Beat The Heat

It’s summer. It’s hot outside. Here are some thoughts that will help you maintain a comfortable temperature inside your RV.

The interior of an RV can become an oven when it is parked in full sunlight on a hot day. So shading as much of the RV for as long as possible should be a prime objective when selecting a place to camp. Try to find a campground with lots of trees and grass. It will be cooler than an RV park that resembles an asphalt parking lot. With any luck, you will find a tree-shaded campsite. Try to avoid parking on or next to a hot surface. A grassy or dirt campsite will radiate less ground heat than a paved site. A concrete patio outside your entry door is nice but it will reflect the heat of the sun against the wall of your RV.

If possible, try to locate a campsite that points the front of your RV in a direction between north-east and south-east (directly east would be perfect). Your large street-side wall will then be on the naturally shady side of your RV during the hotter times of the day; your patio awning will shade the curb-side wall; and one end of the RV will be shaded at least part of the day. By the way, you can increase the shade of your patio awning by adding mesh patio shades that hang from your patio awning.

Keep the sun from shining on or through your windows and skylights. Install window awnings on all your windows and use them. Close the blinds or, better yet, place solar window covers or reflective foil on the interior of the windows on the sunny side of the RV. Do the same for windshields exposed to the sun. Poster board, cut so its dimensions are just a little larger than the skylight, can be stuffed into the skylight opening to block the sun.

Give your air-conditioner a head start. Turn it on early in the day and let it pre-cool the interior of the RV. Understand that RV air-conditioners are designed to reduce the air temperature by 20 degrees. That means your air conditioner is working okay if the air on the outlet side is 20 degrees cooler than the air on the inlet side. Your air conditioner is probably doing about as good as can be expected when the outside air temperature is 100 degrees and the interior temperature of your RV is 80 degrees.

Keep the cool air inside and the hot air outside. Close all the windows and doors. Minimize the number of times the entry door is opened.

Use a fan to circulate the cool air. Direct the fan so it blows from under the air-conditioner towards the area you want cooled the most. Fantastic Vent’s Endless Breeze 12-volt fan does a dynamite job for us.

Decrease the air-space the air-conditioner has to cool. Shut the bedroom door and close its air-conditioning vents. If you do close the bedroom door, be sure to open a bedroom window on the shady side of the RV so the bedroom doesn’t get much warmer than the outside temperature. On really hot days, we have seen RVers retract their slide-outs to minimize the air space their air-conditioners had to cool.

Avoid cooking with the stove top and oven. Use the microwave (but not the convection) oven. Use the outside grill. Use electric cooking appliances outside. Better yet, and our favorite, eat dinner in an air-conditioned restaurant.

Keep in mind that RV absorption-type refrigerators have to work harder as the temperatures increase. Try to shade the exterior of the refrigerator. Encourage airflow over the coils on the back of the refrigerator by propping open the outside access door or installing a refrigerator vent fan.

When all else fails… hitch up and move to a cooler climate.

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July 15, 2010 Issue

In this Issue: What’s New With Us

We’re still here. Unfortunately, we don’t have much RV related stuff to report. Our last RV trip was in March. In May we took a Mediterranean cruise. Since then we have been dealing with the medical issues of Vicki and her dad. Vicki’s right hip has restricted her ability to walk for any length of time or distance for some time now. Visits to doctors, labs and so on have kept us pretty much home-bound. She is scheduled for hip replacement surgery at the end of this month. Hopefully the results will set us free to travel again in the fall.

We have made use of our time at home to revise and update our RV books and convert them to e-books. “Why not keep publishing them as paperbacks?” you ask. The reason is economics. Our books were originally designed to complement and be sold in conjunction with our RV classes and seminars. Now that we are no longer presenting classes and seminars, we are not selling a sufficient quantity of books to cover the expense of publishing them in paperback form. When our current inventory of paperbacks are gone we will be strictly in the e-book writing and publishing business.

Check out the $pecial Deal on the RV Book Page. 3 paperbacks for only $34.95!

A bit of history… Vicki and I got into this business in 1989 when we taught a “How to Choose an RV” class at a local community college. The response and feedback eventually led to six different classes at eleven community colleges and then to seminars and classes being presented at up to twenty RV shows, rallies and educational events a year. Folks kept asking if we had written a book about RVing. So we wrote a book, “RVing Made Easy”. Next came “Extended RV Travel” then “RVing Tips, Tricks and Techniques” and, last but not least, “My RV Kitchen and Favorite Recipes”.

The go-go years between 1990 and 2005 were very good for the RV industry. A lot of folks bought a lot of RVs. Our niche was the new RVer. We presented a lot of seminars. A lot of new RVers attended our classes and seminars and we sold a lot of books. As the economy slowed, however, fewer new people were buying RVs. Our seminar and class attendance began to drop off and, as a result, we were selling fewer books. Last year we “retired” from the seminar business (See the October 7, 2009 post). Book sales since then have been through our RV Know How website.

So, where do we go from here? We are convinced the economy will eventually turn around; just as it has in the past. E-books are our way of hunkering down, minimizing expenses, and waiting for things to improve. E-books will enable us to continue sharing the benefits of our 45-plus years of RV lifestyle experience with our readers… for less than a paperback book would cost them. When things turn around maybe we will come out of “retirement” and start over with new classes and seminars. And, if the demand presents itself, our e-books can be easily published as paperbacks. In the meantime we intend to practice what we have been preaching… traveling and camping in an RV.

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May 29, 2010 Post


In This Post:

What’s New With Us: Our Mediterranean Cruise


Vicki and I celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary on May 20th of this year. We thought it would be nice to go some place special. I worked up a great itinerary for visiting a number of western National Parks in our motorhome. Vicki picked up some cruise ship brochures. The ability to compromise is a major ingredient to our lasting marriage. So we booked a 10-day Mediterranean cruise.

The flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia takes almost five hours. The flight from “Philly” to Rome is about nine hours. Based upon our experience of flying coach-class non-stop from Los Angeles to Frankfurt Germany years ago, we chose US Air’s more tolerable and considerably more expensive business-class seats. Everything about the flights went as expected.



We spent a couple of sight-seeing days in Rome before getting on the cruise ship. Vicki’s ability to walk is limited as to duration, intensity and frequency. That eliminated those bus tours of Rome that included quite a bit of walking. So we hired a guide/driver to show us Rome’s highlights in his car. He took us to all the must see tourist spots… the Coliseum, Vatican, Trevi Fountain and so on. Coincidently, our good friends, Sandy MacGregor and Marilyn Abraham also happened to be passing through Rome at the same time. They took us to a very nice Italian restaurant and treated us to a Happy Anniversary dinner. By the way, after seeing the terrible traffic congestion and suicide drivers in Rome( a red light is just a suggestion) , I will never again complain about driving in Los Angeles.


The cruise-ship Equinox, owned by Celebrity Cruise Lines, is not quite one year old. It is over 1,000 feet long, 121 feet wide and, as near as I could figure it, some 17 decks high (the top deck has a quarter acre putting green with real grass). It has accommodations for 2,850 passengers and carries a crew of 1,000. In addition to being huge it is drop-dead gorgeous. Our stateroom was located on the 9th deck and had a private outside veranda with deck chairs and a table. The weather was close to perfect during our entire cruise so Vicki and I enjoyed a number of room-service meals on our veranda. In addition to the formal dining room and casual buffet the ship had a number of specialty restaurants. The food was plentiful and delicious. The service by waiters, cabin attendants and every crew member, was outstanding.

The ship left port about 7:00 pm each evening and arrived at its next destination by 7:00 am the next day. This left the daylight hours to take tours, shop or just hang out and enjoy the ship’s amenities (Vicki treated herself to a massage and a variety of pampering services). We docked in Messina, Sicily, in Ephesus, Turkey, in Athens, Mykonos, Santorini and Rhodes, Greece, and in Naples Italy. Keeping in mind Vicki’s limitations we booked overview tours of each destination. The tour buses took us as close as possible to the points of interest with a minimum of walking. So we did not wait in line to visit the coliseum, nor did we climb the hill to the acropolis or walk on the rough terrain of the ruins of Ephesus. But we did get close enough to take pictures and we did get an overview of the cities and countryside.

Celebrity Cruise Lines are masters of organization. With over 2800 people getting on and off the ship, going into dining rooms, taking tours and all the other activities.. we never saw a line form anywhere. Crew members were always present to assist and guide passengers. Here is an example of how organized they are:

Our return flight from Rome to Philadelphia was scheduled to leave at 12:00 noon. We had to arrive at the airport by 10:00 am. We dreaded the idea of 2800 people leaving the ship at the same time, the chaos of trying to locate our luggage, and then trying to find empty seats on the proper bus to the airport.

The day before leaving the ship we were given special stickers for our luggage and told to place our luggage outside our stateroom door by 11:00 pm. Our stickers had the number 24 on them. We were also given written instructions that we were in group 24 and to be in one of the ship’s theaters by 7:30 am the next morning. At 7:30 am, group 24 was told to leave the theater, disembark, and go into a warehouse next to the ship. Inside the warehouse we went to the row of luggage under the number 24 marker. Notice I said row, not pile of luggage. After identifying our luggage, a porter loaded it onto the bus with the number 24 in the windshield. Then about 20 of us loaded onto bus 24 and were taken to our airline terminal where our luggage was unloaded from the bus onto personal luggage carts. Porters were available but not necessary to take the luggage into the airline terminal. Until we arrived at the ticket counter at 9:00 am we never waited in a line that morning. Going from the ship to the airport was a care-free experience.

Going home the flights went as expected and without incident; except, of course, going through security and customs in Philadelphia. The lines to both were long and excruciatingly slow.

We had a good time and I told Vicki that I would be happy to take another cruise in another 50 years.

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