I have lots of questions, and apprehension!

[REDDOG7571]

Put this where ever it fits.
1. When you have a residential frig. What takes over when you are moving from one area to another? If it is a converter how reliable are they?
2. What amperage are the receptacles inside the coach?
3. What type of tv provider works best?
4. How well does the stove/oven inside of the coach work?
5. What is the best suggested outdoor grill to takw with you?
6. Are all of the composite wood/laminate flooring products used in the construction safe from formaldehyde?
7. What is the best hitch to use for your 5th wheel?
8. Can you delete specific items from the unit, if you do not want them? Like the table and chairs.
9. When taking delivery i've noticed many suggestions of staying over night at the dealership. When you're spending this much money, why would this be necessary? This is where the apprehension comes..

 

[cookie]

I will try to answer your questions the best that I can although some answers can only be opinions.

1. When you have a residential frig. What takes over when you are moving from one area to another? If it is a converter how reliable are they?
The residential refrigerator runs on an inverter, and they seem to run just fine.

2. What amperage are the receptacles inside the coach?
Most receptacles are 15 amp.

3. What type of tv provider works best?
Are you asking about satellite providers? People enjoy both DirecTV and Dish. I use DirecTV because that's what I have at home.

4. How well does the stove/oven inside of the coach work?
Just fine.

5. What is the best suggested outdoor grill to takw with you?
I like the Weber Q grills.

6. Are all of the composite wood/laminate flooring products used in the construction safe from formaldehyde?
Heartland does not use formaldehyde in their foam insulation, don't know about composite.

7. What is the best hitch to use for your 5th wheel?
Another opinion, I like the Curt although they all seem to do the job.

8. Can you delete specific items from the unit, if you do not want them? Like the table and chairs.
I have been told that yes you can delete.

9. When taking delivery i've noticed many suggestions of staying over night at the dealership. When you're spending this much money, why would this be necessary? This is where the apprehension comes..
Nothing is perfect and this time will give you the opportunity to check out everything that the dealer may have missed. The likelyhood that you will have a problem or two is pretty good no matter what brand or type of coach you choose.

Peace
Dave

 

[For20hunter]

1. We have traveled 14 hours in a day and not had a single issue with the inverter keeping the fridge cold. It prevents long boon docking without solar or generators, but other than that, there are no issues with the residential fridge. In fact, it is much better than the gas/electric rv fridges in any of our old coaches in keeping the temperatures steady in hot weather.

2. 15 and 20 amps i believe.

3. This is very individual as it depends on what you want to invest in and what is available where you stay. We use Directv and love it, but it will not work in areas that we do not have a view to the sky. Others do streaming video on platforms like Netflix and Hulu, but you have to have either cellular or wifi to make that work. Others use the cable in the parks where they stay, but I have found that the quality of that is usually pretty horrible.

4. We have the gas range and oven and it works well once we put some pampered chef cooking stones in the oven to help keep the temperatures more even.

5. Again, a very personal question. You will have to figure out what you like. We use the Weber Q1200, which is a propane fired grill and love it. Others use charcoal fired grills and others use smokers. It depends on your preference.

6. Ours has held up good in both of our Heartlands and I am not aware of any formaldehyde issue in any of the Heartland products and have never heard of that in their rigs, but honestly I have not researched it so I could be wrong.

7. Again a very personal question. Everyone has their own preference. Thats like asking if Ford, Dodge or Chevrolet is best.

8. Some items like the table and chairs are standard and you pay for them regardless, but calling Heartland Customer Service at (877) 262-8032 is the best way to get that question answered.

9. Because it is smart on any RV from any manufacturer to stay for a couple nights using everything in the coach to insure that there are no issues. When we purchased ours, we spent about 5 hours doing a PDI and therefore caught nearly every issue we had on our rig, but still had a couple of questions that we were able to get answered while we were staying at our dealership, which has full hookups on their lot just for this issue.


Rod

 

[MTPockets]

Put this where ever it fits.
1. When you have a residential frig. What takes over when you are moving from one area to another? If it is a converter how reliable are they? An inverter uses battery power and changes it to 110v when not connected to shore power. They are very reliable as long as battery power lasts. Some add more batteries.
2. What amperage are the receptacles inside the coach?
3. What type of tv provider works best? Some prefer Dish TV while others prefer Direct TV
4. How well does the stove/oven inside of the coach work? our oven works well
5. What is the best suggested outdoor grill to takw with you?
6. Are all of the composite wood/laminate flooring products used in the construction safe from formaldehyde?
7. What is the best hitch to use for your 5th wheel?
8. Can you delete specific items from the unit, if you do not want them? Like the table and chairs. I believe you can delete certain furniture items. We sold ours and purchased pieces more to our taste
9. When taking delivery i've noticed many suggestions of staying over night at the dealership. When you're spending this much money, why would this be necessary? This is where the apprehension comes.. Spending more time before you leave the lot can save you time later. If there are items the dealer can fix while there, they usually will do them immediately. Otherwise, returning for warranty work takes more time. We never had to return even once.

Good luck with your purchase

 

[danemayer]

Hi REDDOG7571,

Residential Frig is powered by either shore power or by the batteries providing power to an inverter (12V DC to 120V AC). A dedicated transfer switch automatically selects shore power when available, and inverter output when there's no shore power. There were some early problems over a year ago when the refrigerator supplier changed a key component. The inverters had to be upgraded with new firmware. You should be ok. But understand that this is designed for travel - not for boon docking.

Receptacles are on 15 amp circuits and there may be a string of receptacles on a circuit breaker, just as in your house. Depending on floor plan, there could be 2 or 3 circuit breakers supplying power to receptacles.

Don't know what you mean by best TV provider.

Gas range works fine for us. The oven is ok, but we prefer cooking in the convection oven.

I'm sure you can get multiple opinions on grills.

I'm not aware of any wood flooring - and I don't think there are any formaldehyde issues.

Hitches - lots of opinions. We have a Hensley BD3 and think it's pretty good.

You can probably work with your dealer and Heartland Sales to delete some items. Heartland doesn't do custom builds, but deleting a table is probably doable.

Why stay at or near the dealer when you take delivery? If your expectation is that nothing will need adjustment or correction and you won't have any questions the next morning, you may be setting your expectations too high. You don't find that in a new sticks and bricks home and you would be very lucky to not have any problems with a new RV. How much money you're spending has nothing to do with it. The $350K Tiffin coach sitting next to us last winter had one of the longest list of problems I've ever seen on a new coach - and Tiffin has a great reputation. If you take delivery and go home or start a long trip right away, and you find something needs to be corrected, you'll be very unhappy to 1) have to drive a long distance, and 2) drop your rig off and wait for the dealer to fix it. How much simpler to get the sales and service managers commitment to fix any problems immediately a day or two after taking delivery.

 

[REDDOG7571]

Wow!! That was a much quickier rsponse than i thought i would get!! Thanks to everyone! Now it's time to get to the shows in indiana and ohio!!

 

[pegmikef]

I like the Dish network. I have the Tailgater carryout satellite antenna and like it, but it is limited to one receiver and only accommodates a single TV (or multiple with some fancy wiring, but the channel will be the same on the tvs). I think the selection of the network is a matter of personal preference and often dependent on what folks have in their residence as a lot of them just take a receiver from home when they travel.

On grills, that is strictly a matter of personal preference and the level of convenience. I personally now carry the Traeger Tailgater Pellet smoker and grill, but it does take up more space than the smaller ones. A lot of folks like the smaller Webers and some have modified them to run of their main propane tankis.

Good luck on your new rig. It will be a great adventure.

 

[kowAlski631]

Just responding to your final question which appears of most concern to you. Staying overnight serves two purposes - finding any issues that weren't apparent during the walkthrough and additional use of the features. It's amazing to find out what you don't remember about how some things work. But if you're expecting a perfect product, you've set your expectations way too high - and it doesn't matter what brand or price point. These are put together by humans and humans are not perfect. We found very few problems with our BH, but we know that other owners have had long lists, no matter the brand or type of RV.

 

[JohnDar]

A comment on satellite TV is where do you plan to use your rig. Out in a converted cow pasture CG and your reception will probably be good. In a shady, treed campground and you'll be looking for holes in the canopy to spot a satellite. Doesn't take much to block the signal. Loading a satellite finder app on your smartphone will make it easier to find them.

 

[Bohemian]

Dish has a simpler single satellite system combined with a less expensive base entry package with fewerchannels. Directv has a system that uses 3-5 satellites and a more expensive base package with more channels.

 

[MTPockets]

We've used the Dish tailgater full time now for almost 4 years with zero problems. We like the portability of the Tailgater being able to always find a signal as it can be moved around. I've used it with 100 ft of cable and no problem. Also, it doesn't require a separate power cable, just the coax.

 

[JonCanfield]

Others have answered better than I could with our so far limited experience, but the residential fridge works fine for traveling, although I wouldn't want to be dry camping without a generator, that's not the type of camping we enjoy.

We had a Hitchhiker with our old trailer. I bought a TrailerSaver BH3 and absolutely love it. Pulling is so much smoother now.

We have a Weber Q1200 grill. I hook it up to one of the propane tanks and works beautifully.

We didn't have the option to stay overnight with the dealer, but we did stay at a local campground that weekend. Dealer is only 10 miles from home and they've been great to work with.

Jon