Our Winter RVing Adventure
On March 21, 2017 by Jay McCormickFolks…there are some affiliate links in this post. I will only provide affiliate links to products I’ve used and that I’m happy with.
In this post I’ll discuss what we did to survive a month of winter RVing in Park City, Utah. Winter RVing can be a lot of fun with proper planning and a little patience. I had a good plan, but learned a lot…some of it the hard way.
We arrived in Park City, Utah on December 30th and were greeted by sunny skies and relatively mild weather (in the 30s). Over the next 4 weeks the Park City area would experience one of its snowiest months in history receiving almost 12 feet of the fluffy white stuff. The skiing was AMAZING!
Skirting
Since we are likely upgrading our fifth-wheel in the next year I elected not to spend the approximately $1,800 to have a custom made skirt. Instead I concocted a plan to make a temporary skirt from Reflectix. I found a roll of 48″ x 125′ Reflectix online at The Home Depot, placed the order, having it shipped to the Park City store. I figured I would have some waste and could use any excess to wrap pipes.
Once the product arrived (a few days later than expected) I unrolled, cut, taped until the RV was skirted. I used Nashua Extreme Weather Foil Tape on the majority of the skirt with some all-weather duct tape in various areas where the foil tape didn’t want to cooperate. My strategy in primarily using the foil tape is it would be easier to remove, not leave a gluey residue, and not remove the decals or paint. This worked as expected.
It took me about 4 hours to 
completely skirt the RV. I left seams at each tank valve (we have two valves in the front and one in the back. I was careful not to cover the furnace exhaust, doors, or any other areas that I would need to access.
Overall the Reflectix/tape combo worked great. I made some mistakes (noted below), but it did reduce wind movement under the RV, prevented snow from settling under the RV, and kept the temps under the RV slightly higher (I did not measure the temps under the RV, but there was a noticeable difference). I did put a small space heater under the RV directed at the exposed pipes from my black tank and one of my gray tanks.
The few things that I would do differently:
- Make sure that there is excess insulation at the bottom. In some places I left a gap that allowed wind in.
- I would staple the installation to 2 x 4s around the entire bottom of the RV.
- I would use more tape to ensure that the skirting stayed intact. There were a few times that high winds caused the skirting to separate from the RV.
Pipes, Valves and Hoses
I had left some water in the fresh water tank and planned on using that the first night until I could wrap (to protect) our new $109 heated water hose. This was a mistake as the temps dropped and the water in the tank froze. We discovered this when trying to use the water pump in the middle of the night. The pump does not work well with ice cubes (note: once the freshwater tank thawed…29 days later…the pump worked fine…lucky). The third night in PC the temps dropped below zero with a wind chill of -29. We had issues. (TIP: If you don’t have heated tanks make sure your fresh water tank is empty)
I used the Pirit 25 ft Heated Hose. To add some protection to my new investment I wrapped the hose in some thin, cheap pipe insulation I picked up at Wal Mart. I did not install a filter on this hose as it would have certainly froze. I did wrap some installation around the pressure regulator and the connection in the RV docking station. Thirty days in PC with temps below freezing most of the time and this hose did not freeze a single time. (TIP: a quality heated water hose is a must)
I can’t say the same for the sewer hoses. I strung a lengthy section of hoses under one of the slides then skirted around the slide. I emptied my tanks after a few days and did not check to ensure all the liquids made their way completely through the hoses. Rookie mistake! The section under the slide was essentially full of liquids and froze. (Tip: Make sure your sewer hoses are completely empty). I ended up purchasing a spare hose and only connecting when I needed to empty the tanks. A little extra time to save my hoses.
The other freezing issue we experienced was with our dump valves. The valves would periodically freeze and I would typically wait until the temperature rose enough for the valves to thaw. I did purchase a heat gun, dropped the underbelly and used the gun to expedite the thawing process. One of my neighbors said he wrapped his valves and pipes with a product called Easy (or EZ) Heat and stated that it worked great. Again…we were lucky that we had no pipes burst.
Space Heaters vs. The Furnace
Some of the best advice that we received as rookie RV’ers was to purchase a couple of space heaters to use on cool nights instead of firing up the furnace. The obvious reason to use the space heaters was to minimize the use of propane saving a little (to a lot) of money. This was a constant balancing act. We relied primarily on the space heaters (and our newly installed electric fireplace) during the day and we would turn on the furnace at night when the temps would drop. The space heaters were more than adequate to keep our RV cozy, but since the underbelly is ducted we wanted to give our tanks and valves a fighting chance. I think it helped. When I would open the storage bay I could feel the heat. In addition to placing a space heater in the main living area we also put a couple of rugs down on the vinyl floor. This helped tremendously. (Tip: Use rugs on non-carpeted floors)
Condensation and Freezing Windows
Almost every morning we would wake up to a sheet of ice over all the windows. Fighting the condensation problem was a losing battle. We adjusted the thermostats, left space heaters running, cracked windows, and purchased a small (much too small) dehumidifier. Next year we plan to purchase a larger dehumidifier. Note: We have the traditional single pane windows.
Frozen Exhaust Pipe
On a couple of occasions the sewer exhaust pipe (on the roof) was covered in snow and ice. The result was a smelly, burping toilet. This was easily fixed by removing snow and ice from the areas around and on the exhaust pipes. Depending on the amount of snowfall, I would remove snow and ice from the roof at least once a week. Sometimes more.
Ready for more…
Winter RVing may sound daunting, but with a some proper planning and a little elbow grease it can be a wonderful adventure. We loved it so much we already booked our site in Park City next winter for TWO months.
Please don’t hesitate to reach out to me if you have any questions.
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