Thanksgiving week camping in the cold in Texas

[aggie94]

Just looking for advice to keep warm for next week.

We are camping in our x20e for the Thanksgiving week in central Texas. It is going to be much colder that usual for this time of year. The first three days the high temperatures will be in the 40s. Lows in the mid 30s. It will warm up to highs of 50s by the end of the week.

We have heated mattress pads, a Lasko medium room space heater, sleeping bags and long underwear. Will we freeze if we don't use the furnace? I am afraid to use it.

We have always lived in Texas and are not used to cold weather.

Thank you!

[Camper_bob]

I've camped in Texas all my life, year-round. I've woken up with ice crystals forming on my sleeping bag. As long as you have the proper gear, and you stay dry, you should be fine. Also remember not to scrape ice off any fabric components, the ice will take any surface treatments with it.

But I'm curious, why not run the furnace?

Our tech told us during our PDI that the furnace would eat the propane in a hurry, but I ran it for a couple hours straight the other day to get the stink out (new unit) and it did just fine. But then my neighbor's opinion is "why waste the propane at all? If you're hooked up to shore power, just use an electric space heater." You don't need much of one to just take the chill off that small amount of space. In fact, if you recall here in Texas about a month ago, we had that first cold snap where it got down in the 30's at night, and we used a tiny space heater just to remove a little chill from the rig in the morning; worked beautifully. But for more than that, we would use both the furnace and the little space heater in conjunction.

[Denise]

We use a space heater which warms up our 29bhs pretty well (we do keep the bathroom door closed). We typically stay where we have shore power, but if traveling and boondocking at a WM for example, we use our propane heater. We are currently camping in a mountainous area where it's been running around 40 degree's at night. Space heater does the job

[wmoses]

I use the furnace to bring the RV up to temperature then use the electric space heater to maintain the temperature. The trick is to get the balance right so that the furnace only kicks in after the electric heater can't keep up. At least that was how it was in my old 17Z. This new RV is many times larger and I doubt that the electric heater will keep up as well. That said the insulation is much better. I think the OP should be fine provided they also bring appropriate clothes.

[Bob Landry]

RV furnaces are perfectly safe to use. I don't see why anyone would have reservations using them. That said, we use space heaters most of the time because we do not require a lot of heat, but I don't hesitate to fire off the furnace if I need to. I also installed a separate 20A inlet and ran a couple of outlets for the space heaters so it wouldn't eat into my 30A allowance. I figure I'm paying foe the electricity, I may as well use it.

[RedHorse1]

We've camped comfortably with the nighttime temps in the high 20's. Our little electric space heater does the job nicely. I set the thermostat for 45 deg and will hear it come on a couple of times during the night. When I get up to use the head for what I figure will be the last time before the bride gets up I will set the thermostat to 65 to start warming up. We've run the furnace in the driveway to burn the "smell" off (also sets off the CO/smoke detector - don't remember which) but have not used it while camping. Our heater is a Honeywell 1500W and I recall buying at our local Target. We sleep under a blanket and down comforter and are quite comfortable. We only have a single 30# propane tank and it is a real pain to take off so I don't like to use any propane that I don't have to.
What part of our great state will you be camping in?
Enjoy!

[yingpin]

Originally Posted by Bob Landry

RV furnaces are perfectly safe to use. I don't see why anyone would have reservations using them. That said, we use space heaters most of the time because we do not require a lot of heat, but I don't hesitate to fire off the furnace if I need to. I also installed a separate 20A inlet and ran a couple of outlets for the space heaters so it wouldn't eat into my 30A allowance. I figure I'm paying foe the electricity, I may as well use it.

Agreed! 40 Deg is beautiful compared to what we do during our Deer Camp trip in the mountains of Maryland. Last year I think it was 15 deg outside and we ran the furnace the entire time when we were not hunting. We were able to keep the hybrid at a pleasant 49 deg for the three day trip. We had to deal with a lot of condensation over the beds but we dressed warm and had a blast!