Starting out? Know the Basics of Your Systems
There is so much to learn, where do I even start! We remember saying this as soon as we did the deep dive into researching our potential life on the road. So many Youtubers and Facebook folks telling us what we needed to do and what we needed to buy to be successful. As time has passed, we know one thing to be true- one size does not fit all.
Here are the general things you should become familiar with before you launch specific to your rig. You heard me right- YOUR RIG. When you are starting out, you don’t need to learn what Bobby did in his 1975 Shasta or Sally does in her 2026 Thor Class A if you have a 2021 337RLS Grand Design 5th wheel. To reduce all the noise- which can get overwhelming- listen and learn from those that have your rig. Here is the cliff notes version of each system.
Water System:
Know how to hook up your water, filters, a water softener if you are going to add it. We love it and recommend having one however they are extra maintenance that you might not want to deal with starting out.
Know how to sanitize your lines. You will want to do this as apart of your regular maintenance. We do it every other month or so. If you have washer hook ups, you want to open those up when you sanitize the lines too otherwise water sits in there and gets stale. That is something we did not see on all the Youtube videos and chased stinky water for five months.
Get a water alarm for the underbelly or garage area of your rig if you have one. This could save you lots of headache in alerting you to a leak early… before you see water pouring out the bottom of your camper.
Learn about your water heater. These can be stinkers and cause issues on occasion. They need maintenance with sanitizing, flushing, and/or changing rods if you have that type. Again, learn about YOUR water heater.
Buy a pressure regulator. Campground water pressure is all over the place. Protect your delicate couplings from a blast of water by attaching a pressure regulator to the outdoor spigot. This will keep your water pressure around 45 psi which will save your water tubing.
Electrical System:
If your rig has 50 amp, purchase a dogbone and electric cable to work on a 30 amp circuit as well as an adapter for a house circuit. You might not use them a lot but they are handy to have when you need them.
Find out where your fuse and breaker panels are and buy a variety of fuses to have on hand.
You may discover strange places for wires, fuses, and kill switches in your trailer. We found out that our wires for the lights above our bed were under the bed which is on a slide out. Our wheels from the sliding box that our mattress sits on pulled away and the box ended up rubbing across the wires and pulling the wire nuts off causing the lights not to work. Definite design flaw. There is also a battery kill switch in the garage that we bump every fourth month or so and can’t figure out why things that use to work don’t anymore. You will discover things like this as you go too. Don’t worry about learning them all at once.
Know the loads of the common things you have in your trailer. For example, we have a 50 amp trailer and when hooked up to 50 amp we can run the microwave, toaster oven and the hot plate all at once with no issues. If we are plugged into a 30 amp, we need to run one at a time especially if the air conditioner is on. We have an app hooked to our surge protector that tells us what everything is drawing so we can make good decisions on electrical usage for us. Want to have some fun? Plug in a hair dryer and see how much that draws! No wonder we blew a breaker with the hairdryer, air conditioner and microwave going at the same time.
Buy a surge protector—- a good one! Do not cheap out on this as it will protect your rig. Campgrounds have wonky electric and if you go to enough of them you will know what I mean. A good surge protector will protect your investment.
Sanitation System:
This gets ALOT of airplay as it is the grossest and causes the most issues for RVers. (I have no data to back that up but a quick search and you will see how many people talk about waste.)
Learn how to hook up your stinky slinky with proper supports and secure elbows. If you are like most of us, you will have a moment that you aren’t proud of that includes waste going places you didn’t want it to. It happens and yes, it is gross. Practice hooking up the system “dry” several times so you get the hang of how hard you have to tighten things. Then, run water from your grey tanks through to practice. Now, normally you would dump your black tanks first, then your grey tanks to help clean out your stinky slinky. Yet, when you are practicing hooking everything up, we recommend practicing with cleaner water. The water comes down the tubes fast and if you have something off, it can spray everywhere.
Find pictures/drawings of your tanks so you can see how they sit in your rig. They are not like septic tanks because you aren’t keeping waste in there for a long time so really, you don’t have time to have things “break down”. If you know what your tanks look like and what the flow pattern looks like, it helps to make sense when you have issues like the dreaded “poop pyramid”.
Avoid the poop pyramid by using LOTS and LOTS of water. We hold the flusher down and count to 15 for solid waste. We also dump our dehumidifier water down the toilet and occasionally the kitchen sink water that is in a small rubber tub. This helps add water without having to use the fresh water from flushing. You will hear from others they they don’t flush their toilet paper….um ick. To each their own but we flush ours. Again, we use lots of water and we haven’t had an issue.
You will hear lots about the stink of RV bathrooms too. So much so that many people don’t use their toilets for #2. Again, I am going to use my bathroom for what it is billed for. When your tank starts to get full, you will notice a smell. This is actually helpful. You can also notice the smell if the negative pressure is such that it is drawing the smell into your camper. To combat this, you can open the vent in the bathroom ceiling (if you have one) and/or turn on the fan. We use OdoBan spray too which helps neutralize any odors. If things get really bad, there is a little weather vane type thing to put on the vent pipe from your tank that extends from your tank to out your roof. This helps direct the air and reduce the pressure.
Finally, tank maintenance is important. Rinse your tanks really well after dumping and put 5 gallons back in to start your next cycle. Also add something to the tank to help neutralize odors and keep your tank from building debris up on the sides or bottom. Again, there are a million products out there and a million opinions. We settled on a homemade concoction from KleenTanks of 40 ounces of Pinesol, 8 ounces of Calgon beads/pearls or liquid, and enough water to fill a gallon plastic jug. It will foam up when you add the Pinesol and bath beads so be patient in adding the water. Pour 4-8 ounces down the toilet when adding the 5 gallons back in. It works for us. Again, research and do what you feel the most comfortable with doing. We drain the black tank, then the grey, then put 5 gallons back in the black tank (learn how to do this for your rig) then add our additive.
For us, we dump tanks every 3-4 days depending on how much time we are in the RV and how many showers we take.
Propane:
You most likely have propane tanks in your RV. If you do, make sure you know how to hook them up, and turn them on and off.
Your propane may run things like your stove, refridgerator, furnace, and water heater. Some of our appliances run either on propane or electric. If we aren’t paying for electric, we use that.
If you have more than one tank, we suggest you divert your flow to only come from one tank and shut off the other tank. That way, you know when one tank is empty and can flip to the other tank while you fill the empty one. How do we know this? Well, it was 33 degrees one night and our furnace stopped working. We realized we had the flow coming from both tanks and both were empty. We have a fireplace that worked to keep us warm however we were afraid the temp was going to dip more and freeze our water lines in the garage. This is the benefit of running your furnace in cold temps. It will keep your garage warm unlike your fireplace or a space heater (please be careful with these!)
Propane is “wet” heat. You will notice that if you run your furnace a lot or use your burners/stove that the humidity in your camper will increase significantly. You don’t want condensation in your camper so make sure to run your dehumidifier if you are using a lot of propane.
As questions arise, you will find yourself researching online, through social media, as well as talking with your campground neighbors. As with anything, you will receive a variety of conflicting responses. When in doubt, contact a certified RV Tech or the manufacturer of your camper.