RV Park thoughts, suggestions & ideas.

[rox]

Live Music sems to be a reoccuring suggestion. How cool would it be to hire a Recreation Director, for 1/2 a year, your busy season. the the other half a year they could go work in a different part of the country that has an opposit season from you. If you provided lodging, which would be ideal for you then they would be on site, do you think it is feasible to get someone for say $20,000 for half a year? A young college grad might be a candidate. the reasin I keep coming back to a recent college grad who has a degree in recreation is because that is the first degree my sister earned. they really do learn a lot in college about all kinds of recreation for all age groups. A renect college grad would not have a lot of baggage and if they could get another 1/2 year job with lodging their yearly salary wouldn't be bad to start out with. Those young people who get recreation degrees are a real real nice bunch of young people. Before they leave for their 'absent" half a year they can have your recreation schedule all worked out and laid out for you.

They can book the bands etc. all part of recreation.

I alos loved the garbage truck idea. This group of TBNers is so creative. I bet you will be putting in a standing query at ebay now for garbage truck, am I right?

Question about picic tables. have you got a model all picked out? Are you building them yourself? i ahve been at some really rotten picnic tables. Where the seat is so low when you sit down your chin is on the table top. plus the kids can't even reach. I like a lower table as opposed to a higher table. Just had an idea, perhaps this is really silly but heck you can all laugh at me.

One of the things our kids really really loved camping was stringing patio lights. Almost everybody had pattio lights ont heir site. What if you drilled a hole in the picnic table top and had a long post (which was removable) that would give an ending point to string patio lights. I would have loved that. i said earlier int he thread that i sank poles in 10 gallon buckets and filled them with cement jsut so we had a place to string patio lights on our site. I would have loved to have the campground provide some kind of structure/thing to string the lights to. Sure there were trees in back, at the back fo the site, but that is not where we ever wanted to hang the lgihts. We always wanted the lights near the camper and the fire and the picnic table, not at the back of our site where the trees were.

Just thinking some mroe as i write this, you ahve so many trees, is any of that wood good enough to build picnic table sout of? Maybe it is not cost effective, jsut an idea.

Are you going to have Steph shoot all the pigs befroe you open?

 

[AlanB]

On the picknick table front, do you have a local Vo-Tech?

I really like the ones made from Pipe. If you had a local Vo Tech or HS (and from what I saw in Texas there was lots of pipe work) I would try and work out a deal with them to have them make you up the pipe bases for the Picknick tables. Then have the carpentry section put on the boards.

Those are generally very sturdy, easy to make, easy to move and do not have all the obstructions etc of the bad tables I have seen.

Will try and find a picture of the model I mean if you are not familiar with them.

Oh, and I would do the same for the fire rings, lantern hangers etc.

 

[gemini5362]

I started to post a reply yesterday and had to shut my computer down. I could not find this thread easily so decided to search for the word giraffe. Would you believe that there are not a lot of threads on TBN that have the word giraffe in them.


Eddie I might have an idea or two.

No matter who wires your site mistakes happen I would get me an electrical polarity tester. They are not expensive I believe under 20 dollars or so. The plug in to an outlet and tell you if a ground wire is wired to the green screw in the receptacle, The neutral to the white screw and the hot wire to the gold screw. This is very important to have done correctly and with them installing that many outlets it would be prudent to check them. I also assume you are going to have either GFI outlets or breakers. I would set myself up a Preventative maintenance checklist on a regular basis to test them. I would also make sure that all my wireing is labeled very well. I would have the location and breaker number for each rv hookup and for each receptacle. If someone pulls in to hook up and a breaker for that pad is tripped it is nice to have the location stenciled right on the box at the pad as well as on your electrical circuits blueprints.


I noticed on a show that they now make LED light bulbs to replace incandescent light bulbs. You might want to check out the price on them for your pathway lights. The take almost no electricity and LED bulbs last for a long long long time. In the show I was watching they did a reliability test by turning lights off and on every two seconds all the other types of lights they tested burned out but the LED bulbs were still going strong at the end of the test.


Having a place for horses is a great Idea. I am sure people that travel with horses carry sometype of vacine record. I dont know what diseases are prevalent any more. When my kids were younger and I bought them a horse you had to worry about coggins disease.


Since you are going to carry propane for sell I am assuming you will have a big tank to fill from. Have you considered getting a backup power generator that runs on propane.

Wireless internet. I think that is almost a must have . The way you do it is the big question. I believe I would go ahead and run cat 5E or cat6 cable to each pad site. The last time I bought cat 5 cable it was 8 cents a foot in 1000 foot rolls. If you run cables to the sites there are some advantages and disadvantages. the disadvantages first: you can only run cat 5 or cat 6 300 feet without a repeater (they do the same thing, they differ from cat 5 in that they are designed to run a faster speed.) for repeaters you can get ethernet switches really cheap now and that would do as a signal booster. the other disadvantage is that they really dont need to be run alongside power cables if you can avoid it. the positives: with a cable at each site you dont have to worry about whether you have good rf coverage on each site. If someone needs wireless for their laptop you can give them a wireless access node. You can either rent these or let them use them free with a deposit. In your restraunt or in a lobby area wireless internet is mandatory. I went on a trip last year to yellowstone national park and bryce canyon. In several of the hotels we stayed at they did not have internet in the rooms but had wireless internet in the lobby I was amazed at how many people set in chairs in the lobby to use their laptops. A lot of buisnessment cant spend a day without access to emails. My wife has to take her laptop on vacation in case someone has an emergency and needs something taken care of. Some people just use their laptop to email the kids at home because it is a cheap way to stay in touch.

I noticed you were going to see about a t1 line. I looked at a t1 line once upon a time for a buisness years ago. It was frightfully expensive. I have never looked at it but for some reason DSL and cable seems to be faster than a t1 for a lot less money. If you have DSL avaliable I might try getting one of those and see how that works. I believe most of the hotels I have stayed at use DSL for their internet. If it works for you but seems to be a little too slow when you are full of customers then get a second one. you can always split the park up among two routers.

I might if I were you take the plans for my park to the University of Texas computer engineering department and see if they would let the students design a network for the internet. It would be a good real life problem for the students to tackle and free engineering if you can get it is always good


Your idea for this thread was a great one I am enjoying reading it.

 

[EddieWalker]

Good golly Miss Molly, is this RV park thing a popular thread or what?

Eddie, many years ago a co-worker was planning an RV park on 300 acres of land. He had a good site on a navigable salt water creek with easy access to a major north south highway. The best advice I heard him get was from our boss.

"Go first class with everything."

I'll give that same advice to you.

I've been in the RV business in the past, and frequented RV parks as part of my sales pursuit. The clubs I was a part of gravitated to the upscale parks. We wanted services and amenities. We wanted recreational outlets. Hardly ever did we simply want to get away from it all. People want to be entertained Eddie. Going camping is simply a means to the end.

Good luck with it. Maybe I can get out to camp with you one day.

While I'm giving advice, let me relay an experience I had a while back to you. The wife and I were on the road one weekend and looking for a campsite. We stopped at a visitor's center and gathered brochures. One of those brochures suggested a quaint campground called 'Apple Orchard Campground'. Sounded OK to us. Wife gave them a call to see if they had a vacancy. They did, and told us if we could get there by 7:00pm they had a covered dish dinner, and the band would start at 8:30. Sure enough, they had a hoe down on Saturday night and lots of the campers had a blast.

Moral of this story is to give them not only a classy place to stay with lots of amenities, but give them just a bit more than they expect. We all like surprises.

They held the last campsite available based on a phone call, by the way. Campers love that kind of old fashioned trust.

Tom

Tom,

Thanks for the advice. I'm definately getting the hint that organized activities are a good thing to have!!!

My main marketing point in my business plan is to offer more for the money than anybody else. One fixed price based on the market, but offer more than they any other RV Park. I don't tell owners of Parks that I visit, but one thing I'm doing is seeing what they have to offer and how I can do it better. It's kind of aragant, but I really question why some people would go to allot of the parks I've been to.

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

Have you visited the Y.O. Ranch? I see they had an exotic game auction in October. I found it to be a fascinating place, but that was almost 30 years ago. In fact, "Charlie three" (Charles Schreiner III) was the owner and was a very nice fellow. I see now the managing partner is Charles Schreiner IV.

Hi Bird,

I've never been to the YO, but I'm familiar with there spring auction. It's usually in late April every year and tends to run on the high end of prices. It's also about the furthest auction from me, so I haven't been.

The closests one is in Lampassas and is held every other month. Prices are good with lots of selection.

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

Time to think about a compactor Eddie. There is a huge campground at Indiana Beach (hardly a "resort", but fun). They have these trash carts they pull around to collect the stuff and then they pull up to the compactor. It picks up the cart and tips it in, then packs it into a standard, enclosed roll off. It's gotta be more space efficient but of course, more costly.

Oh yeah, in case you didn't pick up on it... I'm a real stickler for clean, neat and tidy. To me, those are the things that can make any campground stand out.

Rob,

Thanks, I haven't thougt of a compactor. It's on my list of things to look into. I've seen them in commercial buildings, but never thought of one for the RV Park.

Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

I think the answer to your dumpster question, really comes from the answers to some other questions.

If you are going to regularly drive around (daily I think) and empty small (30 gal) cans into a cart or trailer, then bring them too your central collection point, then hiding the dumpsters is nothing but putting them where your construction equipment is / will be.

However, if you want to have the campers put the trash direct in the dumpsters, then the dumpsters must be very convieniently located. I would think that you would do something like McDonalds and the like do with a concrete wall around them, a fence in the front (non see through) and one of those combination locks mentioned for the bathrooms.

Another idea to consider would be to buy a small very well used 1 ton garbage truck. In our area they are fairly common. That gives you the compactor and all on a rolling chassis. Then just make your dump runs yourself. And it would be small and unobtrusive enough to pick up the trash in the park.

On the waterpark / pool / wading thing, I would put one of those big fibergalss something's (like an elephant or Giraffe) in the middle of the pool with the trunk spraying the water out. I think if you could make it oscilate (sp) somehow that would be even neater.

While I am an off road riding enthusiast, I would think long and hard about linking to a 4 wheeler / ATV park. Matter of fact, I just would not do it.

Bicycle trails, would be an entirely different matter. I would think that could be an attraction unto itself. Marked loops and trails of varying levels of difficulty, much like ski slopes.

Of course I think you should have a motorcycle Trials competition there, cause all trials riders are great folks

Alan,

I'm planning on selling the dozer, backhoe and dumptruck when I'm done with them. I'll also buy and sell a trencher when I get to that point. I really don't want to have more than one tractor. The backhoe is nice for it's trenching ability, but not really worth just having in case of an emergancy. I'm donating the water lines to the Water District and they will have responsibiity for both water and sewer repairs and maintenance before the meters. After the meters, the lines will be fairly shallow and small.

The equipment is currently parked at the shop and would be in plain view of incoming guests. I'm going to build another storage shed to sheild my equipment and tools, but dumpsters would be more than I can hide. It's very important to me to hide them and not have this eye sore.

I'll look into buying a dumptruck, but I'm worried that it might turn into a money pit. I'm really don't want to get into the garbage business and I especially don't want another vehicle to maintain and repair.

It's gonna be one of those things that I'll have to run the numbers and try to figure out all the expenses.

I'm in agreement with you on the ATV stuff. If the neighbor does it on his own, that could be bad. Noise is a huge issue and I don't see how I can control it if I allowed them to stay here. Nobody will obey the rules to not ride them here and tyring to enforce it will be a nightmare.

Mt Bikes might have some positive aspects to it, but we're talking way, way down the road and even then, it's not something I'm very exited about. If the demand is there, then maybe I'll look into it.

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

Live Music sems to be a reoccuring suggestion. How cool would it be to hire a Recreation Director, for 1/2 a year, your busy season. the the other half a year they could go work in a different part of the country that has an opposit season from you. If you provided lodging, which would be ideal for you then they would be on site, do you think it is feasible to get someone for say $20,000 for half a year? A young college grad might be a candidate. the reasin I keep coming back to a recent college grad who has a degree in recreation is because that is the first degree my sister earned. they really do learn a lot in college about all kinds of recreation for all age groups. A renect college grad would not have a lot of baggage and if they could get another 1/2 year job with lodging their yearly salary wouldn't be bad to start out with. Those young people who get recreation degrees are a real real nice bunch of young people. Before they leave for their 'absent" half a year they can have your recreation schedule all worked out and laid out for you.

They can book the bands etc. all part of recreation.

I alos loved the garbage truck idea. This group of TBNers is so creative. I bet you will be putting in a standing query at ebay now for garbage truck, am I right?

Question about picic tables. have you got a model all picked out? Are you building them yourself? i ahve been at some really rotten picnic tables. Where the seat is so low when you sit down your chin is on the table top. plus the kids can't even reach. I like a lower table as opposed to a higher table. Just had an idea, perhaps this is really silly but heck you can all laugh at me.

One of the things our kids really really loved camping was stringing patio lights. Almost everybody had pattio lights ont heir site. What if you drilled a hole in the picnic table top and had a long post (which was removable) that would give an ending point to string patio lights. I would have loved that. i said earlier int he thread that i sank poles in 10 gallon buckets and filled them with cement jsut so we had a place to string patio lights on our site. I would have loved to have the campground provide some kind of structure/thing to string the lights to. Sure there were trees in back, at the back fo the site, but that is not where we ever wanted to hang the lgihts. We always wanted the lights near the camper and the fire and the picnic table, not at the back of our site where the trees were.

Just thinking some mroe as i write this, you ahve so many trees, is any of that wood good enough to build picnic table sout of? Maybe it is not cost effective, jsut an idea.

Are you going to have Steph shoot all the pigs befroe you open?

Hi Rox,

Good idea on looking at college kids for an activities director. There's nothing better than that youthful energy when they are doing something they really like. We're pretty much a year round area here, but time will tell what the demand will be once we get open.

My first thought on picnic tables is to buy the thick pipe frame ones that slide easily. They are about $100 each with the wood being extra. The advantage is they slide easily while mowing. Seat height is pretty much a standard thing, the only real difference is some have a large overhand on one end for wheelchair users.

Lately I've been thinking about making my own. My thought is to weld a piece of angle iron to the top of a pipe. The seat and table will be the same. Drill two holes in the ground and set the poles in cement. Or a total of six holes for the seats and table. Pour a concrete pad around the area after the area. Then bolt the wood to the angle iron on tope of the pips. Basicaly it will be six metal T's, then the wood. Cheap, solid and effective.

The hogs are a concern, as are the other wild animals. Usually hogs will avoid areas with lots of people, but there is not getting rid of them. I imagine I'll have spottings of them from guests on a regular basis, but hopefully it's a rare event. Trapping will help some before I open, but when I'm open, I think it will just create more problems than solve.

Snakes are a bigger concern. Not to mention fire ants, ticks, wasps and bees. All will cause problems and there's no getting rid of any of them.

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

On the picknick table front, do you have a local Vo-Tech?

I really like the ones made from Pipe. If you had a local Vo Tech or HS (and from what I saw in Texas there was lots of pipe work) I would try and work out a deal with them to have them make you up the pipe bases for the Picknick tables. Then have the carpentry section put on the boards.

Those are generally very sturdy, easy to make, easy to move and do not have all the obstructions etc of the bad tables I have seen.

Will try and find a picture of the model I mean if you are not familiar with them.

Oh, and I would do the same for the fire rings, lantern hangers etc.

Alan,

I'm going to need around 300 picnic tables, maybe more. It's not something I think I can expect students to do, and my design is very simple. One pipe and one piece of angle iron welded to gether and it's done. Cement into the ground and attach wood.

My goal is to make it as simple and maintenance free as I can. Having them on grass means moving them around to mow. I'd rather have a pad for the tables right away. In fact, I'll pour that pad before I pour one for the RV's to park on.

Thanks,
Eddie

 

[EddieWalker]

I started to post a reply yesterday and had to shut my computer down. I could not find this thread easily so decided to search for the word giraffe. Would you believe that there are not a lot of threads on TBN that have the word giraffe in them.


Eddie I might have an idea or two.

No matter who wires your site mistakes happen I would get me an electrical polarity tester. They are not expensive I believe under 20 dollars or so. The plug in to an outlet and tell you if a ground wire is wired to the green screw in the receptacle, The neutral to the white screw and the hot wire to the gold screw. This is very important to have done correctly and with them installing that many outlets it would be prudent to check them. I also assume you are going to have either GFI outlets or breakers. I would set myself up a Preventative maintenance checklist on a regular basis to test them. I would also make sure that all my wireing is labeled very well. I would have the location and breaker number for each rv hookup and for each receptacle. If someone pulls in to hook up and a breaker for that pad is tripped it is nice to have the location stenciled right on the box at the pad as well as on your electrical circuits blueprints.


I noticed on a show that they now make LED light bulbs to replace incandescent light bulbs. You might want to check out the price on them for your pathway lights. The take almost no electricity and LED bulbs last for a long long long time. In the show I was watching they did a reliability test by turning lights off and on every two seconds all the other types of lights they tested burned out but the LED bulbs were still going strong at the end of the test.


Having a place for horses is a great Idea. I am sure people that travel with horses carry sometype of vacine record. I dont know what diseases are prevalent any more. When my kids were younger and I bought them a horse you had to worry about coggins disease.


Since you are going to carry propane for sell I am assuming you will have a big tank to fill from. Have you considered getting a backup power generator that runs on propane.

Wireless internet. I think that is almost a must have . The way you do it is the big question. I believe I would go ahead and run cat 5E or cat6 cable to each pad site. The last time I bought cat 5 cable it was 8 cents a foot in 1000 foot rolls. If you run cables to the sites there are some advantages and disadvantages. the disadvantages first: you can only run cat 5 or cat 6 300 feet without a repeater (they do the same thing, they differ from cat 5 in that they are designed to run a faster speed.) for repeaters you can get ethernet switches really cheap now and that would do as a signal booster. the other disadvantage is that they really dont need to be run alongside power cables if you can avoid it. the positives: with a cable at each site you dont have to worry about whether you have good rf coverage on each site. If someone needs wireless for their laptop you can give them a wireless access node. You can either rent these or let them use them free with a deposit. In your restraunt or in a lobby area wireless internet is mandatory. I went on a trip last year to yellowstone national park and bryce canyon. In several of the hotels we stayed at they did not have internet in the rooms but had wireless internet in the lobby I was amazed at how many people set in chairs in the lobby to use their laptops. A lot of buisnessment cant spend a day without access to emails. My wife has to take her laptop on vacation in case someone has an emergency and needs something taken care of. Some people just use their laptop to email the kids at home because it is a cheap way to stay in touch.

I noticed you were going to see about a t1 line. I looked at a t1 line once upon a time for a buisness years ago. It was frightfully expensive. I have never looked at it but for some reason DSL and cable seems to be faster than a t1 for a lot less money. If you have DSL avaliable I might try getting one of those and see how that works. I believe most of the hotels I have stayed at use DSL for their internet. If it works for you but seems to be a little too slow when you are full of customers then get a second one. you can always split the park up among two routers.

I might if I were you take the plans for my park to the University of Texas computer engineering department and see if they would let the students design a network for the internet. It would be a good real life problem for the students to tackle and free engineering if you can get it is always good


Your idea for this thread was a great one I am enjoying reading it.

Gemini,

Thanks for the great advice. I've heard from owners of RV Parks that they make it a priority to re-tighten the lugs on there electrical terminals every six months. They blame the aluminum wire, but I don't think they used any aluminum sealer.

I'll have to have a monthly planner with everything that needs to be done every month throughout the year. Taxes are the obvious one, but also meds for animals and PM'ing certain parts of the park. Filters for AC units, lint traps in the laundromat and dozens and dozens of other things.

The labeling of the wires is a good idea. Thanks.

For the internet, I wasn't thinking ot Cat 5 wire, but co-axial. A park near here did that and is having great results. It's just what he's told me, so I could easily be wrong. Any thoughts on using it?

Internet access is probably the biggest thing I'll have to provide. I don't want guest to have to pay extra for it, so I'll factor it into my rates. One of the problems I have with Wi-Fi is the added price guests have to pay. I know some parks are now starting to offer it for free to guests, so that's an option too.

The T1 line was so expensive they wouldn't even quote me a price to run it. There is no way to get DSL, but they said a Sub T1 would be allot cheaper and still give me enough to run a couple hundred connections.

I'm still pretty clueless on which is the best option and kind of waiting until the last minute to decide. It keeps changing and more options are always presenting themselves.

I'm also curious about the wireless cell phone connections like Verizon. There is a towere that you can see from several locations here, so the might work too. Unfortunately I don't know very much about this aproach.

I like the idea of seeing if the University students will want to try and design the parks internet system. They might just be up on the latest technology and come up with some good ideas.

I'm still clearing land and don't know how many sites I'll have yet, nor do I know the exact distances. Once I get those figured out and on a Plat, then I'll be good to go for my exact layout. Electrical is free from my supplier. Plumbing is a no brainer and sewer is designed by an engineer. Internet is my big mystery. hahaha

I'm a big fan of LED lights, but did't know they had them available for outdoor lighting. That would be perfect. Low energy use and not too bright.

I don't think I could afford a generater big enough to do very much here. I'm gonna be in the tens of thousands of amps. My sewage collection system will have a generator, but that's about it. I have lost power here from time to time, but since I'm on the same grid as the sewer plant, I'm pretty quick to be back up and running again. There is a hospital down the road, but I think they are on a different grid.

If it becomes an issue, I'll have natural gas to the store and if I have to, I'll put one in there to save my food. Who knows how much money I'll have in food stuff for the resturant? hahaha

Thanks,
Eddie