oh my god did you turn the air off it is so hot in here
duh the power is off we lost power this morning remember we did but who cares because
we're sitting out here relaxing in the keys in a paradise so who cares how the air conditioner is
running who cares if we have power in a house so that got us thinking we have a generator so for us
it was just as simple as we turned the generator on and fire everything and everything goes back
to working and most of you i'm going to assume well i did have to think of one thing i had to
make sure i had gas yes so there's that and and i think most people have and i know there's a lot of
i guess i shouldn't even say most a lot of you will have um fridges and hot water heaters that
will run on gas or electric so that could be as simple as switch it to gas only residential
doesn't do that residential doesn't work that way so then you're depending on what your battery is i
so do you have guess strong enough battery do you have enough batteries in your battery bank
is your battery even new when's the last time you changed your battery that the thing is this people
so we we are not full time but pretty close um to being on the road all the time and again we have
the toy hauler so we have a generator so it'll run no matter what like we uh well okay provided we
have gas and the gas tank the generator will run and that's okay um we have friends that are with
us however that they have the gas electric fridge and they switched it to gas but then there was a
concern that they have enough propane now to make it through the outage because first of all we have
no law no idea how long the power is going to be yeah there's a there's a power something further
if it was north or south of here anyway there's a couple islands out of power so it might be
out five minutes it might be out ten hours who knows so when you're when you're hitting the road
something that you should think of because tuesday tips for rvers is all about tips that
we share with you whether they be just something cool that we found out or a neat little gadget
we thought today might be a good opportunity to share with you all that being prepared doesn't
always mean what you think so for us it's not real we don't really think about that but for our
friends who are here that don't have a generator they were afraid they'd run out of propane
and then their refrigerator wouldn't work and something else was running we were struggling we
were struggling there to try to figure out whether or not we were able to plug their camper drop it
down from 50 to 110 to plug it in our camper so they can at least have enough power to run their
keep the refrigerator cold so thank goodness they had enough gas they had enough gas and then in
like the whole the battery thing that's a thing too because um like they typically they have an
annual site so they don't travel as much as they used to and so they don't need their batteries so
much they don't like use them for that because it just sits so so how long how old is your
battery and how long are you getting out of your batteries right like do you even think about that
do you think about checking that battery i don't think most people do i know we don't
really check on it like we should because we know we've got the generator as a backups but we still
have to have enough battery power to start the generator too right there's that and does the um
like the hot water heater or whatever if the flame goes out how does it does it need the battery
it's a little bit of battery for us to ignite our hot water heater so again your battery is going to
be kind of important and i think that's probably something that goes unchecked by a lot of people
so your tip is if you're going to be traveling you you don't think about that or or we didn't
you don't you don't think so much about the power going out but we've been a lot of places this year
the power has gone out and power goes out and once that power goes out july time frame you're going
uh-oh it's hot oh it's hot and you don't have a generator and like you could go outside but if you
have pets they could get overheated like it's kind of a big deal and it's something to think about so
our friends are talking about getting just a small generator um to carry with them so for their tips
what kind of generators are you guys using because ours are on board so it's there it's ready to go i
don't have to worry about the noise it's pretty quiet i fill up my gas tanks i have 230 gallon
tanks i don't have to worry about running out of fuel anytime soon and like i said they're looking
for a a generator to carry along so what are you carrying how much wattage are you carrying
what are you powering up what are you using so i think a lot of people talked about honda
generators and then they said they're really expensive but then there's a predator predator
predator that's like a harbor freight thing which is less expensive and a lot of people are
saying they're really great they're just are you using one noisier so i heard one today was pretty
pretty quiet so what's your experience do you have like the honda do you have a predator westinghouse
wouldn't have it on board like what do you have and what do you like and what do you not like
about it now we're on this power thing i did think about something today while we didn't have power
we've been at campgrounds many times where they've had to cut the water off to fix a leak
where somebody ran over one of the water spigots and water was shooting out of the ground so they
had to cut our water off and they're not really good all the time about letting you know they're
going to cut it off they just cut it off and you go to the faucet and there's no water this year
i've learned something that hopefully this will help you guys another little tip i always carry
a little bit of water in our tanks you know we can carry 100 gallons of fresh most of time now anyway
but at least when you get to the campground if you guys are just weekenders or you're just out for a
couple days put 30 40 gallons of water in your tank and your fresh tank because when they cut
that water off it could be off for hours i mean we've we've had we were there it was off all day
one day we're getting ready um i think i was gonna take a shower and i went and there's no water
and then then somebody comes by and says oh yeah they had um they had a water break down there
they're going to have it out for a while they don't know when it's going to be back on so i
would say 99 of the campers do have a fresh water tank so all you do is flip your little switch
turn your water on take a shower do whatever you need to do we don't normally drink the water out
of the campground anyway so it's just for washing dishes great for that kind of thing and then
you know when it gets to be the end of the weekend or like if you're leaving on sunday pull the valve
and dump it either pull the valve and dump it or just go ahead and run it through use it saturday
evening you know use it to wash dishes our last day we're there we'll use all the water that's in
it and if we're traveling to another campground we'll go ahead and put some more more water in
it so it's fresh but in that way one more tip if you if you have to go to the bathroom emergency
situation you don't have to stop it don't have to be emergency all over the parking lot you can
stop it at the rest area if you want you don't have to walk off you don't have to use their
nasty bathroom you just use yours so there's three tips for you guys basically there carry some water
heavy electricity good and let me just put a plug in for keep a check on your tires too i know that
has nothing to do what we're talking about but it's always good it doesn't it doesn't but it's
always good like our friends that are traveling that theirs is usually parked that was something
that was something we did say before they left like check and make sure your tires are good
because if it stays parked a lot and you don't take big trips brand new tires have been sitting
for two years yeah they get like dry rotted and they get gross and then there's nothing worse than
being stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire so so let us know are these there's nothing
to be without power but check your tires keep some fresh water in your tank check your batteries make
sure they're good get you a generator if you need one because it sucks being out of power
and check your propane tanks make sure they're full because you never know when you're gonna
need that propane because the power might go out so let us know these tuesday talks tips helping
you guys are you learning anything is there a tip you want to know something about maybe you don't
know there's a tip but is there something that you think there's got to be an easier way to do
or if you have a tip for us because we're always looking for other ideas to make it easier on the
road so anything anything that makes it easier is great how about i just leave you at home
that would not be easier you would not know what to do without me
he knows it i'm sure you all know it too i know it but anyway guys that's it for this tuesday
talks for rv here so the next time you find us out of power struggling to get the generator started
helping somebody else get their camper cool safe travels y'all