Top 5 MUST-HAVE upgrades for our NEW motorhome!

We've been traveling the country in our motorhome for the past few years, and we just moved into this brand new motorhome about three months ago. Given our experience RVing, we knew there were several things we wanted to get installed on our new RV right away that make RVing much easier and safer. So in today's video, we're gonna go through our top five must-have products that we wanted installed right away. For those of you who don't know us, I'm Hillary and my husband, Chris, and I have been traveling in an RV for the past four and a half years total. We've been living in our motorhome for the past three and a half years. We have learned so much along the way, and our goal is to help share those experiences to help you get started with the RV lifestyle. All right, well, without further ado, let's go ahead and get into the top five products. Okay, these products are in no particular order, and Chris and I are gonna alternate going through them. So I'll start with the first one. So one of the first things that you do whenever you arrive at a new RV park or campground is level your RV. Whether you have a motorhome like ours or a towable trailer, you gotta get your RV level before you can get everything set up. Most jackpads that are under RVs are gonna need some type of support. So this is why we wanted to get snap pads installed in our RV. Snap pads are the world's only permanent jackpad. You install them. All you have to do is place them underneath the jack feet. You put your jacks down. They snap right into place. It's one of the most satisfying things to watch, honestly. And they're permanent. You never have to get under your coach to take them out or remove them anymore. They're made out of recycled rubber from old tires and they work great. They help give you more stability. They make leveling easier. And they also have to protect the surfaces that you park on. A lot of RV parks and campgrounds are now actually requiring some type of pad underneath your jacks. So it's really important to make sure you have something like this installed. And we love it because it just makes setting up so much easier that I, well, I shouldn't say I, that Chris isn't having to climb under the coach every time we get set up. And like Hillary said, they actually are a lot of fun to install. I actually wish we could install more of them other than the two or four that we have, but they are fun to install. They are. So we installed two on our front jacks. Unfortunately, due to the odd jack shape of our rear jacks, we couldn't get snap pads installed on those, but we did get some stack pads from SnapPad. And so if we need to, we can get out and put those underneath the rear jacks. We've done that a couple of times when we were just in Canada visiting Banff. We had to do that to get level. And again, they'll just help give you more protection and stability. Great product. Highly recommend. We have worked with SnapPad for years now. It's one of our top most recommended products. If you use the link in the video description below and our discount code FYW, you can get 10% off your entire order. And I promise you're not going to be disappointed. This is definitely something we would recommend. After four years in the coach, one of the things that we've learned is that there is no consistency in the water across all of the campgrounds. We've been to 42 states, numerous campgrounds, and we've found water that's everything from perfectly clear to brown to full of particulate. So, and smelly actually, if you go down South. So we've seen water across the board. So one of the things that was important to us is to make sure that we had a good quality water softener and water filter that was installed in our coach. We've always had a Bluetech on all of our coaches. We've had them since the beginning. And typically we've had Bluetech outside of the coach. It's a water filter system, a four-stage water filter system, as well as a water softener that we install when we set up the coach. But when we did this coach, we wanted to make sure that we had it installed inside of the coach. So we spent the time to actually install all of the system inside the coach to make it easy. So inside of our wet bay, we've got the four-stage water filter system. So this is the first portion of the system. It's got the water filtration as well as the UV filtration. So that's the first step of the water as it comes into the coach to make sure that it's fully filtered for particulates. And that four-stage filtration system just ensures that we have clean, safe water. Then from there, we take that into the other bay, which we've installed, which is our Chi tank and our water softener. So our Chi tank is filtration for chlorine, for hydrogen sulfide, and for iron. The hydrogen sulfide is kind of a smell. It's that sulfur smell that you might get from some water. This Chi tank makes sure that you don't have that smell. It runs it through charcoal, cleans it nice, gets the chlorine out, and gets the iron out of the water. Then we've also got the water softener in here. So these two tanks do the Chi as well as the water softening. There's no requirements for water hardness or water softness for that matter at an RV park. So you see it across the board. It can be really hard, typically very hard. So our water softener takes care of that for us, which helps the coach, helps us, helps my hair, and helps our laundry. Yeah, and what a lot of people don't realize, and I don't think we knew this when we first got started, but there's actually a study put out that a lot of RV parks don't even meet the EPA standards for safe drinking water. So you do not wanna just put in your hose to the spigot and be drinking out of the water directly from the spigot because you just don't know what you're gonna get. And especially when we go out West and into the desert and stuff, you'd be surprised how hard the water is. It's really bad for your RV. It's really bad for your skin. It's impossible for me to untangle my hair. Chris doesn't have that issue, but soft water makes all the difference in protecting your coach, and it's just better for you in general. So- My hair gets tangled. What are you talking about? But of course, it's because most of these RV parks are out in the middle of nowhere, like they should be, and they use wells. So they're not even hooked to city water. So of course they're gonna have clean water, but it is generally pretty hard. Yeah, and we have had Bluetech installed on all three of our coaches, and it's something we would highly recommend. So tell us just a little bit about this process. Why did you mount these in this bay instead of the wet bay, and how did you do that? The reason that we mounted them inside the coach is if you look at them, you can see these three tanks, so the filtration system plus the two tanks, would always sit outside, and you'd have to take them out and hook them all up each time that we move to a different location. So having them all inside the coach just makes it that much simpler. When I pull into, when we pull into an RV spot, we hook up just like normal, and then everything comes through these filters before it goes into the coach. So we put the water filtration system inside the wet bay because it was simple and easy, it would just fit nicely inside there. But these two tanks are pretty large and they wouldn't fit inside the wet bay. So what I did was move them over here to this bay right next to the wet bay, which had the room. We ran a hose over, mounted them onto the walls, reinforced the wall with plywood to make sure that it could hold the weight of these two tanks, and then plumbed that all into the system. So it took us about a day to do it, it wasn't a huge effort. And the reason why he mounted them on the wall like this is because this is a sliding tray that comes out. So we wanted to make sure that we can still move the tray in and out without interfering with the tanks. So we do have to make sure we don't put anything on the tray right here that would block that. But otherwise it's so nice because when we arrive at a campground, all we gotta do is, all Chris has to do is plug in the hose and we're good to go. Yeah, it makes it very simple. And now it's always, and this actually cleans the water before it goes into our holding tank too. So if we're filling a tank up for boondocking, we're gonna actually have clean water in the tank, soft, clean water in the tanks as well. So we actually partnered with Bluetech to come up with two bundle offers of our favorite products. We have the Xtreme Bundle, which is actually the FYW for Fuel Your Wander Xtreme Bundle, which includes everything that you see here. So this is really meant to mimic what you would see in a house system where it's got everything you would need in addition to the filter and the tanks. It's also got the quick connects, the stainless steel hoses, a water pressure regulator, everything you will need. It's a legit setup. We also have the Starter Bundle for anyone that wants to get started with quality water but doesn't wanna quite invest quite as much upfront. You can try that one out. They are printing these with our logo on the side of it because we honestly believe in these products that much. They are very, very high quality. They last forever. Really, really good stuff. And right now, if you use the link below in the video description, you're gonna get 10% off either one of our bundles, which is a really good deal because they don't ever get discounted that much. If you wanna buy any of the other single products or anything else from Bluetech, you can use a different link that we have below and that will automatically give you 7% off any of the other products. But the bundles are really the way to go because you'll get the bigger discount and it comes with everything you need to get set up. Yeah, I mean, we touched on this, but we have been using this product from the very beginning. We're four years into Bluetech. Can't say enough good things about Bluetech filtration. One of the benefits of traveling in a motorhome is that you have these huge windows in the front of the RV where you can take in all the amazing views, whether you're driving down the highway or parked in a beautiful location like we are currently. Some of the downsides though are that they let in a lot of light, they don't offer a lot of privacy, and they also let in a lot of heat because they're not very energy efficient. One of our favorite products that we had installed in our last coach that we knew we wanted for our new coach are custom fit MagnaShades. MagnaShades are custom fit sunshades for your RV that are magnetic and go up anytime you're parked in a location like we are currently. One of the great things about MagnaShades is that they filter a lot of the light, they offer a lot more privacy during the day, and they also prevent a lot of heat from coming in since they have about 94% of blockage of UV rays. So it makes a huge difference with keeping the temperature down inside your RV on a really hot day. All of the MagnaShade products are made from a local family-run business in North Carolina. They do very high quality work and they have excellent customer service. Whenever you order your MagnaShades, they're going to send you a template to measure your rig specifically to make sure you have all the right measurements so it's gonna fit exactly your coach. Once you get the product shipped to you, it's gonna come with the installation guide and it also comes with very strong magnets that you can use to mount the shades. So basically, you take the magnets and you put them on the inside of most of the windows and then the shade just magnetically attaches to the front of the coach. So anytime we set up at a campground where we're gonna be for more than a couple days, we set these up. They're very simple to install. They come with an installation rod and it's honestly such a great product that makes a really big difference. So you can see the large shade we have here that covers the entire front window and then we also have them for all of our other front windows as well. How they fit exactly how this window is and when we take it off, you can see the magnets there and it just magnetizes right in. Is that a word? Magnetizes? No. It's just two magnets that are north and south connected. These really make a big difference. They give you a ton of privacy during the day. At night, they don't give you privacy though. FYI, if you have lights on and stuff, people will be able to still see through them like you could regular shades but during the day, you can't see through this at all and it makes a really big difference with the temperature. We measured this when we were in Park City, Utah over the summer. Without these shades up, it was like, I wanna say about 97 degrees in the dash of our coach when we were parked. We put the shades up and had them on for a while and it dropped the temperature down to 85. So it was a 15 degree temperature difference. If you know anything about RVs, the air conditioning in these systems isn't great and it has a hard time keeping up when it's really hot. So these really do make a very big difference. They also make a big difference on, she mentioned the UV but it also makes a big difference in UV damage. So all of that sun and UV that would be coming through the windows, damaging the plastic, damaging the rubber, damaging the leather. The leather furniture, yeah. It protects all of that as well. So it makes a big difference. And then one of our other favorite products from MagnaShade, we'll go over here to this side of the coach so I can show you, are these custom fit tire shades. So these, we have these in a bag. They're not currently on the coach because we're getting ready to go on a trip but these pop out and they just go right on top of our tire. So we can just use this little strap that we've got here. This goes over the back of the tire, super easy to set up, only takes a couple minutes. And what's really nice about this is that it looks like tire. So when they're set up, it doesn't even really look like you have a shade on and they block a ton of the UV. That's one of the biggest things you have to worry about with these tires. These are very, very expensive tires. They're about $1,500 a piece and you do not want the UV on these at all times. It will damage the tire, just like the UV damages a lot of different things. So you wanna make sure you're using a high quality tire cover at all times. Yeah, the tires on these coaches are typically rated, or at least our Michelins are rated for seven years or 70,000 miles. And it's rare that most people would put on 70,000 miles. So they tend to age out versus wear out. So if you could cover them, keep the UV off them, keep them from cracking, it's just gonna make you maybe get an extra year out of them, maybe just make you feel safer going all the way to seven years. It's totally worth the investment when you're talking about $1,500 times eight tires. Yeah, they're not cheap. Well, six, right? Because only six are shown. Yeah, true, fair point. So we have six of these total that Chris puts out. And we usually, we don't set these up every single time we park, but anytime we're parked for more than a couple of days, we always make sure all the tire covers are on. But there's other cheaper versions of these that you can get from like Amazon or something where they kind of almost just look like a tarp that you put over the whole tire. I just don't really like the look of these. This is a nice coach, so I want it to look nice. So these tire shades from MagnaShade are really top notch. Definitely probably the number one question we get asked about are where are these tire covers from? They're very popular. Speaking of tires, one of the biggest risks that most RV drivers face while driving one of these coaches is a front tire blowout. Coaches don't come with run-flat tires like many cars do nowadays. They don't have that kind of standard safety equipment. So one of the things that we had installed are RetroBands. And RetroBands act like an aftermarket run-flat tire. It's a band that gets installed inside of the tire. The tire comes off, the wheel and tire come off. The tire comes off the wheel. They install the band inside of the rim, rebalance it all, put it back together. So if there is a blowout, the RetroBand is installed inside the tire on the rim. So instead of the tire deflating down to the rim and becoming uncontrollable, the tire deflates and the RetroBand is now between the wheel and the pavement that allows you to drive the coach safely and come to a stop safely with that RetroBand protecting the rim from hitting the concrete. Yeah, and we've seen a lot of instances with front tire blowouts on RVs. When we've been driving, we've even had some friends that have experienced them and it is scary stuff. It's something I hope will never happen to us. And it's probably one of the main reasons why I don't like to drive a lot because I know I would not react in the right way. But we first saw this product. It's a product offered by NIRVC National Indoor RV Centers. And what actually sold us on them is there's this video with Brett Davis, who's the CEO of NIRVC. He's driving a motorhome and they go ahead and do a test drive with RetroBands installed and they blow the front tire as he's driving, I think like 70 down the interstate. And he doesn't even hardly notice that the blowout happened. So he's able to very safely pull over and it avoids a catastrophic accident potential. So it's a really cool device that makes me feel much more confident if I ever need to drive the coach and just makes us feel better in general. I mean, we're driving with our entire home and our whole family in this coach. We don't wanna have the risk of losing it all due to a front tire blowout. Yeah, I mean, I've driven a few cars that have had front tire blowouts. I've had some experience with it. I know what I'm supposed to do. I've never had it happen to me in a coach, but why not have the insurance and the extra safety of just knowing that I've got that there to help me should it happen. So I think it's additional insurance. I think it's a smart thing to have. So the whole install only took NIRVC about an hour total. It was pretty cool to watch. We actually had it done at the Music City Motorhome Expo in Nashville. They have a mobile install unit that's pretty cool. So you can have it done at any one of the NIRVC locations around the country, or they do have their mobile install unit at events like the Expo or even some of their rallies. So pretty cool opportunity to be able to get such a good safety device. And they're a one-time thing. Once you have them installed, they last the life of the coach, right? So if you do have the tires replaced, you can still have the retro bands on there at the same time. So it's not like something you have to replace every time you replace the tires. It is on there forever. Yeah, definitely a worthwhile investment. One of our biggest fears when it comes to living and traveling in a motorhome full-time is a risk of a fire breaking out. We've seen all too many times when RVs have burned to the ground, whether they're parked at a campground or they're driving on the side of the highway. It is a very scary incident that we hope never happens. That's why we wanted to have ProTang installed on this new coach. This was a new product to us. We did not have this on any of our last motorhomes because we weren't aware of it. We got this installed at NIRVC along with our retro bands. ProTang is a fire detection and suppression system. What's really cool about ProTang is that it works automatically. There's no need to do anything manually. It's always on, essentially, and there's no risk of it going off accidentally. Essentially, they are these rods that are installed at different points within your RV where a fire is likely to break out, like your engine bay, your generator, our aqua hot system, our battery bay, places like that. And it will automatically disperse an extinguishing agent in the event that it detects a fire, essentially based on the heat that it senses. So you don't have to do anything. It will work even if you're not around. Again, it's automatic. You don't have to turn anything on. It will just always work. We've always had, in all of our coaches, multiple fire extinguishers. I think in this coach, we've probably got five fire extinguishers. And fire blankets. And fire blankets, because there are so many places that a fire can break out, whether it's the engine, whether it's the aqua hot, all the diesel systems, whether it's the electrical systems, there's just a number of places that fires can break out. So even though we've got the fire extinguishers, what's really nice about the Protang is they're there, they're already in all of those areas, the hot spots, potential hot spots, and they kick on automatically. Yeah, and it's not 100% guarantee that if it senses a fire, it's gonna work and completely suppress and extinguish the entire fire before it can spread. But what it's gonna allow you to have is time. It's gonna give you a better chance, especially if you're not home or if you're driving down the highway and you don't sense a fire right away, it's gonna give you a lot more time and it can potentially suppress it completely so the fire never spreads. This is definitely one of those products now that we know exists. We would highly, highly recommend getting this done at any of the NIRVC facilities. It is worth the investment. Same as retroband, you do not wanna put your family's lives or your home at risk like this to the threat of a fire. So we definitely sleep much better inside the RV and have a lot more peace of mind knowing that we have Protang installed. Having these five products on our new RV has really improved our quality of life, whether it makes setting up easier or just gives us better safety features. Yeah, I mean, it's like anything else in life. It's really important to have the right tools and the right equipment. And having this on the coach is really, as Hilary said, it really improved everything about our experience in the coach. Yeah, and like we said at the beginning of the video, we have a lot of experience. We've bought lots of different gear. We've tested out lots of different products and there are a lot of things that you need when you're living in an RV, but these are definitely the must-have things that we wanted to get installed right away. So hopefully you found this information useful. All right, well, we are actually getting ready to pack up the RV and head out for our next trip. We are heading to the Hershey RV Show in Hershey, Pennsylvania. If you're gonna be at the show, we would absolutely love to meet you. We're gonna be hanging out in the American Coach section. We'll be doing meet and greets on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday of the show. So be sure to stop by and say hello. We'd love to meet up. Lots of Hershey bars, can't wait. We always have to make a stop at Hershey World because Chris loves to stock up on candy there. They're fresher there. They taste better. There's something just special about them. They're not. They're not any different. You just think it is. They probably ship them in from another part of the world. That's probably true. We also have lots of exciting travel coming up after Hershey. We're gonna be starting our trip out west, back to our other RV lot in Southern California for the winter. So stay tuned. We're gonna have lots of travel content coming soon. All right, well, until next time. Thanks all.