In this episode of The Smart RVer Podcast, Eric Stark takes a closer look at Topargee RV water gauges and why accurate fresh water monitoring matters, especially for RVers who dry camp or boondock.
Factory RV water gauges are often vague and unreliable. They may tell you the tank is full, two-thirds full, or empty, but that does not always help you know how much water you actually have left. Topargee water gauges take a different approach by helping RVers track water usage more accurately, giving them a better idea of how many gallons remain in the tank.
Eric also talks about practical RV battery connection solutions, including Connect-Ease battery cables, which can make battery hookups cleaner, easier, and more reliable. Whether you are managing a basic battery setup or adding solar and other accessories, better connections can save time and reduce frustration.
This episode is all about practical upgrades that help RV owners avoid preventable problems, manage their systems with more confidence, and stay focused on enjoying the trip.
Show Notes
In this episode, Eric Stark discusses practical RV upgrades that can make life on the road easier, starting with Topargee RV water gauges. Many RV owners know the frustration of factory tank monitors that only provide rough readings. A gauge may show one-third, two-thirds, or full, but that does not always tell the real story.
That can become a real problem when dry camping or boondocking. When you are relying on the fresh water in your tank, guessing is not good enough. Eric explains how Topargee water gauges help RVers better understand their water usage and accurately gauge how much water they have left. This can help with planning showers, washing dishes, conserving water, and avoiding running out too soon.
Eric also covers an often-overlooked part of the RV electrical system: automotive-style circuit breakers commonly found on the frame of many RVs. These small breakers can affect power to important systems, yet many RV owners do not know they are there. Eric explains why they matter, what can happen if one fails, and why RVers should know how to identify and replace them.
The episode also highlights Connect-Ease battery cables, a cleaner and simpler way to manage RV battery connections. Battery compartments can quickly become crowded, especially when adding solar, inverters, chargers, or other accessories. Connect-Ease cables can help organize those connections, making the battery setup easier to understand, service, and maintain.
Overall, this episode gives RV owners practical information they can use to improve their fresh water monitoring, understand an important electrical component, and simplify battery connections. These are the kinds of small upgrades and maintenance tips that can help RVers avoid frustration, stay out of the repair shop, and enjoy more time camping.
In staying on the road, I'm going to discuss the topergy water gauges. These are a must have.
And then I'm going to explain to you the little circuit breaker that's on your frame of your trailer how that might be ruining your camping trip. We'll discuss that. And then we got a great option for your batteries. The connecties battery cables.
These things will change how you look at connecting your battery. These things are sweet. I'm Eric Stark. Welcome to the Smart rver podcast.
If you'd rather be camping than sitting in a repair shop, you're in the right place. Every episode, I'll walk you through practical DIY maintenance and repairs that keep you on the road. Welcome back, Smart RVers.
Today is episode 202, so let's just dig right into it. Now, just as a reminder, you can check us out on all your podcast websites, Spotify, itunes, everywhere. We're on YouTube.
We got the video version on YouTube, the audio version on YouTube. So we are everywhere you're at on the Internet. We're following you. That sounds pretty bad, huh? Just kidding.
All right, so let's just jump right into this. So staying on the road, as I mentioned, we're going to talk about the topar g water gauges. Now, what on earth is a topar g water gauge?
Well, we're going to get into that, but first let's talk about this. You know, most RVs come with some sort of gauge to check the water level in their tanks. And these gauges are kind of accurate. They get you close.
You know, it's one quarter, half, three quarter or one third, two thirds full. You know, you hit the button, the little lights come on. In some RVs, they work better than other ones. Depending on the age of the rv.
A newer one might work a little bit better, but it's still kind of a primitive, primitive technology that only gets you close, sometimes kind of close. And when those gauges quit working, well, then it's just a guessing game, right?
And I know throughout the decades in RVs, those gauges have never really been close enough for, for most people. But like I said, technology's gotten a little bit better.
So they're a little bit better, but it's still sometimes the same basic technology they were using 30, 40 years ago, depending on the builder of the RV. And that's what I want to discuss is this Topar G. It's t o p a r g e E Topar G. It's an Australian product and this is like the sole bio.
We are the guys in the United States that have it right now, again, I saw these guys in a magazine, same one I saw Sobio in, said, I've got a call, I talked to them, they're from Australia. And I don't know if you know this about Australia. When they have products there, they actually have to meet certain testing guidelines.
So before a product's released to the public, put out in the wild, it's tested, it has to do what it says it's going to do. Unlike the United States, you know, anything, everything goes right.
Let the market decide, let the consumers decide if that product's gonna be around or not. It's just like the stuff that comes in from other countries that's sold on the jungle website.
There's no testing, it's just, hey, let's see if it works or not. Topar G is different. And what really got my attention is how accurate is. Now I have an RV with a, you know, a little gauge in there.
You hit the buttons and the lights come on. Gives you an idea what's going on. But it really doesn't tell you how many gallons you have left.
And don't worry if you're in another country and you use liters or you prefer to use liters, it does liters as well. It's just a simple little switch, right? It's very accurate. And accuracy is important, especially if you're dry camping.
You want to know how many gallons you have left in the tank, not whether it's kind of sort of maybe a third. You want to know how many gallons are in there. And that's where these guys come in. They tell you how many gallons are in there.
So it takes a little bit of setup to determine how many gallons go into your holding tank. Now maybe you know, that holds 40 gallons, 36. But even that is probably a rounded number, not a truly accurate number.
Where with the topar G gauges, you can get it down to exactly how many gallons are left, which I think is pretty darn cool.
Because if you're out camping, let's say you're dry camping, you have a 40 gallon tank, you're two days into it on a four day trip, you should be about halfway through the tank, right? That's kind of the math where our brains would work. Four days, divide the tank by four. 25, 25, 25, 25%, Right?
Well, what about if you're day number two and you hit your gauge and it drops a little bit less than. Maybe it only goes in thirds or maybe it does do quarters. It drops less. But how much less is it? Or it shows a little bit more than half a tank.
How much more is it? Is it just enough above the sensor where it's registering, you know, is a little above a hat or a half or whatever, you know how.
You know what I mean? It might. It's not going to be accurate where this is going to tell you you've got 22 gallons left. You've got 16 gallons left. Holy smokes. 16 Gallons.
Oh, we've used too much water. We're here two days, we should be at 20 gallons or above. Now we're below 20. So we have to start sacrificing some water somewhere.
And then you walk around, yell at your family, who's wasting the water? No, I'm just kidding. But isn't that true? You're out dry camping? You want to know?
I mean, if you're an RV park, it doesn't matter, you know, because you're not using your tank anyways. Well, you might be. Maybe you fill up your tank. You don't want to use our city water for some reason. So this takes the guesswork out of it.
It gets you right down to the gallon or liter, whatever you want. And these things are so simple to install. It's unbelievable. And they have several different versions.
There's a Bluetooth version which works off an app on your phone. It has a gauge, you know, that you mount. And then it has the unit that goes on a water line, but.
But you can see everything on your phone, which is cool.
And then there's a flush mount gauge which mounts on a cabinet someplace and connects to the, to the center, the little unit, the, I guess the sending unit we'll call that, and that one's 12 volt is hardwired in. And also, by the way, the Bluetooth one, you can get a 12 volt option for it or adapter and run it off at 12 volts if you decide to do that.
Then there's the surface mount one. So a flush mount is going to mount flush on a cabinet, let's say. So you know, it's almost flush with the face of it.
A surface mount is going to stick out protrude, you know, maybe three quarters of an inch or so. And that run runs off a AA battery so you don't have to tie it into the 12 volt system. So they've kind of got an option for everybody.
The guy that wants the app on his phone, the guy that just wants to look at a little screen and figure out what's going on? It depends. It's up to you. Whatever you want to do, Right. And the Bluetooth one, you can put the screen anywhere.
It doesn't really have to be invisible because you have your phone to connect. Being visible might make it easier for you. Maybe, maybe not. It's up to you.
The screens aren't gigantic, you know, they're 3 inches by 4 inches approximately. Something like that. I got one here. Yeah, not big at all. In fact, I got one in my rv.
I put the blue one, the Bluetooth one in my rv, and I have another Bluetooth one here just to fiddle around with show people.
Because we are selling these, you know, like I said, we are the people in the United States, so we are the company you would go to with problems right now. I mean, you can call Topar G, but the problems are minimal. That's the other cool thing. After talking to these guys as a husband and wife, these.
They're super, man. Not just from being Australia. They got that accent that always helps, right?
Well, even the Soul Bio guy, he's got that English accent, you know, it always makes things better. But they're super friendly.
They're down to earth, and they're saying the biggest problems they have when people call the batteries ran backwards, you know, or there's no batteries. They didn't put the batteries in. I mean, that's the tech support. Did you put batteries in it? Did you turn them around? Are they in? Right.
That says a lot about the product. Right. So it's a super duper easy to use product and install. This is definitely a do it yourselfer.
And the little sending unit that reads the water, how many gallons you're using, that just goes in line. Not on the suction side of the pump pulling from the tank, but the other side, the pressure side, it goes in line.
And the instructions show where it's like, you know, a foot away, approximately.
There's kind of this optimal point where it doesn't cavitate so it gets accurate readings where the water's not going through it with air, which is important. And if it has to go on the suction side, they have instructions to do that. You just need to put a check valve on the water line. Pretty simple.
But it's better on the other side. But the other side will work. And I'm not going to get all technical here because it's really not that technical one side of the pump or the other.
If you put it on the suction side, you got to put a check valve in line. If it's on the pressure side, no check valve. Just put the little flow meter in there and you're good to go.
And it just hooks up directly to the display panel, unless it's hardwired. And then the display panel has the 12 volts going to it, which you just tie it into the water pump. Your water pump has 12 volts. Boom.
You're right there and it's on a switch. So when your water pump's turned off, this is turned off. And if it's battery operated, obviously you can turn it off by the, the display.
So it's really simple to use. And these things are not that expensive. You know, they go from 100 to $150. There's three different ones so you're going to be somewhere in there.
100, 136, 150. It's a great price and it's accurate and it'll replace your other one.
And you can just leave your other gauge there working, let it do what it's going to do, you know, but this is going to be more accurate. You know, today with products we add to RVs, we want stuff that's going to last and work and these things do. They've been around a long time.
I forget how many years. It's 10 or 12 years. They've been making these pretty problem free. And also they're, you know, they're big in the marine industry as well.
So this works on boats too. So boats have similar problems that rvs has with accurate water gauges. In fact, their fuel gauges on boats are inaccurate too.
So they've just come out with a fuel gauge that says something about these guys, you know, because you know, on a boat you got to know how many gallons of fuel you have. So you're dependent upon this. So they, they make quality products.
And again they had to go through that Australian testing to make sure it works before it ever hits the market, which is pretty darn cool. We're gonna have this on or it's actually on the sunpromfg.com website. There'll be links to it in the description.
And I really want you, or I really want to encourage you to check it out. Even if you don't think you need it, take a look at it. Maybe someone you know could use it down the road.
They might send you talking to one of your friends at an RV park someplace. Hey, you know, I just. Nothing but problems with my water gauge.
This is a solution and it's not just if your Water gauge is working and it's inaccurate. What about the gauge? It isn't working. You know, this is the replacement for it.
So there's no more guessing on that water that's in the holding or in the tank. You're not going to run out.
At least if you do run out, you're going to know you're running out because it's going to tell you that, hey guy, you're down to one gallon, be careful. Well, it doesn't really say that, but you know what I mean, you going to know and it's important. Got to have that water, right.
So again there'll be links in the description. Do your homework on it. It may not be for you and that's fine. You know, all of us have different things and our RVs are very personal.
Everything about them can be very personal. And certain things we like, certain things we don't like certain products. Yeah, it's an awesome product, but it's not for me. Right?
You don't have to have everything on your rv, that's for darn sure. We're getting into the quick tips here. And this is going to be for the guy who owns the travel trailer, fifth wheels.
In some cases, even motorhomes can have this circuit breaker in it. It depends on the year of the motorhome. There's variables here, but most travel trailers on the tongue of the trailer have a circuit breaker.
It's a little automotive style circuit breaker. Some of them are auto reset.
In other words, when it pops, it'll reset, pop, reset, pop, reset until it just burns up, something gives out or they just go bad. You know, they're, they're exposed on the tongue of the trailer. And a lot of RVers don't even know they have this guy.
And this circuit breaker is a, is a weekend ruiner. Is that right English? Any teachers out there, you can correct me on that. But it's going to ruin a weekend if it fails.
And it's such an easy thing to fix or even to bypass or jump if you have to. I don't recommend that. They're so inexpensive. You should find out what amperes is. And they're mounted right on the frame.
It's just a 12 volt circuit breaker. It has two tabs or two wings coming off of it. So it's held onto the frame with two screws.
You got wires going to it from the battery and then feeding the rv. So it's the main feed into the rv. So and these circuit breakers are used on a lot of different things in RVs.
Like if you have the Lippert leveling on your trailer, the little stabilizer levelers. Leveler stabilizers, they have circuit breakers on them. My trailer has a whole gang of circuit breakers on one side of it.
You know, they're all exposed to the element. Heartland does such a good job of doing nothing to protect them. It's just amazing how well, they're not the only ones.
Most RV manufacturers do a really crappy job at making these things a little better protected, you know. But anyway, as I digress, as they say. So this is a under ten dollar part. You should have one in your rv.
It's just two prongs on it, you know, two posts, two nuts. And if you have to replace it out on a trip because this thing will shut off power to the rv. I probably didn't say that.
So when you have no power in the trailer and your battery's charged or your battery is not getting charged, because this will feed right to the battery, it's the main line going from the converter to the battery. So if you have no power or the battery is not getting charged, this circuit breaker could be bad. And it's easy to test.
If it's working, you have 12 volts on both sides of it. If it's not working, you only have 12 volts on the battery side.
In other words, though the post is going directly to the battery, the other side will be dead. In a pinch, you could jump both wires together, put them on one post.
It'd be easier to take the ones off that aren't on the battery post, the one that are the feed, I guess, and put that on the other wire that's on the post and just connect them together. It bypasses the circuit breaker. So you don't have that protection. So I'm not keen on that. That's why I say have a spare one.
But in a pinch, you could do that in an emergency. And I'm telling you this because sometimes camping trips are ruined, come to an end because of silly little things like this.
Even if you're not mechanically inclined, not really that hardcore or you know, depending on what your skill set is. I don't want to say hardcore, do it yourselfer.
But check out your trailer, look at it, see if you can see what amps it is, get one and have it in there and know that it's there. And sometimes they're not on the tongue of the trailer, they're back underneath the house portion of it.
And I've seen some recently that are just like in a rat's nest. So they can be kind of ugly. But look for it and know if you have one or not. You probably do if you have a travel trailer.
So just a little heads up there. And in motorhomes, they can be in the step next to the batteries. We've seen them there.
A lot of motorhomes have those on off disconnects that kind of alleviate that. And they have a lot of other electronics. But generally when you don't have power coming from the battery, it's something simple like that.
It'll save you some headache out on the road and get a spare, like I said. All right, so now let's move on to RV envy. Now we're going to talk about batteries again.
So there's a company called Connect Ease and they make these battery cables that connect to your batteries and I will have a link to them in our description of this podcast. So what's so cool about them is you attach this cable system to your battery so it's a positive and a negative.
Then it has a plug on it and the opposite end or the other end of the plug will connect to the power source. It'll feed your battery to your converter into the rv. These things are used on boats. They're used all over the place.
But it'll have extra leads coming off of it if you need them to attach maybe your solar to.
You have some accessories going to your battery so you don't have all these eyes now, you know, these cables and wires going to a single post on the battery with some batteries, you know, becomes a hassle to put all those on, depending on where they're at.
In fact, just the other day we were putting a 270amp hour battery in the guy's trailer and 200amp hours were coming out and he was the ideal candidate for one of these.
He backed off on it, which is fine, but it makes it so much easier because you just unplug the battery and you're not trying to monkey with the terminals while it's in an awkward spot. And they're a little on the pricey side. If you have to buy two, three, four, five of them, you think that's a lot of money. But.
But it does make it easier because you just unplug it and all those connections are still connected to the one end of it and the other end is connected to the battery. I hope you can visualize that.
So you just take the battery out and then if you're putting in a New battery, you take it off the old battery, put it on the new battery, slide it in and you just plug it in and everything's working. It lines up, it's polarity correct, so it's not going to be reverse and have a shorter and crazy like that.
And they're heavy duty, they're super good quality. So check it out. It's connecties and I will have a link to them on in our description of this podcast, so you can see for yourself.
So these things are really nice, like I said. So we've covered a lot of ground today. We've stuck with the batteries, the circuit breakers, these connecties cables, the toperg water gauges, and.
And again, all the information will be on our or in the description of this podcast. So it's going to be there for you to look at and to take advantage of. All right, so as a final reminder, sign up for our newsletter.
We've got a link to it in our description and a Contact Us link. We got all the links in the description of the podcast, so you know where to find us, how to reach out to us.
And also if you have ideas for episodes or things you want to talk about, you got questions, you can call me, you can reach out to us. We get a lot of our listeners doing that and we appreciate that because it gives us insight to what's going on out in the field.
You know, me with our RV is different than you with an rv. We have different experiences, we look at it differently. Things that might be stressful to you might not be to me, and vice versa.
So sharing information certainly helps.
And anything I can use that you share with me, I will share with the audience as well because I want everybody to get the the most out of RVing that they possibly need can. All right, that's going to do it for today's episode of the Smart rver podcast. Thanks for listening.
I'm Eric Stark, and if you'd rather be camping than sitting in a repair shop, you're in the right place. Until next time, take care of the little things and enjoy the trip.
