Hey friends, welcome back to Grand Adventure! I'm your host Marc Guido, and now that we are
nearly seven weeks into our full-time RV life in our new fifth wheel you've had a bunch of
questions for us. And we're going to answer the most common questions on this week's episode,
and at the same time we'll share a terrific flagpole solution for your RV, so stay tuned!
Now we're spending the ski season at an RV park in Salt Lake City, Utah. That means that we've had to
take some extra steps to protect the RV from cold, freezing winter temperatures. Now we didn't bother
skirting because to be honest with you, winters really aren't that harsh in Salt Lake City,
and we do only have single pane windows. I'll throw that out there as well, but we've taken
some extra steps to help protect our plumbing and our other things in the RV from freezing.
Now even without skirting we're barely using our propane furnace at all. Our site rental
includes electricity, so we're trying to heat with electricity as much as possible.
Our electric fireplace is largely keeping up with the heating needs inside our RV when supplemented
with a silent mica panel heater from DeLonghi that we're also using in the living area. Between these
two we're pretty much limiting our need to about a 30-pound fill of propane every two to three weeks,
so we're really not going through much propane at all and largely just using the furnace
to try to catch up with temperatures when we get up in the morning.
Also, even though we've only got single-pane windows we are hardly experiencing ... actually,
we're not experiencing any condensation issues at all.
Now to keep our water hose from freezing we are using a heated water hose from Camco
from the spigot which the rv park already has wrapped with heat tape,
until it enters into our enclosed and heated wet bay in the RV. However, because we are not using
the furnace very often -- yes, our furnace is ducted into the basement to provide heat to the
basement area where all our water connections and our plumbing are located -- but because
we're barely using the furnace at all we're really not putting much heat with the furnace
into that enclosed wet bay. So we're supplementing it with a small ceramic heater,
an inexpensive one that we got on Amazon. It oscillates back and forth and helps us maintain
a comfortable temperature in our basement area to make sure that our plumbing doesn't freeze.
So all in all we've been very, very comfortable in the RV throughout these winter months.
One question that we've been getting a lot, especially from prospective full-time RVers,
is do you miss your sticks and bricks house at all? And I can honestly say (and I'm speaking
for both of us here) not one bit. Not only are we saving a ton of money by living in the RV
instead of a house, but we've got no lawn to mow, we've got no leaves to rake, we've got no
snow to shovel, and cleaning house takes a matter of minutes instead of a matter of hours.
Now our fifth wheel is a 32' 11" Durango D283RLT from KZ RV. It's designed to be half-ton towable,
although it's pushing the limits of half-ton trucks including the limits of our Toyota Tundra.
So one question we've been getting a ton is, how's your Tundra doing pulling that fifth wheel? I can
honestly say the short answer, it's towing it like a champ! Last month we took a trip down to
Quartzsite, Arizona. It's two days' travel each way, and we'll put a link here up on the screen
right now if you haven't yet seen that episode from Quartzsite. And our friend Traveling Robert
took this terrific drone footage as we were driving out of Quartzsite to head back to Salt
Lake City. Now even though the fifth wheel weighs 3,000 pounds heavier than the travel trailer,
the truck is actually working less pulling this fifth wheel than it did our travel trailer!
When we're towing down the highway or towing down the road, it's using one transmission
gear actually higher than it would have towed in an equivalent situation with the travel trailer.
Also on that four-day round trip to Quartzsite we got 1.5 miles per gallon better fuel economy
with the fifth wheel than we did with the travel trailer.
It's got to be aerodynamics. That's the only thing we can chalk it up to, the way that the front cap
is tucked in behind the cab of the truck. And for any of you folks worried about stopping, it
actually stops better than our old travel trailer did. That I kind of chalk up to the self-adjusting
electric brakes that we have on this fifth wheel, as opposed to the regular electric
brakes that we had on the travel trailer which may or may not go out of adjustment with use.
Now one thing that we bought in Quartzsite that we're really happy with is this flagpole
and mount specifically built for an RV from a company called FlagPole Buddy. Although
they come in shorter and longer lengths, ours is a 16-foot telescoping fiberglass flagpole.
The beauty of this design is you can put it up and take it down without ever having to
climb up on the ladder. Two mounts attach to the side of your rig or to your RV ladder.
To remove the pole all you need to do is loosen this little thumb screw
and lift the pole out of its lower holding bracket, then swing it to a 45-degree angle
to slip it out of the upper bracket. To set up the flagpole you just do the reverse.
Now if you'd like to check out the FlagPole Buddy for yourself, or any of the other products that
we've mentioned in this video, we'll put links down below in the video description. And those are
Amazon affiliate links. We encourage you to check out the Grand Adventure Shop on Amazon because
everything that we list there we use and feel very comfortable recommending ourselves to our viewers,
so you can shop Amazon with confidence through Grand Adventure, knowing that we've tried out
this stuff and tested it ourselves before you even make a purchase. Grand Adventure
does receive a small commission from each purchase that you make on Amazon through these links,
and that helps us to bring you better and better videos each and every Wednesday. Now
speaking of Wednesday, coming up next week we're going to address one more question,
and that is how are you going to carry a 14-1/2-foot kayak with a fifth wheel?
We've got an idea on how we're going to go about that, and we're going to film the implementation
of our solution to that problem for next week's episode. So if you're not yet a Grand Adventurer,
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So until next week please remember, life is nothing but a Grand Adventure! We'll see you then.