RV Park thoughts, suggestions & ideas.

[Dozernut]

Eddie
To mass produce the tables, you could make a jig on a 4x8 sheet of plywood then lay your picnic table parts in the jig for positioning and drilling holes. A scrap wood template could be used for drilling the hole positions that join the stretchers (seat rails) to the legs. I have used this method to produce kids picnic tables in quantity, no reason why it would not work on a full sized table. Then it's just a matter of bolting them together. I made a couple of the kids tables out of White Oak and gave one to my grand daughter and the other my wife saw and claimed it, it is now our coffee table. It was not what I had intended it for, but being married to one of those artsy types sure keeps it interesting.

 

[AlanB]

Eddie, have you thought about something like this for the light poles?

http://www.tnfab.com/Inside Catalog Pages/p39.pdf
Item # 3437

Expense could be a definete factor but they would look nice.

If you had them Powdercoated with BlackJack they would look great, and hold up a long time, but I am sure the expense will add up quick.

Just a thought.

Not sure what you could do that would go with the Wild Kingdom, probably wood.

 

[rox]

Bird,

I'm seeing the error of my ways.

Putting them in the table doesn't make allot of sense to me anymore, and Rox makes a good argument to have them someplace where they can pull double duty.

More to ponder.

Thanks,
Eddie

Eddie,
I am greedier than you think. Actually I would love to ahve both! Poles along the side lot line for patio lights, about half way down. I'll try and draw a picture with words.

picture a rectangle. At the south end is the entrance to the site, on the west end is the camper, on the east side is a neighboring site and i dont' care to much about the back, north side. About half way down each north/south lot line put in a pole. I would string patio lights in a square, using the ends of the awnings of the camper and then the two poles. in the middle fo this square is the fire pit.

The I also, being greedy, I would love to have 2 holes drilled int he picnic tables, one at the end and one in the middle. Then A pole so that I could hang a lantern over my picnic table. Others have siad that they would not want a lantern over the picnic table but I cast one vote for the other side. I would loVE it.

I don't recall that barking dogs were ever a problem at any campsite I was at so I wouldn't worry so much about that.

I would rather see PCV than anything that needed paint. I hope you can figure out something so that it never needs to be painted. Honeslty i don't think plain old metal pipe is bad at all. IMHO.

 

[CurlyDave]

The name "Wild Kingdom" isn't trade marked for RV Parks. I had a lawyer make sure it was ok to use before I registered it with the state. As an LLC, I have the sole rights to it in Texas.

A very smart move, even if your lawyer did not think so...

 

[DANOCHEESE]

Eddie: Coax is the way to go for your communications needs. You will only have to maintan one system. I just finsihed up a building using coax for 400 units. Boradband internet, Voice and cable tv. Actually if you really want to get fancy dump a Fiber To The home system in. It is not that much more money and easy to maintain. CAT 5 can work but do you want to maintain the additional gear? You can only cascade so many switchs so you will need to design the lay-out. You will end up having a tech on-call because people get really upset when they can't get their e-mail. I know this is what I do for a living.

If I understand you, you are going to meter each site? this means you will have read ins and read outs. this will be quite a few trips to the meter. With the coax system you could implemet automatic meter reading. This all adds up to capital money. Kid on a moped could get readings and call them bak to check out via a FRS handheld.

FOr the TV system you cna get a headend in the box fairly cheap and have the channles you need. Most times RV'r probabaly want the local off-airs. You full timers can just get thir own dishs. Actually most RV'r just bring their dish from home along with them.

Great project

 

[DANOCHEESE]

Also for a bandwidth provider you can use Satelite fairly well. Not the wild blue that is sold to home users. There a couple of providers that will actually provide everythign you want including the back office support. You can probably feed the park with wireless also. There is some great products out jsut for this application. Running cat 5 and maintaing this in an uderground enviroment is going to pose some challanges. I have done it. small little trialer park with 100 units. works ok.

PM me and I can help you out. The key is that you don't want some lady real estate agent pulling in and having issues with internet access. SHe will become the most fun you have had in a long time. Deals are made via email these days. I just sold part of my farm ( 400 miles away from home) and I have never met the realator who sold it for me. 500 emails later I have it sold.

Another story!! I just dealt with a hotel who has a very bad network. They had a customer who packed his bags and moved to another hotel at 1am due to the internet not allowing him to VPN in to his office. He was on vacation. The internet has become a tool that people cannot and will not live without.

Sorry for the rambleing and bad grammer it is late for me.

 

[BTDT]

Eddie, maybe you can let Sprint or someone put a tower on your property in exchange for service to your park. Just a thought, but then again, I don't know if I'd want one of those on my place.

 

[ronjhall]

CAT 5 may be a good way to get Internet to various areas of the park. But I do not think many RV's have a way to hook up to it inside their RV's. Wireless seems to be the standard. Most parks I have stayed in that have wireless become almost useless around 6 pm daily. I try to do most of my Internet surfing away from this high demand time period.

 

[CurlyDave]

CAT 5 may be a good way to get Internet to various areas of the park. But I do not think many RV's have a way to hook up to it inside their RV's. Wireless seems to be the standard. Most parks I have stayed in that have wireless become almost useless around 6 pm daily. I try to do most of my Internet surfing away from this high demand time period.

Ron:

This is more because the internet connection for the entire park gets overloaded than because of the wireless part.

I agree that wireless is the "de facto" standard for RV users, and if a park doesn't have it, it might as well not have internet.

Eddie:

You might want to check this out, but I have never stayed at an "internet enabled" RV park that had anything other than wireless.

The secret is enough nodes, closely enough spaced so you can cover all the spaces. Plus, a large enough capacity connection in the first place. Your campground connection is going to have to be fast enough to handle all the traffic.

I would research this, put in cat 6 wire to the places where I needed a wireless node (router, repeater, switch) and then wait until just before the park opened to actually put in the service. Equipment is getting better by the month, and prices are coming down fast. Some benign neglect will get you a better, less expensive system.

 

[gemini5362]

Also for a bandwidth provider you can use Satelite fairly well. Not the wild blue that is sold to home users. There a couple of providers that will actually provide everythign you want including the back office support. You can probably feed the park with wireless also. There is some great products out jsut for this application. Running cat 5 and maintaing this in an uderground enviroment is going to pose some challanges.


I have not priced coaxial cable how much is it running these days. Also what kind of attenuation do you have with it at internet bandwidths. IN an RV park how many in line amplifiers would you need for an average park with cable. How much are those amplifiers. As far as cascading switches go the average run of the mill router that you can actually get for 100.00 at best buy will handle 256 connections. Last time I bought one it did not have 256 ports I believe that you make those connections either through a hub or a switch. At todays prices a hub is a total waste of money. Sattelite providers if you are talking about sattelite and not Microwave all have the same problem latency times. It takes a while for the signal to reach a geosynchronous sattelite in orbit and to come back down. If most of the Rv's are wireless then you do need to accomodate them. I probably would have a small router in my RV and hook that up to a cat 5 cable if I had my drothers but not every body thinks like me.