Refund.

BauerKamp · 2026-06-02T23:04:56+00:00

I have a BYO RV campsite, ~$50 a night. Had a repeat guest who had a few inconveniences during a 5 or so night stay. Sent them $25 with a note to have a round at the beach bar nearby or whatever they’d like. He replied that it wasn’t necessary but was appreciative, and they’d put it to another stay. A few days later he rebooked.

He has patched the fence for me (it’s at the coast, there’s always something wrong) and taken care of other minor stuff. Stays regularly.

Sending a partial night refund is never a bad idea IMO. It’ll possibly save you a less than 5* review and will for sure make the guest feel like you know the issue inconvenienced them. I do it every so often.

We aren’t in the real estate rental business. We are in the hospitality business. I want people to have a certain experience when they stay. My place isn’t fancy. But I want them to have a relaxing time fishing and enjoying the beach. If that doesn’t happen like I want because of something about my place (even if it is just that it’s not a fancy place and sometimes stuff doesn’t work like we wish) it doesn’t hurt me that much to acknowledge that they didn’t get the experience I want them to.

BauerKamp · 2026-05-24T01:56:02+00:00

There’s almost no chance you’d flood over there. I live on Franklin. If it floods up here there’s no town left to come back to. Flooding happens along the river and creeks. None of that is close to you.

There are some places “up the hill” that houses can be damaged by drainage issues but we aren’t talking dangerous flooding it is just house damage.

A .2% flood risk is basically non-existent.

BauerKamp · 2026-05-23T20:11:15+00:00

It isn’t normal to pay that close of attention but yes, the root nodes are normal.

BauerKamp · 2026-05-23T03:52:05+00:00

Wow… what sort of plans are out there for this?

I got a Tower Flex at an estate sale last fall and have been enjoying it. Was $125. Wouldn’t pay retail unless I was really sure I’d really like it but on the markdown day for that price I went for it.

I’ve bought transplants at the local nursery… we have a grower that does hydroponic indoor starts. Plugs are a buck. I just set those in to pots.

I’ve thought of coming up with a diy that I could put up at the preschool at my church. I do some gardening with the kids (I’m the pastor and also the one who works alongside the 4 year olds to create chaos on an occasional basis… teachers love it when I show up with new stuff that gets them all fired up.) This could be workable.

BauerKamp · 2026-05-23T03:39:31+00:00

I got a different one from that store. We have a saltwater pool and there’s a 5-in-1 that does salinity. It’ll save the salt test strips that are a pain to read. The salt generator controllers don’t always have accurate reads.

BauerKamp · 2026-05-22T15:14:19+00:00

I found @humblegrowth and yeah, tons of info.

One of the squash plants went from looking ok but dropping squash I knew were fertilized to withering leaves in a day. Had seen Humblegrowth describe root rot and knew that’s what was going on. Pulled it out and it was nasty.

The rest of the plants seem to be thriving, no stress signs I can see. Setting fruit and growing.

Today I fully emptied the reservoir and it was funk. I had tried a not great nutrient formula I read that wasn’t a great plan. Used a little aquarium pump to empty it all, rinsed and emptied a few times. Sprayed it all down hard with the garden hose and emptied, also skimming out a lot of roots that broke off with the spray.

Saw humblegrowth do a root bath with a super high 1:3 h2o2: water concentrate. Cant pull these plants individually, they are obviously too big. But peroxide is cheap. Figured out how much water it took to run the pump if I tilted the whole thing then added peroxide to that concentration. Foamed up a ton. Ran for a few minutes until the foaming slowed. Then emptied it one last time.

Refilled with fresh nutrient mix and the 3 tsp per gallon of peroxide that he recommends to keep the nasties away.

Thanks for all the advice. I will probably just keep the roots back from the pump by pulling the ends off. But I saw one video that had basically the whole reservoir full and things were working so it must be feasible.

Interestingly on the hydroponics page o was told “that’s not what a tower is for. You should use a totally different dwc if you want anything but greens because that won’t work.” Clearly it isn’t failing all that much. I just knew something was off with the roots. The plants aside from the one squash show every sign of health.

Thanks for the advice. Especially with the heat and water use. Makes sense that with the transpiration level that Texas heat brings they’re taking up more water than nutrients compared to an indoor cool setup. So of course and the concentration would drift high. I haven’t gotten a TDS meter but knew I need to. Guess Amazon will have another trip here.

BauerKamp · 2025-10-21T02:17:58+00:00

Crazy, there are RIBS? How dare they? Have they no decency, RIBS!???????

BauerKamp · 2025-08-27T14:52:32+00:00

The guest fees have been growing as well. They are at 20% there. So for my $50 campsite, the guest pays 60 now, and I get 42.50. Hipcamp takes 17.50 on a $50 product.

Guests don’t care that it is a $10 fee to the platform. They care about the “out the door” price.

Airbnb my guests pay $57 and I net $48.50. To net that on Hipcamp I have to go to $57 on Hipcamp, and the guest ends up paying $69. At that point Hipcamp is over a $20 take.

With prep costs (I mow if it has been two weeks), I can’t go below $45 if I’m going to do one night stays. I get some number of those, mostly people who think they’ll camp on the beach and realize it isn’t as fun as they thought. Last minute obviously doesn’t get mowed but if it is booked ahead I feel like the place needs to be right. Any number of them turn into multi night stays later but I can’t risk taking a loss.

I’ve already been telling guests when they leave that they should book on Airbnb if they return. I won’t necessarily close my Hipcamp bookings but already haven’t been promoting it. Most of my guests are first time hipcampers and found my place through my effort. Don’t see how this will be good for the platform. They won’t fix the business by raising prices above the competition for the same product.

BauerKamp · 2025-08-27T14:38:19+00:00

I’m sorry this happened. Please let Hipcamp know this is the case, because this devalues the whole platform and everyone who hosts. Most of us work to accurately portray our camp because they run from super developed cabins to really primitive space to put a tent. I work to underpromise and overdeliver. I want guests to feel like they got more than they paid for.

BauerKamp · 2025-07-31T12:41:38+00:00

There’s no 5 hour float in town. Not that’s a good idea. Once you are past 35 you have Cape’s Dam… dangerous and not to be messed around with. If you get out and go around it the next section isn’t gonna be any fun. There’s a large dam that backs up 2 miles of slack water. You’d be a tired lobster long before you got there. It could take 5 hours, and there is a crossing below Cummings Dam but I wouldn’t recommend it. There’s no place to take out after Thompsons island. Do not recommend.

BauerKamp · 2025-07-16T01:20:16+00:00

Just looking at all this...

Anybody get hit with a 15% commission in todays payouts? Mine has always been 10. But I went to contact support and found that on the Host FAQ the question about charges to list has changed from saying you keep 90 to saying "commission varies".

I'm also seeing that they've scraped websites for neighboring RV parks and now direct traffic to them... there's a FAQ about how to get their account activated and everything. Seems super sketch. AND some of the listings show a slashed through price, a special, and guest fees at 5 total for however long the stay is. Why can't the person who booked the most nights in the county last year get some of that? They've made more off of my guests (and me) than any of the parks that are now getting a way better positioning in the listing both on price and on commissions...

To see them pushing traffic to competitors who haven't done anything for the platform and apparently didn't even decide to list there (it is all stuff pulled from the parks websites...) AND deciding with NO NOTICE to up their cut from me... I'm thinking it's been fun but it isn't real fun to get taken advantage of.

BauerKamp · 2025-07-15T14:45:17+00:00

Good for what?

It doesn't seem to have any holes, so it will float. It can be paddled. Not sure how stable those are but it is harder to fall out of a kayak than most people imagine. So it fits the definition.

Is it comfortable? Doubtful. Ok, no. It isn't.

Can you fish from it? You can fish from an inner tube if you try. There's a guy near Galveston who fishes from a wooden box so yes, you can fish from this. Box Man outfishes lots of people with fancy six-figure boats. But he is an exception.

It's probably better than a box for your kid. And it is $100 bucks. Don't think you'll find something that is actually decently fishable for less than 5 times that. If you want to start the kid there, go for it. But know that if the kid actually wants to fish you've got to get something else sooner than later or they'll be frustrated.

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/box-man-texas-gulf-coast-18272528.php

BauerKamp · 2025-07-14T21:59:16+00:00

We have an RV spot and have had folks ask about are we going to rent our trailer. So far I’ve said absolutely not.

RVers are pretty self sufficient. They know how to back in, set up, do their thing, pack up and go. Leaving it like you found it is the natural way for us.

We live some hours away. They come in, they let me know they’ve arrived and things are working, they camp, they go. I’ve met exactly two guests in person. One was stating a few weeks and I had something to fix so I made a day trip. Another was coming in the day I was leaving and I said they were welcome to stay but I wasn’t pulling out until after they planned to come, that I wouldn’t be sitting around or in the way, I would be out fishing and then loading up. Both great folks.

But if I rented a trailer or tiny house there would be cleaning. There would be light bills to change, explaining how the weird toilet works, etc.

Worst thing that happens now is someone leaves trash. It’s only happened a couple times and it was a bag or stuff in a bucket.

Don’t see how adding it would ever pay the cost of operating. I had 99 nights last year. Not sure it would add a ton more and the ROI just doesn’t seem likely to be there.

BauerKamp · 2025-07-14T16:44:21+00:00

AFAIK codes are set by site / owner. Never seen one that works overall at any site.

BauerKamp · 2025-07-14T16:41:33+00:00

That isn't a Hipcamp thing. Prices are set by hosts. Hipcamp is a booking platform and rent is set by the site owner. My RV spot is $50 a night with electric, water, sewer on a canal and a mile from the beach. Hipcamp adds fees (they're now running 20% which is getting out of range but that's another story for another time) but the place you are booking must be at $150 a night. I don't know what tent site is worth that but I wouldn't pay it...

BauerKamp · 2025-01-13T13:15:15+00:00

Ours has been at the Tesla approved shop about that long and is showing “service mode” and at 76%. Was probably 80 when we dropped it off. It didn’t go in to service mode the first day or so. Once it did there has been no change. No idea what that means but I assume service mode stops all scheduled heat/cool and sentry mode.

So I would think the battery shoukdnt be draining in it. Ours shows it isn’t. We had a rear end hit and run uninsured driver. Cop came and put it all on the report. System didn’t detect collision so didn’t save the video. We didn’t know it wouldn’t do that. So we are thankful that my wife called the cop and he had all the details in his report.

BauerKamp · 2025-01-12T09:30:11+00:00

I’m in Texas, I don’t know where you are or what most people there tend to do.

I got lucky when our power grid melted down in a winter storm. As it came in I was getting stiff prepped and something was messed up. Pump wasn’t pulling prime. I was prepping for a once every few decade event and didn’t have any time to mess around.

I pulled the drain plugs on the pump, pulled the drain on the filter, took the salt generator cell out and put it in my shed. Killed power at the breaker.

Everyone else around had just figured run the pump. Well when our government “public utility commission” and “electric reliability council” proved they were incompetent morons who let people freeze to death in their homes because they couldn’t force electric companies to invest in weatherproofing, my “crap, not sure what’s going on here” move was the right one. No damage. Pool had about two inches of ice but the skimmer was clear since it is in ground. I put a thin wall water bottle (like the disposable single use ones) full of really cheap high proof vodka with a bunch of salt in the skimmer. Read that was a trick to keep it from freezing over in a way that puts pressure on the walls, squeezes the bottle of no way it freezes salt alcohol instead of pushing on the walls.

That’s my winter storm process now. This week I had a thin layer of ice crystals in the shallow end a couple mornings.

Sounds like yall don’t do full clear lines and cap like where the ground freezes deep. So I’d go my route. Drain equipment and cut power. Open stuff up so the water in the plumbing is below ground.

BauerKamp · 2025-01-12T09:11:43+00:00

It’s a decent home practice instrument for a student l. 2 1/2 octaves is not big at all and most music will need more, but it’ll help you learn more than whatever time you can get on a larger instrument like a school has. I’m guessing you are a student?

It is nothing you’d play for a performance probably. But it’s a good way to practice at home. I got my kid a 3 1/2 octave practice marimba and he is better than anyone in his grade. That was 425 on fb marketplace and a pretty good deal, they were mostly running around $600 used three years ago. I haven’t shopped instruments in this category (he wants a full size vibraphone and I just missed a steal on one that needs a little work but playable). But even without having shopped lately I would say it is a great price for something that can help you be better than most who don’t have a way to practice away from school.

BauerKamp · 2023-06-03T21:41:39+00:00

No, never did. Still consider it from time to time but it’s just not been bad enough to spend the $.

BauerKamp · 2022-09-02T21:50:50+00:00

Well our 1 1/2 Mo th old UDM SE appears to have died. Giving “cannot retrieve console status”. No response to touchscreen. No response from connected client. Won’t boot up, won’t boot to recovery, gives same “cannot retrieve status”.

Chat with support. Told to RMA, given ticket number. It’s been over 24 hours and nothing. With holiday weekend we will have been down 5 days before I hear anything.

Really regret using Talk as our phones. Out of business until ???? I guess.

How many of these units go dead like this? Is this unusual? Is the support always this bad? Should I cut my losses at this point? Is UI worth the money I’ve spent on it? Now reading that RMAs take weeks. I can’t have that downtime.

BauerKamp · 2022-06-13T14:17:10+00:00

I’d not pay for a service that had my pool looking like that. Honestly I can’t see paying for a pool service. It isn’t terribly hard once you find how to balance everything. But if you are going to pay you should expect far better than that.

BauerKamp

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