Need tips and experiences for first time winter camping.

Cover the skylights with either reflectix or closed cell foam same for the glass on the back door, I do my windows too at night. that will really reduce the heat loss from the TC and minimize the furnace cycling on and off. Secondly pack the area around the dump valve controls with fiberglass insulation as that is a major route for cold air to 1: freeze the valves and 2: let cold air up under the shower pan and into the basement. Leave all the inside cabinet doors open at night to allow warm air around the plumbing. I also put insulation behind the external storage compartment doors to keep in the heat and keep out the cold. I also add antifreeze into both the grey and black holding tanks to prevent freezing. I drain my fresh tank and use 3.5 gallon water jugs for my fresh water needs. Flannel Sheets and thick down comforters are nice, some folks use winter sleeping bags. Don't keep the TC too warm at night, I have it on low and it doesnt drop befow 58 while I sleep which conserves propane.

Practice first in your driveway before it starts to get really cold. If it looks possible, practice on even colder forecasted nights, until you know your limits.

Buy some wireless remote thermometers and put them near your tanks, drain valves, water lines, battery compartment and outside.

Drain your water lines (but leave the hot water heater full and bypassed) then pull your camper out of your nice heated garage and test how the camper does overnight in the driveway by reading min / max the next day. This will give you an idea whether you need to winterize or not

Use a fish scale and weigh the easy to access 30# propane tank before and after to calculate propane use @ 4.2 lbs per gallon

Set the furnace thermostat for a comfortable 70 degrees, turn on the refrigerator and turn on the hot water heater.

Reset your battery monitor (i.e. Trimetric) and see how many amp hours (Ah) of electricity your use. If you don't have one then seriously consider buying one to manage your batteries. In the mean time use a voltmeter to read your batteries state of charge before and after to see if your batteries will make it. If less than 12.1 VDC the next morning, the answer would be no.

Spend the evening in the TC and use lights like you plan, Lights and the furnace fan use the most electricity. See how much electricity you use.

If you are going to do this a lot, consider adding insulation to your TC to use less electricity for the furnace. Think filling the holes in your TC like the big opening in the roof via the AC, the range vent, electric cord box.

Adding reflectix between the windows and curtains, and stuffing into skylights and fantastic fan vent openings. Adding insulation under the mattress also makes for a more comfortable night. Search this site and you will see how other Lance owners insulated their TC for winter use.

Replacing lights with LEDs also saves a lot of electricity, if you haven't done so already.

2- 30 pound tanks of propane is a lot you could camp for 5 days easy. What we do is winterize the camper, bring rv antifreeze to flush the toilet. Use bottled water for drinking. We bought a 1 inch foam pad to put on top of the mattress that works great. You can dump the tanks at most sewer treatment plants in town. I agree with sleep in the driveway first. And as soon as you get home wash all the salt off of the camper. Have fun:)

Some good ideas, thanks.

Consider the weather carefully. You really do not want to take your rig out for the first time from heated storage to freezing cold. Definitely try it outside a few times as you test colder and colder.

The windows are double pane, so I got that going for me. I have the snap on quilted covers for the bedroom skylight and bathroom vent.

DW likes the idea of practicing in the driveway. I have a volt meter on the battery but forget how low to allow them to get. IIRC 11.7 is the minimum.

A few more thoughts:

Double pane windows help a lot. They even have a thermal block so you don't have the metal frame on the outside conducting the cold inside directly. However when they routed out the window opening in the TC, the manufacturer left lots of room so the metal frame cools off the air space and then the inside window flange. If you remove the inside window flange, you can use door/window expanding closed cell foam to insulate these spaces. Less ice on the inside window frame.

You can make the windows warmer still by taping inexpensive, clear shrink wrap film (Walmart and hardware stores) to the inside of the windows to make them triple pane. In another post Photomike made nice acrylic interior storm windows.

The back door in TCs aren't very insulated. Having an insulated curtain/quilt to hang in front of the door at night makes it warmer.

My TC needs around 10,000 BTU/hr to keep it warm once the temperatures drop into the negative range. With an electrical hookup, I have forced air electric heaters for both the basement and the main cabin, and I use an electric blanket to pre-warm the bed.

Consider changing the oil in your generator to a synthetic 0-30W or 5-30W, if you haven't already.

Consider practicing with the cat too, if it isn't used to the TC and cat carrier. Cat treats go a long ways to making it painless.

Consider driving with the furnace on to keep the TC warm. Power supplied by the truck, vs. the TC batteries. It takes a long time for a TC to warm up.

If you winterize, don't forget the outside shower. We run full utilities all winter long for our ski road trips. However, divert valves have been added to the outside shower and city water plumbing to allow these to be drained and blown out to prevent damage due to freezing.

If you start doing this a lot also consider getting AGM batteries, they are sealed and as such you can insulate / heat your battery compartment for much more battery capacity in the cold. Additionally if you deep discharge these batteries they can be recharged from a generator faster and aren't damaged by freezing like a flooded battery would. Flooded battery electrolyte is more water like when deeply discharged and will freeze, destroying plates and connections)

We went through our TC and put reflectix under our bed and in all of the cabinets near the bed. We also put in reflectix in our windows. We also use it in all skylights and vents. The vents/skylights fit are cut slightly larger to fit tightly. The windows are cut to be held in place by window frames or curtains.

I'm not sure about backdoors not being insulated. :) Ours is solid insulation foam except for the window. We use a reflectix attached with velcro over for that.

If you do use plug in heaters, keep in mind that it won't heat the basement which is not a problem if your TC is winterized. We've used RV antifreeze to flush. For sure, reducing the temperature a little will help decrease battery usage. We found like others hear that a digital thermostat seems to control the temps better and the bonus is the LCD display with actual temperature.

I have an adjustable fan electric heater that's made for boats to vary how much heat it produces and how much fan it uses. We also have a heating element for the AC.

MN Ben wrote:
I have a volt meter on the battery but forget how low to allow them to get. IIRC 11.7 is the minimum.

For optimum battery life it is recommend to discharge to ~50% of the battery capacity, although they can be discharged to 80% occasionally.

As far as the voltage at that state of charge it depends on the temperature of the battery. See the table below



Note: at 50% discharge the freezing point of the battery electrolyte is in the low single digits. At 80% discharge the freezing point is around 20F. Freezing a flooded battery destroys it.