TOP THINGS RV OWNERS SHOULD HAVE • Secret Things, EMS, Adapters

what's up guys you know whenever you buy a used or a new RV it doesn't matter whether you have a pull behind trailer a fifth wheel a Motorhome or toy hauler it doesn't matter these are very important things we're gonna cover that right now coming up on RV Street the first thing I want to mention here is that this is not just some phony-baloney another must-have videos this video is something I've been wanting to do for a long time because it is so important over the time we've been traveling we have seen so many people that are not prepared and they run into problems that they should not have to happen I was really I mean there's so many important things you should have with you at all times and I really had to narrow it down to the most important so I'm really gonna try to be comprehensive in this one it's going to be a little lengthy but I can assure you it's going to be very informative and so I hope you stick with me so let's get right to it so number one the most important thing that you should carry with you is all of your manuals when we bought our motorhome we got a black bag and it had some of the manuals but it didn't have all of them I keep I carry this in our motorhome above the cab at all times but I immediately realized man I got a lot of searchin to do so I went online to all the different things that I needed to keep track of and manuals so I got everything on the chassis wiring diagrams plumbing diagrams greasing points that you have to do on there the refrigerator the hot water heater everything all of the manuals all of the instruction sheets all of the service manuals that I could get my hands-on and in addition to that I have dis tons of folders in my computer covering everything from electrical to insurance dehumidifier furnace generator oil changes you name it these are these folders have links to things that I have learned over time and I'm like oh that's a really good video I'm keeping that one and I make a folder for it and you open up each one of those folders and I'm telling you there are scores of really important information that you know I don't need it now but I'll need it later or I may need it later those of you who have been in the military like me you know that being prepared is the most important thing you prepare and you train you prepare and you train and so what I'm showing you today is to be prepared so that when something happens or you get somewhere you're going to be ready and you'll save yourself a whole lot of grief so again the first thing is manuals documents and so forth and don't forget also the stuff that you download electronically make sure you back it up oh and by the way when you get all those manuals read them the next thing that's kind of in this same grouping is have at least one set of spare keys and have them hidden somewhere I know that if you're a couple the husband probably has a set a wife has a set or your traveling partner whatever you probably both have a set in your pocket or purse or whatever but you need to have at least another set stored somewhere hidden in the event that you lose your your keys and the third thing in this group is to carry critical parts now I've read a lot of people online as I told you before I'm online a lot and other people saying yeah I've carried a critical parts and never used and waste of time waste of money well let me tell you something I know you all have learned what I have learned during this Cove ed thing all of a sudden nobody has anything priorities change they're not going to be stalking this and that they're going to be shifting priorities of shipping groceries and shipping toilet paper and all these other things so critical parts for example I carry a sure flow water pump because to us a water pump we use all the time it's critical and as luck would have it on our way up here to Maine this trip where we are right now the very last campground that we were at our pump went out so I'm going to be replacing our water pump and yes there'll be a video on that so critical parts things that you really need while you're on the go and you need them now you don't want to have to find a place to order them can they mail them here you want to carry those okay so let's move on to the second group you need a surge protector well not really a surge protector what you need is an EMS an electronic management system it looks something very similar to this now we used to have a trailer before we got our motorhome and we didn't know anything then and we ended up buying this surge guard surge protector and it's not an EMS but we didn't have our trailer very long and when we sold it we kept this a portable EMS is what you plug into the electrical pedestal and that EMS is going to tell you right off the bat whether the pedestal is wired correctly it will monitor surge surgeries or power fluctuations either high or low and it can save you a ton of money in the event that you plug into a bad electrical pedestal if you've been around any time at all you know that a lot of these parks they're old and these electrical pedestals they can be wired wrong or in a situation where you go to a park and there during summertime and everyone's running their AC and the electricity starts to fluctuate within the campground your EMS is going to detect that and it's going to shut off or allow power to come through as necessary so you don't ruin your electronics in the in the RV as you know and especially in these newer coaches the RV is loaded with all kinds of electronic devices and monitors and sensors and TVs and on microwaves air conditioners you want to make sure you've got clean power coming in to the coach what i did as i installed a hardwired ems and since we have this already from the trailer what Joanie does if you'll see right here she always when we get ready to pull into a campground she'll walk up and she'll test you'll plug this in and she'll look at the light and it'll tell her whether we're good to go we want to know that first before we go through all the backing in and leveling out we want to know before we even get in that site whether the power is good to go so we decided to keep this because we have a hardwired EMS in our electrical Bay I installed a hardwired EMS and you can see that what I actually did is I this cord was one cord and this is the power cord that you plug into a pedestal in order to install a hardwired unit you cut the cord right here and this is what it looks like inside here you have to wire the outside this side here this this wire here goes into the transfer case it comes out of the transfer case goes into the EMS and then out the EMS to the electrical pedestal on the side here you can see I have a little cord here that comes up into the digital display I mean one other thing that some people do is instead of wiring their LED readout here many people will take this cable right here and they'll run it up and into the coach and they'll have this mounted in a convenient place where they can dis monitor and see inside the coach to me that wasn't important I didn't want to go through all that I decided to mount mounting right here on this panel in the electrical Bay when you buy this hardwired TM as it comes with an option there's a little clip that you can add at the bottom that allows you to do a two-minute delay and I decided to insert that option I put that little clip in that little space right there so let's just say for an example you lose power you're in a you're in a park we're all of a sudden the power just went out what that does is when the power comes back on it just doesn't come back immediately and jolt the system the power will come on the EMS will wait two minutes to make sure that that electrical power is stable and then it'll send it to the coach so I opted to insert that when I installed this unit but I just wanted to make you aware you know if you decide to do this install yourself it can be done you probably need you know a pretty good skill set some strong hands because again when you're bringing this big old set of wires in here and this big ol set coming in here it's tight in there but you know it's definitely doable I screwed the back of this case into the back of the bay and but I wanted to basically show you that option that two-minute delay option I think that's a very good thing to do so by having this hardwired system its permanent it's inside a bay whenever we wire up we plug in we close the bay the bay door and we lock it up so we are always protected by the hardwire even though I'm hardwired with an EMS I always want to also have another piece here and again I said this is a surge protector it really should be an EMS but I'm protected by a DMS I have it back there so if you're starting out and you don't have either you at least have to have an EMS right here a portable you would plug this into your power supply poor plug your coach into that I have chosen to be redundant I plug I test the pedestal with this and I plug it into this and I plug my coach into here that way if anything goes wrong with the pedestal or a surge in the campground or what-have-you low-voltage this is going to take the hit and I'm not going to have to disconnect the one I have in my electrical Bay and send it in for service now I prefer having the hardwired version inside the coach in addition to this so if you do not have a portable at least a portable EMS to plug in to the pedestal before you plug in the coach you need to get one if you have a hardwired one I suggest you put a secondary one there it can be a surge protector or a portable EMS that way you've protected on both ends with an EMS and if you ever sell the coach you can leave the hardwired one on the coach and keep your portable and move it to the next RV and the portable EMS that I'm going to recommend it's going to have a weather guard that goes over the over the connector and there's been a lot of chatter I've seen people talk online about yeah well portable EMS is people can steal those things they can just unplug them and walk away with them I'm going to tell you out of the four years we've been RVing I have not ever heard of anyone stealing but if it'll make you more comfortable get you a little bicycle lock you know the plastic covered cable type put it around the pedestal in your EMS lock it up and that'll maybe give you some more comfort confidence and some insurance one last note about having an EMS and protecting your electrical coming into the VAR v if you a severe storm coming like we did when we were coming up here to Maine we were going through Oklahoma and Missouri man we had warnings all over the place tornadoes hail thousands of lightning strikes a minute blah blah blah oh and they also had like 70 mile an hour winds when you see these kind of severe storms coming don't take any chances when you see the storm coming go to the pedestal and just unplug just unplug and we also brought in our slides we weren't going to have our toppers I'll rip the shreds with the high winds wait till the storm passes then go back and plug it back in okay let's move along to the next subject a multimeter every person that owns an RV needs to carry with them at all times and know where it is a multimeter now as I've shared with you guys in the past when it comes to fixing things mechanically I can pretty well tackle anything and get it done electric has always been kind of my Achilles heel when Joni and I first bought our motorhome and all the stuff that's involved there electrically it kind of was overwhelming at first but now four years down the road I'm pretty darn comfortable with it but I do know when I'm up over my head or beyond my paygrade but a multimeter what's it do it's a diagnostic tool it has two probes a negative and a positive and you're able to diagnose and test and a sundry different AC and DC items AC meaning all of your 110 50 amp 30 amp all that stuff coming in and DC meaning all your 12-volt stuff okay like your house batteries or let's say you had a couple of these and they were old you didn't know if they were good or not you can test this battery right here to see if it's still good it can test anything electrically they can take they can test the continuity of something if you have something acting up and you're not really sure whether it's the motor or whether it's this or that you can check it with a multimeter now looking at a multimeter to those of us who are uninformed and uneducated on how we first use it it's like oh man that looks really complicated yes it is intimidating looking I'm going to tell you it's not that hard to learn especially the basics and there are a ton of videos on YouTube that'll teach you how to use one of these now why do you need one let's say you're out in the middle of a campground somewhere and all of a sudden X Y Z's not working right you call it you call warranty or you call a mobile tech and one of the first things he's gonna say is do you have a multimeter I'll walk you through it well if you don't have one guess what he ain't walking you through it there's nothing he can do remotely without you at least being able to have some of the basic testing tools so multimeter if you don't have one of these you need to get one and get it soon okay let's move along to the next subject dog bones no not those kind of dog bones these kind of dog bones and this kind of dog bone and so forth what are these things well they allow you to adapt down some people will call these adaptors some people will call them step downs I call them dog bones doesn't that look like a dog bone but again whether you're have a travel trailer a fifth wheel or a Motorhome and it doesn't matter whether you have thirty amp or 50 amp you need to be able to step down because when you get to where you're going even if you have reservations for us say a 50 amp site guess what there may not be a 50 when you get there and so here you got a 30 amp you need to be able to plug in the 30 and step it down to plug in your 50 here's even a better one like here in Maine we don't have 50 we don't have 30 we don't have 20 we don't have any pedestal at all you know what we have and I go Raaj outlet a110 garage outlet we're running and we'll be running all summer on 15 amps but up here in Maine is plenty we don't have to run our ACS and we just manage what we have turned on at the same time but I did a clip yesterday kind of explained how we run that 15 amp Garage outlet to our coach let's just take a quick look at that so we're parked up here in Maine and we are a 50 amp coach but the only available power here is the garage so I ran an extension cord a 12-gauge extension cord and I ran it to my first dog bone which is right here this dog bone I plug in the 110 here and that converts it up to a 50 amp female plug then I put my 50 amp surge protector into that and my 50 amp plug that goes to the coach plugs into that you never know what you're going to run into when you park somewhere it could be in an emergency it could be a campground it could be anywhere you never know what's going to be available where you're going to be able to plug in and so you're gonna want a good assortment of different dog bones or reducers and also a protecting unit so you'll have all bases covered so for those of you who say that well if I need one I'll just run to the store and get one well Joanie and I have really been paying attention to the inventory of RV stuff for places like Walmart and stuff like that when we go to these stores I'm going to tell you it's not been pretty again because of priorities on what they want to ship and keep their what they want to bring in on the loads and so forth heck I couldn't even find an oil filter for the coach and they always have all filters so again just to be prepared like the military keep an assortment of dog bones one last thing this is probably not apply to a lot of people but we did run into this situation a couple of times an extension 50 amp cord if you have a 30 amp you get a 30 amp cord I'll tell you a quick story we went to Florida a couple of years ago to an encore park and again it was an older Park it had a it had it was peppered with Park models and sights all in between us so forth well they told us where to park we backed in and heck the electrical outlet was way over there I mean it was like 40 feet away and I'm like okay my cords 30 feet how am i how did they expect me to get over there well we had an extension cord with us we carry this in the car we do not use the room or the weight in our motorhome we carry this in the trunk up underneath where the spare tire is it comes with a handle and I'll tell you another thing about the importance of these some national parks and state parks were you back into that pedestal will be like in between two coaches and you'll share a pedestal and there's a long reach sometimes of those things so this is not for everybody but again if you want to be totally prepared in case you end up in one of those situations you don't have to worry you have an extra extension cord on hand okay we're going to end this right now because as you can see we're already approaching the 22 minute mark and I've noticed over time that any video that gets over to be 15 minutes or more some people begin to stop off they move on to something else so I try to keep it within 15 or 20 at the most so we're gonna stop right here but I really appreciate you guys staying with me this long I mean it's for all of our benefit right when I initially plan to do this video I thought I was gonna be able to cram everything in one video and I quickly realized holy mackerel this thing's gonna be long all right no way anybody's gonna watch this thing so I broke it up into three parts this is part number one part two and part three are coming part two will be next Sunday night at 8:30 like always and then part three will be the Sunday after that and both of those parts are going to be packed with some really good information so don't miss out on that this whole series was created so that you will have on board at all times crucial very important things to have so you can avoid a lot of common made problems or be able to address the emergencies and stuff like that this can save you a lot of money and damage and a whole lot of grief and frustration when something all of a sudden happens and now you don't have the right gear or you don't have the know-how on how to take care of it in this video I have covered a lot of items and I have hand chosen with my experienced products that I can fully recommend that will deliver the mission they're made by companies that have great reputations great customer service and they are reliable all you have to do is go to the top of the video page and look down to where you see show more click that scroll down and I'll have links to everything that we've talked about right there so as usual guys if you liked this video if it was helpful like wow Martin that was really good information give me a like button and and give me some comments because when I see those things I'm like okay they like these kind of videos I'll do more of them if you haven't subscribed consider subscribing and ring the bell off to the right so you'll be notified the next time we upload our next video anyway that's it for now guys until next time this is RV Street stick around [Music]

Channel: RVstreet

Views: 36,395

Keywords: RV ems vs surge protector, rv manuals, Portable EMS Surge protector, best RV 50 amp EMS, EMS-PT30X review, rv 30 AMP ems, EMS-PT50X review, Surge Guard 44290, best surge guard protector, EMS-HW30C, MS-HW50C, 50AMP adapters, 30AMP adapters, RV electrical 50amp adapters, RV electric pedestal protection, Hard Wired EMS Surge protector, RV electrical 30amp adapters, RV electrical protection, Protect RV wiring, RV common mistakes, RV 50 amp service EMS, best RV 30 amp EMS

Id: U9nb40m9-IY

Length: 24min 11sec (1451 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 19 2020