Discover The Best RV Upgrades for Comfortable Camping and Full-Time Travel
Learn about every RV trait you should look for and the best upgrades that you should make to your RV before you hit the road so that you travel in comfort and luxury.
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📍- Your Home-on-Wheels
Just as a house does not make a home, any old RV does not make the home-on-wheels of your dreams. Whether you plan on using your camper for extended periods of adventure, or you’ll be living in it full-time, there are some important upgrades that you should make to your RV that will allow you to travel in comfort and style.
Over the past 17 months of full-time RV living, we’ve made plenty of upgrades to our rig and have found some of them to be vitally important to giving us the luxuries of home while on the road. So, if you’re in the process of getting your camper to be full-time ready, or if you’re just searching for some finishing touches to add leisure to your camping game, keep reading to learn about the 11 best RV upgrades for comfortable travel and full-time living.
RV Upgrades for Comfortable Travel
Forget everything the RV salesman tried to convince you of. RV mattresses are one step above a bed of nails. We found this to be true in every single RV that we toured. The rig we eventually purchased claimed to be fitted with an upgraded mattress the previous owners purchased during their years of use and it still felt like laying on plywood. The importance of a good mattress for your rest and overall well-being cannot be understated which is why one of the best investments my husband convinced me to make when getting our RV full-time ready was with our Signature Hybrid mattress by Brooklyn Bedding.
This company creates different varieties of mattresses in a collection of RV-approved sizes in order to match you with the bed of your dreams. After testing ours throughout the past two years, I can confidently say that it was one of the best choices we made during our early RV days.
If you are going to be using your RV frequently, you’re probably going to be traveling to a lot of destinations and will want to expedite the set-up process as much as possible. One of the best ways that you can ensure that you make camp with ease is with an auto-leveling system. While you can purchase some RVs with this upgrade pre-installed, it’s also possible to add a system yourself.
This is one of the most expensive upgrades on this list, but we can personally vouch for the world of difference that this little system makes in our lives. Leveling is one of the most time-consuming steps in the set-up process, but with an auto leveler, we can park and be sitting outside with a cold beer in our hands in 10 minutes flat. It’s so easy, it almost feels like cheating.
With the push of a button, we’re level in a matter of only a few moments.
In hindsight, we waited way too long to install a set of SnapPads on our jacks. For months, we would park on grassy surfaces and have to crawl under our RV to place stabilizing pads in order to keep us from sinking into the mud. It was an annoying process that wasted time, covered us in dirt, and had us juggling muddy stabilizing pads in between uses.
Please learn from our previous blunders and get yourself a set of SnapPads from the very beginning. These little suckers quickly install onto your leveling jacks and stay there permanently, increasing surface area and preventing them from sinking into soft ground. They are the perfect accessory for anybody who loves the freedom of camping anywhere the wind carries them.
These helpful pads also protect concrete surfaces from jack indentations.
As someone who is currently surviving a cold Virginian winter in my RV, I can say with sincerity that I do not know what I would do without my winterized holding tanks. Sometimes these are marketed as an“Arctic Pac” or “Winter Pack” when purchasing your RV, but you can also easily and inexpensively install your own version at any point. Essentially, if you are ever planning on camping when it could dip below freezing, you’ll need heating pads on your fresh, grey, and black holding tanks so that the contents of said tanks don’t freeze and damage your plumbing in the process.
Since our RV came with them pre-installed, all we have to do is flip a switch to warm our tanks when we know that the temperature is going to reach freezing. This puts our minds at ease, has protected our tanks all winter, and means we don’t have to mess with expensive skirting that we’ve seen many of our neighbors mess with this year. If you want to install your own tank heaters, consider purchasing these ones right here.
With the switch of our little “Arctic Pac” switch, we sleep soundly on the coldest of nights knowing that our pipes can withstand freezing temperatures.
With so many RVs and cars coming equipped with backup cameras nowadays, I don’t even remember how we lived without them. Even though we generally do not back the RV up without a spotter of some sort, having a backup camera gives us a bit of added confidence when we are squeezing our rig into some of the tighter spaces that we’ve dared to venture into. Because we also tow our Jeep behind us on long drives, our backup camera allows us to watch our car on the road so that we can pull over and fix anything in the event that there is an issue with our tow system.
If you’ve ever dragged a piece of equipment as valuable as a car for extended drives, you’ll know the peace of mind we have by being able to keep an eye on it.
When we were hunting for our RV, we knew that would either find one with an upgraded sway bar or we would immediately get one installed. If you’ve ever driven a large vehicle such as a tractor-trailer or a Class A motorhome, you will be familiar with the sway of the vehicle on the road and the classic oversteering that you often have to do in order to compensate. This creates a stressful driving environment and makes simple maneuvers such as passing large vehicles on the highway seem downright dangerous.
With the addition of an upgraded sway bar, the driving mechanism in your RV becomes more stabilized and allows you to relax behind the wheel on those long drives. No longer will you fear the unexpected crosswind on the highway! Our motorhome has a Safe T Plus stabilizer, and it has given us the confidence to drive coast-to-coast in our little RV more than once. It is an upgrade that I would never want to live or drive without.
While you may not be able to SEE this upgrade, you sure can FEEL it when driving down the highway.
As a fabulous time and money-saving investment, slide toppers are a two-for-one upgrade! These small awnings extend above your slides and they keep debris and water off their roofs. Because slides are a weak engineering point for many RVs, keeping water clear from this area prevents leaks and water damage which is all too common in campers. You’ll also never have to worry about leaves or sticks jamming your slide and forcing you up onto your roof ever again. For a clutz like me, I’d pay much more to keep both my feet on the ground.
Just be sure you install your toppers tight enough. We can personally testify about how annoying it is to tighten these once they have been placed.
Sometimes it’s the little things. While an upgraded shower head may not sound like a necessity, if your RV shower is your primary mode of scrubbing up, this little modification will go a long way. The shower heads which come pre-equipped in most RVs are perfect if you’re a fan of poor water pressure and narrow streams. If this doesn’t describe your showering preferences, invest a small amount of money to get yourself a decent, water-saving shower head that is actually capable of rinsing the conditioner out of your hair.
Sometimes, more valuable than your RV itself is the collection of electronics inside of it. And if there is one quick way to damage all of these valuables in one swift action, it's to have a power surge. These nasty devils happen all the time with the load and change in electricity usage within a normal campground, and since most RVs don’t come pre-equipped with any protection against them, it leaves your RV circuitry and onboard electronics vulnerable. As two people who work from home and depend on our electronics to make a living, we have never lived a day in our RV without a surge protector. This one is a small investment that makes a big difference in the end.
RVs have this interesting quality to them which turns them into human pizza ovens during the summer and drafty ice boxes during the winter. It’s the result of poor-quality insulation, lots of windows, and a lack of sufficient ventilation. And while it's possible to create a cross breeze with your windows open, or run the generator-powered air conditioner for the hours you are home, what happens to any furry friends or beloved house plants when you are away?
We believe a temperature monitoring system goes a long way to providing peace of mind in this department. Our wireless Govee temperature sensor hangs inside our RV, alerts us of rising or falling temperatures, and can be monitored on our phones at all times to ensure that our pup, Charlie, is comfortable if we ever decide to do an activity where dogs aren’t invited.
This little gadget is so small that it doesn’t even take up any of our valuable space in the RV.
I lack the right combination of words to express my love for our MaxxFan. During the hottest months in the RV, there were several occasions when we camped without electricity and were kept cool by the grace of the heat-sucking powers that were provided to us by this small but mighty fan. If your RV does not have a proper ventilation fan, this is an easy install that I suggest you make before hitting the road. Even still, if you have a crappy vent fan, upgrading to a proper, quiet, and high-powered one can save you from sweating the night away during those hot summer months. Remember, not all vent fans are created equal.
The difference that this small but mighty fan makes in the temperature of our home-on-wheels is something you have to feel to believe.
We hope you enjoyed reading about these amazing RV upgrades that will make your camping and travel experiences more comfortable. If you disagree with any of these recommendations, or you think there is an upgrade that I missed, leave a comment so that we can help future travelers together!
Thank you for joining us at Discovery Detour, where the destination is always unknown.
