Why you need to compartmentalize your RV. This is Eric Stark with the Smart RVer Podcast, delivering the smarts. You need to enjoy the freedom of the RV lifestyle without the fear of breaking down. All right, everybody we're in July. July is upon us. Summer is moving right along. We're seeing high prices on fuel, but it seems to me everybody's still using their RV at some level or another.

So if you can come to Montana, check this state out. I know it's probably gonna be a little more expensive, but it's worth the trip. If you can cut back on something to help offset the price of the gasoline or diesel. Or food, whatever it might be. I know the United States is in some turmoil right now, but Montana's still here.

It's still an awesome state. There's tons of wildlife to see here, rivers mountains. I mean, this place is just awesome. I'm gonna talk about a little bit more later on in the show in the next stop section, gonna focus on Montana and just some things that you need to know. I mean, things that I'm still learning about this state.

So come to Montana and you know, an RV is still a pretty inexpensive way to travel. You know, you take your house with ya. It's comfortable. Yeah. You might have some problems, but overall RV is a great way to travel. Get away, enjoy a weekend. It's your house, you know, it's, it's your place. It makes it comfortable.

It's nice. You know, it's better than staying in a motel or a hotel. And, you know, I've stayed in motels that have cockroaches running across the floor and I've stayed in hotels at, you know, five star service, but there's still nothing better than your own home, at least in my mind how I see it. All right.

So living the RV life. So the question today is, is retirement in an RV, is the lifestyle for you. So if you're going to retire. Would that retirement be comfortable in an RV? Could you do it? Is this something you've considered? Well, you know, many people do retire in RVs, but you know, it's a lifestyle that you have to really think about cuz you know, sometimes people will sell everything they own without really experiencing it at a full-time scale at any level.

And you really should do that first if you possibly can. So if you're retiring. I wouldn't recommend selling everything and moving into an RV until, you know, you can do it, you know, think about that, selling everything you own. Now I know a guy, his name is Leo used to work for me when we were in Arizona.

And when he retired him and his wife, they already knew they were gonna live in their RV. So they sold their house and they sold, you know, almost all their possessions. He said when they had their yard sale, trying to get rid of stuff. I mean, it was like a can of nails, a box of screws. I mean, anything, they had anything and everything was up for sale and they sold it all.

So you have to let go of everything. And for some people it's hard. I mean, know like me moving from Arizona to Montana. You know, at my shop at home, had a lot of equipment in it and, and, and stuff that I used every day. And I, I got rid of that stuff. Some of it, I threw away. Some of it I sold, you know, gave away.

Then when I got up here, I didn't wanna have to start over, but I know that I'm, I, I have bought some stuff that I got rid of. And there's little things that were handy to have around that are no longer here that, you know, you. Work around. So an AR living in an RV full time can be the same way, cuz you really don't want to have a storage unit with a bunch of stuff in it, right.

Especially if you're gonna be gone or on the road traveling. And when you do this, you know, you gotta buy the right RV the first time you really don't wanna be skipping from RV to RV. You wanna get the RV that's gonna work and you have to really think about this type of stuff. How much, how many belongings or, you know, what belongings are you gonna keep and take with you on the road?

Are you gonna pull a, if you let's say you have a class, a motor home, are you gonna get a enclosed trailer? That'll hold a car and then some other possessions, you have to think about that. And it's a big process. And, you know, Leo, the person I was talking about earlier, he ended up buying a house in Arizona and then a house back in, I think it was Wisconsin where he lived origin.

You know, he kind of went back to that house thing, which is okay, because he spent a lot of time in Arizona, a lot of time back in Wisconsin. So having a house made sense. And then the RV, well, actually he changed and bought a camper that was, you know, uh, in bed camper. So traveling back and forth became easier.

So then he had made some adjustments on the road and you're almost gonna have to do that. You know, you're probably gonna make some adjustments someplace because if you find a place you really want to be in the, let's say the winter time. You're probably gonna buy a house there. It would make more sense.

So make sure that you have the funds available as well. If you're gonna live out on the road in an RV, you know, make sure that it's the lifestyle that you can do and talk to people who have done it, you know, get their stories, their experiences, the, the challenges they faced, cuz you know, I'm not at that point in my life.

And I don't think I would ever retire in an RV. It's not for me. But for a lot of people, it is, but just make sure that if you're contemplating this. That it's a decision that you can make and lived with. And if you decide down the road that it's not for, you make sure you have the assets to buy a house someplace.

Don't force yourself into an RV for the rest of your life. That could be a very bad decision. So think about that kind of stuff. Talk to other people, get the facts, you know, quite often with RV, we, we make, we can jump into a situation, cuz it sounds really good. You know, it sounds very romantic, you know, it's.

We romanticize it. And then in reality, it can be jumping into a bucket of, you know, what it just isn't right. Sometimes. So we have to proceed with caution. That's a lot of things we do in life too. You know, sometimes we just don't, maybe we don't wanna know the truth. Maybe we don't really wanna face the facts, but we have to do it.

And so an RV is definitely an RV lifestyle is definitely a choice we make and we have. Take it in a balanced fashion. So that's the RV lifestyle now staying on the road. So this is for the RV owner, the guy who wants to keep his RV on the road. And this is an important part of the show. This is my favorite, as I always say.

So in case you don't know, I have a brick and mortar retail store. A lot of the content of this show comes from just people I talk to on the. Or that come into the store. And, you know, I got people calling me from all over the United States. I get emails from different parts of the world. You know, people coming into the store that literally come by here to see us and talk to us who listen to the show.

They don't even live in Montana. So we have people that, that trust what I'm saying. And that's like I said, that's where my content comes from. A lot of it. Staying on the road now comes from that. So last night, in fact, I had some other illustrations. I was gonna use some experiences for this section of the show, cuz this is where the containers come in, compartmentalizing your RV.

So in other words, putting it in containers. Now let me explain why. I'm talking about this. So just last night, I mean, this guy called perfect timing, cuz I already had other stuff set up. So now I'm gonna use this example. So a customer calls me actually, he called earlier in the day I was too busy and um, Alexis took a message.

So I call him back and the message was all about a water heater, a hundred percent about an Atwood water heater, nothing more on the notes. So I'm talking to the customer, you know, we're talking about a circuit board, um, no spark gas valve bad. And so I'm listening to this person, they said, okay. So it sounds like maybe the circuit board is bad from what you're saying.

So bring it in and I can test it. You know, I knew he was local by his phone number and he says, okay, no problem. So, so now in the water heater, it has a big hole in the tank. It froze this winter. Now it took him five minutes to get to that with all the other stuff he included in that, how he bought the RV, how it wasn't winterized properly, how they said they drained it, how they did it, how they did this.

I mean, I couldn't even follow it, but a also there's a hole in the water heater. He said so well, if you have a hole in the tank on an Atwood water heater that you can put a fist through. I'd say the water. Heater's no good. It's not something you can weld up and you're not gonna need a circuit board anymore.

He says, oh no. Well, the circuit board has nothing to do with the water heater said, what do you mean? Um, that's what we were talking about. And he says, no, that's the refrigerator. He goes, we're talking about at least four different things right now. You just don't know it. and he was right. I didn't know it.

He needs a water heater. He's got a problem with his refrigerator. Somewhere in this conversation, we were talking about his black water holding tank and there was something else that I couldn't even figure out. So now for him, he's looking at his, his RV. It's like he's sitting in the center of it and he's just seeing problems everywhere and I'm not knocking them at all for.

Explaining things the way he did, because he's got all these issues going on and they're all big too water. Heater's not working. There's a problem with the holding tanks or refrigerator's not working pretty big problems. You know, it's not like a light bulb's out. And, um, the rug is, you know, the corner of the rug's peeling up.

You know, it's not like that big things here. They all important things to have working in your RV. In this case, he's kind of talking about everything all at once. On the other side of the coin. Sometimes I get people that they'll ask a question about the refrigerator and before I can even answer it, they're asking about the awning.

And before we can even get into that, now they're ask talking about maybe the holding tanks and getting rid of odors in it. And then bam, there's another question. And all of a sudden there's four or five things on the table that we haven't even been able to discuss. And as you go back and try to take the first one, you know, the customer might take you back into the second, third or fourth or fifth one.

And so you're all over the board. So it's really hard to have a conversation like that and help somebody. And I think you can imagine that. And that's where compartmentalizing comes in. It's staying on track. So I've given this a lot of thought. Um, you know, cuz in my business it's customer service, we try our hardest and I'll tell you sometimes we fail because we don't understand a situation or it's just something that we cannot accommodate.

That happens sometimes, but we try our hardest. We answer our phones, we call people, we have questions about orders. We contact them. Every Amazon order we get, we send the customer a message verifying what that, that, what they ordered is correct. So we go out of our way to try to help people, make sure they get the right thing, the right answer.

And you don't find that in the world today. I mean, like even Amazon, you know, I don't even consider them part of the RV industry and I wish nobody'd shop for RV parts on Amazon. And I'm serious about that because there's no customer service there. And quite often the small business selling on Amazon gets hammered because of Amazon's lack of customer service.

It's all about just giving you your money back and that's it. And it doesn't help the situation. Not at all. We try to help. And I guess that's the point getting a little off track here. Like I always do, but we're trying to accommodate everybody, but sometimes it's really hard to do cuz customer service is going by the wayside today.

And I think all of you experience that. That's, we're thinking about this pondering this situation and how people are sometimes. You know, I, I think about our store, we have powwows about customer service and sometimes I get, these looks like Eric, you're crazy. You know, it's just not gonna work that way.

Cuz I have expectations and we have to meet them. And I learned that from my father, he had expectations and his business with his employees and he has always known about customer service. People loved them for that. And that's just something I've grabbed onto. And I think is very important. I, I ponder these types of things, so okay.

Looking at it, how can we help the customer learn their situations? And that's where compartmentalizing comes up. Now, if you take your RV, you know, let's just pretend it's a big box now. So you're looking at it. Like I said, about the, the guy on the phone, he's like sitting in the middle of his RV, just looking at all of his problems.

So if you sit there and just, you know, mentally sit in the middle of your RV or physically, and you're looking at everything in the RV and you're imagining you can see through the walls, you can see the wiring, the insulation, the, the framing. The, the staples that hold the framing together. You know, if you imagine all that with problems, you know, the plumbing, Vince, the roofing, Vince, the appliances, if you imagine it all, and you're sitting here thinking, oh, what am I gonna do about this?

What am I gonna do about that? What about when this fails? What about when that fails, man, your head will explode. You can't do that. You have to just look at it's a box. And it has as I call containers. It's, you know, you compartmentalize it, you take the container, you put it here. So everything should be a bunch of containers.

Visualize your RVs at it's a big box filled with containers. So each container can be a system. For example, the fresh water system can be a large container that holds smaller containers. The smaller containers can be items like the faucets, the showers, you know, a small container container, the water pump and the filter this on the water pump or the water filters in general can be in the same container as a water pump.

But when you break it down that way, it makes it easier to look at your RV. So now. You got this big box filled with containers. And so you can pick out containers and you can move them around. You can do whatever you want with them. Your focus should be on one container at a time. Even if you have six problems, 10 problems, two problems.

Generally they're not related unless you're elated, unless your refrigerator isn't working and your battery happens to be dead and you're not plugged into shore power. Now that could be a relation. You. But it's still two different containers. It's just, they have a connection between them, but not every connection or not.

Every container in your RV has a connection to the next one. And so it's isolating containers or appliances or systems, every how you wanna look at it, which. That's the point here is looking at it properly and separating them and not bringing them together. And one of the things that I experience, um, trying to help.

The RVers with their problems is things get so blended together. And I understand why. In fact, I find myself sometimes let's may say it's a problem at my house. And I call up one of my buddies who maybe is an electrician. And I got this odd electrical problem that I just can't, you know, isolate or, or solve myself.

So I call someone. and, you know, I start going on about this and that. And it's like, whoa, Eric, you know, slow down, you gotta just talk about this. So I, I find myself doing it where I, I blend things together. And what I mean by that is, let's say it's an RV. The interior lights do not work, whether it's plugged in or not plugged in.

So you're either on 12 volts or you're on shore power and the interior lights don't work, you know, to me, it's a battery problem. Right? That's the starting point for me. But what I get from a lot of people is, you know, it's gotta be the 110 volts because the lights are 110 volts and you, then I try to explain, no, the lights are 12 volts.

They work off the battery and then there's this insistence that they're 110 volts. Then when you get past that, it's still trying to blend the two systems together. And ultimately they are separate systems. They belong in their own contain. There are a couple paths where they might cross like at the converter, but you can isolate it pretty quickly and get 'em separated out again.

And it's important to do that because if you keep crossing or connecting containers together, or systems in an RV, when they shouldn't be, it makes the diagnosing process much harder to do it actually makes it harder to explain. And for a guy like me, it makes it harder to understand. So sometimes you walk into a store and you're explaining this, or you're talking to the service writer and they're looking at you like you're nuts and they treat you like you're nuts.

And you look at the service or the invoice where they write, oh yeah. Um, 110 volts causing lights to not work. You know, that's the service writer who couldn't, he didn't even listen to what you said. He didn't even try to reason with you. You know, then there's has to be all this exp explanation to the technic.

Well, he's not gonna get it. Then you pick up your RV. You're probably can still have the same problem because there's a lack of understanding and communication. And it's important that you get the RV people to understand your problem. And it's important that we understand the problem. So we have to work at it as well.

We have to help you with those containers. And also by looking at containers, for example, the 110 volt system versus the 12 vol. It's two separate containers. They should never be put together cuz they really don't cross over. As I said, just like the fresh water system, it's its own container. Maybe it's a big container with smaller containers in it.

Like I said earlier with the faucets and the showers, you know, shower faucets where the black water or the, the sanitation side of the syst water system should be in its own contain. I know some of the catalogs that we use to find parts like, um, P traps and things like that are in the fresh water section.

And to me, they should be in the sanitation section, cuz they're not fresh water. Once the water hits that it's not fresh water, but I kind of see it as attaches to a sink. The sink is more on the fresh water side sometimes, you know, it's, it's hard to separate it, but that's what helps make things make sense.

When you're looking at your RV, you know, you can't see through the, the walls. You can't see if the wiring is deteriorating in the walls. If the insulation is just flaking off and literally just flaking off and falling into the ceiling or the walls, you can't see any of that, but you know what, that's something you don't need to worry about.

My experience with RVs is that they very rarely have wiring issues. The wires are built into the walls when they build the RV. And that's it. It's done occasionally, you know, a technician, somebody working on an RV might just put a screw in someplace and hit a wire in a wall. It's very rare, but that could happen, but that's just one of those things that if it happens, it happens.

But I wouldn't sit there and worried about this container, you know, the 110 volt electrical system and opening the lid look trying to look and peek is everything okay. I'm worried about this. Don't worry about it. There's nothing you can do about it. The wires are built into the wall and typically you don't have problems.

And I bring this up because quite often that's what someone says, an outlet quits working. And if you think it's a broken wire and you know, my response is no, it's probably the outlet's bad. You know, if, if, or the breakers, you know, popped or something, but it's not a wire. If the wire is broken, it would be right at the breaker.

It'd be right at the outlet or something. You know, maybe it got hot, bad connection, but a wire generally doesn't just break in the middle of an RV, you know, on a wall, just like they don't in your house. They use the same. Romax in an RV as they do your house. Maybe it's not the exact same, but same principle, 12 volt wirings.

The same way. It doesn't just break 12 volt wiring, 110 volt wiring last for decades. In fact, you know, people come with old RVs and they're replacing all their lights and stuff. Maybe they're remodeling it. The wiring's fine. They just leave it. They use it because there's nothing wrong with it. Take your containers and the ones you need to deal with, they should be at the top of the box, the containers of things like wiring that you can't control, even plumbing, you know, for the most part, the lines in an RV are fine.

It's the connections that are the problem. Occasionally you get lines that fail ones that are soft, um, reinforced on vinyl for flexible lines. Um, there's some, you know, There's definitely some problems there. You have to be aware of, but overall, most of your P line is gonna be is fine. It's just the, it's just the connections.

So that's where a container, the toilet goes in the container because that connection going to the water valve and the toilet is where the problem's gonna be. You know, if it's part of the fresh waterline system, So I hope this makes sense, breaking things up that way. Cuz it makes you can take certain things that are important.

Keep them to the top, you know, the, the refrigerators in a container, the water heaters in a container. And you know, sometimes you have to just replace the entire water heater, the entire refrigerator. So that relieves some stress. But sometimes it's just a matter of replacing parts to get it going like a furnace quite often, people wanna replace the whole furnace.

You don't need to do that. Generally you can repair a furnace forever. It might seem ridiculous putting money into it, but the furnace is there. It's built in, it works. And quite often you can't get the same furnace to go back in there. It might be some modifications you have to make. So look at the container for what it is.

It's the furnace. Let's just keep the furnace working rather than replace it. Refrigerators and water heaters are easier to replace than a furnace. Because you can generally get something that fits right back in the hole hooks up real easy. So your entire RV, the roof can be a big container with smaller containers in it.

You know, such as the vents, you know, the, the exit vents, the, the ventilation vents, the plumbing vents, the rubber roof portion of it can be a container. For example, maintain the rubber roof. , you know, that's your focus now, when you're doing that, if you're washing it and cleaning it and, um, putting UV protection on it, you might catch some things up on the roof that need to be maintained.

This another container, like a, a roof vent needs to, uh, have some new, uh, lap seal put around it, cuz it looks like there's some cracks and that's preventative maintenance. You know, the lighting, the, uh, exterior lights, big contain. Taillights might be a smaller container, clearance, lights, another container.

I hope you get this. And I'm sure. Well, it makes sense to me. Just keep it compartmentalized. So when you're talking to somebody at the RV shop the RV store, it's gonna make more sense to them when you're talking about a specific thing and don't blend it all together. Start the conversation with, Hey, I got three problems here and the first one I want to talk about is the water heater and stay on the water.

Now if the technician says, or the parts guy says, Hey, you know, um, what are your other problems? And he might ask that just to see if there's any relationship whatsoever then if he, okay. Alright, I'm just gonna make a note of those, but let's go back to your water heater and stay on that. That's the focus and let him ask questions.

Don't bog him down with too much data, cuz remember he's putting all this data in a container. He's gotta make it fit and make sense of. So stick to what's important. And it's also when you're talking to your friends or your spouse about your RV, cuz maybe you're looking for some input. If you're keeping it contained or, or compartmentalized, it's gonna be easier to explain things to others, especially if you're seeking some assistance.

So we're gonna leave it there. Compartmentalize your R. Don't try to explain everything at once. Everything is a container. Every system belongs in a container and you might have to have multiple big container with smaller containers, multiple big containers, which you will, but just keep it all separate.

It's gonna make more sense to you. It's gonna be easier to digest it all, and you'll probably get better sleep at night, not worrying about things you don't need. And getting help is gonna come much easier. Now, the next stop, I want to talk about Montana for just a moment. This last weekend, my wife and I, we took our mountain bikes out and we were actually on the continental divide trail.

We hadn't been there before, been by it, drove over it, but we went out on the trail and you know, it really made me start thinking about, um, Not just Montana, but other places like where you live or maybe where you like to go RV. And I mean, if you live in Los Angeles, you know, you gotta definitely get out of the city to enjoy anything.

But it made me think about my wife and I, cuz lately we've been doing these local trips, you know, just day trips in some cases where we take our bikes and we go riding for a, you know, a certain amount of time. And then we spend. A certain amount of time exploring that general area, looking for other places where we can ride our bicycles.

And a lot of that entails over landing or four wheel drives, cuz you know, we have a truck and it's set up, um, to go offroading. And it also has some bike racks that I built to hold the bikes and you can pretty much take that truck anywhere on a dirt road, rock road and those bikes aren't going anywhere.

So it works out real. We enjoy doing that. It's a nice way to get out exploring, especially living here. You know, we lived in other places, you know, you take the RV and then go out from there. But here we're like in the middle of this, you know, area where there's so much to do. And that's kind of, my point is, and I, I know you guys do this it's it's um, maybe you do it without even thinking about it, but maybe some of you don't, but explore the areas where you're at.

You know, if you go out for the weekend in your RV, You drive 300 miles or 200 miles to get outta the city, you know, and then you're up in, let's just go Southern California. You're up in the big bear mountains, you know, and there's the place you always go and you kind of do the same thing. You know, you go there, you maybe go hiking backpacking or boating, or just wander around the shops in big bear city, whatever it might be, broaden that out.

See what else there is to do. Is there horseback riding, is there river rafting? Is there something else you could do? Are there some trails that you could just drive on a regular, you know, on a two wheel drive vehicle, you know, and go exploring, you know, sometimes there's trails that are just take you absolutely gorgeous places where you can get to in just a two wheel drive car, you know, case in point, my wife and I found this place.

Um, I call it the green valley. I don't know what it's. but you get down in there. It's just from up top looking down, it's just this beautiful green valley and you get down in there and you see the colors, the flowers, they're yellow purple. You know, it looks like lakes of, of yellow lakes of purple. It's just awesome looking, you know, and.

Is just by spending a few extra minutes. And sometimes it's like, ah, I don't want to do that. I don't want to go there, but you know, you start seeing different things and it can make the trip so much more worthwhile. So check it out, go beyond what you normally do and, and explore around the area that like going to.

That's what I've been doing. That's what made me think about this is just, there's so much to see. And we're finding all these great places and we're not even talking to anybody we know anymore about where to go. We're just going to find them. We're going to find these awesome places. Okay. So do that next time you go someplace, do some more exploring the normal.

You might be amazed at what you find doesn't have to be outdoors, even in a town, these small towns, it could be anywhere, widen out a little bit, do a little more exploring. Okay. So now RV envy RV envy is generally we're talking about products, modifications, things that make your RV a little bit better and else RV envy, because technically they could make someone envious of it.

And, you know, we're not pushing envy, you know, that's not really right, but you know, you get the picture here. So having a cool RV with the nice stuff on it, and it doesn't have to be a big, giant RV. It could be a small, comfortable RV it's just dialed in for you. And one of the things that I keep hearing about is people wanting to buy two generators to run their RV air conditioner, and you don't have to.

You gotta see what the running Watts are. That's, what's important, but a micro air soft start solves that problem. And we have 'em on our website. We have 'em in stock all the time. We install these things all the time and they work. So you don't have to have the two small generators connected to each other.

You don't have to have the one big generator. So you'll get down to one small generat. Thus eliminating one other small generator and a headache to get rid of. So you got one generator now, a small one, easy to handle, easier to maintain, more efficient on fuel. And the micro air soft starts work. In fact, they work so well.

Coleman has come out with one, the medics coming out with when everybody's knocking it off, these guys have had a good run, but it's coming to an end. Well, it shouldn't say an end. They're gonna have some serious competition now. Micro air. I mean, we trust them. We've talked to 'em. I mean time or in, you know, we've talked to him many, many times every question we have the answer before we ever stalked him, I started, you know, talking to him about 'em and before I ever talked to him about talked about 'em on the show.

We've, you know, tested them, they work. It's an awesome product. So if you have any questions about it, you can call me or go to our website, have to think of the name of it. Arizona RV part center.com and the microwave soft starts are there. I'll put a link to them on the, in the, uh, show notes on our podcast website, the smart RV or.com under this episode, which happens to be 103, which I didn't mention at the beginning of the show, episode number 103.

And if you need to call me the phone number is on our website. And also you can use the contact us page there to send me an email. So I want to hear from you too, about anything doing with your RV. I love that using his content. In fact, I was going through notes yesterday and I got a bunch of stuff I need to mention, um, shout outs and such.

So hopefully I can get to that next show. There's a lot of stuff always going on here. We're always busy, but we get the show done. So this is Eric Stark with the smart RV podcast. It has been great hanging out with you guys today. So if I don't see you on the road, if you don't come by my store in the month of July or hit Montana the month of July.

Then we will see you another time, but in the meantime, let's connect at the SmartRVer.com.