Today our goal was to mail our home owners and auto insurance policies to our agent and to sign up for health insurance for next year. Gotter done. Our insurance agent went to another agency and they pulled their individual policy agents out of Warsaw. She left that agency after 18 years and we went with her so we had to fill out a lot more paper work than we typically have to do when renewing. We also signed up for an Affordable Care Act health insurance policy. The savings of which compared to our current health insurance will pay for our home owners, auto, and motorhome insurance. Did I mention it is also much better insurance than we currently have.
Now on to the subject of the post. Living in an rv whether it is a motorhome or 5th wheel, or a travel trailer in cold temperatures requires you to be on your toes. For example; our motorhome has three heat pumps on the roof that are built into the air conditioners. They heat our motorhome most of the time (all of the time if I can help it). They don't work below 40 degrees. Below 40 degrees we switch over to our Oasis heating system that has two different heating elements that operate on electricity. This system also supplies us with hot water for the sinks, shower, and washing machine. When the demand is too great such as your trying to heat plus take a shower while you are washing clothes the two electric elements won't keep up with the hot water requirements. At that time you switch on a diesel burner that supplements the electrical elements and this will supply unlimited hot water for heating, showering, sinks, and washing clothes. The downside of running the diesel burner all day is it can use 1-3 gallons of diesel fuel per day depending on how much it runs. In addition, we carry two small but very efficient electric heaters that can heat the motorhome. You can't rely on these however because these or the roof top heat pumps don't put any heat into the basement. In cold temperatures you have to make sure the basement has heat or you could have water or sewage pipes freeze up. In the 5th wheel we always put a small electric heater in the basement and it kept everything warm. In the motorhome there is a heat exchanger in the basement that keeps it warm.
Water -- In your house you don't give it much consideration. In an rv to get water you run a garden hose to a spigot to supply water to your rv water system. We have heat tapes that we can wrap the hose with so it won't freeze but this isn't always allowed. In some RV parks like the one we are in now they want all of the hoses disconnected at night when the temperatures are this cold so their pipes don't freeze up. They will charge us $550 if we don't disconnect and they have a freeze problem. So we fill our on board water tank which holds 100 gallons to last while we are disconnected which is no problem for us. In fact, we could go days if we weren't doing laundry. The washer uses like 16 gallons per load.
Other issues. Cold weather effects all systems. Since you are running heat pumps, Oasis heating elements, convection microwaves, washing machines, dryers, two/four flat screen TV's, slow cookers, portable heaters, hair dryers, two computers etc. etc. you can overload internal electrical circuits or the campgrounds pedestal circuit. I installed a device on our electrical system that protects us from surges and tells me how many volts the rv park's system is putting out on each line and how many amps I am drawing on each line. I installed this system after getting dirty electricity up in Milwaukee this summer. This morning we tripped a breaker on an inverter which converts 12 volt power to 120 volt. I had to reset the breaker and we were back in business but the problem occurred due to the additional electrical demand related to the cold weather. We have a bank of eight six volt batteries that will let us run 120 volt appliances with the invertor for many hours. In the event we need to go off the grid longer then that we can run our generator to power everything in the coach. We can run everything off of batteries except the roof top air conditioners and the electric induction stove. These draw too much current for the batteries/invertor. For these we have to be hooked up to electricity or run the generator. We bought a very nice slow cooker/stove top burner/oven that we use now while rolling down the highway so we don't need to start the generator as much.
Sewage -- Usually we have a four inch flexible sewer hose hooked up to the rv park's sewer system. We then usually leave our grey tank valve open so it drains whenever you have anything go down a drain except for the toilet. This allows us to do laundry without worrying about filling up our 65 gallon grey tank. We close the valve a day before we need to dump the 50 gallon black tank which holds the toilet waste. This black tank can go days without being dumped. You need some grey water to dump behind the black water in order to flush and clean out the sewer pipes, hose etc. etc. Think about it for a minute and you'll get it. In cold weather you really don't want to leave your grey tank valve open since the sewage could freeze in the sewer pipe on it's way to the sewer. So you need to judge how cold it is going to get and when to shut the valve off on the grey tank.
There are also diesel engine preheaters for the motorhome but we haven't used that yet and I don't plan on ever using it.
A journal written about life, retirement and our journey throughout the United States in a 5th wheel, along with our two Shih Tzus, Tanner and Syndey. Written not for notoriety but for our sons, family and friends, so they know where we are at any given time. And particularly for ourselves. Finally, we get to slow down and smell the roses and we don't want to forget any of it. You are welcome to join us as we go 'Down the Road a Piece'.
