RV Show—TechnoRV

I would say that there are three items that, and we've talked about this for years, just understanding RVs and the things that you need to protect within an RV to make sure that you're, quite honestly, you're safe, 'cause there's things that are like, I just want this and then there's things that we consider you need it. You need to protect your electrical system in an RV, you need to make sure that your tires are protected and monitored and then you also need to protect the propane system in your RV. So if we take each one of those out individually and talk about what is the problem and what is the product that can solve that problem, as it relates to the electrical system, and for people that RV, they kind of know this but, when you pull up to that pedestal you're the last link to connecting to that electrical connection at that pedestal. Like if you're at a house, like an electrical inspector comes out and they make sure everything's right, well when you pull up in an RV you're the one making that final connection. And you really don't know what you're getting, who was there before you or did they damage the pedestal, so we always recommend that you get a surge guard electrical protection system and basically it looks something like this, this is a 30 amp model but you can get it in a 50 amp model as well. Essentially what you're doing is you're plugging this into the pedestal and then you're plugging your RV into this unit. When you flip the breaker on the power comes here and a computer inside of this analyzes the wiring of that pedestal to make sure you don't have an open ground or reverse polarity or anything like that going on, assuming you're okay you'll hear a little click after about 10 seconds, now you've got power. Now what it's doing is it's protecting you against surges and high and low voltage. So what a lot of people may not know is that actually low voltage is basically the bigger problem for RVers. Of course you can get a surge, a lightning strike but those are more rare than say everybody turning their RV units on in a RV park at the same time and it dropping the overall voltage, because if you get voltage below 102 volts or something like that, that's not good for the electrical components in your RV. And that may be happening and you don't even know it. So one day you wake up and maybe your microwave is not working and you're just thinking, "Well it's life just ended". Well it could have been because you've been experiencing low voltage. These are the type things that a system like this surge guard right here will absolutely protect you from and that's why it definitely tops the list on what we consider one of the top three items that you have to have. So now that we've talked about your electrical system and you know that you need a surge guard for that, I want to transition into talking about the number two item on our list, which is tire safety. So I've personally had a blowout on a class A motor home doing 65 miles an hour on a steer tire and it is not a comfortable situation, I can assure you of that. And so there's a lot of things that you can do to help prevent tire blowouts and one of the main things that you can do is have a tire pressure monitoring system. The blowout that I had was a catastrophic blowout and that is a very rare, rare thing that can happen. Most things, as it relates to tire blowouts, can actually be something that could be prevented. So a tire pressure monitoring system is essentially, you're going to have a sensor that screws on to each valve stem on your RV or the vehicle that you're pulling your RV with. These sensors are then programmed into a monitor that will sit with you wherever you're driving at. This is going to display to you in real time your pressure of each tire and the temperature of each tire. Typically a tire blowout is preceded by a couple of conditions and that is low tire pressure and high temperature. Typically what will happen is someone will get a leak in their tire, let's say they've got, it could be a valve stem leak, it could be they ran over a nail, whatever it is, their tire pressure starts to go down, when your tire pressure goes down your temperature on that tire goes up. The reason the temperature goes up is because whenever you are at the proper tire pressure you have a certain size tire footprint, let's say it's that big, whenever your tire pressure goes down that tire footprint gets bigger, so there's more surface on the road and more friction and that drives the temperature up, it's like taking a marshmallow and just mashing it down, it just, there's more surface on the ground now, that drives the temperature up. What happens from here is that when a tire gets above 200 degrees, right around that mark, this is getting close to the temperature at which they actually manufacture and pulled this tire together, so it would make sense that if you got back to that temperature, that could also be a temperature that tire starts to fall apart. So essentially what happens is, when you get above 200 degrees the components in your tire start to come apart and then that's when the blowout happens. If you have a tire pressure monitoring system your tire pressure gets low, you're going to be alarmed, if your temperature goes up, you're going to be alarmed. And in most cases, if you can be alarmed to this, you're going to be able to pull off the side of the road, you're going to know exactly which tire is in question and it gives you times to address that tire before the blowout occurs. And that's why I cannot stress enough that you get a TST Tire Pressure Monitoring system. Now they've got a couple of different systems, essentially all of the sensors are the same. You do have a cap sensor here, that's a real low profile sensor. And then we've also got a flow through sensor that's a little bit longer but you can actually air your tires up through this sensor without taking it off of the valve stem. Now with this flow through sensor you do need metal valve stems, on the cap sensor, you can do that on rubber or metal. So, and you can mix and match these. For example, on my class A, I have flow through sensors and then on the Jeep that I tow, I have the cap sensors. So you can mix and match them. TST has two different monitors to choose from, this has been the workhorse that has been around for a lot of years and the one that I've used for a long, long time, it's called the 507. They've recently just come out with a bigger model that is called the 770, it's a bigger screen, a little bit more brilliant. I would say that the usability of it is easier because it has a touch screen. It is more expensive, so I want to point that out that's like, hey, if you're looking for the workhorse you don't need the top of the line, best of the best, this 507 unit right here is the one that I would highly recommend. If you're the type that just wants it all and, you know, you get the 770, right? But both of them are operating off the same sensors and are performing the same function as it relates to protecting you as you travel down the road. All right, so we talked about your electrical system and how to protect that with that surge guard electrical protection system. We've talked about your tires and how a TST tire pressure monitoring system can really increase the safety as you travel. Now I want to talk about the propane system that exists in your RV. Obviously if you're carrying around propane tanks there's just some things that you need to know from a safety standpoint in order to ensure that you are in the safest possible position that there is, whenever you're carrying these systems around, so. Whenever I started dealing with propane, I guess I thought that from the manufacturer that these tanks had some kind of system in them that would shut off the propane if I had a leak. And as it turns out, that does not exist. However, there are two safety devices that come on your propane tank. One of them is called an OPD valve, that's a overfill protection device, and these were put on here because back in the day, you could, used to just turn this on without anything connected and propane would just free flow. Now if you have a tank and there's nothing connected to it and you open it up nothing comes out, that's thanks to the OPD valve, so that's a great safety addition. In addition, inside of your connection point to your propane tank there is something called an excess flow valve. Now that will shut off a portion of the propane flow, should you have a leak, but it's not cutting all of it off. So you can imagine, if you have a leak in your RV that it doesn't take a lot to fill up 250 square feet. So what we want to do is we want to make sure that we have a device on our propane tank that instantly and automatically shuts off the propane should I have a cut line or a ruptured line or something like that, and that device is called Gas Stop, it's one of its kind. And you may see a device like this elsewhere that has the gauge on it that tells you how much propane there is in it. And a lot of device that you'll see that look like this are really just a gauge. The Gas Stop is different, it actually has a ball bearing that is tuned to seat itself inside of an O ring once you get so much flow of propane, which would represent a leak. So it allows enough flow for you to run whatever you need to run inside of your RV, if you got an oven or a heater or things like, that's all fine, but a line cut or a rupture, that's a whole different story, that's a different level of flow and this thing can detect that and seat that ball bearing up against that O ring and completely and automatically shut off the flow of propane. So I want to just give a quick demonstration of how this device works. So this is a propane tank that is filled with air, so there's no propane in it for our demonstration purposes here. And this is going to represent the line going to your RV, okay? And so if I get this tank turned on then you can see that- You can see that the air or propane would be flowing out of this tank. So that would represent a leak, 'cause that is a lot of air that just came out of this line. So with the Gas Stop, essentially all you're doing- Remember this is the line to your RV. All I'm doing is in between your line and the regulator, I'm putting the Gas Stop device onto the OPD valve. And then all I'm doing is attaching my RV to the Gas Stop device here. Now I'm going to turn the line back on. And then in order to prime this, 'cause you remember that ball bearing that was inside the Gas Stop, I need to seat that and in order to do that, I'm going to press the gauge in that has a pin that's going to press that ball bearing down. I'm going to do that five times to make sure that it's seated in there, okay? So now I've got a live system, all right? I'm in my RV, I've got my system set up and then let's say I get a line rupture or whatever the case may be, I've got a massive leak that's coming through here. Now you remember before the Gas Stop when I did this it was just free flowing, right? Now with the Gas Stop, just like that, it's shut off completely. Remember without the Gas Stop this was just free flowing. With the Gas Stop it instantly and automatically shut that propane off. So if you're in your RV and you have that situation happen, this is absolutely the answer. And I can tell you, the class A motor home that we were in for a lot of years was an all electric coach, I never even had to worry about propane, but then we ended up getting a travel trailer, ended up getting a truck camper and I was like, "Whoa, now I'm dealing with propane". And it's just a different feeling and you want to make sure you're doing everything that you can in order to protect you and your family when you have propane and the Gas Stop is an excellent product and you can check them all out over at technorv.com. I'm an RVer just like you are, I've traveled to all 50 states and I've just made it part of my life for the past eight years. And I can tell you there's so much more that I have to learn but I'm happy to be able to present to you what I consider those three essential things that from the beginning when we started RVing, like this is it, if you're an RVer, it's just like getting a hose, you know, your freshwater hose and your sewer hose, protection system for your electrical system, your tire's got to be protected and that propane system. So hey listen, I hope this has been helpful and you can always check out all these products over at technorv.com.