Today, we will discuss surviving winter in your RV all winter, not just for a week here and there—surviving the entire season. We live in the Northeast, so it gets pretty cold, and there is much snow. So, we will show you what we did to prepare our rig and ourselves for camping in the RV through the winter months. Whether you have a four-season camper or a four-season motorhome, being prepared is key to staying comfortable in extreme weather.
Preparing the Outside of the Rig
Skirting
The first thing you can see is the skirting. We put one inch of polyiso foam around the whole thing. If you can, you’ll want to put insulation around your slide-outs, which we could do on a couple, but the other ones are too high. So that’s one of the first things we did to survive the winter.
Propane Tank and Insulation
Second, we have a larger propane tank: the 100-pound propane tank piped in. That’s so we don’t have to fill that often because when it gets low—like this, we’ve been to seven below—the 30-pound tank only lasts two days, so it’s not great. I’m unsure if you can see it here, but let me see. Right here, we put polyiso underneath the slide-outs because you’ll also get that cold air radiating through the floor. This way, we eliminate some of that. I’m not sure; also, in this corner and all these slide-outs, we stuffed insulation in the corners—any spot where you can see where air could get in, we did.
Cold Weather Silver Tape and Landscaping Spikes
We used the cold weather silver tape to hold this together. That’s the only thing holding it up—there is that tape—and then, as you see down there on the ground, little landscaping spikes hold it into the ground so it can’t kick under.
Wet Bay and Heated Hose
This is the storage locker—a bunch of stuff here. Take a look in there. This is our wet bay, and you can see coming up here that we have a heated hose right there. You can see the heating part that comes off of that. Our hose is heated, and I can feel the heat on it right now. But here, this storage thing is not per se heated, but it stayed when it was seven below and around 48 degrees. One of the things we did was put the polyiso up here and all the gaps there to help with that. That is the heating duct that runs this way; there’s not a vent in it, but I’m sure it radiates some heat off. But seven below, it stayed above freezing, and just in case, we had this light in here with a 150-watt bulb to try to add heat. But we haven’t had to use it yet, and we have that on a smart plug so we can tell our Alexa or the smartphone to turn it on, so we don’t even have to come out here to mess with it.
Hot Water and Slide Toppers
We haven’t had to do anything with the hot water. We have that on propane—that’s what we use for that. That comes on; it keeps it warm anyway. But I would say one of the most important things, if you don’t have them already, are those slide toppers. It saves the top of your slides like crazy. You don’t have to shovel the snow off them. Off the slide toppers, I still get it off—excuse me—you don’t have to get the snow off your slide-outs. You have to get off the slide toppers if there’s too much. We had two feet here a couple of weeks ago. We had to get it off there and ensure your vents stay clear. But we put slide toppers on all these—that was the first thing we did.
Back and Hose Insulation
You can see that polyiso is everywhere, all the way around. Polyiso is at the bottom, and there is nothing back here. One of the things you’re going to see is that this is part of that heated hose. We took it one step further and wrapped the heated hose in pipe insulation to make it more efficient. Also, when you get over here to the hose bib, we wrap the hose bib with pipe, but there’s heating tape around that, and then that’s wrapped in insulation as well with the reflective tape, so the hose bib doesn’t freeze. But that goes the whole way. We got the 50-footer from that hose bib to the other side. Then you’ll see this yellow extension cord. That’s one we have fed separately inside to run one of the electric heaters. We’ll show you that when we get inside.
Insulation and Electric Heaters
Again, the foam insulation all the way around, nothing holding above the tape, and then landscape spikes at the bottom. There is the third tube. We only have grey water; the open valves are the only things that go through the septic. So that’s it for that. You only open the black water when you need to. This is the extension cord we have plugged in on the outside of the rig, which goes up into that storage bay we showed you to run that heat lamp. It’s the same thing on this side: the match of the other side. You can see the foam underneath the slide-outs there. But, like I said, it stayed about 48 to 50 degrees in that storage when it was seven below here, so that was nice.
Fifth Wheel and AC Unit Covers
Then here, one thing we didn’t do that I almost wish we had was this part of the fifth wheel. I wish we had put the foam around that, too. I think it would have helped with the temperature of the floor up in that living room area and given you a little enclosed storage. Let’s step back here for a second, go around, and see if we can get back far enough. There we go.
Up top here, one other thing we did was install these air conditioning units. We put air conditioner covers over them to keep them sealed off, the wind out, and all that stuff out of there. That was awesome. It helped because much air came out of those units from inside.
Skirting and Tank Heaters
So, that’s all you’ve got to do on the outside. The skirting helped tremendously because we had a thermometer underneath, and even when it was seven below out, it got around 30-32, so it was just right at that freezing point. And we did turn on the heat tanks. The heat tanks are, or the tanks are heated, so we turn them on when we need to. We’ve only had to do it several times, but it’s pretty nice.
Preparing the Inside of the Rig
Dehumidifiers
All right, everybody, now that we’re done showing you the outside and what we do to our rig, let’s show you what we do inside here. Let’s start up here in the living room. The first thing you can see here is the dehumidifier. These are a must-have in the RVs for the winter because you’re not running your ACs, and they’re not sucking the moisture out of the air. So these are important to have. Our size is really—we have three of these throughout here. We’ll show you those as we go through.
Reflectix on Windows
Another thing we do is all the windows—roll this one up. We put the Reflectix on all the windows. You can feel the cold air come off those once you put this on there. The cold air stops. I recommend removing them every few days and wiping the windows down because you get much moisture behind them, but that’s a crucial step.
Air Conditioning Units and Foam
Next, we have in here—there isn’t too much, like I said, inside is not as much as you do for the outside. Okay, pan up here to the air conditioning units. You can get reflective insulated plugs in the air conditioning units in your vents. They fit in here just as well. We put foam, but I’m not sure if you can see it from here. Let’s see if we can get it down. You can’t see it here, but we have the whole inside of that plug with foam. That way, you get no air coming out of there at all. And as we showed you from outside, you have the covers on the AC units, which also helps the air not get in there. Those are a nice find.
Electric Heaters and Smart Plug
Up here, that’s it—just the Reflectix on all the windows, the air conditioning unit, and this top part. We have one dehumidifier. Oh, another note: We use the electric key primarily throughout the RV. We run this fireplace up here, and then down below, we’ll show you in the centre. In the kitchen area, we have another radiant-type heater, and in the back, we have one of those oil heaters that are nice and quiet in the bedroom.
Weather Station and Monitoring
We have one of these weather stations with three different probes, and you can label them according to their room. As you can see, the top-left one is the main bedroom; that’s the current temperature. Upstairs in the loft is 65. The storage, which is the underbelly storage on this because it’s cold outside, is 47 right now. And then, at the display right here where we’re at, it’s 67. It could be a little higher there because we’re by the fireplace, but that’s very important to have to monitor everything. You can also set alarms here, so if the temperature in the storage gets too low, an alarm will go off and remind you to turn on your heat lamp. So, it’s essential to have.
Kitchen Area and Electric Heater Usage
Now that we’re done up there in the living room