How to Level a Motorhome/RV… Plus an Awesome Giveaway!

Hi Eric. The only systems that we've heard of that sound similar to this are the old Monaco 3-jack systems, which had a single jack in the center up front. They went to the three-point system because their windshields were popping out like crazy with four jacks. Can you tell us the make and model of the jack system so we can research a little further?

Hi Dayami. I think you may be misunderstanding something about the leveling process that we demonstrated. For all intents and purposes, there's no raising of the high side after raising the low side. The 4th jack only touches the ground and presses in until firmly planted, not lifting any more than the tiniest amount. The only exception to that is for any slight adjustment that is sometimes needed to compensate for any minor change in the side-to-side level that occasionally occurs during front-to-rear jacking, which was the situation we demonstrated. Sorry if we weren't clear enough on that.

With a diesel pusher, you start by dropping the air bags, thereby lowering the suspension at all four corners as far as it will go. Of course with gas rigs, there's no way to lower the suspension, since there are no air bags to dump. So either way, the RV starts off as low as possible at all four corners, which prevents jacking any side or end more than needed.

The first step in jacking raises the low side to exactly match the higher side and that's the end of the side-to-side leveling. Same goes for the front-to-rear jacking... raise the low end to exactly match the high end... no more. The RV is as low as it can be, since the high side and high end aren't raised at all. The low side and end were simply brought up to match the high side and high end. If your jacks are raising the RV so that the low side or low end are lifted further than the high side or end, then your jacks are not working properly, or you could be doing something wrong.

Regarding whether to level front-to-rear first, or side-to-side first, that can be a matter of preference, as long as you don't contradict your manufacturer's instructions. Our rig, and others we have seen, level side to side first when using the computer control, so that's the way we do it when leveling manually. If you have a computerized system that's working correctly, you should see it exactly mimic the steps that we performed manually in the video.

If you jacked up the front, and the jacks slid on the grass or on the pads, either your pads weren't centered under the jacks, and/or you failed to set your parking brake correctly and/or failed to chock the rear wheels. In our 12 years of full-timing, we've never once had a pad slide out or have the RV slide when jacking, even on a substantial hill, even on wet grass, because the brakes/tires/chocks hold the rear in place when raising the front, and the chocks hold the front in place when raising the rear (although we never lift the rear wheels into the air, to avoid lifting the only parking brake-equipped tires off the ground). And we're careful to place the jack pads centered directly under the jacks, no matter what kind of pad/block we're using, expensive or cheap.

Welcome, and thanks for the comment! A few years ago, we tried using the exact method you described for a while, and it works very well, too. But we ended up going back to the way we demonstrated here because that's the way that the computer does it when automatic mode is used, and it has never caused us any problem. There's nothing wrong with an abundance of caution though!

Hi Donna! What you're describing may not be that unusual, depending on the circumstances. What size and type of RV do you have? The larger the motorhome and the more robust the leveling jacks, the less you're likely to feel movement. That said, even on our 43' rig, we can sometimes feel each other walking or moving around. It tends to be more noticeable if the movement is coming from a slide-out, since sticking out the side of the RV puts the weight change further out from the jacks. It also tends to be worse on very unlevel sites that required jacking one side or end of the RV very high up. Also, the more weight, the more we notice it (one of us weighs more than the other, so when the heavier person walks around, it's more noticeable than when the lighter one is doing it). Our bed is in a slide, so if one of us is in bed and moves around too much, the other can feel it up in the living room if they're sitting still, and if the RV is jacked up pretty high. It's not enough to make us seasick, but it's detectable. lol We used to notice it more in our previous motorhome, which was smaller and had smaller jacks. This is just our experience. Hope this info helps a little.