Forum Discussion

golfoh1's avatar
golfoh1
Explorer
Jul 20, 2015

Working in winter location

Trying to figure how to keep everything going if working in a winter zone and the temperatures drop to 25 degree. Anyone have experience with this. How to have water and just staying warm and keep things from freezing up.
  • That is warm for my Foretravel. Single digits is where I start to take some extra measures. Depends on your coach though.
  • When we travel in the Winter we keep our fresh water tank topped off close to full at all times. We only hook up the hose to shore water to top off our tanks. If it is expected to stay at 25 or below, we put a 100 Watt incandescent bulb in the wet compartment using a thermostatically controlled outlet and a mechanic's trouble light shield. This keeps our pump and water lines from freezing.
    For heat we never use the furnace unless we want a quick blast of heat for some reason. We use an electric blanket, electric space heaters, as well as our roof top heat pumps. If it is going to get below about 32 degrees, we use a portable internal heat pump that is not affected by outside temperatures. This has kept us warm to single digit temps below zero. We keep a dash fan blowing to keep the windshield clear since we use a curtain to close off the cockpit instead of the pull around drape.
    We prefer to travel in the Winter and have camped in the Grand Canyon in January and many other places where the snow can get deep. Our dog loves the snow and we love not having to fight the crowds, which is one of the reasons we leave Florida during the cooler months.
  • What part of the country are we talking?
    Is it occasional 25 like parts of Florida or days below 25 like parts of Virginia and North Carolina.
  • According to his other post, yea, duplicate, he is looking at Grand Canyon area.
  • 25F shouldn't be an issue as long as you have the furnace on and it's just dipping to 25F at night. There will typically be enough residual heat off the unit to keep the water pipes unfrozen.

    It's when you get down into the teens and contionus 24/7 freezing that you need to take precautions. In this case, do use the propane furnace. The duct work usually goes thru the underbelly where the water tank is and a little heat will bleed off to keep the tank above freezing.

    Single digits and colder is when you really need to take steps.
  • We survived sub-zero temps for many weeks over the last Winter. Having a Bus Conversion with diesel heat made this a non-issue except for the $700 worth of fuel required to keep the diesel heat running all day for nearly 3 months.
    Would I ever try this in a propane coach? Not a chance. I nearly froze to death in my 1st RV (propane) when the temps dropped into the teens.
  • I keep everything on during the winter when I'm not down in AZ. My coach has basement heat and I don't worry much unless it gets below 25* then i winterize the coach.
  • Bill.Satellite wrote:
    We survived sub-zero temps for many weeks over the last Winter. Having a Bus Conversion with diesel heat made this a non-issue except for the $700 worth of fuel required to keep the diesel heat running all day for nearly 3 months.
    Would I ever try this in a propane coach? Not a chance. I nearly froze to death in my 1st RV (propane) when the temps dropped into the teens.


    Not sure why diesel or propane would matter. We've had ours down to -5F for a few days and the propane furnce did just fine. As mentioned, it will be expensive but very doable. At that point it's about how many btu's your furnace puts out not the fuel source. We were going thru a 30# tank per day.