So you’ve got an RV, a basic freshwater hose, and a sewer hose, but what next? Well, after several years of RVing—two of those being full-time—I would add or upgrade the following nine things to my RV.
An EMS system will shut down power to the rig if the voltage becomes too low. If the voltage is too low, you’ll still have some power to your appliances and accessories inside the rig, but you’ll be frying those internal electronics. Over time, you will shorten the life duration of your air conditioner, refrigerator, and all the electronics inside the RV. While this video isn’t going to be a comparison of all the different items within the same category, being able to have protection against things more than just an electrical surge and also having Bluetooth access—being able to pull up an app and see how much power is coming in, how much power is going out—yes, you can plug into a pedestal without it. Still, it’s not even negotiable for me. That’s one of the top things I would add after you get your water and sewer hose. An electrical management system is something to protect your RV because, with these new RVs, electronics are everything now.
It still boggles my mind that this is something that we have to add as consumers, but walking around one of the big RV shows, looking at all the rigs—from low-end, entry-level budget models up to super high-end models—having a handle on your screen door that allows you to grab and close that screen door from the inside is something that any RV with a drill can do. Four screws into the aluminium frame of the screen door make a significant difference in how your screen door functions and actually how safe it is to go in and out of the RV. When you’re coming in and out of the RV, you know, you’ve got your grab handle here, but you’ve also got a secondary handle on the screen door. Being able to open that without risking putting your hand through the screen door saves you from having to replace a screen door, but two, it also saves you from potentially falling down the stairs—not something you want to do. So, adding a screen door handle to your rig is super cheap and super easy, and it is something that I wish we, as consumers, didn’t have to do. It should just be included with the screen door; unfortunately, it’s not.
I met the people from Hub Saver at some of the prominent manufacturer shows, and they’ve done some testing with loaded trailers, successfully getting the trailer off the highway when the hubs fail. It’s simply a washer you replace the other washer with, and it keeps the hub on even if the bearing fails. This could avoid a catastrophic incident on the highway if you’ve got a hub failure. Hub Saver is something I recommend. It’s a super easy install if you’re mildly DIY-inclined. It should be no big deal for you; it’s just removing the cotter pin and the castle nut and replacing the washer already there. It’s intuitive once you think about it, and it’s been pointed out to you, like, “Yeah, why would this not come from the factory that way?” But for whatever reason, it doesn’t—thankfully, it’s something we can change.
This one does not surprise anyone who’s done some research: having a water pressure regulator on your RV, between the campground spigot and the rig, is essential. Water pressure varies from park to park, site to site, and can vary drastically. Some parks have a tremendous amount of water pressure, and some parks have barely a trickle, making you want to fill up your fresh tank and use the onboard 12V pump. But make sure that we protect the plumbing inside the RV with a pressure regulator—either a set one that is just in line and has a fixed pressure you can’t change or a variable one where you can adjust a screw inside to either increase or decrease pressure—is super important. Variable one has a lot of merit because it depends on whether you’ve got filters on or a water softener. These different things go in between, in various spaces throughout your water system, from the campground spigot to the endpoint of your faucet; you may want to have different water pressure. Being able to measure and adjust that flow is super important. So, a static or a dynamic water pressure regulator is essential.
The next thing you want to do is couple that with an elbow. For whatever reason, the hose hookups on our RVs come out at 90 degrees, right? That makes no sense because we’re hooking a hose parallel to the ground. Where’s all the pressure going when we let go of that connection? It’s pulling down, so the connection right at the RV, either in a wet bay or on the rig, is under a lot of pressure. Over time, those plastic fittings will break and crack, and you’ll leak inside. So, adding in a 90° or, depending on how your wet bay is set up, a 45° angle will reduce the amount of leverage on those connections and severely extend your equipment’s life.
Here’s one more quick tip on water things: If you’ve got a wet bay with the water management panel inside of a pass-through and then a hole in the floor where things come out, add a 3-foot leader section. Connect that to your 45° or 90° hose and leave that connected all the time. So when you’re done hooking up, you disconnect your water hose and pressure regulator and store those away, but the leader hose pulls up into the wet bay. You store it there, and that way, you’re not doing and undoing the connections every time at that wet bay, again extending the life of those plastic fittings.
Now that we’re sticking with the safety factor let’s talk about propane. You know, we’ve got water pressure regulators for our water systems and EMS systems for our electrical system. It only makes sense that we would have a safety feature for our propane systems, and that’s what Gas Stop provides. Gas Stop is a manual catastrophic event shut-off valve for your propane system. Now, I know that the propane tanks have an overfill protection device, and if they get too hot, they can leak out some propane so that they don’t explode. Well, Gas Stop is an addition to that; it screws onto the tank, and if there’s a specific flow rate achieved, it immediately shuts off the flow from the tank to the rest of the system. So, we’re not going to get into the debate of whether you should or should not drive with your propane tanks on, but say there’s a catastrophic event. I’ve been concerned about when I plug in my external RV grill or a propane fire pit, and someone stumbles over that hose and rips a hole. I have to run up here and turn off the propane, and I’ve got an open flame either at the barbecue grill or the fire pit. I tested it. I hooked up a sacrificial hose to my outdoor kitchen quick-connect, and I cut the propane line, and sure enough, GasStop cut off the propane supply to the rest of the RV. You can extrapolate and see how that might be helpful if you were going down the road and had a tyre blowout, and it started ripping stuff up. The propane lines in RVs run right along the frame rail, right where your tyres are. So, a rock kicking up, a rear-end collision, or someone running into the back of your RV are all different things that, ideally, we don’t want to have to deal with, but unfortunately, they do happen. GasStop provides a fail-safe and shuts off that flammable gas from being able to go down the rest of the line. You’ll drop out 20, 30, 40 pounds of propane, and it shuts off, keeping everyone safe. So again, electric, water, and propane are the top three systems that we have in RVs. We’d have safety stops for all three systems: an electrical EMS system, a gas stove for propane, and a pressure regulator for your water system.
Most drivers understand that you must check your tyre pressure before going on a long trip. I’m going to take that one step further and say a tyre pressure monitoring system (TPMS)—something that attaches to the valve stems of the RV tyres or is mounted inside of the wheel to actively and constantly measure the tyre pressure inside of these tyres—is essential. There are countless stories of TPMS systems saving people from catastrophic failure on the road, myself included. I’ll put a link to the video down below. We had three tyre issues in three days, and the TPMS system saved our bacon. So, a TPMS system with quality brand tyres and Hub Savers is right there.
This next one isn’t necessarily safety-related, although we could go on a limb and make it such a thing. Having an additional blade valve on your sewer outlets is not a bad idea. I like the Valterra Twist-on Blade Valves. They’ve got the bayonet fittings that go on to the existing end caps of your sewer outlets. The critical reason is that following the adage “two is one and one is none is essential.” Think about this: You’ve got a 30, 40, 50-gallon black tank full of human black water. The only thing between you and that tank is a single-blade valve and often a cap at the end. Well, if that blade valve fails, and you don’t know it and can’t see anything behind the end cap, you open it—no bueno. So, having an additional blade valve, two between you and any waste tank, is my preferred method and something that, without a doubt, I would add to a new RV immediately. It’s as simple as using the bayonet fittings, clicking it on, and then adding the cap to the outside. That way, I have two blade valves between me and any waste tank on my RV. It’s an inexpensive add-on that requires no tools to install, and if you don’t do it and have an “oopsie,” you’ll wish you had spent the $20-$30 to get the valve, put it on, and just start from the get-go that way. So, I highly recommend an additional blade valve at the termination point of your wastewater outlets.
Now, there isn’t a lot you need for an RV. You need a 12-volt battery, a power cord, a 120-volt short power cord, a freshwater hose, and a sewer hose. In addition, it’s often an excellent idea to have some safety features and different add-ons, which I would add to a new RV if I get one tomorrow. They’re the ones that I recommend to you. If you don’t have some of these things, consider adding them. The safety features of water, electricity, sewer, propane, and tyre safety, both from the hubs and the tyres themselves, make a ton of sense. And unfortunately, I wish they were things that would come from the manufacturers already installed. Even something as simple as the screen door handle allows for better balance and safer travel up and down the stairs into and out of the RV. What does that part cost in the grand scheme of this entire rig? I wish they would all come that way and just be standard.