Martinjmpr
Wiffleball Batter
^^^^ What he said.
Some people here are painting an overly bleak picture of RV ownership. Interestingly many of the tales are second hand.
The "truth" about RV's is that they are neither as good as the RV industry likes to pretend nor as bad as the nay-sayers would have you believe. As with most things, the truth lies in the mushy middle.
We are on our 2nd manufactured RV. First one was a 2014 Little Guy T@B Clamshell. Very good craftsmanship, definitely a cut above the standard, with a price to match (just to give you an idea, our trailer had no bathroom, slept only 2 people , no separate eating and dining area, and still retailed for nearly $20k.) We bought that one new in 2014 for about $18k and enjoyed it for 3 years. We bought it winterized and used it "dry" the whole 3 years we owned it (IOW we never put water in the tank, never used the sink or gray water tank.) We did make use of the furnace and the AC. We used that trailer pretty hard, 14 - 16 camping trips per year, everything from developed campgrounds to boondocking. Probably 15,000+ miles of towing including a trip from Denver to Niagara Falls and another to Seattle and back. We had no issues other than a bent axle that was replaced under warranty and a broken heater fluid tank (the T@B uses an Alde heating system which is a radiant system using RV antifreeze as its fluid.) The tank was also replaced by Little Guy at no charge to us.
Our 2nd manufactured RV was an R-Pod 179 Hood River Edition that we bought 2nd hand from the original purchasers. It has many more "systems" than the T@B did (wet bath with toilet, shower and sink, kitchen sink, furnace and AC as well as black and gray water tanks.) Purchased winterized in January 2018, we used it 'dry' for the 2018 camping season which had us camping roughly every other weekend from about April until October, with a bonus trip over Thanksgiving week from Denver to Corpus Christi and Padre Island, TX. This year we have used it every weekend or every other weekend starting in mid April. Our next camping trip (our 15th this year) is scheduled for this coming weekend. I finally de-winterized it in May so we could use the toilet, sink and shower. Turns out we only used the toilet, the sink and shower were never used this year. I winterized it two weeks ago but we are still camping. We've noticed some sloppy wood work and trim, but everything works on our trailer including the slide out, the 3 way fridge (which is a godsend when boondocking - uses hardly any propane and keeps our food ice cold!) Furnace works great as does the AC (obviously only when we have shore power.) We've never owned a generator, because any place we will be camping without power we won't need AC anyway. I upgraded the 2 x 12v Interstate marine batteries to 2 x 6v golf cart batteries for 230ah of power (115ah of usable power) and added a 2nd propane tank to the tongue. Being a "Hood River Edition" it sits on risers and has big, meaty tires that make it easy to get to boondocking sites.
So for those who say RVs are not for weekend trips, I say nonsense -we do it all the time. We do have the luxury of being able to store our trailer at home (it sits in the side yard, the only HOA rule is that it has to be behind a fence, which it is) so we don't have to go to storage to pick it up or drop it off (though there are people in our camping group who do exactly that and don't have any issues with it.)
I admit that we are likely not typical RV users. There are plenty of RVs that are purchased and then used hardly ever. And while there are QC issues on most trailers, if you have the right attitude and can do basic maintenance stuff, most of it is not a big deal.
With regard to the rent vs buy dilemma: IMO the small, niggling issues with RVs support the "buy" option more, because once you take care of those issues, they're fixed. Whereas, if you rent a different trailer every time you go somewhere, it's crapshoot: Maybe it will have small issues, maybe it won't, but either way you will have to 're-learn" all the "systems" for each new trailer which sounds like a massive PITA to me.
