12 Best COLD Winter RV Camping Tips That Will Keep You Safe and Warm

You can do is actually get what's called a skirt. Our boy Desert Snow and he's such a good boy. It's not too cold for what's called a poop popsicle. I too hate sweaty walls. Tanya's technique for getting rid of the grackles. Preparing your camper van for a winter RV life can be a real challenge and certainly varies depending on the rig you have. Now we've been living in our Winnebago Echo. Desert. Snow. For over a year we've been in the snow a lot. We've learned a lot. We're going to share our experiences with you and also tips that will apply not just to our Winnebago Echo but to your rig as well. So that is the name of our RV Desert Snow and it's because we're from Boston as well as Las Vegas and while we do love spring and summer RVing we enjoy winter camping as well right babe? Oh man there is nothing quite like winter camping whether it's that winter campfire in the snow, whether it's going off snowshoeing, whether it's going off like crazy sledding or even hot tent camping. We've had so much fun. Yes so that's exactly right and today we're going to share with you how we prepare our camper van for winter RV camping but it's not exactly what you think. And just real quick you may hear some planes going overhead because we are camping right now right next to the Las Vegas airport getting ready before we head off into the mountains. Oh and don't think you snowbirds that this information doesn't apply to you as well because winter is coming for all of us. Hey babe let's talk about a cold wind in the winter. What that means for rigs right? That can really make it cold pretty quickly especially kind of coming down here. If you have wind blowing under the rig kind of getting up underneath even though the Echo is insulated there's still some weakness underneath. You can feel that cold a little bit in some places and so what you can do is actually get guess what we call it a skirt and that's a skirt that's right it's basically an insulated piece of fabric that you basically button all around the rig to stop that wind flow from coming under under your rig and now we haven't done that yet maybe we'll do that if we start doing some really extreme cold weather camping right for a long time we'll probably get ourselves a skirt as well. Now many RVers would consider draining their water pipes and their tanks in the winter to prevent them from freezing. Many going as far as putting in some RV antifreeze. We don't have to do that for a couple of reasons. Well first and I will say this our boy Desert Snow and he's such a good boy all of his water tanks and lines are behind these thick insulated walls and floors which really helps to prevent them from freezing but also behind these insulated walls our water control panel our garage space it all has ducted heat which allows us to go off grid in the cold weather for an extensive amount of time without any freezing but speaking of which inside this garage if we were at a campground and we had an insulated hose and we wanted to plug up to the water we can certainly do that but we don't and a couple reasons why we have a 50 gallon fresh so we fill it up but we do quite a bit more boondocking than in campgrounds so with that being said we don't need it. Now many RVs have what's called single pane windows and those will bleed heat incredibly they are not very well insulated at all and you'll see people actually putting up insulation barriers over those windows which can actually block all the light into the rig which is kind of depressing but what we have here is actually dual pane windows which is very different i said dual pane windows dual pane dual pane oh wait dual pane windows hi um yeah as you can see they're dual um nice and dually which allows us to not only enjoy the outside and bring in some of that natural light but it also allows me to close this keep you out of my dirty kitchen and that's all there is to say about that what's up next on the agenda now have you ever enjoyed a just a wonderful popsicle in the winter it's too cold for popsicles in the winter i prefer like hot cocoa well it's not well that actually is kind of relevant it's not too cold for what's called a poop popsicle okay let me show you ew a poop popsicle like why do i need to see a poop popsicle no thank you well fortunately fortunately you probably won't won't have to at all but actually a common problem that you can run into when you're winter camping in traditional rigs if you basically assume this is that we don't have a black tank and we'll talk about that later but this is our gray tank drain and many times this is what will be behind insulated walls like it is here but this can freeze up right and cause a lot of damage but another issue is if you actually connect your black tank to the drain in the winter that that actual uh pipe can actually freeze up as well and crack and also create like frozen whatever like poop popsicles in there as well so you don't want to do that if you're gonna camp and you have a black tank don't stay hooked up to the drain pipe in the winter much just just drain it when you hook it up when you're draining it and then put it back after you're finished draining now of course babe you know we don't have a black tank right right we have this wonderful cassette toilet behind this insulated wall which is convenient for us but what do you call this thing again it's your toilet suitcase that's right portable toilet suitcase and i see it you kind of take this out and you can dump this anywhere what you can't dump it anywhere where can you really dump it because you don't want people thinking that we dump it on the ground yeah no no no no timeout so of course we don't do that at all but you know any toilet porta potty of course rv park places like that rest area there's a lot of instant noodles here in a cassette you can dump it in many places all right so really quick for those of you wondering well how do we survive with that tiny cassette toilet off boondocking for say a couple of weeks well i have in that garage space right over there hidden right over there in that garage space i have a tent and a princess toilet along with a couple of lovely disposable bags where we can then once we get off to the next spot go ahead and just dump them so it's a convenient way to stay off grid and enjoy yourself without being out of luck oh my goodness gracious did you just fart no i did not fart crazy that's someone's releasing the black tank i think somewhere yeah now for those with other rigs and if you have a black tank certainly let us know in the comments below how you handle your black tank during the cold winter months just pause this video right now go ahead down there leave a comment and let us know and then come on back and continue right where you left off i'll see you in a second all right so quick story time so when dave and i first got desert snow we were definitely excited about going off and doing some winter camping and we're talking about places where the temperature was going to get down to the single digits so yes it's a brand new rv they do ensure that it's got great insulation but you never know it's an rv so for our comfortability we just wanted to make sure those compartments were actually being heated and sustaining temperatures way above freezing so we ended up getting this they're called temp sticks so we got a couple of these temperature sticks and we placed them in various places around the rv and the biggest reason for us doing that was it allowed us to monitor the temperature via wi-fi so even away from the rv we were able to check the temperatures on a frequent basis to know what the readings were now you will have to have some sort of wi-fi connection in your rv for them to work but they work amazing and if you're curious about learning more of this we do have a link in our amazon store below where you can learn more about these temp sticks but for us they work really well and we have three and we love them now we do have a small dirty secret we have a small base heater which we do use on occasion i gotta admit when it gets really cold sometimes up here in the transit side of the echo it gets a bit drafty so we may have the space heater to kind of warm up this area a little bit but you never want to just rely on the space heater to heat the whole rig you need to use the rig's heater that we talked about before that heat warms the compartments that are kind of maintaining you know the water and everything else from not freezing all right babe it's time for a little bit of a game changer winter rv camping talk you ready for that oh the game changer the rv game changer you know what we're talking about well we are talking about our heating system both the heater and the hot water right we have the aqua go for the water heat what do we got for the heat inside the vario heat on the inside right the trim of vario heat and we found that these systems are just unbelievably efficient of course i run off propane we have two 20 pound propane tanks we found that after eight nights last winter in 15 degree weather we ran the heater constantly for those eight nights we only used three quarters of one of the tanks that's right that was awesome that was awesome that is incredibly efficient and the other was full i know exactly exactly you can't believe it so i mean it's incredibly efficient incredibly quiet we're toasty inside so it's pretty darn good definitely not sponsored but hey truma you know let us know but yeah it's not sponsored but one thing we did add on this one you don't want to drive with the propane on and one concern we had was well if the propane is not on is there a risk of the aqua go actually freezing go if you're driving down really cold wet through really cold weather with nothing on here because there is water that's quite close here as you can see so we've added in truma provides this effectively an electric antifreeze system that's in here so the propane will be off but the antifreeze electric system prevents any freezing yeah and dave did a great job installing that and if you're driving down the road in the freezing cold there is a preventative measure right well yeah well when you set this up i mean you go inside and actually turn on the the system but you do need to kind of put this in here as well so the air won't kind of cut back in just kind of put that in here and close it up and you'll see right there you know it's right when it's sticking through there and you're good to go but you got to turn it off first before you do that so what am i doing here no it is already off oh my goodness it's off look at it i did it right i did it right but we don't need this right now so before we get into this next part which i feel is a really important piece as to why we truly enjoy off-grid camping and camping in winter in desert snow is a bonus tip and that has to do with propane and some of you b-classers or van lifers may not have it but a lot of rvs still have propane and rely rely on propane for cooking maybe even your heating things that nature so for us having such a smaller rig we like to preserve our propane and and the way we do that is by not using it when we don't have to such as cooking so i'm going to show you really quick i have a single burner induction portable cooktop and for me it's really important i love to cook and so instead of wasting the propane which we like to use and preserve for the hot water and the heat i tend to use my induction cooktop and if you don't have one they're very easy to find you can find them anywhere as a matter of fact i love to cook so if you haven't seen any of our videos when i'm cooking some food you should go check them out because i can cook up a main storm i'm just i love it right oh man you cook amazing food baby amazing oh no i mean it though you're so really quick about the propane one last piece is one great thing that we have is a monitoring system for the propane tank so we know what the levels are before we actually start heading to our destination our mopika system they attach right on to the bottom of the propane tanks you can use either the monitor that's in the rv or you can use it via app and we find that to be very efficient and a peace of mind especially if you're going to be winter camping well welcome to our bedroom area and i feel it's a great opportunity for us to talk about sweaty walls oh i love sweaty walls i know you like sweaty walls nothing like a sweaty ball good times good times i hate sweaty walls especially in an rv all right we are talking about condensation now i know a lot of us in the rv community have dealt with or may still be dealing condensation and the way we especially in a smaller rv try to prevent that condensation from happening is we do a couple things one we open up our max vent fan give it just a crack to allow circulation of airflow out in that direction we have a small fan that we'll sometimes use if need be but our game changer when it comes to condensation is a small dehumidifier you talking about this a small dehumidifier yes i mean for us some folks who use the traditional size ones but because we have such a small rig on rv we have to accommodate and so we have a small dehumidifier and let me tell you that puppy comes in handy especially during those winter months so we're really excited to you know get out there and explore and soak up that moisture in the dehumidifier and and so does bray bray right bray bray i too hate sweaty walls oh god i hate sweaty walls especially if there's no catnip involved do you hear all those grackles say hi to the grackles the grackles are everywhere crackles are speaking to us they're in the trees listen listen i just hope they don't crap on the rig i know we just got washed they might can you say oh no they're don't you dare say that all right well they're still serenading us but we need to talk about one more feature of our rv that was super important to us is super important to us and that of course is all-wheel drive we do a lot of driving on snow-covered roads you know ice mud exactly mud as well traction has been great we have a lot of confidence in driving this thing super important and plus we actually just just did cut off the presses a absolute major mod and we're going to cover that in an upcoming video so hit that subscribe button and stay tuned for that my goodness gracious town is technique for getting rid of the grackles you have a better way i think you should kind of yell it out that's not working crackle wait i'm afraid they're gonna poop me the story of the grackles so since you're hanging out with dave and myself and the grackles this long there's a couple quick bonuses i want to share with you even if it's the winter you don't always have to sit inside and be stuck in the warm you can also take that warm on the outside and a couple quick things that we enjoy one here is our propane fire pit whether you're using a individual 20 pound propane tank that you may carry an extra one for us we have a quick connect that we tend to connect directly to our rv which is very very handy sit around the fire and have a couple drinks now there's another thing that we like to use which is a fire pit are basically it's called a solo fire pit and for us it's very very efficient we get a couple stacks of wood and we can go through those very very slowly because of the efficiency of this stove so we really do enjoy that getting outside and enjoying some of nature even in the winter months exactly enjoy the campfire i love the winter campfire and with the zone i can make s'mores who doesn't want s'mores in the winter i'm hungry s'mores in the winter actually i can go for some s'mores right now i'm kind of hungry i got steak and s'mores all right so we lie there's actually one final thing that you have to do especially if you're going to be inside staying toasty warm during these cold winter months that's right check out the full tour video of desert snow right here that's right you guys check it out right there we'll wait a second just tap somewhere look right there and we'll see you in the next one