RV Newbie: Tips & Must Have Gear for Beginners

welcome to KYT this is our RV newbie essential video because we just picked up this new to us Airstream music in San Antonio we've repositioned it here in Georgetown Texas at Trish's dad's house yes and now we're just about to get ready to go back to Arizona about 1,200 miles on our first road trip first real big trip with this rig and we're taking the opportunity to go around.if with all the things that we consider to be absolutely 100% essential before you can really go anywhere with your RV right these aren't the I wish I had these this is what you need before you leave your driveway yes yes so that's what we're gonna be covering in this video we're gonna be talking about the sewer hose and fittings fresh water filters and fittings electrical and TPMS systems tire pressure tire Safety chalking leveling and then some of the tools that you might need in your bag I remember the first time we bought our rig we were walking around the store and we were like I don't even know what this stuff is well and then on top of it we bought two about too many things yes now we haven't done this video in about three years we did an RV newbie essentials video about three years ago and that video shockingly is at 1.4 million views and went back and watch it I agree with everything we said but we have so much more experience now since then we've been are being through the United States Mexico Canada New Zealand Alaska yes and so we just wanted to do a second edition yeah and really break it down and keep things simple okay just a couple quick points before you even get going on your first trip we wanted to talk about mindset yes because anytime that we have been in a hurried mindset problems have followed that's right the adventure starts immediately right it starts from the moment you get in the car so sometimes we're so excited to get somebody where we're like give the car no stopping no bathroom no snacks instead slowing down not only helps up setting up properly making sure you have everything you need but it helps everybody that's on the trip have fun just remembering that that Trish is right that the memories that you can make while you're getting there can be some of the best laughs and some the best memories right it doesn't start when you get there okay gonna neg walk into a bar the bartender says hey we don't serve breakfast here often I have to remind myself just to slow down because okay all the time Marc's favorite thing to do is to leave before the directions are in or before anybody's see this already what's no one watching camera late that's event no one time in Seattle I tried to disconnect we had a Hensley hitch on a travel trailer I tried disconnect without even putting the tongue jack down don't you need to take some pressure off it with by putting your stand down yeah when it comes to hooking up and setting up and disconnecting have a checklist we've done a video on that that you can search on I'll link right there and then I'll just remember that I would say to myself I've got nowhere to be an all-day to get there right and so it's you in a good frame of mind to be ready to be in the moment because our meeting is actually pretty serious so we want to be light-hearted about it but you are bringing a gigantic huge piece of equipment down the road we want to make sure that you set it up safely and that you're ready to have a lot of fun yes the second tip is mind the dip and we've done a video on this also but we just want to remind the community as a whole when you go through a dip and it will you will eventually go through a dip something that's when reality does not meet your expectations right here this is the dip I will tell you that it was fun for the first hour and now it's not it's not fun anyway something will happen your RV at some point will break and likely it will break when it's new because that's when it's gonna break but you start shaking and they start moving and that's when things break and unfortunately the brand-new RV R thinks that a new RV should be perfect for like a car for like a hundred thousand miles and that's just not how it is so when it breaks or when something goes wrong because it will oh my god was that hanging down because someone else hit it or was it just under 14 feet just remember oh yeah I knew this was gonna happen mind the depth grab some food but I must say to pull in to a discount higher and for me to go in and get a new tire and for you to make food nice that's me no I wake up the next day and just know that your trip is not ruined nope you're gonna put that solution based mindset on and figure out okay this is where I get out the duct tape and it buys me a little time to strap down that broken awning not speaking from experience no no no I strive down the awning with duct tape you you taped up a window i deep differe window that I broke I think we have a watertight seal now okay go all the way down like that yeah you're gonna go through that dip but your kids or whoever's with you is watching to see how you react and it can actually be an opportunity to be solution-based and show maybe if you're traveling with younger people that you problems happen all the time and you just put them enough join em sign came out of nowhere using we still got that Wi-Fi going strong you just get in and those will be the stories that you tell tomorrow so I just salute just know that when you go through okay so those are just a couple things that we wanted to make sure that we talked about before we get into all the gear because this is kind of like a first trip video and those really are a couple I'm sure there's more but those are a couple things that are very important okay you're ready to go walk around the rig sure would you mind holding the camera absolutely okay good let's go [Music] okay let's start with the sewer hose this is often from brand-new RV or is seemingly the worst part but it's really not that bad this is this Airstream is as one of these stinky slinky holders right here and these are nice to have and if your RV does not have one of these they're pretty easy to add these are the sewer hoses that I really like these the I think it's made by oh yeah RINO and I have bought the premium versions of you before you don't they're not as good as this so this is the less expensive one I think it's the better version I like the clear elbow so you know what's going on and then in terms of gloves this is another thing when you first get started you consider these to be absolutely central they are but there's also a way to do this that you can do it you can take your time and you can do it very sanitary like I've seen people with gloves on hold up their sewer hose grab the get this potable water stick it in their hose this is why don't fill up fresh water at sewer stations and swirl it around like this right in front of their eyes which is a great way to get pinkeye so even if you don't have a gloves there's a way to do this very clean and you're not gonna have any interview problems just be sure to wash your hands let's talk about some of the accessories that you'll need so this guy right here I hardly nine times out of ten I'm not gonna use this this is like the thing that holds up the stinky slinky so it goes right in every once in a while I need to do it to get over burn and go down but the reason I carry them and I want to carry the the 10 feet because it's the cheapest one is because some RV parks will require you to use these and I don't want to go spend three times as much to go buy it in there a little gift shop so I just carry a little ten footer with me I need so those are some of the items that you'll need for your sewer hose and set up well other quick points about a sewer hose and our last rig was a 44-foot toy hauler and there were two black tanks and you can buy one of these wise to come in and I found that to be very frustrating to use what I would do is I would empty the rear through the hose close it all off and then I would connect that hose to my main black tank hose connect it and then I would empty the black and that would flush all the gray out instead of using the why and leaving them open I found that to be well let's just say there's something called a poopsie and I had more poopsies with managing two black tanks than one so managing one hose and two black tanks and my experience was a more proficient way of going about it okay next on the list fresh water hoses filters and fittings you know when we first started I thought that like fresh water hoses needed to be white and gray tank hoses needed to be gray and I would like it's gonna have a hard time keeping them separate and I think I heard that once I make sure your great water hose is grey I'm like okay um so ridiculous so this is a 50 foot 0g hose these zero-g hoses are fantastic because they're truly no kink whatsoever even when it's cold they operate like this so what I do is I operate with a 50 foot 0g hose all the time it's often more than you need but it's not a problem having extra because it doesn't kink and in situations like this where we're at somebody's house I almost always need a 50 for the hose so what I do is I use my 50 foot hose for the crush water and then I use by 25 foot for the greywater and I've had no problems but there's a couple fittings that you might need one is a actually essential the only is a water pressure reducer now this one is it gives you the ability to see what the pressure is and actually adjust it and so I've adjusted up to that 62 psi which is fine for this rig but for your rig you're gonna want to check to make sure that 60 is capable because it's not Peck's all the way through your rig sometimes they say it specs but the fittings are not and so you might need to be down in the 40 or 50 so check with your rig but this is not 100% essential this is an upgrade this is a $40.00 water reducer you can get a cheaper one that looks a little bit more like like these and it's much too I think it's like ten dollars and it's an inline pressure reducer it just doesn't give you the ability it only goes up to like quarter 50 psi but you're looking to save money this is the way to go okay so speaking of this this is an elbow and what I use this for is plugging into the side of the RV because the pressure of the hose goes straight down instead of into the side of the RV and sagging like this so it can be a little bit easier on your RV if you're fitting on your RV is plastic like most of them are the constant in and out at every RV site will wear down the threading that's the other nice thing about this you can screw them once and then this is metal this is metal that you're going into this one is permanently attached so that's a quick little tip right there all right now let's talk about water filter system the easiest cheapest thing to do is go with the blue I think it's like a camco water filter but it's a hundred micron which is essentially a strainer you can go one step up from that and you can go with the green ones and and they're better I don't know how many microns they go to but much lower but I had issues with flow with those when we tried it so I prefer to go to 0.5 micron and then can get that from clear source now the reason I didn't use this with our grand design momentum is because the grand design momentum had a water flood like a Nautilus system built in and it already had a water filter in there that went to 0.5 so it was redundant I didn't need it but but this air stream it doesn't have a built-in water filter so for this I can use this water filter I connected right here at the source goes in here and then out this way so look into something like this this is not sponsored content but clear source did send this to me but they also are providing a 10% discount to you so everything we're talking about is going to be linked down below I think it's kit10 will get you 10% off of this but they even have a system that will go even lower than 0.5 I think it like it protects crazy stuff in the water but from the most part if you're hooking up the RV parks 25 is sufficient so I think that's everything you need to know about water ok let's talk about surge protectors and electrical for this I kind of like we're in an RV park but this is where we are right now and it's a little bit convenient because this is my 50 amp cord coming from the air spring air stream into is called typically called like a dog bone that goes from 50 amp to 110 this is a 50-footer same thing in the water hose when it comes to like gue knocking at someone's house or mood shocking is they call it typically you're gonna be pigeon feet so I carry a 50 footer and I carry a 25 footer and between 75 50 and 25 I seem to be all set having the proper ways to go from 50 to 30 to 110 or 5230 all those adapters they're not absolutely essential to get started but you will find out that you need them and in fact if you RV a lot eventually your 50 amp cord is not going to cut it and you're probably going to need an extension is that the end of the world no you just exchange sites and do it whatnot but if you really want to add some convenience having a 15 amp or 30 amp extension would be pretty good okay let's talk about surge protectors so I've got two here that were sent by techno RV they're great partner of ours because they provide so much education to the KYT community in their videos so I got a surge guard here that is Eric with technology says provides total protection and then I have a more of a starter a surge protector which protects you against surges but I'm gonna explain the difference so this right here is about a hundred dollars but a little over a hundred dollars and it analyzes what's going on at the panel before you put when you plug in so when you plug it into the panel it's going to give you the right color coding to say that that panel is giving you a good current and if it's giving you a good current then you can go ahead and turn off the power plug it into your RV and then turn it back on this right here essentially does that for you so it won't send any power to your RV if it suspects anything wrong with the panel at any time so let's say when you pull up to an RV park and you plug in and everything's good and then that RV park starts having issues and it senses those issues it'll cut power off to your rig the reason that that's important is because if you get spikes in current that's going through a panel those spikes could cause boards like circuit boards in your RV to bust I've had to replace circuit boards before like a water heater circuit port things about $150 replace that board but if you had a large spike that was going through an RV park and it impacted your rig you're talking about air conditioning boards your refrigerator boards your water heater your furnace that's a lot of warts and at $200 a pop you're $1,000 pretty quick okay tires this is critically important to understand a few things about it I'm not gonna go into all the things about tires but there's just some things you need to know before your first trip one of those things is to have some proper shocks it's very easy to go get the cheap plastic ones you put them in your RV like this and then you forget about them I mean you drive off they they you they disintegrate so what's the point of having a chalk is if you can just roll over them right so these aren't very much more expensive and they're rubber and they actually weren't properly like that um it is absolutely critical to chalk your trailer before you disconnect there are some really bad stories on a hill and you just kind of lose it like we said in the beginning you think you're in a hurry or you're distracted and you forget to chalk and you're on a grate and the trailer goes rolling away it's also really really important when you're leveling to chalk on the side that is up high and for that I use the anderson blocks but they're those big red curved brick leveling blocks and so you roll back up on them and it goes up to six inches and then you put the little red triangle piece to chocolate the advantage to this is not only is it super easy to level your rig but it acts a little bit as a chunk when it's up there I can't tell you how many times I've seen people will they're up on four of these blocks not chalk so in order to chop on these blocks that's for these guys come in so you put them in here you open them up and it gives you the stability some people use these for a little bit extra stability in the rig because it prevents it from moving back and forth but it's also good for chalking when you're up high so I highly recommend these are they absolutely essential for your first trip no um these are these are these are nice to have canned an added level of level of security okay tires so these are good year endurance tires st tires meaning trailer tires compared to an LT tire light truck tire have come a long way in the last three years when we first started our being you could not get this tire on a 15 inch rim you essentially couldn't get an e-rate a tire on a 15 inch rim and as a result a lot of towable RV owners went to LT light truck tires and you know trailer tires are just considered to be junk well now the tires have come a long way and Esty tires provide a little Stifler's on the sidewalls and and they're they're better for towing in the sense that the rubber compound in st tire is designed not to break down as quickly so that if you're going to put your RV on the side of the house for three to six months the rubbers gonna last better last longer than a light truck tire so those are some of the advantages to a trailer tire over an LT tire but that's up to you there's nothing wrong with an LT tire as long as you know everything back so let's first talk about just tire safety in general especially on a brand-new rig but before your trip it's really important when you're down here and you're removing your chocks to take a look at the tire look for cracks and then also this is the key part look way up under here and sure you've even wear because it here axles are bent or out of alignment in any way they'll start wearing on the inside and the hardness spot or it whirring the outside but in our case it was the inside and I just didn't see it for a long time and so that is a surefire way to get below it and now let's talk about the proper psi or how to inflate your tires so if you look on the tire it's gonna tell you to go to max cold so max cold means the maximum amount of psi when the tire is cold in the morning cold meaning in the morning but you also haven't driven it or or towed it because when you tow it this tire is gonna heat up everything about proper maintenance on a tire has to do with how do you manage and reduce heat that's that's everything about when your tire is overinflated what happens is you run on the center of your tire right here and you generate heat in the center of the tiger but what's even worse than that is running under inflated and then your tire tends to sag on the sidewalls that generates even more heat and then the heat happens here on the edges like this that's often what causes a blowout either you're overloaded on that tire or you're under inflated and it creates heat so the best way to inflate a tire is to create the proper flat footprint of a tire in order to do that you have to know how much weight is on each tire most people have not gone to a cat scale or even better an actual tire scale so they know how much weight is on this tire because maybe the fridge or something heavy is on this particular tire so if you know how much is on this tire then you can go to the manufacturer manufacturers load inflation table and you can say for this much weight or you can see for this much weight how much does this tire need to be inflated and then you can proper inflate it if you do not know how much weight is on the tire then absolutely a hundred percent max cold is the way to go here's one myth for you a lot of people think that let's say for this tire I think max cold is 80 psi to be rated tire a lot of people see if they install the TPMS system which we're gonna talk about next they see this tire pressure go 81 82 83 84 and they think oh my gosh I'm exceeding the maximum could pass through this tire no it's 80 psi max cold tire can go way beyond 80 psi when it's hot so don't think a lot of people they under inflate their tires because they live in Arizona and it's really hot and so the under inflate to give themself room or buffer before they hit the max cool that's a myth if you don't know how much weight is on the tire you go to the max cold and it can go it can exceed psi above that so I hope that helps now speaking of managing tire pressure and heat a TPMS system is not essential but a really strong recommendation and we've used three and this is the best one we found also provided by tech-noir B is a color screen what I really like about it it sits on our dash and it rotates through all the tires which is really cool technology has created a video on how to program and so what you do is you put these little caps right here and then it has a booster with just a 12-volt booster that we'll put in the front of the RV so it relays the signal from the tire to the booster to the cab the truck what this does is it gives us our psi at all times and it means that we don't have to go out every morning and check the psi because I can see as soon as I were in the truck but it also detects small leak so as we're driving on the road it can detect that hey this is slowly losing pressure and then we're gonna we're gonna pull over and fix it before it blows out some of these things are expensive but let me tell you we've had three blowouts a blowout destroys the rig can bust your electrical cables can damage the under carriage under here the RV and often is far more expensive than just replacing the tires with adequate back tires all right so speaking of tigers if it's a D and E rated tire my recommendation is just go and get the Goodyear endurance this isn't sponsored by any means we do enjoy getting good your tires from discount they do a great job I think it's good peace of mind in the D and E a lot of people want to move from they want to move to a G rated tire but they don't have an e rated rim what you have to watch out for is the G rated tire is 14 ply 110 psi if you inflate a tire to 110 psi on a rim they can only go to 80 you'll crack the rim so you can't go up entire rating unless you take a look at your RAM or you manage the air of that tire and I have heard from saloon that you can actually lower you can reduce the inflation of a g-rated tire to meet the rim and you'll be fine and we did it but I'm not recommending that I think you should do your own research when it comes to all of this there's lots of blogs you can talk to manufacture I'm just sharing information that we learned about tires and I hope that was helpful to you it was a lot of information so for any time I do a technical video we have a link so that we can go do updates and corrections and provide more information so for tires and tire safety that's keep your dijeron calm forward-slash tires go there and we'll make any updates and corrections disclaimers and all that stuff okay so I think we've covered it all that's talking about tools air is really important but it's not it's not essential reason it's not essential because a lot of people who start with travel trailers have a D rated tire that only goes up to 65 and you can get you can get air at a gas station up to 65 psi but you can't go above 65 their pumps don't go up above 65 so if you're in that situation having your own air through like a fire pump this is pretty nice when we first started RVing we had a flat about half hour out of the gate that's when I realized that RVs do not come with a lug nut wrench and Blood nuts on a trailer trailer are different than the lug nuts on a truck so if you don't know that and you don't have one of these you're calling Good Sam or Coach net or whomever you use so first critical tool is to have a four-way right in terms of things that I carry in here I would say in terms of tools that you might need I would say this whatever makes you feel comfortable to your degree of handiness and I think it's important to carry like a socket wrench I've kind of pared down my tools I've got a socket wrench fit inside here and I and you know I've got monkey wrenches because these come in super handy on you know plumbing in the RV and things that come loose that dry lube burst like wd-40 but like a dry lube so it doesn't attract more grease it's critical you know a PSI in case you don't have a TPMS system one of these is handy like this definitely anything electrical stuff like this because with an RV you end up doing some electrical stuff in fact one of these is kind of Handy now look I'm not an electrician so I personally don't need this but what you'll find when you're RVing is if you're trying to troubleshoot what's going on with a 7-way pin back to your trailer and you call someone they'll often ask if you have one of these so that you can give them certain readings so a lot of the tools I have are not for me they're for the people that are at an RV park that are extremely handy maybe even auto or RV mechanics and they don't have their tools with them so I let them use my tools to fix my rig for free it's a good deal so you know obviously jumper cables and you know lights and straps and gloves and stuff like that but so I would say those are some of the essential tools to bring I feel like I'm forgetting something you know I do have large wrenches and super large socket wrenches like a 3/4 inch I think the name for it it's one of those big socket wrenches and I did the video a long time ago and just people gave me grief for saying that I'm suggesting that people are have to bring too many tools on the road like they've never have to change a leaf spring ok below tape we've another 4 years I know at least 5 people live changed and had to change at least bring it on the road I'm not suggesting that if you're not handy or if you're older that you're gonna crawl an air rig and change the leaf screen what I'm suggesting is that if you're gonna take a trip to Alaska or gonna be on the middle of nowhere and something happens to your rig where you need big tools the likeliness of somebody coming along and helping you that knows exactly what to do is extremely high but the likeliness of that person not having the proper tools to do it is also very high so I like to have some of the tools I wanna go crazy I don't think this been a pump and this and a for.we wrench is excessive and I feel like it gives us enough independence where we're self-sufficient on I'll add one more thing that I just remembered that we keep in the truck at all times that we think is essential to get started hold on that is this first aid kit got $150 which is more than we spent when we first got started but we've had things in here like burn kits and tourniquets and things that if there was an accident or the world upon an accident or something happened to you that are pretty necessary to have it here so I'd say in terms of tools basic everyday tools your pump first-aid kit and then larger items that just makes you feel a little bit more comfortable on the road okay so that's our first trip RV newbie essential gear stuff I wasn't overwhelming yeah I think you did a good job I think there is a lot to know I think there is a lot to know I tried to you know the tire stuff is kind of complicated it can feel a little bit overwhelming so what we did on our Amazon page is we created a like a first trip category like an RV essentials category on there and then in there is everything we talked about that way it's kind of simple to say okay I know I'm gonna need more once I get started but at least I can get at least I know I have what I need for the first couple trip well at least we can leave the driveway yeah you know yeah and be able to dump the sewer correctly plug in if you have water and your tires aren't going to blow up on ya well hopefully Wow okay and and you'll be really good at changing them and it'll be a dip and you'll know that it's gonna be fine your trip isn't ruined that you're gonna get through it and you're gonna have a story to tell by the third tire that we had a change I was timing everybody before never doing a great job and we actually got 11 minutes 11 minutes I remember but it was good it was good okay so we have big plans for this Airstream and we're gonna be sharing our 2020 route here momentarily we've got another video on how we do grout planning and things and we're gonna art I'll just share with you right now our plan is to get up into the Northeast and it's it's a big 2020 route I think we'll be on the road for another six or seven months mm-hm and then there's also a video coming to upgrade this truck which I cannot wait Trisha is getting her sixty gallon fuel tank back you know like I said there's a couple blogs and there's some discounts with our partners so take advantage of that and we'll catch you next Sunday same time same place good idea hi okay what did I forget nothing you didn't forget anything I just want to keep in mind that you're an RVer now okay and so for Christmas you probably don't need new blankets or like gift cards to certain places you need tools so you know tell your family hey I'm in our beer and I got my eyes on this that's true everybody could pitch in because these are expensive but they are worth their weight I'm telling you when you get to really have peace of mind listening at your tires so anyway just remember you're in our beer now and so you want fun tools and although some of them are expensive it's worth it and maybe you know family members can pitch in or if you're retired you're going on the road the kids want to give you a housewarming gift your new house buh-bam your new house yes thanks for that message Trish all right let's go talk about toys oh my knees are you joking me okay okay [Music] hold that on the ground you know anybody so fun I can I can flip it onto this ladder for $5.99 it looks it looks 99 or less

Channel: Keep Your Daydream

Views: 636,722

Rating: 4.9406714 out of 5

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Id: Xzz9TQtccqg

Length: 30min 4sec (1804 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 12 2020