SOLAR Ice Age

Lwiddis wrote:
What a waste of fabric...bell bottoms!

Guess you werent a sailor. Bell bottoms have a purpose

Wow, that is amazing, that insulation would help so much in a truck cab where there is so much glass!

I did not insulate my first van, because there wasn't really any wall space that wasn't covered with a foot thick layer of storage :-). That acts as plenty insulation.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with my current, extremely slow van build.
Because it's a bigger rig, fridge and body temperature don't help as much. Certainly they do something, but I still feel the cold more.

I haven't slept in it with an all packed up, though, so I don't know what that will be like. What I would really like to insulate is the roof, but that would be tricky with condensation and all.

Just insulating the RV like you gave half a dang would make a huge difference. The insulation gaps and thinness are laughable.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Naio, in 1976 I went on a binge. Yanked the seat out of my 1970 chevy pickup. Padded the floor with closed loop nylon carpet. Drilled holes in the overhead and fill it with aerosol foam. Took the doors apart and laid 1" insulation on the inside of the exterior sheet metal then that sticky brown sound absorber factory stuff on the inside of the interior door sheet metal. An upholstery shop redid the seat. Carpet was glued to the behind the seat gas tank which was removed and insulation stuffed on the rear cab wall.

The difference was astonishing. We had days of 0F fog and before the defroster kept a dinner plate size hole of the windshield defrosted, afterward in even colder weather not only was the whole windshield defrosted but I had to turn the heat down.

The truck was quieter than my 67 caddy. I could park in subzero F and the truck would take 20 minutes to cool down in the cab. Summer 100F temperatures were throttled by cutout shades on the windows when parked in the sun.

All this made a lasting impression on me.

David ... your comments above and by some others (i.e. Naio) in this thread touch on something I have noticed in our small Class C. So far in any cool temperatures we have camped in - with no heat turned on at all - just the body heat from us two adults and one 8 lb. dog seems to be able to always keep the interior of our RV 10-12 degrees above the outside temperature. (How many BTUs per hour does an adult human body put out, anyway?)

So insulation combined with small interior volume can indeed conserve heat well. I'll bet an RV with 6 inch thick walls and 12 inch thick ceilings - all filled to the brim with insulation - could stay real comfortable with way less BTU help than current RVs require from their furnaces and air conditioners.

FWIW, I stand by my assertion earlier in this thread that living in and RV - not traveling, but living - could be way less of an energy hog than a 1000 sf on-up stick house with all it's appliances and other modern energy powered trappings. Unless of course that "house" consisted of a 1000 sf on-up cave. ;)

Naio, in 1976 I went on a binge. Yanked the seat out of my 1970 chevy pickup. Padded the floor with closed loop nylon carpet. Drilled holes in the overhead and fill it with aerosol foam. Took the doors apart and laid 1" insulation on the inside of the exterior sheet metal then that sticky brown sound absorber factory stuff on the inside of the interior door sheet metal. An upholstery shop redid the seat. Carpet was glued to the behind the seat gas tank which was removed and insulation stuffed on the rear cab wall.

The difference was astonishing. We had days of 0F fog and before the defroster kept a dinner plate size hole of the windshield defrosted, afterward in even colder weather not only was the whole windshield defrosted but I had to turn the heat down.

The truck was quieter than my 67 caddy. I could park in subzero F and the truck would take 20 minutes to cool down in the cab. Summer 100F temperatures were throttled by cutout shades on the windows when parked in the sun.

All this made a lasting impression on me.

Yep definitely a small carbon footprint. I spent $00.00 to heat or cool my place on the last seven months. 818 miles in the same period at 24 mpg. Quicksilver has sat with perhaps 10 gallons of fuel used to keep things lubed. I paid my last electricity bill which amounted to 127 kWh for 63 days. Eighty three watts per hour continuously.

Where a person lives is just as important as how they live. I believe most people sacrifice some things to amplify others. My food bill (consumed) for five days was three dollar and eighty cents. Getting old means a shrunken stomach. I can eat an egg sandwich this morning which will do me until tomorrow lunch.

These are not bragging rights...they are reported in amazement just how much my lifestyle and metabolism has changed in say 30 years. When I was younger I was the living picture of conspicuous consumption. Except for a @#$%&! cellphone I lack for nothing.

My new van might change things, though. It's probably triple the interior volume, and much less of the side wall area will be insulated with storage stuff. The fridge + body heat might not do as much to keep it warm, and I might end up running a heater sometimes.

I will have a couch, in addition to the bed. It occurs to me now that I should put an electric mattress pad on the couch, like I have on the bed! That plus a heating pad on my lap does a lot to heat the person, rather than the space. The cats, of course, get their own heating pads :-)

I do think I could drive a lot more than I do and still use less energy than I use heating my stick house up north.

.

Let's see...

Wikipedia says a gallon of gas is 33.41 kwatts.

To make the math easy, I will assume 10 miles per gallon on my rig and 4000 watts (4 kilowatts) of heat per hour in my house, 5 hours per day. (I figure 5 hours because the heater cycles on and off, and I switch it off at night.)

So, to heat my house for a day is 20kw, or about 6 miles of driving.
Over 6 months, that is 3600kw, or 1080 miles. Wow, driving is a lot worse than I thought!

(edited for more realistic heater usage)

I think snowbirding can be pretty darn energy efficient. Depends on how you do it.

For the last four years, I have had neither heat nor AC in my van. Well, I did have a 300 watt heater which I think I used for a total of 30 minutes over the four years :B

My van is powered by an extension cord and a single power strip with a 10 amp breaker. I think I have used two of those little camping canisters of propane over the four years.

I don't drive much at all. 1000 miles, give or take, for the north-south trip twice a year. Maybe another 500-1000 miles of side camping trips. When I am in one place, I get around by bike.

When I'm awake, I'm usually outside the van. In the cool evenings I wear a lot of layers.

I've had two or three days when I have crawled into bed at 4:30 in the afternoon because it was dark out and cold, though! Good place to read and surf the net.

All of this is a lot less energy than I use in my small, energy efficient stick house up north, where I run heaters in the winter and sometimes AC in the summer.

One totally stupid extra inch of specialty insulation could cut energy by 30%

I had cavities filled with the then most expensive foam on earth and it is better than anything on 2018 models. I tacked Reynolds EXTRA heavy duty aluminum foil to the deck before Erb shot it. Then 5/32" teak.

It's extremely foolish to force people to waste even more energy to try and fulfill demand for heating or cooling.

Even intelligent water draining evacuation has been overlooked. Should take ten minutes to drain every last drop from the fresh water.

Manufacturers are still under the assumption RVs are weekend play toys.

I'd bet if I lived in a 400 sq ft brick and mortar house, my energy bill would be a fraction of an RV.

As it is, my park model propane costs in the winter are more than my 2000 sq ft house, and the park model sits at 50°F during week days and weekends we are not there.