First-Season RV Questions, Answered

Six things: a sewer hose (20 feet), a drinking-water hose, a water pressure regulator, a surge protector matched to your amperage, leveling blocks and wheel chocks. Add disposable gloves and a headlamp, which cost almost nothing and get used constantly. Everything else can wait until you have camped a few times and know what is bothering you.

Yes for a first trip. It costs less than buying the same categories separately and guarantees nothing is missing, which is the real risk in week one. Every item in it is the entry-level version, so expect to replace the sewer hose and the pressure regulator within a season. No kit includes a surge protector, so buy that separately.

A surge protector or electrical management system. It is the only item on the list that stands between an unknown campground pedestal and every appliance in your trailer, and low voltage at a busy campground quietly destroys air conditioner compressors. It is the one purchase we would tell you not to economize on.

It is written on the plug at the end of your power cord. A 30-amp plug has three prongs; a 50-amp plug has four and is noticeably larger. Most travel trailers are 30-amp, while large fifth wheels and motorhomes are usually 50-amp. Every electrical accessory has to match, and getting this wrong is the most common returned RV purchase.

A weight distribution hitch unless your dealer specified one for your setup, upgraded stabilizer systems, a macerator pump, a second sewer hose, and tank sensor upgrades. All solve real problems that are not yet your problems. Skipping them is how you afford the surge protector.

Be careful. The forums are full of people in their tenth year of ownership solving tenth-year problems, and their shortlist is not a beginner's shortlist. Working through it in month one is the most reliable way to spend a lot of money on gear that solves problems you do not have yet.

Level, chock, unhitch, stabilize, power, water, sewer. Leveling has to happen while still hitched because the tow vehicle is what gets you onto the blocks, and chocking has to happen before you disconnect because that is the moment nothing else is holding the trailer. Doing it in another order means doing some of it twice.

No, and this is the most common beginner mix-up in that category. Blocks raise a low wheel so the trailer sits level. Wheel chocks stop the wheels rolling. X-chocks between the wheels on a tandem axle reduce rocking. They are three separate products doing three separate jobs and none substitutes for another.

Power, and test the pedestal before connecting the trailer. Plug your surge protector into the pedestal on its own and let it check the supply. If it reports an open ground, reversed polarity or low voltage, you want to know that while your appliances are still isolated from it.

Travel trailers usually have absorption refrigerators, which rely on liquid flowing through coils by gravity rather than a compressor. Off level, the circulation stalls and cooling drops off. It is a real functional reason to level rather than just a comfort preference.

Retracting the entry steps, and leaving the surge protector on the pedestal. Both are caught by one slow walk-around of the trailer before getting into the tow vehicle. Do the lap every time, including the times you are certain you do not need to.

Twenty feet. Fifteen reaches most sites and twenty reaches nearly all of them, while a 10-foot hose will eventually leave you unable to reach the site connection with no workaround available. The hose is cheap and being stranded is not.

No, and this is the most damaging first-season habit. With the valve open the liquid drains away continuously and the solids stay behind, drying into a mass around the tank sensors that is genuinely difficult to clear. Keep both valves closed and dump when the tank is nearly full, so there is enough volume to carry everything out.

In a standard travel trailer black tank, no. Rapid-dissolving supermarket tissue breaks down fast enough and you can restock it anywhere. In a cassette toilet, yes, because there is far less water and much less margin. To test any tissue, put a sheet in a jar of water and shake it ten times.

No. Garden hose is not rated for drinking water and will affect the taste at minimum. Drinking-water hose is labeled as such and is usually white or blue rather than green. Keep it separate from any hose used for the sewer side.

Yes. Campground water pressure is unregulated and varies enormously between sites, and RV plumbing is not built for the top of that range. A burst line inside a wall is expensive and invisible while it is happening. Buy an adjustable brass regulator rather than a cheap plastic inline one, because the plastic ones reduce flow to a trickle and people remove them and then forget to reinstall them.

No, and we will never claim to. There is no test lab here. Recommendations come from published manufacturer specifications, from watching new rigs get set up at a lodge that hosts RV sites every weekend, and from whether a beginner can use the item correctly without prior knowledge. The full methodology, including its limits, is on our how we choose page.

Because prices change constantly and a stale figure is worse than no figure. Every buy button goes to the live retailer listing where the number you see is the number you pay today. It is a deliberate choice in favor of accuracy over the convenience of a number on the page.

Because we have no honest data to build them from. A score out of ten implies a measurement nobody took, and we have no verified reviews for this site, so there is no testimonials section anywhere on it. Instead each product carries named criteria rated in words with the reasoning attached.

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Janet H., the hands-on owner behind Janet Media Group, which runs a lodge that hosts RV sites. Every article carries that byline and there is no expert panel or anonymous contributor pool behind it. One named person is accountable for anything on the site that is wrong.

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