hello and welcome to grateful glamper we are here to help you with RV living to keep things simple
to help keep you organized and to just make sure that you're having fun while you're out there on
the road in today's video we're gonna show you the three things and yes only three things that you
really need to use full hookups at an RV campground so let's jump in and get started
so full hookups in an rv campground means that you have all three of your utilities there and
accessible for you basically it makes it feel like home when you're on the road because you
have things like your water hookup you have an electricity hookup to run everything electrical
in the rv and then you also have a sewer hookup so that you don't have to worry about those
waste tanks filling up you can drain them into the sewer at the rv campground now there's
really three main things that you're going to want to make sure
that you have with you in utilizing all of these main types of hookups
how am i supposed to shower in this so let's get started with number one your water hookups
so now when you are hooked up to water in an rv most rvs are very very similar in how you hook up
and that is you're gonna have some sort of switch that will switch you from pulling up the water in
the fresh water tank to utilizing the water that you're hooked into at the campground so once that
you are hooked into that water you can flip this switch here and it will actually be using the
water that's coming in from the water spigot and not drying up from that water tank now when it
comes to the water spigot there's something very important that you need to have that i'm going to
show you so something you absolutely must have when are hooked into a water connection at a
campground is a water pressure regulator now you have to remember that the lines inside of your
rv are not like standard household pipes they can't take a lot of high pressure and so you never
know what sort of pressure you're gonna have with these types of water hookups in a campground you
need a regulator to protect your rv from things like burst pipes and or flooding now a couple of
things that we have learned in the last four years of rving when it comes to this you can get very
inexpensive standard water pressure regulators that will basically just dial that pressure down
and there's no way to adjust it it's just set it and forget it which might sound convenient
until you go to take a shower and you just don't have the water pressure that you want to have
so this type of an adjustable water pressure regulator that we got from amazon we'll put a
link in the description below is super helpful because this we can actually set the pressure
where we want it to a little bit higher pressure we've got nice pressure in the rv but we also know
it's not too high of pressure where we're running the risk of damaging anything inside of the rig
so the number two thing that we're going to talk about is the electrical hookup now something
you absolutely need to have when it comes to your electrical hookup is a surge protector
now we have this one from progressive industries and this is why you need this i can't tell you how
many times we've actually pulled into a campground and seen these electrical hookups actually
blackened or we've heard horror stories really where something is not quite right in the wiring
of these and it can cause damage to the electrical system in your rv that gets very very pricey so do
yourself a favor spend a couple hundred dollars to get a nice quality surge protector we use the one
from progressive industries it's very very easy to use it also gives you some information when
you first connect it in to make sure that there's not a problem with this electrical pedestal before
that you actually plug it in and then just a quick tip for those of you that may be newer
to the rv life when you first pull in and you go to hook up to the electrical connections all
of them have this breaker panel that should be turned off so you want to make sure that
that is turned off before that you plug in after you plug in then you'll turn those breakers on
so number three has to do with sewer and that is why i'm actually wearing these gloves right now
so your sewer hookups are going to be one of the pieces that you have when you have a full
hookups campground now here is a little note if you go to make a reservation at a campground
and it shows we when it comes to hookups now that means you just have water and electric
and not sewer full hookups are going to be all three of your utilities so for the sewer hose
the third thing that you really want to have with you is one of these ladders that actually
then makes it to where you know what is flowing in the right direction which is
downhill now a lot of campgrounds in some states are going to actually require that you
have something that does elevate that sewer hose off of the ground and that it's not just laying
on the ground so you want to have one of these with you other types of campgrounds depending
upon their hookup style are going to maybe also require something that is called a donut
this is basically like a little rubber thing that creates a seal really depends upon the campground
some of them are primitive and so they're going to require something like this to create a nice
seal from where your sewer hose is going into that in the ground now if you're using one of
these donuts you also want to have some of these weights to put over the top of your sewer hose
so everything is sitting nice and seated you do not want a loose sewer connection at any
point in time so we'll have links for these in the description below on amazon now here's
something that we see a lot of new rvers make mistakes with when it comes to sewer hookups
and that is thinking that once you're hooked up those waste tank valves you just open those up
do not leave your black tank valve open it will create something that is known as a pyramid of
poo now what happens with black tank type waste is that there's a lot of liquids and those liquids
are needed to break down the solids if you leave that valve open all of the liquids are going to be
constantly flowing out and the solids will build up so you definitely need to make sure to keep
that black tank valve closed what we usually do is we usually leave our gray open but on the last day
before we're ready to depart we close that gray tank so that we can build up some water in that
gray tank when we go to dump to be able to flush after dumping the black tank before we get to the
next tip i wanted to take a quick minute to thank the sponsor of today's video campgroundviews.com
now we are loving campground views to be able to plan our trips because with campground
views you can actually take a virtual tour of the campground before that you book it this is super
important for things like state parks and national parks where you don't actually get a chance to
see it before you book because the websites aren't super helpful in that area so with
campground views you can take a look before you book and know which site is really the best site
to book there'll be a link in the description below with an exclusive discount for our viewers
that we know you're going to want to check out okay back to the video so a great way that
you can show that you appreciate experiences over things are with our t-shirts experiences
over things now this is absolutely our motto and part of the reason why we live this lifestyle
why that we've decided to become minimalists and be able to put our resources towards
travel versus other things these are available on our website in the description at the link below
as a guy there's certain things that i just
like and so we're going to go ahead and give you a few what we call bonus things and one of them is
this little two-way valve so what this does is allows you to basically have two hoses converts
the one spigot into two different hoses so i can leave one of the fresh tank hoses hooked up
while we have this second hose to use to wash out feet if there's sand on our feet or hook it up to
one of the flush valves later after i pull off the other hose it just gives you a little
bit more flexibility so the next thing is these quick release devices these are a game
changer so look at how fast this is to connect this up and then clip it in boom disconnected
connected and i have these basically on everything so that way i can just quickly connect up
and we're done one thing i do like about this particular brand
is the other ones are really hard to turn the knobs to turn them off and on this one is really
really super easy from the research i've done this is probably one of the better ones that you
can get it's very easy to turn off and on put the link for both of these in the description
below so you'll have to leave us a comment below let us know what gadgets that you have
found make using full hookups easier for rv living we love to hear what you guys are doing but also
it helps the rv community as a whole when we can support each other with this type of information
i'm going to put a video with just some of the basic necessities that you want for rv life
right up here do not forget to subscribe right down here we've got a ton of travel
videos coming for you this summer you're going to want to see every single one if we
don't see you out on the road or around the campground we'll see you in the next video