Full-Time RV: Cold Weather Boon-docking.

I'm in Ohio and a lot of people like why don't you just drive your house somewhere else warm and I want you to just mind your own damn business I wish I could I don't want to be in Ohio in the wintertime I don't want to be Ohio in the summertime but I have two young ones here and s Trump says anchor babies I got two young anchor babies that keep me stuck to this enchanted land so that's why I'm here howdy folks a lot of people asking me how I make it through the winter living in a vehicle so it's gonna do a little video and I'll show you a little tips and tricks I did a big winterizing video when I first got it through my first winter I'll post that below I also did one about solar panels that's below and the foam insulation as a bunch of videos below but I'm not gonna get into complete detail on all this stuff I'm just gonna basically give you my day-to-day kind of operation living in this thing in the winter but I'll start out here I got in this bin this is a fairly recent happening this winter has been extremely cold but a lot of snows to an actual real winter it was very wet and cold the other night and my LOC froze this happened quite a bit and normally it's been okay I just kind of used a cigarette lighter from something and try to heat it up but it wasn't quite enough and Mikey broke off in there which is not nice at one o'clock in the morning in the snow it may not be able get into your own house so I keep this guy in the this is why I like about this is it's I feel like it's both hillbilly and gangster at the same time and then you don't burn your house down but keep it out just a little bit heats it up gets all the water out of there and then zing you got your key in there and I keep that at the ready right here with my other tanks right here I have two individual propane tanks these were not set up with the RV I added these two one way to each content for how full they are as you can see the frost on the outside so I know I'm about 3/4 on this one I always have one full so the second one is changed like when I switch it immediately go get the other one cuz in case you're out somewhere and you're not gonna be able to get to propane god I think this guy here to keep my court here if I'm ever lucky enough to be near a plug and I get the plug in I can use the electric space heater when I'm plugged in but if not the solar power power and the batteries don't have enough juice to support a space heater but typically I don't really need one because I got these guys here and propane is a pretty Hardy resource again this guys here at the ready and recently I've been using this quite a bit to get into my own house [Applause] this seems like a pretty obvious thing but you don't want snow all over your floor because then it turns to water then your waters all wet so I keep my slippers right there by the door mr. Rogers style you're in and out also I try my best to get my kids to do it but I always got a little compartment up here and throw my gloves and hats and such flashlights there's no need for outside right in there this might sound like a silly thing to think about but one time especially if you have kids there's like coats and boots and gloves everywhere and it's gonna drive you insane especially if you're in a small space so I use make sure you have some closet space ready for the coast and say designated code area designated glove area and again if any parents out there they know that's gonna be a daily struggle to enforce that rule but at least as long as you have a program in place it makes it more fun to yell at them so it's important my primary source of heat is the mr. buddy heater I've gotten a lot of this thing I bought this thing two years ago and I've more than got my money's worth out of it this is the hose that goes that propane tank and it runs down to a little hole on the floor there I usually get about continuous run about five days out of a six gallon tank and that the price ranges anywhere from two to three dollars per gallon and those things so typically right now I'm looking at about $25 a week for heating but that's about run it continuously but I don't normally run a continually run it when I'm in it or if it's below zero I leave it on because otherwise everything in the fridge freezes and all that kind of stuff they're pretty easy to use it's got a little igniter deal over here just one double-a battery then you put it to pilot flight you push down it's lit lit up and then then you fire it up and then there it goes it says high or low but really it's a high or just off so really it's uh I mean that's what low looks like but it's unless hot did this thing gets hot as all hell all cool safety feature of the mr. buddy heater if somebody bumps it it turns off so if let's say you have a pet there's some and your pets an idiot and they get up and knock into it it's not gonna burn your house down any sort of jostling to this thing and it turns off if we're going sub-zero temperatures for a bit I have a second this is the portable little mr. buddy heater and you can get these two dudes for about seven bucks for two so that's 350 a night and these get about six to eight hours per full if you're on full power so again that's if you're gonna you need a little something extra typically that little mr. buddy things pretty nice but this thing's not the most insulated thing ever so I'll usually put this guy on in the evening if I need to or if I come back and it's like a really cold night and that heaters been off and I wanted to get it hot but not wait two hours to not be freezing in here I put two on and that'll sort that usually I I don't use these too much but when I do it is needed so yeah so this guy's nice to have all the same similar safety features as the big fella and it's red it's kind of sporty it's not as Hillbillies the other one it's got two little screw holes in the back if you wanted to hang it up I guess if you're gonna be running a little buddy or any sort of propane here you want to have the window cracked a little bit so if you get oxygen get fresh air in here because it is burning up oxygen in the air it's also releasing things that can kill you which brings me to this you're gonna have a combination smoke in co2 I have two installed in here one high and one low also I have several fire extinguishers about the place just in case you're gonna need it I've not needed it yet but also make sure you check the batteries on these guys regularly and check your fire extinguishers to make sure they're good now there's plenty of videos on YouTube to tell you how to do that if you need me to do that just let me know and I'll be more than happy to oblige the RV is equipped with its own onboard furnace but uh this one takes a lot of battery and uses up propane rather quickly the onboard propane which I use for my refrigerator and my cooking but let me let you and also it sounds like a horror film so when we turn this on for a bit you jack up the heat so you can hear it and when it's really cold or it in the evening I put these in the window these guys old you get these in any hardware store just been insulation a lot of them I've wrapped slowly I gonna do all of them but I've wrapped them in black fabric and they all fit kind of each one's cut to a certain window this one's not for this window but you pull this dude up slides in place drop the curtain down sometimes I'll use a little piece of masking tape to hold it up but I don't like it during the day because I like to have the sun shining in here the reason I don't do it during the day I like the Sun to come in is there still the greenhouse effect and that is a way of heating the house actually you think about a hot car in the summertime the same effect applies in the wintertime just not to the same degree but like I said if the Sun is still out it is still slowly heating your vehicle and I don't want to look like a big baked potato sitting inside here also I'm sorry to brag but I have one of the finest collection of knitted blankets you've ever seen handmade knitted and Afghans so if it's a little extra cold and I'm just chilling I just throw it back it on my legs there maybe have a guest over and they're like a little bit chilly I like put this blanket on they're like whoa very thoughtful so maybe in the morning I'll just have my sit here and I'll drink my coffee mm-hmm so I don't really think you need to have an RV to understand how blankets help to keep you warm but it is helpful in the wintertime electricity wise that's another question but I still have the solar panels atop and the Sun still shines in the snow but I got to go sweep them off occasionally so the Sun does work on it but one thing I'm going to start if you've got an older vehicle you usually want to either keep it plugged in something for the battery if it's real cold out or just run it every now and then so the batteries don't get too cold and you can't start it as I've shown in another video I put a little thing so I can I start it every day anyway and usually run it for like 20 minutes to a half an hour just keep the batteries charged and when I do that I got this little guy down here I turn that on and that charge is not just the starting battery but also the house battery all right so right now I am it uh I got my batteries are all the way charged up to 13 volts but that's only because the engine is running and this little switch is on I wear in the bathroom a little bit thing is a black water tank and great water tank maintenance is difficult in wintertime because if you're poopoo freezes then you can't drain it so but I use this simple two-part process riddex and automotive antifreeze and every time I have to the tank I put a half of the PAP of this in here has been the black water half in the gray water tank and some red X this is just a septic tank stuff helps break down your doo doo I tested it outside in a bucket first and sealed it because I don't typically recommend just mixing two chemicals together and seeing what happens you'd be surprised even things you can make a bomb out of that just inside your kitchen I will do a video on that later but you could take down an entire town with just basic household products so yeah and I also cuz sometimes the water line freezes keep a little jug of water here so you could flush your toilet with it you can hear the ice holes away for the weekend my water lines of ours they do a heat tape on them but the constant power those things are gonna freeze anyway they're only pretty small see PVC pipes so they'll freeze pretty quickly you might be like well then how do you shower that is tricky business one I have a gym membership as you've noticed by my sleek slender muscular frame that uh that is not completely natural and you're right um so I do that but in very desperate dire straits you can boil a bucket of water on the stove and then just give yourself a hobo bath with a sponge and a rag but I usually hope I usually tried it it forces me to go to the gym and that's good cuz I eat like a four-year-old not just be a big fat person if I'd in it so yeah that's really pretty much it for the black water tanks again you can pick up any of this stuff at your local hardware store this is at any gas station and yeah getting water in the winter time can be tough because a lot of state parks and national park turn their taps off in the wintertime which is typically where I get my water and I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I feel like kind of a badass when I do this but if you can go to any hardware store you're given these things these little tap keys and Walmart's and places like that leave their outside taps on because their most of their pipes are inside and warm but you need one of these special keys and only turn it on if you go and they're like you own the place no one ever says anything to anybody I wouldn't say go to Walmart but go to like maybe a place that's closed and get some water again not totally on the level but I don't care so that is I don't have the heat on basically all the time so one nice thing about that is the windows don't ice over north to scrape them very much but you do get a lot of moisture so I have this guy right here I use it in the shower all year when you don't take in a shower you squeegee it off so you don't have excess moisture in there but I use it a whole lot in the wintertime if I can show you over here I'm going to adjust the lighting so you can kind of see it better with the camera but yeah just occasionally hit it with a little household squeegee that's all your disgusting sweat and breath I'm not gonna sugarcoat it live an RV in the wintertime does suck the last two winters have been pretty easy so this one has been a real test of my grit but luckily the last two winters were that I was learning weren't so bad so I slowly got to drip into it if it were this one my first winter in the RV it would be a different story but a couple little tips are little things and you got to you got to watch the way they're more than you would if you lived in a home and I still think I definitely paid way less in heating my house like I said average probably maybe a hundred bucks a month for heating the house I still have no electric bill the other than just gasoline for the RV and when you're snowed in typically people aren't going to come mess with you too much they just feel sorry for you so they don't tell you to move quite as frequently other than that I don't really know what else to tell you but if you have any questions post them below and I will get to them ASAP

Channel: Luke Capasso

Views: 160,002

Rating: 4.6508393 out of 5

Keywords: Luke Capasso, Winter time RV, Insulation, Boondocking, Pace Arrow, Ohio

Id: xUNgw_IIaxE

Length: 15min 8sec (908 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 15 2018