RV to power home temp

DrewE wrote:

way2roll wrote:
Why don't you just move your food and perishables into the RV and live there while the power is out? That way you don't have to do anything other than ride it our in your RV. Simple. I mean if you are going to run your RV anyway, forget supplying power to the house, move into where the power is.

If you're in a freezing climate, you need some way to run the furnace or otherwise keep the house above freezing lest the pipes freeze and you have a big plumbing problem. In quite a few cases the RV furnace might also struggle to keep the RV temperature at a reasonably livable level as well.

For relatively brief power outages (maybe less than a day), this is less of a concern since it takes some time for a house to cool below freezing if it's halfway well insulated, but given enough time it's a very real concern, and it's rarely known at the onset how long a power outage will last.

Is an RV genset big enough to run a home furnace? When we lived in MD I needed a 16kw house generator and 8k of that was to run the furnace - in extreme cold as you mention - below 20 degrees a heat pump won't do it, you need resistance heat and that's a huge amp draw. I doubt an RV genset would run that and even if it could no way you could do it without hard wiring romex. Also I doubt you could run anything else. But hey, at least the food won't spoil. I would guess that if you are in a climate that cold with outages longer than 48 hours, you would invest in a real whole house generator instead of trying to limp along on your RV's power supply. To the op - sure you can run an extension cord to run small items and a fridge.