olfarmer wrote:
I know you love to be in Wisconsin but it would sure be easier to go south for the winter and return in the spring! I love Wisconsin too but I used to snowmobile up there and it is beautiful but very cold. You could probably get to Texas for $500 in gas which might be cheaper than your heat bill there. At ant rate, you said you did not want to cover your windows with plastic because you wanted to be able to see out if you wanted. Have you thought about the kind of plastic that adheres to the window frame and then you heat it with a hair dryer and it shrinks up tight? It is almost crystal clear just like glass. Wishing you the best of luck in what you do!!
P.S. It gets very cold here in Ia. too and is 18 here right now.
:-) I have had more people suggest going south.. We CAME from the south to come home after my leaving the last military project I was in 8 weeks ago.. I have been wanting to come home for good since entering the U.S. Navy in 1980. Winter is not an issue. Just learning the ropes and making preparations are.
While it may be cheaper to go south, we just do not like it down there. We both love the seasons and the changes. With the work we have done, we are comfortable even in these temps for now. Should the temps get to the -20 below stuff, we may see some issues but I have a plan for that as well. For example we do have a backup generator on top of the built in genset and if need be, if the temps got to -20 below I will power that thing up and plug in however many electric heaters it can handle at once.
Since I use ceramic heaters for safety, if it comes to that I will even put one UNDER the RV to heat the sealed off space under us. The only thing I cannot control is the sewer pipe elbow IN the ground they have here freezing and not draining..
Hopefully things will not come to that. But I am planning just in case.
Right this moment at our current usage, we are looking at $60 or so on electric for a month ( if you read my other posts you know I built a solar/wind system to keep and upgraded 6 deep cell bank charged - which is helping a lot ), $150 for propane and $350 lot fees with all hookups.
Almost forgot.. your idea on the windows IS what we chose. Amazingly the shades already installed in this thing were actually doing a great job which surprised us. Only leakage was around edges and now with window seal added, the windows are much better. One place I forgot and just took care of, of all things, was under both the driver and passenger dash area... ie. firewall..
And as others have mentioned, YES we are taking into account ventilation. I set things so that we pull fresh air from the side that is not windward. If the winds shift, we can close that side and open the other. And to be safe we installed additional monitors for fire, carbon monoxide and so forth..
