🛠️ Friday’s Finds | DIY Power, RV Upgrades & Smart Solar Solutions!

Welcome to Dude RV! Hey, I appreciate you stopping by and of course, say it with me, you got here just in time. That's right, just in time because it's Friday and it's time for another edition. Another fantastic, fun, and exciting edition of Friday's Fines. In case you don't know, Friday's Fines is a product show. Most of the products are from Amazon, up to, you know, five or six products, 20-30 minutes at the most. I try not to be boring. I try to keep it flowing and moving around so that you are infotained. This is an infotainment production. For all you background watchers, not much has happened with any of the projects because I've been staying at mom's taking care of her and cleaning up the buildings. Anyway, I'm home for a few days. I got a few boxes, so let's get to it. What a, it's January and I get to dress like this. I get to wear shorts in January. All right, we're gonna do, we'll go with this one first. I don't know, I don't have my gift receipt for this one, so I'm not sure where it, who sent it, but it is, it is difficult to read. I know what it is though and I'm excited. So on the Friday's Fines show, I actually put the products to, to, to, I don't, I don't, if you're seeing a product on Friday's Fines, it's because it did what the marketing says it will do. It does what it's supposed to do. Otherwise, if it doesn't, you don't ever see it. Where am I going with this? Oh yeah, it often requires me to build stuff and to put stuff together. And one of the, so I'm always doing stuff. PVC pipe is one of those things that I like to work with. You can do all kinds of cool stuff with PVC pipe and a little heat. This actually is a PVC pipe heating blanket. This way you can manipulate your PVC pipe. So I need a piece of PVC pipe and we'll, we'll shape it after we open some more boxes. We are moving right along. We're going with this one. This comes to us from WorkPro. Can't let you see that side because there's an address on there. WorkPro. This is the WorkPro metal fender. So if you're doing like a standing seam roof, you want to work with some sheet metal, we're going to make some very precise 90 degree bend. This is the Dwill metal black paint kit. Rust reformer. So if you got a piece of rusty metal, this comes to us from Dwill paint. Dwill paint. Roller, a brush, I guess that's a stirring stick. And there it is. And we get a user manual. So rust converting. We need some metal to paint. I have some metal to paint. A little plant stand that we're gonna, we're gonna make it black. All right. I got another, I got more boxes coming. I think we need to open another box. Actually two, two boxes. And these are not sponsored products. These are products that I picked out specifically. You may not be aware of this, but we have a new transit. Yappy has a new transit van. She loves it. She loves taking her puppies with her everywhere she goes, but she is concerned because there's, there's only two windows that open on the van. And we've not yet decided whether or not we're going to put in a roof vent. So she's worried about the puppies and ventilation, which is where this product comes into play. This is a set. It was a heck of a deal. It was like $15 for this set of three. Auto fans. These go on the window. The solar powered exhaust fan. And it sits on the window like so, with that pointing out. This is on the outside of the window. This is on the inside. So it's pulling air in. And because the window doesn't close all the way, they include some gasket material. So one of my concerns, yeah that may be good, but what about rain? What, what about somebody maybe trying to get a coat hanger down to open the door? So with that in place, I decided that we were going to go and install the wind deflectors over the windshield. That way when the window's cracked, when the windows open a little bit, you can't get in and open it. So we'll be installing that into the transit van very shortly. Meanwhile, meanwhile, let's make some metal edging. Comes in two sizes, a six inch and a three inch. We're working with the six inch. That's your maximum bite. It's an inch and a half. It's actually working out really good. You don't want to get in too big of a hurry. Just like that, you got a piece of metal edging. Should have one in every toolbox. We are moving right along. Get some latex, water-based paint to clean it. Clean up will be much easier. That's nice. While we're waiting on paint to dry, let's go pipe it. We want it to be piping hot. I have no documentation. It's heating up really quick. While we're waiting, paint's dry. I bent the pipe. I don't think I had the camera running. Dang it. It got overcast. Ruining my life. I like this paint. It's really simple to work with. Dries really quick. Looks good. That's cool. I like that. It's a good product. Does what they say it will do. Reheating the pipe. It works, but it's a good idea to have your camera on if you want to get video of it working. I'm going to do an S curve. It takes about 10 minutes for it to get hot. I'll be back. That's a handy tool to have right there. I like it. I like it a lot. All right. Moving right along. We're going to put on some primer. It has the adhesive already on it. I'm going to make sure we get it lined up correctly because you want that to overlap the mirror. You want that to line up with the window. I have to have both hands. You'll watch from right there. Just like that. The fan, I've already installed one. This is literally just about as basic setup as you can get. There's no battery, no on and off switch. This is pure solar. And then the panel's connected directly to the motor. We do have our air seal in place. A little pull air in. Blow it in. Nice vise. I like that. I bet Yappy's going to like it too. All right. Moving right along. I've been working on this video. It's like the first week in January. The Chinese New Year is in the process. All my Amazon stuff has just kind of come to a screeching halt over the last several weeks. No deliveries. Well, I'm getting like three deliveries a week versus eight or nine. I'm at the end of this video and I still have, of my allowed time, I still have about five minutes. So I thought I would show you where I am and I'm going to introduce two new products that have no vendor sponsorship. These are ones that I have located to fill a need and that need is my pond. As you can see, I'm extending it. We've got that pretty well working the way I like it. And now we're going to build a big waterfall right there. It's actually easy to build water features here because sand is so fun to work with. So anyway, we got to keep the water in the hole because here it's sand and it'll straight through. That's where the 20 mil liner, UV resistant 20 mil, comes in a variety of different sizes. When you're working with these liners, one thing you have to keep in mind when you're doing a water feature, and I learned this on the very first little water feature I built, when you're fitting your liner into your excavated spot, you have to fold it and those folds can create a siphon effect. So if you overfill your pond and water starts flowing through those folded capillaries, those little channels in the folded plastic, it'll siphon all the water out of your pond. Or not all, but it'll lower the water level and you're like, I got a leak. And you'll spend forever trying to find your leak when it's really just that cavity in the plastic. So you have to fold that edge over, that way you don't end up with that siphon. And it won't be on the uphill side, it'll be on the downhill side. For this, since it's all going to be moving water, except it's all going to be moving water, it's less of a concern. I could not find a long narrow. I needed, you know, like 20 feet long. So I bought a really big tarp. I'm gonna set you up right here and let you watch me spread it out. We'll do a little time lapse and I'll find us some music. Almost there. Got the fiddly bit parts left on the waterfall. We're going to test it. We're going to do a, we're going to do a, we're going to plug the, we're going to turn on a pump and see what happens. Test. It's still a work in progress, but I have made progress. Nothing's changed here, although I did clean it up a little bit. Finished out this edge. Still got to figure out what I'm going to do with the, that's the overflow. And I kind of think I'm going to put another pond down there, but not, not, that'll be in the future. And now I got other stuff I got to move on to after I get done with this. I guess y'all want to see it running. I need mulch, a couple of plants to put in there. But before I finish this out, I need to make sure that I'm not losing water from this part. Not losing water there, but I don't know if we're going to hold water here. What do y'all think about that water feature? Post in the comments down there. Tell me what your thoughts are. Would you use that liner to build a pond? I know I would. I'll, I'll use another. I got half of that one left to build a stream and another pond. But for now, we're done. Thank you for catching this episode of Friday's Finds. I hope you found it entertaining and informative. All of these items are available on Amazon and you know how it goes. Link up there, links down there. If you make a purchase, I get some money. That helps me continue the mission. Your support is most appreciated. If you're still with me at this point, I'd be most honored if you consider clicking on the subscribe button and hit that notification bell as well. That way you won't miss another pond build. And for those of you who have been following along, thank you. I truly appreciate that support. And for our patrons, your generosity made this episode possible. Thank you. You guys rock! All right, y'all come back now, you hear?