Was It WORTH IT?? - All Our RV Upgrades Review - Solar, Toilet, Booster & More

hey guys I'm Jenny and this is our travel trailer behind us now since purchasing it two-and-a-half years ago we have made a lot of updates and upgrades to it we have videos on almost all of these and in those videos we show installing them testing them all that good stuff but we've never really shown in one video everything we've done for those of you that maybe haven't seen all those upgrade videos so in today's video we are not a link just going to be showing you all those upgrades but we're going to tell you how much they cost how long it took to install them and whether or not we would do them again all of the upgrades were going to be showing you in this video will have links to them in the description below along with links to all the install videos as well now the very first ever upgrade we did was the bed lift kit for our bed most RVs have storage under their beds and a lot of the bigger RVs they have bed lift kits in them already but ours didn't come with one and one of the first things we also did was we got a new mattress our mattress here is at least twice as thick if not three times as thick as the original mattress that came with our trailer and it's way heavier than the original one and we have to get down here every day multiple times a day we store all our pet food down here extra blankets our backpacks for hiking all that stuff so because we had to get down here every day I'd have to hold this up and it was really heavy while also trying to get into the pet food or to feed the animals or whatever so installing these two gas Springs down here was an absolute must for us it only took David two hours and it was $60 so it's super affordable and obviously it is just a must for being able to access this all the time for us so if we do it again that answer is very much yes our second upgrade was here in the bathroom and that is our max air fan our trailer originally came with just a real small it looked like a computer fan computer cooling fan up in here one of the exhaust fans that does absolutely nothing I think it's just there for show and we knew that we wanted to be a to draw in a whole bunch of air throughout the day if it was a hot day we wanted to be able to pull air in through the windows get a breeze going in here or if we were like cooking boiling water and a lot of humidity was accumulating in the trailer we knew we wanted to be able to get that out too so ventilation was really important so we removed our old fan and replaced it with a max air fan now we got the cheaper version that doesn't really have any of the bells and whistles so it's manual open and it doesn't have the vent that kind of scoops backwards and and like faces down so that you can run the fan when it's raining and because of that ours only cost $150 and it took about eight hours maybe a little more to install this just because I had to remove the old fan first and getting that off the roof peeling all of the sealant off was the longest part of it wiring this in took no time at all because the wires were already right there and I just had to splice into him to power them - max fan but would we do it again absolutely in my opinion this is another must just like the bed lift kit you it's so important to be able to ventilate the trailer like I said on hot days but but even more important than that is ventilating if you know there's humidity in the trailer or if there's you know something smells it's good to be able to ventilate that out too when you're cutting up onions first you know for instance you got to get that out of here otherwise your eyes are just gonna start burning and we love onion so we're always cooking onions and throwing them in with everything and we have a max fan going and it just pulls that out it is excellent now the third upgrade we did to our travel trailer is this composting toilet and the reason we went with a composting toilet is because we boondock in dry camp almost exclusively very rarely will you find us in an RV park or somewhere that has hookups or even a dump station within 20 miles so for us a composting toilet was very important what this allows us to do is combined our black tank and our gray tank together into one huge gray tank we have 76 gallons of greywater storage in this small 25-foot trailer and it's because we were able to combine them those two tanks because of our composting toilet but it hasn't been all rainbows and unicorns with this composting toilet it does smell a little more than we thought it would but thankfully not when the lid is closed like right now I'm right next to it I can't smell it at all but when you're using it some smells can come and it's a little more than we thought but it's it's nothing bad and we have had one bug issue with it where we had gnats living in it so we had to disassemble it we bleached the whole thing and it took care of that and it only that's only happened once in the two and a half years that we've owned this so when it comes to if the composting toilet is more work than a black tank I don't think it is I think it's a little less work than a black tank but no more certainly one thing that we haven't done with our composting toilet that many other people have done with this model and it's probably a really good idea is to divert make a way so that the urine tank just divert straight into your grey tank so that you don't have to mess around with dumping this anymore for us the urine tank only lasts about four days which you know isn't very long and the solids tank will last about two to three weeks before we need to dump it and refill it with fresh composting material so to answer the question of would we go with a composting toilet again for us yes it fits our lifestyle very well like I said the increase in gray water storage lets us stay out on site and boondock longer you know we can stay up for two weeks before our gray tank fills up which is huge for us so it's totally worth it it did cost nine hundred and sixty dollars new which is a hefty price but for those of you that want to travel similar to we do and you want your gray tank to last as long as it possibly can it is worth it and it took about 12 hours to install but that was mainly because I had to do some wiring the fan that's inside this to keep it that keeps the inside of the toilet dry her and I had to route the exhaust tube for that fan out to the outside of the trailer so there was some screwing through this cabinet down at the bottom and then through the floor in that cabinet to get that exhaust hose outside so that took up most of the time and I also had to make a step a wooden step so that the toilet would sit flush with the old toilets flange that led down into the black tank in the fourth upgrade we made to our trailer is without question the largest the most expensive but the most important one and the one that we use all day every day and that is our solar and our battery bank the solar components that we have is 670 watts of monocrystalline solar panels up on the roof of our trailer and we also have a 130 watt fold-out portable expansion panel that we can set up on the ground and plug in if we want to boost our solar output by another 130 watts we have a 3000 watt pure sine wave inverter a 75 amp three-stage smart converter charger a standalone transfer switch an albick FM 60 m PBT charge controller and 400 amp hours of lithium iron phosphate batteries now let's start off with how much it cost all of the solar components not including the battery bank cost three thousand six hundred dollars pretty steep price is pretty salty but wait till I tell you much the batteries cost they cost 2,400 dollars each we have two of them so it's forty eight hundred dollars total now this sounds like a lot of money and it is it was quite the investment and we made it before we even hit the road but the reason we did it is because we knew that we'd be boondocking and dry camping all the time so what this solar system allows us to do is camp anywhere out in the national forests on BLM land anywhere that there's camping we are typically looking for we can stay there and still have electrical power so what justified this huge expense for us is we figured that you know the daily rate of an RV park for hookups is somewhere around $30 a night so it just would not take long for this solar system to pay for itself I mean 300 days in an RV park at $30 a night is $9,000 and we've been on the road for over two and a half years now which you know we're approaching a thousand days on the road if we were staying in RV parks all that time I mean what is that thirty thousand dollars or something crazy so I mean I know they have monthly and weekly rates at RV parks and that makes it cheaper but the fact remains that since we're able to boondock for free because of our solar it is already well paid for itself and now we're just reaping the benefits of being able to camp for free we actually have a ton of solar videos so I'll actually link the playlist down below to all of our videos on solar so that you can see on the step-by-step installation of everything and you know in depth on all the components that we have and I actually did the solar install all by myself and it took well over 30 hours to install all of this so you know in the videos ego it makes it look like it goes pretty quick but it actually took a very long time but would we do it again absolutely I love solar we we just think it is so awesome that you know just collecting solar rays you know photons from the Sun are charging our batteries and we can use that for everything you run our lights it powers our laptops that we work off of it solar literally powers our lives every electrical system in our trailer can be powered by our batteries and it's it's just incredible technology that blows me away every time I think about it and when I see my panel is up on the roof you know tilt it up toward the Sun it just looks so cool and I'm so proud of it Solar is what allows us to RV to travel to live the way that we do it is a indispensable part of our adventures so would we to it again absolutely heck if we did it again I might just buy us another battery for 600 amp hours of storage because you know 400 amp hours just hasn't really been enough for us with the electrical the electrical usage we do but then I would need another $2,400 and it's just not happening the fifth upgrade we did in our trailer had to do with our shower as many of you know the original showerhead that comes in a shower is typically pretty low pressure and it uses quite a bit of water and it has you know the shutoff valve that leaks a lot what we did is we bought this oxygenic showerhead which has higher pressure but it doesn't use any more water than the other one as a matter of fact I'm pretty sure the only one actually used more water than this one does and the the update to the showerhead that we did is it did come with its own shutoff valve but it dripped when when you had it turned off while you're lathering up or whatever just imagine standing in shower and you're lathering up and this is dripping cold water down your back I'm sure you can imagine that it's not pleasant so we switched it to this one which doesn't allow that to drip and on that same note the other update we did is when you have your shutoff valve turned off your cold water has higher pressure than your hot water lines so when this was off and you were lathering up the cold water had time to backflow into the hot water lines so when you were to turn it back on you get blasted with 40 or 50 degree weather whatever is in your fresh tank whatever that temperature is instead of hot water and it would take a second before it warmed up so imagine you're lathering up and you turn your water back on and a blasted to you with very cold water you can just imagine the screams in here just just imagine them so what David did is he put a one-way valve on the hot water line the access to it is actually on the other side of this wall and that allowed it so that the cold water couldn't backflow into the hot water so now when we turn this off and we lather up not only does it not drip the cold water that has been back flowing in but it also when we turn it back on blasts the regular temperature water that we've already set you know down with the faucets and this showerhead costs I think $30 and all the extra little components for the hot water fix only cost about five dollars so in total this was only about a thirty five dollar upgrade which is great in total Davis says it took them about three hours to do both of those and obviously would we do it again yes nobody likes cold showers if you like cold showers then I don't know there's something wrong with you I mean you might like cold showers I guess I guess that means there's not really something wrong with you but I don't like cold showers so yes I'm doing it again but no one likes getting blasted with cold water during a hot shower yes if you're expecting hot water and you're getting blasted with cold water not fun the sixth upgrade we did was this we used to have a big you dinette back here which is great for seating it in our view especially when you have family it's a nice area to sit and eat at but it's not really a great place to sit and work at so what we did is we ripped that out of here we had had enough of that that was a pain in our butts literally so what we did is we instead made and installed this butcher block table top with these wrought iron legs we've got these nice comfortable seating office chairs that are also cute so they look good in the area we added carpet back here to make it easy for or less comfortable for our feet because I mean the grounds cold back here and then we also added an Ikea table on the side for storage and then also for some decorations on top we love this workspace we sit here day in and day out we work constantly on our laptops or if we're gaming or if we have to sit down and eat this is the only seating we have in our entire trailer we don't have a couch we don't have chairs none of that so for us making this space over here more comfortable but also look good and work well with our space was a huge huge plus for us now you might be wondering how long something like this could take well David and his dad actually hi grandpa and my grandpa actually had to cut sand and just they had to do a lot of work on it they had to do a lot of work on it and my grandpa had to help us get it in here that was a chore that was crazy we weren't even sure it was gonna fit but it actually fits wall to wall perfectly it's great we love it in total it probably took well over 20 hours to not just take out the dinette that was the easy part it was you know getting it in here doing all the staining and the sanding getting the legs attached properly it was a chore we had to make a box over our furnace back here and it was a lot the 20 hours is purely a guest of it because we don't actually know how long it took us but it took us a very long time in multiple weeks and a lot of work in total with the butcher block tabletop the wrought iron legs these chairs the IKEA table and the rug it was seven hundred dollars or roughly seven hundred dollars to update this portion of our trailer will we do it again yes obviously this is the most comfortable seating we've had in our trailer and I just I love it it's it may as well be my own personal recliner I can lean back I can enjoy this space I'm not just sitting on this tiny little cushion foamed seat anymore that has blend out and and so I'm not actually sitting on the cushion anywhere I'm sitting on just hard plywood with this hard back behind me no I'm actually comfortable I enjoy the space it's definitely a must upgrade for us if we ever get a trailer that doesn't have comfortable sitting again it's something we'll do again the next upgrade we did was these roller shades when we first bought our trailer we had mini blinds and they didn't block the light very well I don't really like the look of mini blinds so I kind of thought they're ugly and the cats just were so annoying with them because they're always you know pushing on them with their paws and like just that crinkling kind clank-clank noise it would happen in the middle of night or in the morning and it would wake us up super annoying so we got these day/night roller shades that are on some of the nicer trailers you know they're not putting these on a Springdale these are going on the Montana's and the Grand Designs of you know the RV and community not not not our Springdale but we love them they roll up by themselves super easy and behind the Night Shade is add a shade which is just like a mesh so if the Sun like if it's really bright outside then if the Sun lights too intense especially when we're sitting here working at our desk which looks out this window we can pull the day shade and it helps block that sunlight but it also pulls up really easily you know rolls up by itself they're slow rise so they don't just go blasting open but yo we really like them they were they were fairly easy to install as well the mini blinds came off super easy and then all I had to do was just screw into the wall the clipping the mounts that via that the roller shades clip into total I would say our time in total it probably only took like two maybe three hours Jenni and I did it in an afternoon it was super quick and as far as cost those goes the problem with these roller shades is there isn't gonna be like a set cost it's really gonna depend on how many windows you have how tall they are and how wide they are especially this huge back window if you've got a picture window like this this bad boy is gonna be pretty expensive you'll just have to call and get an estimate on how much it will cost and just like everything we've got the link in the description hello to Irvine shades website so you can give them a call if you're interested but we love these day/night shades and we would definitely do it again and going along with that - Jenny rewrapped our valence 'iz and she made these as well to replace the brown ones that we had this color scheme just goes better with what we're trying to you know create as the color scheme on the inside of our trailer it really makes it more homey in here because the design we had on these was um this is very camporee it felt like you know we were in a camper which we are but you know we wanted to feel more homey in here so the gray and the blue looks so much better Jenni did an excellent job on it the fabric was pretty cheap because this is actually just a bed sheet we bought two bed sheets so when we replace our beds bed sheets so it actually matches our bed perfectly and this we just got from jo-ann fabrics so we've got probably less than $100 in fabric but it did take Jenni a really long time to do because she's not you know an upholsterer or anything so it's kind of learned how she goes and she bought a hand so err to help her out - off of Amazon so she put a lot of time into this but I think she did an excellent job it looks great we would definitely do it again I would definitely have her do that again Thanks the eighth upgrade we did was our r.v lock keyless entry door lock and it was super easy to replace there's only six screws on the inside you take those out you take your old one off you put the new one on six screws you're done I think it only took David an hour at most I think it even took him less time than that and it's really nice because if you don't know this there are quite a few our v's that might have the same key as you now that's not all of them not all RVs have the same key as you but some of them might so to ease our fears on that we got this and having this keyless entry over here is really nice we use it all the time especially we're just going on walks and stuff however whether or not we would do this again we're not really sure we're kind of on the fence about it and the reason being is because let me show you it moves it Wiggles a lot I'm not sure if you can see that yeah we can yeah cool so it Wiggles a lot and we have tighten this so many times it still does it this striker plate over here this this top screw it seems that no matter what we do we can't get it to to stay in and that means that we have issues closing our bean as you can see on the inside this Wiggles on the inside too that Wiggles a lot it makes it really hard to close our door sometimes and you can obviously see it's rusting - these aren't stainless which is really frustrating because this is an outside component and it's introduced to moisture all the time so not being stainless it's pretty frustrating to us however knowing that our key doesn't match anybody else's key is actually really comforting to us so for now we're dealing with it if you guys have a solution to this or if you have an RV lock and you've had to deal with this before and you know of a solution let us know because that's the only thing that's frustrating us about this now this was two hundred and forty dollars now that's a pretty penny but we liked it we thought it was worth it at the time we still think it's worth it now we're just a little frustrated with it the other keys that we've replaced actually are down here we replace these tumbler locks with these circular lock tumbler locks they don't have a handle anymore our old one had a handle and only locked on the one side meaning someone could just grab the handle and essentially open it up enough to get a crowbar behind it and then rip these open so to ease our stress on these we replace them we got six of them because we have three doors each with two of these and these were about $50 each we love these there's no way that I'm getting my fingers back here to even pry anything out so we are really happy with these we would definitely do these ones again the reason we switched out our tumbler locks is because the key to them probably matches yours if you look at your key to your RV storage it probably says see 7:51 guess what that means that my old key that used to open these opens yours too we wanted these to be as secure as possible so we got these and we're very happy with them you're gonna join me for the last one you gonna join me okay I think she's gonna join you is my lab warm oh oh I squeeze her too hard I was I was just hugging her anyway the final upgrade that we made to our travel trailer is our cellular signal booster this is the interior and Alice is getting a little too close oh and butters is gone dang it Alice she was my buddy oh well they fight they'll be friends one day we're holding out hope anyway our cell signal booster is our last upgrade and we went with a solid RF signal booster this is the interior antenna and the biggest thing that we love about this one in particular is that it has two interior antennas so you may know that the antennas don't really have very much range the interior antennas so your cell phone when you coming back come on okay whatever the cell phones have to be fairly close to the signal booster to get the boosted signal or your Wi-Fi hotspots or whatever so having two interior antennas it's kind of a big deal the other one is on the other side of our trailer so that we can have boosted signal throughout the trailer so that's the main reason we went with the solid RF it costs just under five hundred dollars and it took let's see it took me probably six hours to install it wasn't that hard it's fairly simple and straightforward one thing that did add to the installation time for me is that I wired it directly into DC power so that it could receive power without our inverter being on and it's also more efficient to run stuff off of these things off of DC power as well we did test our solid RF signal booster against a sure called booster it's very similar and the solid RF win that competition and what it actually really came down to is whether or not you minded that the amplifier is mounted up on the roof that's how solid RF does it I've read online that the closer the amplifier is to the outside antenna the less you know signal degradation you'll have so that's what solid RF did it does make the mounting up on the roof a little more wonky whereas your call and weboost have the amplifier mounted inside so it really just depends on whether that you know potential increase in quality of signal quality and signal boost strength is worth having the amplifier mounted up on the roof everything's still waterproof so it's not that big of a deal but basically what it all boils down to is that this was absolutely worth it to us we love our signal booster we know we knew that we needed one for the longest time but boy how nice it is to finally be able to boost our signal when we're camped out in the middle of nowhere and we have super super weak signal that before we couldn't work on it was not usable now plug our booster in and we're good to go I love this thing so that's been all the upgrades that we've done to our trailer in the past two and a half years that we've owned it and we love all of them except like we said the RV lock keyless entry other than that I mean that one we're a little on the fence if we might do it again we're not really sure but we would definitely do all the other ones again oh my gosh do you imagine doing all that over again okay never switching rigs we're never getting something else for staying in this trailer forever cuz I've known to do all the solar I mean that's just so much work and having as much ring to put new solar on anyway if you guys are interested in any of the things we've mentioned in this video not only do we have links to all the products in the description below but we also have links to all of the installation videos along with David's entire solar playlist down there for you if you want to watch the install videos maybe get a better feel as to whether or not you'll be able to do this yourself so on and so forth yeah but that's it for us today we're gonna call it a night we'll catch you guys later bye my alley

Channel: Fate Unbound

Views: 823,804

Rating: 4.8871655 out of 5

Keywords: rv, full, time, rving, rver, full time rv, full time rving, full timing, rv life, rv living, full time rv life, full time rv living, fate, unbound, fate unbound, travel, trailer, travel trailer, traveling, full time rv couple, vlog, video blog, rv upgrade, upgrade, diy, project, projects, rennovation, solar, rv solar, composting toilet, exhaust fan, cell booster, singal booster, bed lift kit, roller shades, rv lock, door lock, keyless entry, Toilet, Booster & More, worth it, review

Id: udj68z6tGuU

Length: 29min 7sec (1747 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 09 2020