Cold Weather RV Camping: Tips and Equipment for Greater Comfort

We recently received a question from an RV Repair Club member that wants to do some winter camping, and saying, "What should I be aware of in camping in cold weather?" Well, the first thing you need to know, is where your water lines are located and how well they're protected. If you go into below freezing weather and your water lines are exposed to that cold weather, it won't take long and that small little water pipe is gonna freeze up, and could possibly burst. So you wanna be able to put in, maybe you can get an option, where there's a heat pad. Some of them have a winterized, winterizing kit, or not winterizing, a winter kit, that includes a heat blanket, additional batteries, that type of stuff. You wanna be able to maybe supplement that heat.

What I've done using an RV in the wintertime, is just put a small little ceramic heater, down in the water center. And that keeps all the water pump, pipes, everything warm. You can also get a catalytic heater, which runs on the small little propane bottles. Very few fumes, one of the safest heaters you can have inside your coats even, because thing you gotta remember about the RV is, even though you have heat ducts in various places, you don't have that cold air return. So you don't have, you get a lot of pockets of cold air.

So you wanna make sure that you look for those. Otherwise, I would look for additional propane, because you're gonna be using the heater quite a bit. I would look at additional battery capacity as well. That'll all help extend the life and the use of that RV in the wintertime.