the couch mine does not unfortunately but most of them do this one just pulls out into a large bed we have storage under here this is completely empty storage here this is empty stuff you can put up here again empty then you have your cupboards I really went i downsized everything I have just the essentials for cup or four bowls for small plates for large plates couple more bowls there and then cups and that's it this is empty this has my owner's manual and how to operate and run everything we have junk drawer forks and knives random like larger utensils this is one and that's empty under here we have garbage the rest of it empty this is pretty cool you got your stove oven both work great over here we go freezer fridge both full-size this has some food stuff in it not a lot down there again empty closet is really nice lots of room you open it up the light comes on that's cool so I have dual like that and then I put this in here something I can organize jeans and stuff they don't hang my jeans here we have underwear or socks underwear and then empty again the camera stuff lots of storage here I've towels and just like random bathroom stuff again empty down here garbage empty drawer empty cupboard in the back we have storage here that has a couple backpacks otherwise empty this one here has some Linens stuff for the bed this one's empty this is completely empty these are all empty and then this has some of my stuff in it and of course under the bed tons of storage if we're looking at the outside of my unit you can see lots of these cupboards this has my water tank comes to up here and then this all storage straight through this is where I fill chemicals in here actually this is where I film my natural gas this compartment straight through this compartment straight through this one here is where I have my black water and grey water and then where I plug this is just a small compartment that meets up with where I fill my water and then this at the back is my onboard generator so this unit is actually completely off grid which I absolutely love about it right now I'm plugged in just because of convenience sake and I have it set up so that my lights are all running off the battery water pump is running off the battery and then all of my outlets are running off of the plug in it I wasn't plugged in they would run off the generator so when you want to use something like the microwave there's a switch right on the microwave that has turn on the generator so it's really convenient so you don't have to actually go outside and turn it on you can do that anyways but you don't have to other things that you'll kind of just get in the habit of there they seem inconvenient at first but as soon as you get in the habit of doing it it's really not a big deal at all number one is make sure your water pump is always switched off when you leave or at least when you're not using it water pump everywhere that you need water in a motor home you can turn the pump on that's this switch right here that turns my water pump on same from the bathroom if I want to use the the sink that's that switch right there that's crucial because if you leave and your water pump is turned on and you have a fitting that goes or a pipe that goes bad your pump is just gonna pump all the water in your tank into the motor home wherever the pipe burst so that's very crucial make sure your pump is always off so that's one of my habits when I leave the motor home before I close the door I just look back that little red light there that tells me if the pump is on or off another thing is you have to be cautious about power consumption first of all if you're running on a battery system with either a generator or solar or whatever it is you want to make sure that you're not draining the batteries like unnecessarily and another one if you're plugged in well there's breakers on your converter here as well the onboard system has breakers but when I'm plugged in I'm running the breakers on our power system in the shop so if I have my kettle going right here if I'm making coffee in the morning I can't also be running the microwave so little things like that at first they seem inconvenient but within two days and you're used to it it's really not a big deal anymore at all that's about all that I have for kind of the quirks and stuff of living in a motor home if you guys have any questions please feel free to ask this summer I'm planning on putting some real miles on this thing and parking some cool spots and actually living the real Motorhome life so that's gonna be part of this channel so I'm really excited about that and I hope you guys are excited too if you have any questions about motor home life or you just want to know anything at all please feel free to ask thanks for tuning in but

Channel: Destination Adventure

Views: 14,245

Keywords: MoHo, Camping, motorhome, home, boondocking, winter, urban stealth, urban, stealth, mobile, house, RV, Winnebago, Adventure, cold, survive, ice, living

Id: DjhEaqnUgy4

Length: 14min 0sec (840 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 04 2020