Winter RVing Tips

00:00 Intro
03:38 Water System
04:36 Heat
11:01 Preventing Freezing Pipes
16:00 Tote Tank

Hey guys, It's Barratt with the Gimpy Camper. In today's episode, we are going to go over how to survive winter in an RV in a northern climate. We are going to give you some tips and go over our story, right after this.

For all of you who don't know, my father passed away at the end of last year. He had a stroke and got progressively worse over a few months. He is one of the main influences that got me into this lifestyle as both my father and my grandfather always had a motorhome. During the time when his health was declining, I was traveling to Northern Michigan to visit as often as I could and help out around the house when necessary. I usually don't share a lot of my personal life, but I do travel the Southeastern US for my job as a traveling Nurse Practitioner. Luckily during this time I was mostly assigned 45 minutes from my home and was working at a local hospital. I work 10-12 hour days and usually only work 12 days per month. This usually gives me about 2 weeks off every month. Almost any time period that I had a full week off I was driving the 700-mile trip from SE TN to Northern Michigan. I had decided that we would be doing this indefinitely and decided to take the camper up to Michigan before winter. I felt this would be the best option for me as it would allow me to have my own space. It was also better because I'm more of a night owl and my dad's hospital bed was in the kitchen/living room so I didn't want to bother him. My stepmom was awfully nervous about me staying in the camper in the winter, but I told her it would be ok. I thought that I had a good grip on what to do and wanted to see if I could hack it.

Some things to point out first. My camper does have a winter package, but with Keystone, this mainly means that there is reflectix insulation over the plastic material of the underbelly and that I have tank heaters. Second, I camp during the winter all the time in Tennessee. That being said I knew winter camping in Michigan was going to have its own issues. I have been down in nights as low as 25 in the camper in TN. Also, I have slept in my camping hammock at 20 degrees so I'm no newby to winter camping. Since I was only going to be in the camper intermittently I decided that my basic plan for the water system would be the same as usual. I would winterize the camper with compressed air as I do multiple times per year. It's not uncommon for me to winterize 10-20 times in a year. I have a video where I explain my process that I'll post up in the corner and down in the description. Then I would de-winterize every time I get up to Michigan.
My plan for staying warm consisted of a multi-prong plan. I like to use a combination of electric and gas heat, but mostly in winter down in TN I only use electric. We are usually on 30 amp electric so what my normal plan consists of is to use the electric fireplace through the 30 amp service and then I use the portable AC that has a built-in heat pump to augment. Now both of these together are too much for the 30 amp service, however, I run the heat pump off the 20 amp outlet on the post. This allows for the use of both, however, the colder it gets the less efficient a heat pump is. Also, I had a 30 amp outlet at my dad's house but not an accessible 20 amp outlet on a different circuit. I ran all of the heaters one night as I could watch the line draw on my power watchdog. It was consistently pulling 1280 watts on one side of my panel and 1120 on the other so I thought it may work. It didn't throw the breaker that night, but it did the second day. I did plan on using the gas in Michigan a little more and there was a propane company 0.5 miles from the house. I had talked to them about possibly running a line from my camper to the big horizontal tank that they had in the yard, however since It was only going to be a week at a time I decided not to. Also, the propane was about 30% cheaper there than it was at home to fill my 30# tank. Since I have the Mopeka pro sensors, which by the way have traveled over 8000 miles and stayed in place on the tanks, I would just keep a close eye on it when I needed propane. switchover.

Amazon Links
Mopeka Pro Sensors- https://amzn.to/3PKWwkT
Mopeka Halos- https://amzn.to/48R1XW0
Thermometer- https://amzn.to/48Z8ZI6

Don't forget to check out our Facebook Page! https://www.facebook.com/gimpycamper/?modal=admin_todo_tour

We are also on instagram www.instagram.com/thegimpycamper

We are now an Amazon Affiliate. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.

Видео Winter RVing Tips канала Gimpy Camper