Puff's View

So, from the male side of things..!

3 months in.......would I do it again, in a heart beat.  This has been by far the best move we have made and trust me, we have made a lot of moves.

As you have read from previous posts this is not something we jumped at without thinking and planning it through.  The only glitch if you can call it that, is that our house has not sold however, it is being rented out and covering the payments just fine. 

Getting settled took a little longer than I thought it would.  I have been camping in some form of RV since I was in diapers so this is not new to me.  My parents also had a boat so I was familiar with that side of things as a lot overlaps from the RV world to the boating world.

We do not plan on moving our home for the next few years so I would recommend placing it on some concrete blocks or other solid base.  I have 6 jacks with an auto-levelling system ( this thing is so cool, when parking I turn the system on and raise the front jacks to enable me to unhook the 5th wheel pin.  When the truck is clear I push the "Auto Level" button and the coach does the rest.  4 more jacks drop from the rear 2 in front of the axle and 2 behind to first touch down and then reposition the front ones if needed for height and unit levels itself within 0.1 degree..!!! )  How slick is that, and when hooking back up to the truck it does the reverse and brings to front to the unhook position, right back where I started.  I can't imagine levelling a coach without it.

2 grey water tanks, one for the shower and other for the sinks. 1 black tank.  As we are not moving I left the vales for the grey tanks open all the time, just make sure to run lots of water after using the sink for sink related things. You wouldn't want things to get hard and plug the drain lines up.  The black tank is the opposite.  I leave the valve closed and only drain it when it is full, this allows all the $#!& to swim down the drain hose which is connected to the sewer.  An indicator panel tells when the tank is full.  If you were to leave this valve open all the time there would not be enough slant or water flow to push the material out of the tank and down the drain, it would then sit and settle.  This would not be a good thing.  It has been done and there are ways to fix it but I am not going there tonight.  Our coach also has a built in black tank sprayer, a separate water hose is hooked up and flushes the tank when you have emptied it helping to clear the tank of anything left behind.  Once again and excellent feature and almost a must have on a large coach.  The drain hose outside connects to the sewer via a normal RV sewer hose, I have taken the liberty of slipping it into a 4" piece of white PVC pipe.  It looks better than a hose just hanging there and it is also keeping the entire length of hose at a continuous angle to the sewer connection thus there is no flat spot for things to stop moving at.  The hose was a snug fit but it works.

We are hooked up the city water, a regular RV hose with a regulator is connected up.  From a bad experience last year with my daughter living in our other 5th wheel, this hose is insulated.  Once again it is a regular hose and I wrapped it in the grey hose insulating foam then a heavy duty duct tape and more insulation and more duct tape.  The last layer of tape is black to help absorb the suns energy in the winter to help prevent freezing.  Some people have added an electric hose warmer or line warmer, I am sure you have seen the orange tape wrapped around someones hose.  It has a sensor to tell it when it's cold and to turn on thus preventing freeze ups.  I am hopefully optimistic that it will not get that cold..!

We have electricity, water, sewer and a great view.  Electricity is included in our pad rent so we use the electric fireplace and a small space heater, it helps in the bedroom to take the chill off.  Yes, electric fireplace..!!  The windows are double pane and the coach is well insulated keeping us warm and cosy.

There are a few more neat features but I will cover those in a later post.  So from the guys side of things I am most impressed and happy with my choice. 

Keep the jacks down and awning out with the wine glass filled......happy on RV buddies..!!

Puff