-Oh, you made me breakfast.
A little bit nippy.
-Look at this. I ain't putting up with this. This is when you know it's time to go south.
Never mind. This is when you know it's time to go south.
(music)
-So, we are winter RV living. And we're going through another blizzard.
-These blizzards are buy one get one free. -What a deal. -Blizzard deluxe.
So we decided to not even get out of our robes. -No.
-Just be all cozy during the storm and just have a little chit chat with you guys, we love chatting with you guys.
-No seriously, and if you want to know what winter RV living looks like...
(Wind blowing)
That's about it.
If it's your first time here to HappilyEverHanks, welcome I'm Kyle. -I'm Renee.
-And we're here showing you everything you don't want to do with RV living so don't do this.
All right, so we are at about two feet right now.
As you can see, it's pretty insane right now. And there's no chance of it stopping anytime soon.
Look at all that snow. And there's that RV. Nice and toasty in there.
Oh my goodness. Why are we doing this?
Head south, everyone says head south. I don't know why. What..
What's the joke? Is there a punch line to this joke. I feel like this is just, this is crazy.
Oh man. So something you should know about winter RV living is be
prepared for anything. Including two blizzards. Love it.
What's up everyone? How's everyone doing down in Florida today?
Awesome. I'm so glad to hear it.
There's Tim plowing.
I gotta get me one of those for my truck.
I see what the joke is. Renee got me this for Christmas.
I get the joke now. I see what it is.
Nice babe. Nice.
Ok, so we're a little stuck but don't worry. No need to fear, we're gonna get through this here.
Here we go, here we go, here we go.
Oh yeah baby. We're good. We good, we good, we good.
Oh, hopefully Tim's not stuck up here.
That does not look good.
Well I got out now I gotta go pull Tim out, I think. Wow. Welcome to Pennsylvania.
(engine revving)
Oh man.
So, here we go. Time to put Dee to the test.
(heavy music)
(engine revving)
(heavy music)
-Yo, I'll show you a trick.
Pulling somebody out with a chain. What happens is, when you hook a chain on, you just hook it around a link.
-Yeah. -I always take a zip tie. And I'll zip tie the hook to the link then.
-Zip ties is where it's at huh? Nice.
Dee held up well. Pulled it out like a beast. -It's pretty cool on video. -We had to rip on it hard.
-Thank you.
-Woo, that was fun. Good times. So that was pretty cool. We were in just chilling inside and...
getting some editing done and all that fun stuff.
And our buddy got stuck so Kyle had to pull him out with some chains and..
I got to stand there and just spectate. It was awesome.
Wow that is around the skirting over there. Holy cow.
We'll see what this looks like tomorrow. Exciting.
If you have to winter RV because of a job or you are building property or anything like that. -Yeah.
-It is doable. -It's definitely doable. -But if you have the choice and you want to enjoy RV living...
go somewhere where you could be outside. And not getting pummeled with snow like...
he was this morning. I could tell you are itching to go somewhere warm.
-No I'm not. -No? Okay. -Yes I am.
So another thing, when you are winter RV living, you need to plan accordingly for
your water source. Now, if you have a heated hose great but we don't have a heated hose.
So, since we're here, the nearest source of water that we're staying to is inside the sho...
(laughing)
..is inside the shop.
Who's done this? Who's done it? Who's done it?
The nearest a source of water...
is the inside of the shop.
So the cool thing is with this sewer connection piece with a property that we're staying on is
our friend Jess and Tim. And they actually have a sewer connection that they use for his old
machine shop here. Which is really cool. So... it's a little bit longer than I had hoped and...
as you know with RV living there's never an adequate sewer connection situation going on.
So we had to figure out a solution for our sewer system here. We needed access whenever we needed to dump.
So what I did was I took some extra pieces here of this insulation board and voila.
There we go nice cut out hole for the sewer. I have a quick connection whenever I need it.
And then when I'm done, I just put this little doohickey right back on here.
And then tape er up and it's good..good to go.
Good to go.
So this is that window access that I was talking about where we have the access to the water tank there.
Right now I just leave our fresh water connection hooked up. So if we need to fill up water really quick...
I just fish that out the window, hook it up, and turn on the water to fill up our holding tank.
But, since we are actually going to be dumping the black tank and everything,
I need to go get the water hose. I just remembered, I left the water hose out on the truck. So I'll be right back.
Okay, I am back. I got the water hose. So this is that 100ft bad boy that we use to dump all the black tanks.
The things you do to live in an RV right? Everyone's like get out there, it's so simple.
RV life is the most simple, basic life ever.
Oh and so you know, I also do have my water pressure regulator up here as well.
Honestly, this one has been our favorite so far. You take a flathead screwdriver to the top of it.
And you can manually adjust it to the PSI recommendations of your specific RV model so, pretty cool.
Hey oh!
Don't try this at home.
See not so bad this is a little, a little tedious, a little time consuming but..
Okay, so now we're hooked up here with the water source. So now I gotta pull the black tank.
And then I gotta quick run in, turn on the water.
Quick run back out and then I could just make sure everything's flowing nice and good.
I forgot to pull the handle. See I get ahead of myself sometimes. Okay.
I feel like a fireman, climbing a ladder here.
Oh yeah. Cooking, cooking with crisco. Here we go. Here we go.
And looking good. Flush it out a little bit. Do a couple thorough flushes. And then...
then we should be good. Then the wifey won't kick me out tonight in freezing cold weather.
-Yeah, the tanks are empty. Fresh tank is full. We got the tank heaters on.
The tank heaters on have been on since we've been here.
-Let's talk about the propane usage. Since we've been here.
Yes. We upgraded to the 100 pound propane tank. Worth it. It was about $200 for the tank itself.
Yeah, you gotta dish out a little bit more money to have that extra capacity.
But we're not going nearly as much to get them filled up. Actually...
we're getting them filled up here. On site delivery. -Yeah. -Bougie.
This door is access to one of the 30 pound propane tanks that come with the unit
when we first bought it. The other one is on the other side. So what we did was, we actually used the same
tubing that was previously installed in the rig. And we just flipped that over to this side here.
We did have to buy a connection piece here. If you're wondering what the connection piece you need is...
I'll leave a link in the description below. We found it at a local Ace hardware store so...
Pretty convenient there. Now these ones you're looking at about seven gallons a piece but with
this one, you're looking about 24 gallons. So about a little over three times the amount
that we previously had in one of the tanks. So... The only downfall is that we haven't figured out is
at night time... we woke up in the middle of the night and I was like Renee what is that noise?
It's driving me crazy. There's a banging on the door. Usually it's Dexter, he's the culprit to everything.
But we found out, we came out here and we noticed that, with the wind... all night.
(metal clanging)
Just... just non stop.
So we're gonna figure out some way to maybe like jerry rig this bad boy, so we're
not having to hear that all night., cause...
So if you are considering winter RV living in the near future or sometime during your travels.
And it's convenient for you to do so, I would definitely look into getting one of these 100 pound propane tanks.
So it's nice to have in one aspect that we can take it wherever we go, but I don't think we're
gonna do that. We might actually sell it back to the propane company that we bought it from.
So what would you say, are some of the worst things about winter RV living?
Some things that you just weren't prepared for?
-I just like to be outside, but that's just generalized like, I like to be outside when we're RVing.
I want to cook outside. It's just, when it gets really really cold like below 20s, it's just...
you're inside all the time. -Yeah. -Another issue with the whole being outside is, you know, we have
Reflectix all over the windows. -Right. -And this RV, the Grand Design Solitude S-Class 2930RL,
check it out if you are um, looking for RVs because it's a fantastic model. There are so many windows...
but we have Reflectix on about 75 percent of the windows. So we don't get any sunlight. -We can't see.
Like, out here it's just, it's just a sheet of aluminum foil, so... But it's helping, like, keep that heat in here.
Which is a plus, so... -It ain't cute. -It ain't cute but it does the job.
-When it's winter time and...
and you have the Reflectix all over the windows. So you can't really see out the windows
well and you're trying to keep that heat inside.
If it's calling for rain or sleet or snow...
when you leave your camper, just grab the... grab the handrail every time.
Because a couple times, I was just like la la la la la.
And we just got a little bit of sleet. Didn't know. Like I said cause the windows were blocked.
And I almost, I almost went. -You almost turfed it. -Yeah, I almost turfed it. I sent it. Yeah, X-games.
February is another month where we're just gonna kind of hunker down.
We got a really great spot even though it's freezing.
You always gotta look at the bright side of things. I'm the one that's like...
trying to always look the bright side of things.
Even though it's freezing, you know, we can't just walk outside with t-shirts on.
We are staying on friend's property. And they are awesome hosts.
-We're saving money. -Yeah, we're saving money. It's peaceful. We have all the amenities.
Family and friends are really close by and...
I guess I should have said that first. Family and friends are close by.
(laughing)
-Oh and by the way, if you guys didn't know from previous episodes, we sold Renee's car.
So Fay is gone. Which is good, we're happy about this. If I may go out on a limb I've
already noticed a con. When I get out in my truck, my truck automatically connects to Renee's phone.
My, my space, my one space I had, the truck. -That just. -It's already like 'connected to Renee's iPhone'.
And then I try to connect it to mine, it's like, 'device not found'.
-I just talked to the truck the one day. And I was like, 'hey, it's me I'm coming in'.
-Yeah you girls are gonna have to get along. There's no fighting. Okay?
And it looks like you're already getting along just fine so. -Yeah.
Here's the big one. Okay, it's not the biggest thing. But here's one of the things that bugged me...
with having two vehicles is that, if we go to a state park, you have to pay for each vehicle.
-That's true. Oh man, that was so ridiculous. Yeah. -I was like, oh, like I want to just leave this somewhere.
-And the national park, we had a national park pass. And it only allowed one vehicle in.
-Yeah. -Like I was like hey my wife's behind me...
we're full-time RV living. Is there any way you can let her in', they're like...
-Nope, one car. -Negatory. -We tried. -We had lived in an RV for four years full-time.
But for those first two years we actually owned a house as well.
Now we kept it because we're travel nurses and we need a home base...
in order to qualify for tax exemptions and everything.
-We also, just didn't feel comfortable selling it...
right away. We didn't know if we were gonna like RV living and all that stuff.
So even though we had a house, we were still full time because we didn't live in the house.
-Yeah. -We just came by every once in a while checked on it, all that stuff.
-And now the house is gone. -Yay. -And now the car sold.
So we're slowly getting into the normalcy. Even though we've been full-time RV living for
four years, we're slowly getting into what the normal would look like when it comes to full-time RV living.
-It's so nice not to have lots of things. You would think, oh but I want to have all these vehicles.
And I want to have all these toys, because we also sold his motorcycle, his Harley. -Right.
-But having less things to worry about is just the weight off the shoulders. -Yeah.
And now that we're home, we're actually even going through the trailer again as we speak.
-To get rid of more stuff. -Yep. Or just like downsizing it more. There's just like so much weight.
So much junk you just take along. You never use it. -Yeah.
-So we're just getting rid of as much as we can...
before we hit the road again. So now that we're staying in the RV during winter...
we're gonna take the pros and just go with it.
-I mean it is the season to start planning your trip.
And we have visited some really cool places. -Yeah we have.
-And I think if you guys are interested in knowing where you should plan
your next vacation. Or what to do. Or you just need some ideas on...
what area of the United States to go. Um, definitely check out
these videos. We have a playlist of all of our destinations we've been to with RV living.
-We'll throw a link here guys. We'll see you next week.
We love you all, it's HappilyEverHanks. We're checking out. -Yep.
-All right, see you guys. -Bye.
(music)