camping with temps in the teens

Hello all,

I have to take a short trip to look at some property and was hoping to spend one night in the trailer there. The temperatures will be getting down to 25 to 15 degrees. What temperature do you all think the trailer would be able to hold with the furnace and a couple of space heaters? I would have the water system fully winterized so that would be a non issue. I would just bring some bottled water and use an outhouse on the property I am looking at. Trailer is an 06 27 bhwb.

I've camped in the low 20's with just a furnace, no space heaters.

We camped at 16°F before and used a small electric space heater in the master bedroom.

We've camped in the mid to low 20's and were okay..... with water in our tanks and pipes. We used one electric heater in the living room - heat rises, and set the thermostat on the furnace so it would turn on about every 30-45 minutes. We also had a 60w light bulb turned on in the basement. Keeping the kitchen and bathroom cabinets open will get a little heat on those pipes. But, since you are winterized, you shouldn't have to worry about that. We have an electric mattress pad that keeps up toasty warm all night. Bake some Danish in the morning to get the chill out of the air.

Tater

Tater, where did you get the electric matress pad? DW purchased an electric blanket with dual controls, and I wonder if you could get a matress pad with dual controls as well.

Can't remember where we got the one that we use on our king-size bed at home. The queen-size in the trailer came from Bed, Bath & Beyond. The one at home is better quality - very thin wires. The one in the trailer has thicker wires, and without a regular quilted (thin) mattress pad over it, we'd be able to feel the wires. The trailer bed - from the platform up --- mattress, 1-inch uncovered memory foam pad, 2-inch thick covered memory foam mattress pad, electric mattress pad, thin quilted mattress pad, sheets.

Tater

I saw one at Walmart this week in the bedding dept. I don't know how thin or thick the wires are.

Cherry

Thanks.

Plan on freezing.

I dry camped for a week with the lows in the teens and highs barely over 30. I set the furnace to 55 degrees and it ran almost constantly. I often wonder if there would be any benefit to wrapping the trailer with an apron to keep the cold from the ground out. The water or tanks never froze, but you could never get comfortable.

I've wondered about wrapping the trailer. It probably wouldn't take much. A strip of canvas, and some snaps. And maybe a blanket with a light bulb under it to cover the spigot and water hose on the outside.

Tater

There is a tiny little campground near me, it's really just private property that the owner rents out seasonal spots to about five people...

Over the last few years I see a HUGE deisel pusher there all winter...I talked to hime once at lowes and he's actually from FLA. but comes north in the winter!...says he cant stand the winter pansies....I dont think he was talking about flowers...

He lines the entire rig with hay bales and has a miller mobile home furnace running in a little enclosure outside the rig....its ducted into the underside of the rig... he says he burns about 175 gallons of fuel all winter....

Not saying you should go to that extreme but keeping the underside from direct exposure would absolutely help...heat migrates to cold....it does not just rise.

I just pray he never calls me to work on that furnace... it looks like quite the Red Green set up....those of you from New England will know who Red Green is...not sure about you Texans,but I'm sure you have your equivelent

I think that you'll find that many of us who have camped extensivley in the winter have made many, many mods to our Cats to keep them warm. We had two 1500W oil filled radiators assisting the furnace. One of these was hooked to a seperate 20A circuit that plugged into the CG's 20 recep on the power post. We also insulated all the openings in the belly (sewer line pass through's, low point drain pass throughs, the mixing valve for the shower that's accessible through the little door high on the side of the trailer [this had no insulation at all], insulation for all the doors to the basement, isulation for the roof hatches and windows and finally hanging two 60W bulbs in the basement [kept the basement at 40*F even when the outside temps got to 4*F]).

Thank you all. I do realize that it won't be the best conditions and the furnace may run all night. But, I am just hopeful that we can get it to a comfortable temperature for the one night. We would be arriving at this property at about 4:00 in the afternoon so we would have a fair bit of time to get the trailer warm enough for sleeping. Then it would just have to hold that until lunch the next day. Even if the furnace ran the whole time it really wouldn't bother me. It is just one night. I have checked with where I am plugging in and there is two different curcuits so I will be able to run at least one other space heater and possibly two. If snow isn't predicted to make driving too dangerous, I am going to attempt to stay in the trailer and see how it goes. I will post how it goes at the end of next weekend.

I think you'll do just fine..... and maybe better than you expect. We haven't done any special things (like insulation) to keep our trailer warmer, and we were pleasantly surprised to see that it got through the cold so well. We got down to around 23 one night and a couple nights in the mid-upper 20's, but we stayed warm inside.

I don't want to think how we would have fared if the temps got down around 4 as did schrowang.

Tater

We are back from our stay in the cold. It went just fine. The electric space heater we brought decided to burn out shortly after arriving. We have used this heater for years and it picked the one trip that we REALLY needed it to stop working. Anyways, the furnace worked fine at keeping the trailer warm-set at 68 (outside temps around 20) and it did snow quite a bit. It wasn't predicted but it ended up snowing about 6 inches by the time we left. The furnace did cycle but I would say it was running at least half if not more of the time.
We did drain all the water out of the system but I would not do that next time. With the furnace running I believe we would have been just fine with the water system operating normally. You do have to plan on breaking a lot of ice off in places if you do this type of camping. I had to climb on the roof carefully to clear snow and ice off the slide so it could come in.

Glad you made it okay. It would have been better if your electric heater hadn't decided to quit, but everything seems to have worked out.

maxum1989 wrote: We did drain all the water out of the system but I would not do that next time. With the furnace running I believe we would have been just fine with the water system operating normally.

Maxum,

If you're staying in one place for awhile, it's not necessary to drain all the lines. The only place that needs to stay warm, that is not heated is the basement area. That's where all of the water lines are (at least on the 29RLBS). It only takes one or two 60W bulbs burning all night to keep the basement temp at 40 to 50* depending on outside temps. The rest of your water lines are in heated spaces inside the living area of the trailer.

I you're planning on towing during the day and the temps aren't gonna get above freezing, you might have to drain the lines to prevent freezing.

The only thing you should need to do overnight is to disconnect and drain the water hose. Also you might think about getting one of those styrofoam outside faucet covers to go over the exterior hose connections. Worked for me.

Thanks Mike,

I agree that draining the lines wouldn't be necessary if set up in freezing temps but I was concerned about driving in the cold on the way to our destination. I did learn a lot about this type of camping with this trip so I will know how to handle it next time.

This helps.

i spent a lot of time last year in the WC (I lived in it for about 6 months). Some nights got down into the teens. Try to park on an angle to the prevailing wind with pullouts on the opposite side, if possible. I did and it made a world of difference. All that I had was the furnace and no power other than 4 batteries, which the solar kept charged when I swept the snow off of them. It is surprising how comfortable it was.

I agree that even though our Wildcats our not designed to be used in very cold conditions, I was a little surprised at how well it went. I know the snow and ice was building up on my trailer so that was the biggest problem, but that was because the weather was just shy of a full blown storm. In a little more normal weather (just cold) we would have had very few issues. The drive out in six inches of snow was the worst part but manageable.