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On August 5th, 2016 My wife and I set out on our annual trip to North Carolina to escape the steamy weather of Northwest Florida. Our plan was to work our way up the Blue Ridge Parkway through North Carolina and into Virginia, then maybe on to PA as time permitted. My first mistake was thinking I could tough it out with a torn Meniscus in my left knee. It soon became apparent that the act of kneeling, stooping, hauling, and all the physical activities associated with setting up and breaking down camp place a huge strain on the knees and pain became a constant companion making me a miserable companion. So after only ten days we gave up and headed home. A few things learned... Camping is physical and you need to be healthy. Some things on the Oliver are just not designed for function. ie. The sewer connection is very difficult to reach when your newly purchased Rhino hose separates from the fitting. I will be modding this to extend that connection to outside the bumper. Lesson learned...always check the connection before opening the gate valve. The water connections are just inconveniently located. Not only must you kneel to access them, they are underneath the trailer so you must kneel And reach. OK if you are healthy but a real struggle with a bad knee. Again I will mod these somehow so they are easier to reach. The fridge is way small, and again down low so that you must kneel to gain access. Holy cow...even the $30,000 Escape has a 7CU fridge mounted at eye level. Rain. What can I say. Just no good solution to living indoors when it raining and your campsite is a lake. 100 square feet and no comfortable chairs gets old after a few days. One good thing we learned is that the shower curtain my wife made works great and having a shower inside the trailer is a real bonus. I suppose we all will experience some bumps in the road and this will not be our last less than good trip. In the twenty months we have owned our trailer we have had over a dozen great outings, all in the Southeastern U.S. and all but this last one have been great. I see the surgeon tomorrow and hopefully the knee will get repaired soon. My new mantra is "Always check your sewer connection".

I want to fabricate a clothes line that will reach from the rear overhead cabinet to the bathroom wall. It will clip onto the ceiling in a couple of places; the line will be plastic coated steel cable so that there is no stretch. I will use simple dog-leash snap hooks or similar quick release fasteners so I can rig the line in a few seconds. It will run along the street side of the cabin so hanging towels won’t be too much in the way of movement. In warm weather you can get natural cross ventilation and they should dry quickly. In cold weather, the furnace will assist. I haven’t decided on how to secure it to the ceiling, the best I have come up with so far is these mini flush lift rings. ($19 at Amazon): http://www.suncorstainless.com/sites/default/files/S3851-0.pdf Big problem, they are not spring loaded so they will hang down all the time.....! Any ideas or links to a small yet heavy duty spring loaded flush fitting that will accept a carabiner or similar device? Here’s a retractable clothes line that uses a swaged end fitting and the small slotted receptacle for it, that sort of setup would work well for each end, at the vertical attach points. Thanks for your ideas. I will do a How To thread once I get things sorted.... John Davies Spokane WA

Here is a video to help show you how to winterize your Oliver Travel Trailer. Note there are two valve configurations depending on the year model that can be seen at the 27 sec and 35 sec time frames in the video. Hope this helps!

If we need to dump and we’re not at 70 or 80% I turn on the water for the black flush until it gets up to 80%. Then I pull, leaving the water running into the black tank. When it gets down to zero or 5% I close the valve and fill again. Sometimes with the water running it won’t get below 5%. Then I do it a third time. When it gets down to zero I shut the black flush water off and let the tank drain. Then I do the gray tank. I leave the valve under the dinette seat open most of the time. I have a back flow preventer on my hose and I think there might be one built in. Mike

Yes, we just empty ice cube trays into the toilet and flush. Simple and effective.

But had to be posted here separately...

You don't need the macerator for the gray tank. After filling the black tank and letting it run out the first time, I leave the water flush system running and walk away for a few minutes to let it run. When clear water comes out, I fill it up to 80%+ to 95% at the most on accident... Lol, then pull the handle and let it run clean again. Then refill it again and it should run clean from start to finish, letting you know that it's perfectly clean. These 2 movies go together but had to be listed separately on this page,so there's another page now... Haha Oliver :) Reed

Usually the last trip home of the season, after dumping, we put a couple pounds of ice cubes into the tank with some water. The "splash blending" going down the road really cleans the tank. By the time we are home it is mostly water. That can be dumped into a 5 gallon bucket and the poured into a cleanout or the home toilet. I like to use Eco-Save during the season, as an additive. I think it smells good and has no chemicals. It is bacterial and you only add when waste is present and it digests that. Just not easy to find everywhere...

We usually fill it to 80% for the extra rinses. I’m outside and Carol is inside watching the level readout. She tells me when it hits 80% and then I pull. I just leave the water running while it’s draining, then do it again. We drop in a detergent pod and a little Calgon water softener with some water after we dump. If we’re putting it away I also add some Happy Camper powder and a couple of gallons of water in both the black and gray tanks. Mike

Yikes!

Not Mike, but the method that works best for me; When we go to dump, if the tanks are not "full" we add more water, the key is sufficient water for a good flush, then when you use the back flush feature I close the black tank valve and fill to approximately 3/4 then drain until it runs clear, if I feel it needs more I do it again, experiment, see what works for you. I don't use chemicals in the tank, if you use enough water to clean it, it doesn't smell.

We just winterized our boat. We wet it, we dipped a brush into a bucket with Meguires Ultimate Wash +Wax. Power washed it, and it looks real nice, clean, and shiny. It looked so nice, we just knew the Oliver sitting next to it needed a turn. And we did it too. And then we pulled a chair over and watched them dry. My rear bumper still looks great. But when it starts to get 'cloudy' there we will try some polish we have used on truck tool boxes. They shine right up and stay that way. Think we got it at Home Depot though others must have it too. Have to think our season is coming to a close, at least around here. Guess we should plan a trip...

Matt - Instead of just doing a video on lubing a jack, how about a general lube video. This might include the jacks, the EZ Flex suspension system, doors, waste valves, Bull Dog hitch, hinge mechanism on the Maxx Air Fan, window slides, etc. Bill

I've used several hoses for our Oliver. I threw the Rhino hose in the trash can and bought a Valterra D04-0450 Viper 15' Sewer Hose Kit from Amazon. You can get it either at Amazon or Camping World. I also bought a 10 foot Valterra extension hose and attached it. Now I have a 25 foot sewer hose that stays permanently attached to the Oliver until I take it off when I get home for cleaning. I have never had the Valterra pull apart like the Rhino. Unfortunately the part that goes into the sewer hole will not fit into the rear bumper compartment so I just detach it and keep it in a breadbox in the rear storage compartment until needed. If you do a little research, you will find out why the Valterra is much harder to pull apart than the Rhino which scared hell out of me every time I used it. For water hose and black tank hook up, I bought from Home Depot three Garden Hose Quick-Connect Kits. They cost about $7 each. I screwed the male ends into water connections on the trailer black tank, city water, and water tank connections and leave them permanently attached to the trailer. I leave the female connected to trailer male section until I start to use it, then disconnect the female - screw it onto the water hose, then reattach it to the trailer, then turn water on. The Quick-Connects make using water lines very, very easy. When traveling, I screw the black dust caps onto the Quick Connects. I'm sure your quite confused by my pitiful attempt to explain all of this, but if you purchase the Quick Connects and play with them for a few minutes you'll get the idea. Can't make any suggestions for rainy days other than to say that in 2013, we bought a new 40 foot Tiffin diesel pusher which we had for about seven months, until a very large semi totaled us. We bought an Oliver Legacy Elite II and have traveled for about 40,000 miles all over this country, including Alaska. Ask the Oliver folks and they will tell you this is true. We loved the very expensive Tiffin, but my wife and I love the Oliver much, much more. Sometimes at our home in Florida but today we are in Wyoming. Hap