RV with No Winter Mods | RV Mods
So, you’d like to get out winter camping but have not done any “winter mods” yet? Well, there is another way to take advantage of the season while contemplating some future modifications. (In fact, depending on just how often you intend to camp in cold temperatures, this could be your “go to” solution.)
The mods on our RV Winter Camping page have been designed to cater for those times in early spring or late fall when we are operating the coach with normal summer functionality, but don’t want to go home when the overnight temperatures drop well below freezing. Those mods allow us to seamlessly go from warm temps, to freezing temps, and then back to warm temps. But, there have been times when we have had to quickly dig the sealed up motor home out of a snow bank at the storage yard and get it “campworthy” to prepare for an unexpected mid-winter trip, with no hope of temperatures going above freezing. In order to accomplish this type of operation, we operate like this:
1 – Forget about the Winnebago plumbing. Leave your coach plumbing completely winterized. For a View / Navion (or any other RV, for that matter) without winter mods, you can resort to localized plumbing – A cassette toilet and a below counter grey water tank…
We put a cassette toilet in the shower, which gives us lots of room to use it like a normal toilet. We opt to use a jug of water, stored nearby, to be the flush water instead of using the toilet’s flush system. This keeps the toilet’s centre of gravity down low (I have not figured out how to practically restrain it from leaving the shower in the event of a hard stop, so with a low centre of gravity I’m banking on the toilet not being able to make it over the lip of the shower…), and also helps to conserves water. We only use the amount of water that we need.
These cassette toilets can be split in two, to allow you to carry the bottom (black water resevoir) somewhere to dump in a real toilet that is handy. Or, if your trip is not too lengthy and you have not used up the five gallon / 20 litre capacity, wait til you get home and simply take it in the house when you are unpacking the motorhome.
These cassette toilets are easy to find:
For washing up, we rely on a jug on the counter with a tap:
We replenish this counter top supply from larger jugs of water we bring along and store in the coach elsewhere.
To easily collect the grey water, we place a bucket under the sink. We only use one sink; in our View that would be the kitchen sink. The bucket is easy to empty, wherever you want. (Depending on where you are camping, that place could be fairly close by…) Remove the kitchen P Trap, and you are ready to go.
For any type of winter camping, plumbing or no plumbing, we also consider these:
2 – It is a must to have some sort of divider between the cab and the coach, as all those windows up front do nothing to help keep heat in the cab. (I’d recommend closing off all of the air ducts, and turning off the heating system prior to shutting off the truck, in an attempt to keep cold air from leaking into the cab, as well.) You don’t need anything elaborate to do this job – we use a curtain made of two sleeping bags zipped together. Have a look at our curtain, found on our Miscellaneous Mods page:
In addition, we also close off the privacy curtains up on the overhead bunk; that helps quite a bit.
3 – If possible, we try to clear the snow from the roof, especially in the vicinity of the fan vents; bathroom and kitchen. It is handy to be able to use the fans in the kitchen and bathroom to remove humidity from cooking. (I’m a bit nervous walking around on the thin Filon fibreglass roof during super cold temperatures, so if I have to go up there in the winter - I sit on the roof and try to keep my weight distributed. Dunno. Just me, maybe.)
4 – If we are dry camping, we run the generator semi-frequently. It tends to like starting better if not super cold, but in reality, because we run it when operating the microwave – it tends to keep at a decent temperature anyway. We’ve found that we can stay away from really long battery charging cycles if we fire it up to do the cooking, instead of using the coach batteries / inverter to power the microwave. If we are out and about during the day driving, the alternator does a pretty good job of keeping the batteries topped off if we have not deep drained them by using the microwave.
TIP - Discharging or charging the coach batteries do warm them up nicely. If you are dry camping and your lithium batteries are too cold to accept a charge - and you have the luxury of using a bit of battery capacity to power a large load - try running the microwave via your inverter for a couple of minutes. That might get you above the charge cutout temperature controlled by the lithium battery management systems and allow the batteries to get happy accepting a charge. (If you don’t have temperature monitoring of your lithium coach batteries, and you do plan on spending time camping in the cold, I highly recommend you adding that feature to your mod list…)
5 - We leave the slide on our 24J IN for winter operations. On our J model, the coach is fully useable with the slide in, and it greatly reduces the amount of volume that we need to heat. Interior temperatures stay quite toasty with the slide in.
6 - We have been quite surprised how warm the coach gets while driving in cold temperatures. We don’t drop the thermal cab blanket, as we use heat from the cab to keep the coach warm. The cab would definitely be warmer if we did drop the thermal blanket, but the coach seems content to take the leftover cab heat and stay around 60F / 15C if we are driving in reasonable winter temperatures. During driving breaks, with the propane furnace on, the coach comes up to room temperature very quickly.
Note - If you don’t have Lithium batteries, you are A Ok right out of the snow bank. Your electrical system is good to go in sub-zero temperatures, and you can start using the propane furnace to bring the coach up to livable temperatures. But, we have lithium batteries - so we have to bring them up to a temperature above the battery management system’s charging cut-out temperature of around -4 C, or 25 F. Because we have a Lithium Battery Heater mod, this is pretty easily accomplished. (It takes about 8 to 10 hours to get them from super cold to a temperature where they will accept a charge, so we definitely have to plan in advance.) They do heat themselves while in use, so we monitor them closely to see if we need to keep the heat on. But again, if you have lead acid batteries (including AGM), all you have to do is put them back in the coach, or hook them up, or just turn on the battery master, and you are good to start using 12 volt electicity in the coach.
Another Note - As you know, you don’t need the coach’s battery system to be able to use 120 volt shore power. If the coach is plugged into shore power at your house, all the 120 volt outlets are powered with residential power. You can warm up the coach with electric heaters, independent of the propane heat, until you get your battery system sorted out…
And, that is about it. No winter mods? No big deal. Get yourself a cassette toilet and a bucket, and away you go.
