Class A Motor Home 101

Review

If you own, or are thinking of owning a Class A motor home, you probably know that there's a lot to learn about using and maintaining your home. Sure, your salesman will show you all the great features of your home, and give you a walk-through, mentioning tips on how to maintain this beauty. But, when it comes to actually doing it, well, you may wish his walkthrough had been a little more specific.

To the rescue is a 75 minute video, Class A Motor Home 101, that covers just about everything you'll need to know about caring for and using your Class A motor home.  Mark Polk, producer and host, takes you though an extensive checklist of safety and maintenance tips, and he doesn't miss a thing. I'm amazed at how much information he can pack into such a short presentation. Without wasting words, he held my attention with clearly presented demonstrations of every step he described.

To be clear, this is not a lesson on troubleshooting or repairing your motor home. Rather, it is rich in tips and techniques that will show you how to prevent the need for many repairs while planning for and using your Class A motor home in the most efficient and safe ways. He begins his lesson with tips about preparing for arrival at your campsite, with emphasis on anticipating all your needs before you even leave home.

He thoroughly covers pre-planning how to tow a vehicle and stocking your motor home, the sequence for setting up at a campsite, including safety tips, and a checklist of steps so that you don't overlook anything. There are a number of important devices you need to have on hand to hook up to the camp's services. Since items, like adaptors, aren't provided by the campgrounds you will need to have the right ones on hand before you leave home, unless you plan on dry camping.

As much as we'd all love to hop into our motor home and just go, there are serious considerations to take care of, such as adhering to weight limits and distribution, and knowing how tow dinghies affect weight limits, driving, braking and handling. How do you know what your motor home loaded weight is? What does Mark mean by weight distribution? How can you be sure your weight is distributed correctly? Why does it matter? Mark answers these questions and others, clearly, concisely, and shows you how to figure this out. He also makes it clear why knowing how to stay within weight limits is one of the most important aspects of planning your trip.

If that isn't enough, he gives a thorough demonstration of checking all your fluids and the three primary systems in your motor home. You'll learn when to fill and drain each system, in what order, how to prepare your motor home for use as well as for storage, how to sanitize economically, and safety for every step of use and maintenance.

One great tip he gives is how to convert amps to watts. If you are running on batteries, or a generator, this is helpful for purchasing the right units to fill your electrical needs. This calculation will help in estimating what appliances and devices you can run simultaneously, or over any given period of time. Along with all this, he covers circuit breakers and fuses, and how to avoid tripping or blowing them.

Motor home appliances, such as stoves and ovens, don't work the same way their home counterparts do. While the differences in operation are small, they can be significant if you try to use them like home appliances. He'll show you how to get the most efficient use from your motor home refrigerator, how to balance the use of high-power demanding appliances like air conditioners, coffee pots and microwaves, how these affect battery use, and how to maintain air conditioners.

Every one of Mark's motor home safety tips is a value in itself. Motor home living is different from living in a standard home, and overlooking those differences can result in costly repairs or replacements, or serious injury. Do you know which devices can cause carbon monoxide poisoning, and how to protect your family from exposure? What sensors do you need in your motor home? What chemicals do you need for treating motor home water systems? How often should you treat them? How do you get the chemicals in, and out, of these systems? You will know all this after watching this video.

Mark thought of everything. He even shows you how to set up your awning by yourself. Good to know when everyone else has gone fishing on a hot day. 

Class A Motor Home is available online from RV Education 101 for single or unlimited online viewing.  0nline videos require a minimum of Windows XP running Windows Medial Player 11. They also run under Mac's Boot Camp running Windows XP or Vista, but I couldn't get them to play under my Parallels emulator.

Alternatively, if you are a Mac user, don't use computers, or want to add this video to your RVer's library, you can order it on DVD.