Top Tips for Winter in Your RV

Winter RVing is not for everyone. It requires a high-level of attention to make sure all parts of our RV and heating solutions are working towards you and keeping you warm and water not frozen. Let's cover our top tips for winter in your RV!

After spending over a month at the top of the Colorado Rockies in the winter, here are our top tips to stay warm minimize issues.

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Top Tips for Winter in Your RV

Truck Must-Haves for the Winter:

Going into the mountains in the winter does have some legal requirements you need to be aware of. From my research, most states have similar laws, but please do your own research to confirm.

Diesel Anti-Gel

Being someone from Texas, I have had my desiel gel on me a few times when it gets really cold in the winter. They don't sell winter diesel in Texas, so you have to add your own anti-gel in your tank. Colorado does sell its own Anti-gel fuel, but depending on when or where you got your fuel you might need to add some more. This is something i always keep on us.

Auto Socks

When traveling through many states in the winter, snow tires and/or snow chains for your tires might be required. As a full-time RVer, I am not going to have snow tires rotated onto my car, and carrying heavy chains year round when a fireable, I never plan to use them was no option. This is where Auto Socks coming in an save the day.

These are cloth-based socks for your tires! They are light weight and approved in most states to count as snow chains. I personally never plan to tow if these are in requirement for driving on the road, but as I first mentioned, just being a certain time of year, it could be required to have these on you at all times in the mountains. These is a great option if needed!

Snow Broom

This snow broom has saved me. It's lightweight but heavy-duty enough that it has lasted many seasons for us. I like this broom over a 'brush' because I can take off large amounts of snow off the truck bed cover and other areas of the truck. A small broom might work for a small car, but for these big 3500 trucks, you need to upgrade to the snow broom.

Must Haves for the Exterior of the RV

EZ Snap RV Skrit

There are lots of RV winter skirt options out there. We went with a high-quality but DIY version that in the end was perfect for us. The kit comes with everything you need and, surprisingly, it only took us about an hour to fully install. I HIGHLY suggest you install this when the weather is still decent, then you only have to put it on when its cold and you need it.

Winterized Hose

There are not that many options available for winterized or heated hoses. The camco one is easily accessible, sold everywhere, and you will probably only get a season or two out of it. I have gone through 3 of them so far, and they are expensive. The only other option is to create a sleeve for your current hose and run heat tape through it. I think this is a great option if you are stationary. But we move too much to recreate this each time, so the camco hose is an all-in-one solution that works.

Electric Heater for underbelly

With temps going below 0 degrees, inside the skirt was still below freezing. Running a small eletric heater solve the problem and allowed us to keep all our sewage drains from freezing.

I have also used this heater behind our residential refrigerator so keep the sensors from thinking its in a cold garage and shutting off the freezer.

Wireless Temp Gun

I have had gadge for years and always find new reasons to use it. This was great to have to check the temp outside, check the temp of windows, heat vents, cords, grill etc. Anytime i question if something is hot, i can point this at it and get a read. Absolutely a must-have.

Propane Tank Gauge

I wasn't sure this was needed until we started going through 40 pounds of propane every 4 to 5 days. When you go through propane slowly, its easy to gauge and not so critical. However, when you are only able to stay warm because of propane you get a new view of how important it is to know how much is left. This gauge worked quite well and i could know when one tank was empty and a decent guess at how much was left in a tank. We have two 30 lb tanks on board and i carry a spare 20 lb Blue Rhino tank. This product has two sensors, one main guage and bluetooth. I would get an alert on my phone that a tank was empty. I could check the estimated amount in each tank or just push the button on the wireless display inside and get a fuel gauge amount, too.

Must Haves for Inside the RV in Winter

Weather Mats

These are inexpensive and worth it. They kept gross slush from boots off the main floor, caught a lot of water that would have been cold, and tracked it through the RV, all contained.

Boot Pan

This boot pan is from Ikea but was a lifesaver to keep our boots inside the warm house, but catch the water as the snow and ice melted off them after coming inside.

Dyson Heat/Cool Air Purairfiers

We have gone through a lot of heaters trying to find the right one that works for the space, creates good heat, and has some basic features that we think are required.

In the winter, your electrical usage in an RV can be tough to manage. Most heaters will take anywhere from 1000 watts to 1800 watts. Depending on how your circuits are run and where you want to plug in these heaters, it might cause an issue.

These Dyson fans pull a max wattage of 1500 watts on full heat and fan. They do an excellent job of moving the warm air through the RV. These fans are the full package and I swear by it. We hated carrying a fan around for the summer and a separate heater in for the winter. Where do you even store it when not in use?! The Dyson Heat/Cool solved this for us because its an all in one. You get a fan in the summer, a heater in the winter AND if you have allergies, the Dyson is cleaning the air removing everything. This has saved us in the spring with pollen blooms.

Window Vyinal

Most RVs do not have double-pained windows. Having double pained windows creates air gap between pains create a huge insulation layer. To get this effect, we had to make the second "pain". We wanted this to be removable, so we added velcro to all window seams. Black velcro in the black window seam so its invisble when not in use. Then cut the vyinal to size for each window and with the counter part of the velcro used that to kep the vyinal in place. The only issue we had is a few windows we did when it was already really cold, and the glue had a hard time setting from the velro to the vyinal. The windows we did ahead of time did not have this issue.

Temperature Gauges

We had a simple weather guage setup so we could keep an eye on key places in the RV.

This gave us reassurance that all our efforts keeping the heat in and the cold out where working and I didn't have to outside with my temp gun to check. We placed this sensors outside, in the basement bay (next to my lithium batteries), under the skirt, and the main unit tracked inside temp. This gave us huge peace of mind knowing everything was warm.

Dehumidifier

Depending on how you are heating your RV, your heat could come with moisture. It is important to remove the moisture because it can get into the walls, collect and get absorbed. This is when mold can set it and cause issues. Removing the moisture is important!

We ended up having an absolute BLAST staying in the deep snow. It felt like we were living in a winter postcard. With these tips and products, we were able to stay warm and really enjoy our time! For most items, we have found the are great to have throughout the year as everything on board needs to carry many purposes to be worth its weight.

Links:

Tiger Run RV Resort

Products:

Truck Must Haves

• Diesel fuel anti-gel

• AutoSox

• Snow Broom

RV Must Haves

• EZ Snap RV Skrit

• Winterized Hose

• Small electric underbelly heater

• Wireless Temp Gun

• Propane Tank Gauge

Inside Features

• Weather mats

• Boot Pan

• Dyson Heat/Cool fans

• Window Vynal

• Dehumidifier

• Temp gauges

Things we wish we had

• Vent Covers on the Roof

• Hot Water Bottles for the Beds