New to fiver's but have 25 yrs. with a Truck Camper

[WPRer]

Hello all! We have experience in truck campers but are now looking at a 'fiver to retire and travel in after my wife retires next May. I will have a lot of questions so please be kind with all my questions....
Thanks
Barn

[Michelle_S]

Some of the newer/bigger 5ers have 40K BTU furnaces.

[WPRer]

Thanks for the info. When we camp in cold weather around 3-6 degs with the camper we go through a 30lb bottle every 3 days.... But the camper is small area to heat and we run the thermostat as low as it will go and that's about 45-50 deg. I had not seen any info on heater wattage in any specs so far.
We have a 2000w Yamaha/Smart Tools gen. When we used the camper I would haul our Early Bronco with us and we had a 3800w gen. mounted on the trailer and used that to keep the batts up every day. I know I will have to piggyback 2-2000w together to run 1-AC on hot days camping.
Thanks again.

[Old-Biscuit]

RV Furnace in a 5vr will be 35,000 btu
They LOVE propane and run exclusively on 12V DC
Either supplied by batteries or via AC Power thru converter.

Rule of thumb..one battery/one night of RV Furnace use then battery would NEED recharged.

Propane......
1# propane is 21,600 btu
30# cylinder------648,000 btu divided by 35,000 equals 18.5 hrs of furnace total run time
(we used a 30# daily when in -19*F temps)

RV Furnace use is necessary in cold weather for 'ducted/heated underbelly'
Space heaters OK for supplemented area heating

12V and 120V tank heaters....
Need AC power or if 12V then need recharging capabilities daily
OK if on electric hookup site.
Boondocking......can limit amount of propane used for furnace but still need generator or larger solar set up for maintaining battery

[WPRer]

I plan to look for some answers.... I have questions... Silly stuff such as tank or underbelly heating as we camp boondock style many times and with buying a fiver I want to be able to keep from freezing.... We want to leave our 5'er parked while we explore or hunt and come back to a coach that is not froze up or dead batteries... I have seen there are 120v AND 12v heaters And underbelly heating on 5'ers. Most sales people we have run into can't answer my questions!

Can I run heaters on batteries only or do I have to run a gen to keep batteries up. We have camped at 0 degrees in our camper (hunting) and run our heater on low and have not froze up yet and when we return after several hrs. we run the gen to top up the batteries. This works well in the camper but how do the heaters work in a fiver??
Thanks for any insight on how these systems work in a 5'er.

[rskeans]

I loved our camper, but DW hated to make the bed. I lost. But the 5ver is really nice.

[Old-Biscuit]

Might want to send some time pursuing topics on the 'Fifth-Wheels' section and on the 'Full Time RVing' section

And of course the 'Tow Vehicles' and 'Towing' sections

[TxGearhead]

Fire away!
I'm going in the opposite direction.