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Old 01-23-2010, 06:57 AM   #1
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What the Coldest Temp that you have Camped in ??

Do to some refinishing of the hardwood floors in the house, might have to spend a few nights out in the camper here in north eastern Pa.

Just curious as to the coldest (nightime) temps any of you have spent in your Sunlines.

I spent many nights in the camper when the temps were in the low 20's but none colder than that I can remember.
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Old 01-23-2010, 07:04 AM   #2
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Back in the early '80s, a few times in the upper 20s. However, since then have increasingly avoided chill-related camping.

Comes with increasing geezerdom! LOL!

Frank
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Old 01-23-2010, 07:29 AM   #3
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nasa42a

I know what you mean about the increased "Geezerdom".

The older I get, the warmer I want it.
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Old 01-23-2010, 08:07 AM   #4
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We have often camped in the low 20's, but only by weather chance. We don't do anything special except we always disconnect the water when below freezing to protect the water system. It seems the system can take some measure of freezing if it is not pressurized.

At these temperatures we do not run our heat at night, prefering to use an electric blanket.

We have been in colder temperatures in our Bounder and did manage to freeze the water inlet in one of our underneath compartments. After that we kept a AC lamp on in that compartment when substantially below freezing.

The Bounder does have an advantage in that all tanks are internal. Our trailer has two of three tanks internal. When we anticipate cold temperatures we try to keep the gray tank virtually empty. If we anticipate cold weather we try to be in a powered situation.

We have been in extended freezing and snow for one extended period and attached heater tape to our hose line, encasing it in pipe foam. Again we had no problem. A good portion of this time was without power other than the occasional running of our genertor.
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Old 01-23-2010, 01:53 PM   #5
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I'm not sure how cold it was, but when we first arrived here in Fla, we didn't bother running the anti-freeze out of our systems because it was below freezing for about a week or so. The other campers were running their water overnight so it wouldn't freeze.
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Old 01-23-2010, 02:02 PM   #6
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Ron and Alice,

We were in the same Florida freeze and did not run our water at night though I know some of our friends did in our park, leaving a slow drip in their sink.

We simply put water in our tank for night time and breakfast use, dumped our grey and black tanks, and disconnected and drained our water hose each night.

Usually by 9AM we would reconnect the water hose until disconnecting it about 10 PM.

Nothing froze in our Sunline and we do not run heat at night. As far as I know none of the water pipes are exposed, certainly not on ours.

I think it needs to get very cold to have a problem
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Old 01-23-2010, 05:58 PM   #7
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I have camped when it was low 20s overnight .... but it was in a tent with the Boy Scouts when I was an Assistant Scoutmaster
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Old 01-24-2010, 01:21 PM   #8
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We unintentionally did a lot of cold weather camping while traveling west last spring. The trailer was not winterized. The coldest overnight temp was 19 F for several nights. We managed to avoid winterizing because we had a lot of sun and the daytime temps rose quickly to at least 35. With this kind of temp range, the actual time spent below freezing overnight is only a couple of hours. Water has a very high specific heat capacity and does not freeze quickly--for example time to make ice cubes in freezer. We ran the furnace overnight and kept the electric HWH on as well. I opened the cupboard doors in the bathroom as that is the only cabinet without heat, but lots of plumbing. The water pump is in an outside compartment in the 2499, but close to the bedroom duct. The water heater and furnace are back to back in the same compartment so there's lots of heat in there. We never drove at temps below freezing as 60 mph wind would likely freeze stuff quickly. One problem is holding tanks. Our gray pipe was frozen one morning when I would have liked to dump before hitting the road. If the tanks are half full they won't likely freeze--and there's plenty of room for expansion if they do--but the small gray pipe is vulnerable. Again, the key for us was that daytime temps were always above freezing.

A 25,000 BTU furnace puts out a huge amount of heat and, if necessary, would be able to keep us warm at temps well below 20. We fired it up only after parking with an inside temp of close to 32 and were comfortable within minutes due to the warm air blowing around. It did take quite a bit longer to bring it up to 70.

I can't remember which trailer you have, but our 2499 is too big to keep warm with an electric heater if it's only 30 outside, the outer cabinets with all the plumbing won't get any heat then either. If you can use the facilities in the house, leave it winterized and run the furnace--you'll be comfortable. If you need water in the trailer try to schedule the job for daytime highs in the upper 30's.

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Old 01-24-2010, 03:21 PM   #9
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henryj

Thankfully will be able to use the facilities in the house.

I have a Sunline 2975, and will use the electric heater as we can.

Hopefully we will not use any water in the camper as it is winterized and will stay that way. Probably just boil water for coffee and maybe light microwave stuff. We will be able to use the kitchen in the house as well.

We don't have too much flexability, as to when the job will be done. The contractor says the wintertime is actually the best time to refinish Oak hardwood floors due to the moisture content being very low etc.

If the timing were later like around the end of march i would de-winterize the camper use the water etc and just keep the furnace on as nessecary untll the freezing weather is over. But it's a little too early for that.

thanks all
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Old 01-24-2010, 05:28 PM   #10
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Hi Sunline 1

I have camped down to 0 degrees F with the scouts in a tent. However I think you are after low temps in the Sunline ... LOL

We have gone down to 15F in the middle of January without issues. However we also Dr up the camper some to be able to do winter camping. The windows are the biggest source of heat loss. We put shrink wrap (hair dryer kind) on them and that really helps. However it does take time to do up a large camper.

In the T2499 we did not find the shrink wrap trick and just used the unit as stock. We did it dry camping, bringing in fresh water in 3 gallon cans and drinking water in 2 qt cleaned juice bottles. We had a porta potty from the PU days for middle of the night runs…

When we went to the new T310SR, well the windows are a lot more and large space to heat. Here we use both the furnace and the ceramic ele heaters but we have the windows covered.

Regardless of covering the windows you must vent the camper and by a fair amount or else the moisture will build heavy inside. It is worst for us when sleeping for the moisture build up. We crack open a roof vent on the other end of the camper from the bed room a full 1” on the opening end. Yes heat goes out it but so does the moisture. This keeps the moisture to a level of tolerable.

Good luck and hope this helps

John
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Old 01-24-2010, 05:38 PM   #11
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Winter

I know this does not relate to camping trailers or even tents, but if going out into the woods on skis with a back pack, gathering some spruce boughs to put on top of the snow to roll out your sleeping bag on, crawl into the bag and spend the night, counts as camping, - I have done that at -18°C (=0°F).
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Old 01-25-2010, 07:47 AM   #12
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On the way to Fla. last Christmas we spent the night in Carlisle PA. It was 23F when we went to bed and 18F when we woke up. The real problem we encountered was that we didn't turn the heat on when we stopped for fuel earlier so the memory foam mattress topper turned hard as a rock in the cold. We crawled into the bed anyway and as our body heat thawed the topper, we were sleeping in these body sized depressions which made it almost impossible to turn over until the heater thawed the rest of the foam.
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Old 01-25-2010, 12:49 PM   #13
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The coldest we've camped in is 17 degrees and that was in our popup. We camped a few times in sub-freezing temps in our popup.

The coldest we've experienced in our Sunline has been about 32.

In both cases, we used only electric space heaters to warm the camper. The Sunline was CONSIDERABLY more comfortable in that sort of weather.

In both cases, we remembered to store enough water to flush a few times (in the Sunline only) and to make coffee and tea before we shut off the water and drained the hose.

I completely agree with the comments about needing a bit more warmth as we get older!
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Old 01-25-2010, 01:07 PM   #14
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The coldest we've done has been about 8-10 degrees overnight. It was in the 30's during the day. We disconnected the water supply hose overnight and stored it coiled in the shower. We filled our fresh water tank for overnight use and ran the furnace. We also have electric heaters on all three tanks. We did not have any issues, but plenty of our neighbors did. One thing I'll say about the design of the waste water system on our coach, the valves on the grey and black tanks are located at the tank outlets which keeps the pipes dry. The pipe between the tank and the outlet (which is where thier valve(s) were) was where most of our neighbors had issues with freeze ups.

We left the bedroom vent open about 1" and were very comfortable temperature wise and moisture wise. We also have an electric heater that does very well at keeping the unit warm (we forgot it this particular weekend)

Mack
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Old 01-30-2010, 05:30 PM   #15
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Might have been last night Got pretty cold for this area, but I don't know what the temp was-only that it was below freezing. There was ice on everything when I woke up. At least it wasn't the snow much of NC experienced last night :P
Might have been the night I drove from PA to NC- about 3 weeks ago. Had a similar frozen foam experience as someone mentioned above. My pillow was too cold/hard to use. I spent the night in a roadside rest area, so had to use the furnace.
May be tonight. Already have my water hose stored in the shower as it was frozen when I checked to see if I still had water a few minutes ago
We don't close on our house until the first of March, so it may be some night soon!!
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Old 02-10-2010, 07:51 PM   #16
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I guess I am a little late to posting on this thread. Last year we camped in our trailer several weekends throughout the winter. Here are some pictures from one of the weekends. In the following picture you can see the outside temperature was 19.2 degrees and the low for the overnight was 12.0 degrees. I believe the coldest night we had was 5 degrees.

As John said your biggest source of heat loss will be the windows. We usually cut and place reflectixs in the windows and this make a huge difference. The other area of heat loss will be through the doors. We will hang a large blanket to cover the doors to prevent heat loss. Also another concern will be condensation build up. to help prevent this we always left a roof vent under a Maxx Air vent cover cracked open about in inch and a side window on the trailer cracked open a 1/2 inch. This would create a nice almost convection effect to help draw out the moist air. We also would use two ceramic heaters in the trailer to our surprise we found after the firs 24 hours our biggest problem was trying to prevent the trailer from getting too warm. Hope this information helps.

If you want to see more photos of our winter camping adventures from last year here are several other links to albums:

Album 1

Album 2

Album 3
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Old 02-11-2010, 04:35 AM   #17
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Nice pics, look like you had a fun time camping.

Maybe I should try winter camping ?
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Old 02-11-2010, 08:26 PM   #18
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunline1
TrailBlazer

Nice pics, look like you had a fun time camping.

Maybe I should try winter camping ?
Thanks, it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately this year circumstances did not allow us to do the winter camping. We are hoping we can do it again next year.
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Old 02-11-2010, 10:29 PM   #19
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Trailblazer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunline1
TrailBlazer

Nice pics, look like you had a fun time camping.

Maybe I should try winter camping ?
Thanks, it was a lot of fun. Unfortunately this year circumstances did not allow us to do the winter camping. We are hoping we can do it again next year.
Yes, winter camping is a lot of fun. And bummer we have not been out since after Thanksgiving day. The weather has been so bad and now we are under 24" of snow... it did go down a little today. I hope March has some hope....
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Old 02-12-2010, 11:38 AM   #20
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JohnB,

This white crap had better be gone by April !!!!!!! so we can get to Washington, PA for our camping weekend
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