As an RVer, you may have noticed that some fellow campers put the reflective material known as Reflectix in their RV windows. This is actually a fairly common practice and for good reason. There are a number of great benefits to putting this shiny material in your RV windows. In fact, there are so many awesome benefits to covering your windows with this stuff that we highly recommend trying it for yourself.
Need a bit of convincing? Here are some of the things Reflectix in your RV windows can do for you.
Regulate Temperature
Because of poor insulation, keeping an RV cool on the hottest days and warm on the coldest days can feel like an impossible task. Of course, the single-pane windows found in motorhomes and travel trailers don’t help anything.
Fortunately, you can help remedy this situation by covering your windows. A set of Reflectix window coverings will keep heat and cold from entering through your single-pane windows and keep the air at the correct temperature inside. It’ll also help reflect sunlight away from your rig, helping keep you comfortable when the sunshine is unrelenting.
Block Out Unwanted Light
Speaking of sunlight, there are times when you simply don’t want sunlight streaming into your home on wheels. In the early morning, for instance, it can be nice to sleep through the sunrise. Likewise, nobody likes artificial light from the campground or parking lot lighting peeking through the blinds while they’re trying to sleep at night.
Reflective window covers help improve your RV sleep by blocking out all this unwanted light, leaving you with a dark cave of comfort and rest.
Protect from UV Rays
If properly cared for, RV furniture can last for years. This is especially true if you use your RV only for weekend camping. Unfortunately, the UV rays in sunlight can wreak havoc on your upholstered furniture by causing it to fade. This fading is usually uneven, with the lightest spots being where the sun shines most. This makes the fading even more obvious.
To avoid this fading due to sunlight, you will want to keep your windows well-covered, especially while the RV is in storage. Reflectix covers do the job very well indeed, helping preserve your furniture for as long as possible.
Prevent Excessive Condensation
As mentioned before, RVs are made with single-pane windows. This can lead to a lot of condensation on the windows if you do any cold weather camping at all. Unfortunately, condensation can cause all kinds of issues, including mold and mildew, as well as wood rot and rusty metal.
Reflective covers remove this issue by acting as a second window pane, providing a barrier between the cold glass and the humid air. This prevents condensation—which is created when warm, moist air touches cold surfaces—from forming on the windows.
Gain Extra Privacy
Finally, we should discuss privacy. We all know that RV camping doesn’t offer a ton of privacy. That said, there’s no reason you shouldn’t do what you can to improve upon this.
Reflective covers can offer increased privacy. These covers are cut to fit your windows, providing a covering that is free of gaps. This removes any potential of fellow campers seeing inside your rig. These covers also help buffer sounds, meaning your conversations are less likely to be heard by passersby.
Surely by now, you will all agree that reflective window covers are an excellent investment. Now, because you will need covers to fit your specific set of windows perfectly, pre-made covers simply won’t work. Instead, you will need to purchase a roll of Reflectix and cut your covering to size.
If cut just right, these should wedge into your windows, holding themselves in place and giving you the ideal RV window cover.
About the author: Chelsea Gonzales
Chelsea has the amazing opportunity to take part in full-time RV living and traveling with her tiny tribe. She homeschools her five-year-old son as they travel, and takes full advantage of their unique situation by using the entire world as her son’s classroom. A group of total Disney fanatics, Chelsea and her family often find themselves in the Orlando area in order to visit the Disney parks, but they have also visited over 25 of the 50 states with plans to see many more along the way. No matter where her travels take her, Chelsea enjoys riding bikes, gazing at beautiful sunsets, finding new coffee shops, Irish dancing, and sitting around a campfire with her family.
You can join her adventures through her blog, Wonder Wherever We Wander.
Amanda J. ~ “I’m a single mom of 6 kids and every time I call, I feel reassured that I’m not alone and Coach-Net will do anything to help and make things as easy as possible for me. I’m extremely impressed and grateful.”
In the fourth part of this series on RV inspection and maintenance, we will discuss the RV cooktop and focus on slide-in type cooktops with piezo or electronic ignition. Cooktops are arguably the most reliable of RV propane appliances. These articles provide tips on performing annual inspection and simple maintenance only, which should help mitigate unexpected component failures. It is important to have your RV propane system regularly professionally inspected and serviced.
While the cooktop cover is open with the burner box exposed, check the ignitors for proper operation. If you are having problems with your cooktop burners lighting, there are a few simple checks before taking the RV in for service. There are different configurations of piezo and electronic ignition, but they operate in the same way. The piezo ignitor or ignition module generates a spark that travels along the high voltage wire(s) to either the central piezo cluster or each individual burner. In the case of a central cluster, each burner is fed by a flash tube that channels propane from that burner to the central spark for ignition. If you are having ignition issues, first determine if it is affecting all burners or only specific ones. If it’s affecting all burners, check for the presence of a spark. If there is no spark and you have electronic ignition, check for 12V feeding the ignition module. If you don’t have 12V, you will need to trace the voltage loss. Complete loss of spark (and verified 12V for electronic ignition) often points to a failed piezo ignitor or electronic ignition module. Piezo ignitors are not expensive, although electronic control modules can be a little pricey.
In this second segment of a 
Locate the combustion chamber exhaust and intake tubes on the outside of the RV as shown in the photo. These can be identified as the familiar chrome double-tube fixture. On some furnaces, the tubes are integrated into an external furnace access panel and on others, the tube assembly is directly mounted to the RV sidewall. For the former configuration, the furnace components can be easily accessed by removing this exterior panel. For the latter, the components must be accessed from inside the RV by removing a panel from the furnace itself. Fortunately, there is no reason to access the furnace internals unless there is a component failure. If the combustion chamber develops a crack or hole, Carbon Monoxide (CO) can escape into the living areas of the coach instead of being vented to the outside through the exhaust port, which is an extremely dangerous situation. This is why it’s important to have a working CO detector in the coach.
Even if you use your coach through the winter months, or don’t experience the cold or harsh winters that some of us do, it is still important to perform regular maintenance on key components of your RV. This is most conveniently done either before putting your RV into storage or before taking it out. Over the next few articles, we will be discussing some important tips for your RV that may help prolong the life of key components and appliances and prevent unplanned downtime.