My best friend just moved into a travel trailer due to financial difficulty. With winter coming, I was wondering if anyone had any advice to help keep her surviving through this year. We both know it won’t be a comfortable winter, but if we can keep things from breaking and make it as comfortable as possible, she may have a chance at surviving the winter.
She is currently wrapping water pipes. Seeking insulation for the air conditioner and solar lights for safety outdoors. I suggested lining the windows with plastic to help with drafts.
Does she need to wrap leads to gas tanks for heat? What else might we do to help keep leaks down, water flowing, and heat in?
My husband and I Full time RVd for 2 years. If your friend has her camper in a stationary place, tell her she will need to open her grey tanks and let her faucets just drizzle water so her water lines don’t freeze. She can use pool noodles to wrap her water hose and use duct tape to secure them. The faucet where her water line is connected, tell her to wrap that with a blanket and cover it with a trash can. That will keep her water from freezing. If she can get some bales of Hay, she can put them underneath her camper and it will act as a barrier against the cold and keep her rig warm. Definitely putting plastic over her windows is a great idea.
We’ll see what we can do about hay bales. Her daughter lives out by a place which has horses, so I’m sure we can find something.
Since the homeless steal stuff out here, we are concerned about having blankets out where they can be seen, but covering with a trash can is a good idea to hide the valuables. We were shopping for a blanket, today too, when she realized theft was likely.
I’ll keep you updated as to her results. Thank you again.
She found out that hay is not allowed because of fire hazard (in case someone flicks a cigarette) and pest infestations. New Mexico is known for rats and bubonic plague, so city officials frown on anything that would support rodent populations.
The idea of putting something under the rig is still a good one. We are researching other ideas. When I mentioned the trash can idea over the phone, she got thoughtful.
Ok. If you can’t use bales of hay, how about tarps. I went to Harbor Freight and bought medium thickness tarps. You have to lay them out completely straight and cut them lengthwise. You can use snaps to attach them but I didn’t. I wasn’t working so I used zip ties and attached the tarp to the bottom of the rig. I think it took about 2 tarps for my rig. I don’t know the length of her rig or how it’s set up. If she can get cinderblock to go behind it that would be a good way to hold it in place until she could get something more permanent. At some point I would shoot for weather treated lattice to go around the bottom. Feel free to message me anytime. I can just about walk you thru anything on a camper. LOL. I’ve owned one for the last 15 years and I have done just about everything with mine.
use the pink sheet foam from home depot get the 2" thick one wrap the camper to prevent airflow
under neath. than add a small electric heater. I have pipe line warmers on my waterlines. that keep the lines at 45 to 50 all winter, the are set to come on automatically. I run them on my p traps and all running water lines. my camper doesn’t have a hot water tank so only have . for the ac build an foam box to cover it but you’ll want to make sure its not a heater unit as well other wise it will need to be exposed… depending on the age of the camper/rv the insulation should be decent up to 32-0 degrees most older ones 1989- 60’s need new insulation and thats a huge process due to it requiring a full removal of the skins from the outside in. keep in mind campers and rv/s are build from the inside out so you need to reverse the process…
