Hey everybody Bucars says you don’t want to winterize your RV. Well, you don’t want to winterize your RV yet.
Heat is really something you got to think about when you’re camping in the fall. Now your RV let’s be honest you’re not in a tent so going camping in the fall can be very comfortable but you need to understand the heat in your RV. A lot of RVs have what’s called a heat strip or a heat pump built into the air conditioner and those are really good for milder temperatures but for them to work in cool temperatures below that 10 degrees celsius they are not efficient they are not going to work well for you. So that’s where you need to rely on your propane heat and the propane is highly efficient it works really well and it provides heat very quickly but it does have some drawbacks that we need to think of.
Number one is power consumption. If you go dry camping in the middle of nowhere and want propane heat for a whole weekend to fall camping your one battery isn’t going to get you through the weekend comfortably. You definitely want more than one battery to provide enough power to that fan motor so you can have heat all weekend. Please keep in mind the heat you’re gonna have in your RV does not need to be the Sahara desert. We are not looking to have you dance around in your speedo while camping. Keep it a little bit cooler you don’t need to have it super warm like you have your house make sure to have a sweater and if you run it down you’re gonna find that furnace isn’t kicking on as often.
So the power is one thing you got to think about the other thing is the propane itself. A lot of you RVers you know maybe fill your propane once or twice a year that’s more than enough but if you’re fall camping you are going to burn through a whole bunch more. Just keeping that heater on you’re going to hear it clicking in and out all the time that’s burning propane. Usually, when I’m camping my two 20-pound tanks you know what I make sure they’re both full before I go out for a weekend because those two twenty-pound tanks depending on the weather might be enough for a weekend and that’s it. So definitely know your propane.
Now the problem with the propane heat is that it’s going to create moisture. Everyone goes inside their RV they see the drips on the roof of condensation when they wake up in the morning and they start to panic that they got a leak. It’s not a leak that’s you breathing that’s your family breathing inside your RV and it does create a very humid heat. So you’re going to find a lot of condensation so you do need to find a way to knock that moisture down. If you’re on a plug-in site a plug-in dehumidifier is best if you don’t have access to that crack a window you’re going to have to get the moisture out.
The other thing you really need to look at is a lot of the foam mattresses today that we’re seeing come from manufacturers in high humidity. In the fall we find those mattresses wick all the moisture out of the air and then you lay on it and it squeezes the moisture out. So if you do have a foam mattress you do need to get it up a little bit so that there is a cushion of air underneath it or you got to make sure to dry it out during the day so just kind of prop it up and let air at it.
So heat stick to propane it’s proven it works you know you’re going to be comfortable and your family is too and please know you will have enough heat to stay warm.
