Thursday, July 29, 2010

Cold! Did I Mention it Was Cold?

Okay so I won't sugar coat this for you, winter in an RV is cold.  Even with a really powerful forced air furnace it's still cold.  They just weren't meant for this.  RVs are for fun summers on Route 66 and vacations by the lake, not snow and certainly not ice.  Our first winter we swore we'd never do it a second time, but we did.  We found that if we supplemented the forced air furnace with those electric oil heaters that looked like radiators we were much warmer.  We had used the oil heaters for several years in our home due to the fact that it had a floor furnace that kept the house quite warm, unless you wanted to sleep in the master bedroom.  So we just brought them to the Airstream.

A note of caution, an Airstream of this model only has two breakers so you have to get creative if you want to run to two oil heaters and trust me Wynn and I can get creative especially when we are freezing at night.  So what to do?  Run one oil heater off of a surge protector from the outlet in the kitchen, okay cool.  Now how do we run one for the bunk and the ice cold bathroom without tripping the breaker?  Because it will trip the breaker and the breaker is in the back of a deep dark bathroom cabinet where spiders could be lurking.  Remember the afore mentioned phobia.

So here's the cheat folks, run an extension cord out the trunk to the shore power, most shore power set ups will have regular outlets on a separate breaker from the plug in for your RV.  There is a nice gap that lets in cold air next to the toilet, but it is also just the right size for an extension cord plug to fit through.  Close the truck lightly and don't lock it.  Now plug you heater into the extension cord and eureka, heat.  Do not run the heater any higher than medium or you will trip the breaker and have to go out in the cold, usually at night to turn it back on.

This trick has kept us fairly warm through two really cold Oklahoma winters and it has saved us a ton on propane.

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