Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido,
and in this episode we are going to check out and
install the Super Shade Front Panel for our Solara awning from Lippert, so stay tuned!
So the way this front panel works is it slides into the accessory track on our Solera awning,
and then comes down all the way to the ground and stakes into the ground,
providing us with shade from the afternoon sun the way it hits our patio area. Now a
couple of notes. We do have two awnings here. We decided that we were only going to do the one
that covers our primary patio area. I'd rather not block the view to the windows in the main living
area of the trailer. The advantage of putting it on this awning is that it will also block the
afternoon sun from hitting the side of our bedroom area, which now it's not that big a deal -- it's
not that warm out -- but come summer if we're parked facing with the patio side facing west,
that's going to make a huge difference in trying to keep the bedroom area cool. It's also worth
noting that Lippert also makes side panels for these awnings. They even make a whole danged
screen room, which I guess if you're in a buggy area that would be kind of a nice feature. Around
here, you know, if you're in the Intermountain West the common question about mosquitoes is,
"What's a mosquito?" So I'm really not too worried about having anything like that either. They don't
come cheaply; it was well over $200 bucks for this front panel because we needed the extra tall
Super Shade version that reaches, in our case I think it was 10 feet was the measurement I
took from the awning bar to the ground. So let's get this thing unboxed and take a look!
Alright, so let's see what we've got in here.
That appears to be it. They gave us this rather nice storage bag that's rather
attractive. That'll be good for storing this in the basement area. And pull this out...
It looks like we have the shade material. Take that out of the bag.
See if there's anything wrapped in here.
Yep, we've got another bag here. I'm guessing these are stakes but we'll double check.
Yep, we've got stakes and line for tying this out. And some Velcro, not entirely sure what
that's for. We'll get about, set about getting this set up. So these awning shades actually
separate into two pieces. Up top there's a section that goes in your accessory track and stays there,
and rolls up with the awning. And it's separated by this zipper from the remainder of the sunshade
that is removable for those times that you don't want to use it.
So now our first step is going to involve simply sliding the tube here and the sleeve of this
awning extension right into the accessory track and working it all the way through.
And here's how the section that stays in the awning looks when it's deployed.
It'll provide a little bit of shade even just like that as long as it's not too breezy.
Now that section stays in there and as you can see it simply rolls up with the rest of the awning.
So now that we have the permanent section installed the next step is simply to
install the removable section with the zipper.
It's a little tricky to get it started, but once we get it started we should be pretty good.
There we go. They use nice big teeth on this zipper,
it looks like a quality zipper. It's a plastic zipper.
And this might be easier with two people to keep it taut so I don't have to keep doing this, but
let me just zip this across.
There we go! And now all we have to do is stake it out.
And there you have it! Of course it went cloudy while we were filming this, but
this will provide some ample shade on our patio area when the sun starts setting in the west.
However, it really doesn't block our view looking through the shade from behind it.
Tear down is super simple, just simply pull the stakes and unzip the main section.
All done! Now we'll just stow this in our storage area and we'll be ready to go.
So I know that many of you were expecting our solar panel install video this week.
Unfortunately, the panels arrived five days late
so we weren't able to get that video ready for you for this week, and we'll have that coming up
next week. So if you're not yet a Grand Adventurer this is the perfect time,
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So until next week please remember, life is nothing but a Grand Adventure! We'll see you then.