Cold weather Camping - Some real experience

My wife and I just returned from Banff NP in Alberta Canada, we were up there for a week where the temperatures ranged from ~50 deg highs on one day to a whiteout blizzard to extreme lows overnight (-6 F).  With all the discussion on this forum recently about winterizing, cold weather camping and tank heaters, I figured I’d share our experience.

IMO, you have 3 problems, in general, to deal with.  Inside heat, condensation and freezing lines/tanks/dump gates.  

Starting with the easy one - inside heat.  The Alde system works well on either electric or propane BUT it takes a very long time to heat up the trailer from cold on setup.  I’m talking hours.   One example, we arrived to one camp ground and it was ~45 out. Hooked up to power and running the Alde on 2kW AC it took over 2.5 hours to heat the inside temperature of the trailer up from 45 to 65.

On the plus side, once the trailer gets hot, it seems to stay hot.  During the extreme cold stretch where we hit -6F and 2 days with HIGHS of 20 deg F, the Alde kept the inside of the trailer a balmy 70 deg F.  In this case we found that hotter is better because you’re going to run into condensation issues.

To avoid condensation, you’ll need to do a few things.  Above 25-30 deg F or so you’ll want to vent a side window and the top vent.  Below 25F the air will be dry enough that you really only need to vent the top vent.  On top of that, the outside air will be so cold that any side window venting will result in cold spots on certain walls.

Here’s where condensation, heat and ‘trailer configuration’ will come together.  First off, it’s best to leave the front table/couch area setup as a table.  Setup as a couch, the front Alde vents are blocked and you’ll get extreme cold spots on the inside front walls. This will be exaggerated by the seat cushions. These cushions will act as insulation, and you’ll end up with a super cold wall.  This cold wall will start to sweat and you’ll get lots of condensation on the back side.  At night we got into the habit of pull the cushions off the walls to create a small air gap.

Other spots that will be condensation problems are the top cubbies where your speakers are and above the bathroom cabinets. There’s just no airflow in these pockets so they form localized cold spots and start to sweat. 

The next time we go ‘extreme cold weather camping’, we’re going to add small oscillating fans (tiny USB powered ones) to push air into these corners.  I might also add some vanes behind the cushions to create tiny air pockets.  Airflow is your friend in this case.

Now onto the tanks, valves and water supply lines.

Before the trip we added DC powered tank heaters.  One to the grey tank, one to the fresh for ~35W each.  This was plenty.  I saw somebody post on here they thought 4 were necessary; that’s just not the case.  These tanks aren’t really prone to freezing* as the Alde will be keeping the inside of the trailer nice and hot - which will somewhat leak down.  Even at -6 outside, under our trailer underside was just below freezing.

We did not add any heat to either our cold water supply line or the valves and these ended up being our problems spots.  If I were to redo my prep work, I’d forget about the tank heaters and focus my efforts in these areas.  I think everyone else planning work should take that into consideration.

The first freezing problem we had was our cold water supply line.  This is the blue line behind the drivers side wheel that feeds the water pump.  It’s a 1/2 inch pex line and is the first thing prone to freeze.  I had hoped the tank heaters would keep this warm enough, but that’s only true when using the water.  Overnight this froze.  Thankfully pex can expand/contract a bit.  We put a space heater under the trailer and unfroze this line multiple times.

The second and more concerning freezing problem we had was our grey tank lines.  We ended up wrapping them with kitchen towels and running the space heater on them.  The towels kept the heat in and we successfully dumped on our last day when the outside temps were ~15 deg F.

Overall I was very happy with our first ‘extreme cold weather’ T@B camping.  However, being an engineer, I can’t leave well enough alone. Before our next trip I’m going to insulate the entire basement and come up with a insulated/heated solution for the dump valve area.

My advice for others looking to do this is to focus on airflow inside and the valves/supply line underneath.  That’s going to be your problem.