Snowmobile Camper with Off Grid Heater- Surviving the Night in -18C / 0F Temperature!

let me introduce you to my DIY snowmobile camper I built it last year with my dad and I've taken it on several trips since then this year I doubled the insulation and I'm currently prepping to take it on its first tour this winter after making provisions for my fair feathered friends I could now see to my own I've been looking forward to this trip because I will finally get to field-test a heating system which I've developed for the camper the weather report says it's going to be a cold one tonight so here's hoping my homemade water heater will keep me warm enough with the loaded camper in tow I was underway [Music] [Music] through snowy glade and a long forest trail I went it was a day of mixed weather overcast in the morning and snowy in the afternoon with the odd patch of Sun as the afternoon grew later and the journey extended further the trees together drew closer and my pace noticeably lesser it was as I traced between the closely knit Cedars that I decided it was best to stop for the night I didn't want to find myself at the end of a trail with no easy way to turn around I began to look for a small clearing that I could camp in [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well it wasn't much of an opening but it will have to do for the night on the upside the dense tree cover will provide excellent shelter from the wind it was time to settle in after establishing the fire my next job was to get the heater going I filled the ammo can with a 50/50 mixture of environmentally friendly antifreeze and water totaling about 30 litres of liquid to keep it from being knocked over in the night I made sure to anchor the animal camps the wall next was the copper coil which I had placed inside this lobster pot filled with sand finally I hooked the outside coil up to the ammo box inside the camper using two hot water lines which I fed through a port in the camper floor I added pool noodles to the exposed water lines to insulate them from the cold and minimize their heat loss after placing the coil on the fire I noted that it took an hour for the water to begin circulating [Music] since I've already spoken about this system in another episode which I've linked in the description I will give just a summary of how it works here basically the water and the ammo can travels down into the coil where it's heated in the fire the heated water then circulates back into the ammo can as the water continues to circulate and heat up the ammo can then radiates that heat into the camper once the fire goes out the sand and the lobster pot and the water in the ammo can will act as thermal batteries radiating their heat into the camper until it eventually dissipates the hope is that the ammo can will absorb enough thermal energy from the fire to keep the camper warm until morning that's the hope at least once hooked up I made sure that all three of the tanks valves were fully opened the lower valve on the side is where cooler water flows out to the coil the upper valve on the same side is where heated water from the coil circulates back into the ammo can and finally the valve at the very top acts as event this vent is extremely important because it prevents pressure from building up in the system it is also directed outside with a hose to prevent the camper from filling up with moisture anyway that's basically how the whole thing works after the system had taken several hours to sufficiently store the campfires thermal energy the camper temperature had risen to a toasty 21 degrees Celsius and rising while outside it was minus 11 degrees and falling the camper would eventually reach a peak temperature of 24 degrees Celsius or 75 degrees Fahrenheit even though I had left the door wide open several times throughout the evening [Music] I noticed that there seemed to be a fair amount of steam escaping from the vent hose this concerned me because I didn't want to lose too much water and therefore the campers warmth to evaporation however when I checked the water level in the tank the next day I saw that there had hardly been any loss at all once it seemed that the water in the ammo can was about to boil I removed the coil from the fire and allow the system to coast for a little bit the good news is that the water continued to circulate anyway but no longer at a runaway pace I decided to go on a short walk to stretch my legs one last time before going to bed I've never gone a night out here without hearing at least one howl and often many more but tonight the forest was unusually silent were they sleeping or were they watching the temperature was continuing to fall and would reach minus 18 degrees Celsius or zero degrees Fahrenheit by the wee hours of the morning so I figured the Coyotes had tucked themselves away in their warm dens and I would be wise to do the same when the fire had died down I set the coil back onto the coals which is where I left it for the night in order to keep the heat inside the camper I would not be opening the door again until morning once inside I could finally sit down to eat one of my trademark no cook suppers smoked salmon pepper ATS fruit macaroni salad and some trail mix it isn't fancy but it's practical so as you can see I'm settled in for the night and although it's a typical winter's night outside at minus 12 degrees Celsius inside it's a cozy 22 degrees Celsius what I did before I came in was I let the fire die down just to the coals and I have the lobster pot or the copper coil sitting on those coals right now so as the night continues that he will slowly dissipate but for now those coals are just keeping the system warmer for a little bit longer hopefully I can make it mostly to the morning with this place being nice and warm I also have an electric 12-volt blanket inside my sleeping bag so that's keeping me warm if it gets cold in here so I'm really curious to see how the heat will dissipate if it will happen quickly or slowly over the course of the night I'm just not sure so I'll have to check back in with you in the morning on that but the good thing is that this whole thing is insulated quite nicely so the floor is insulated the walls in the ceiling is also insulated I have two inches of insulation on the walls and above me I have an inch of insulation of foam board insulation followed by two inches of space which is where the roof rafters run and then underneath that there's an inch and a half of foam board insulation followed by the cedar lumber here so I think with the combination of having a couple sheets of full board insulation above me and having some air between them I think it'll make this roof really good for holding the heat that much longer for how long I don't know so again I'll have to check back in with you in the morning on that one if you've been following along with my channel you'll know that I've been developing this a mokan heater or this copper coil heater for several episodes now in the summer time I came up with a concept design and I was pleased with the results but I also knew that there was some room for improvement so through some research of my own and just some observations that I had made I began to refine the system at the same time I had received so many comments from the outsider community so many great ideas and suggestions to help refine the system further just from different people all over the world different walks of life different skill sets and expertise it was just really great hearing from all of you so I've taken some of these suggestions and I've implemented them to just make a better system I received several comments from people suggesting that I use pool noodles to insulate the water lines and they're no doubt helping to improve the efficiency of the system because there isn't as as much heat loss as they travel between the fire in the camper I had also received so many suggestions from people saying that I should use any freeze in the system and initially I just didn't want to use any freeze because all the antifreeze that I've known is bad for the environment so if I were to accidentally spill it would be bad for the animals and for the plant life in the area but as I read further through the suggestions there were people saying that there's actually an environmentally friendly antifreeze that you can buy it's called RV antifreeze so having the RV antifreeze mixed in with everything just gives me that peace of mind knowing that these lines aren't going to freeze up on me so that's been our great suggestion that I've really appreciated so I say all that to say a big thank you to the outsider community I have really appreciated your suggestions and really you've helped me refine the system so this is as much your project as it is mine so thank you so much so here's a look at the foot of the bed I've got everything packed in on the right side I have my drone bag which it has to stay inside here so that the batteries don't freeze the same thing with my camera bag as my camcorder and GoPro over here I have a power bank which is running the electric blanket in my sleeping bag and of course the ammo can heater it's really nice that it's at the foot of my bed so that I can put my feet up against it and it keeps me nice and warm so I can actually stretch out in here but there's no more extra room as well I have my vintage LED caged lights whatever you call them the funny thing is that whenever I have an episode where these lights are shown I always get people asking me where I got them from so in this episode in the video description I've linked them so if you want to know where I got these lights from you can just click on the link and that'll be your answer so yeah I think I'm ready to turn for the night and I'll see you in the morning once I had left the coil on the coals and gone inside for the night the ammo box continued to steadily gurgle away for another hour after that the circulation slowed to a gentler pace just as it had taken the system four hours to reach peak circulation it took the same amount of time for the circulation to stop after the fire had died down then the system coasted on whatever thermal energy it was able to store which lasted me pretty much until the morning well good morning it's 8 a.m. and I'm just nicely getting up as I look at the indoor/outdoor thermometer it's minus 17 degrees Celsius outside and it's plus 13 degrees Celsius inside so that's a 30 degree difference it's still fairly warm in here especially considering how cold it is outside this morning now in Fahrenheit outside it's right around zero degrees maybe one degree or something like that and inside it's 55 degrees Fahrenheit so that's pretty much a 55 degree difference in Fahrenheit so obviously the ammo box heater has been doing its job quite well now of course this place would be warmed a little bit by my own body heat and I have had the electric blanket running throughout the night but it is a 12 volt blanket so it's not putting out a lot of heat just a little bit inside my sleeping bag so I'm not sure how much that's producing but as I feel the ammo box heater it's a little bit warm to the touch just slightly above room temperature when I when I turned in for the night the ammo box was too hot to touch the water was still quite hot it was circulating well and I could hear it circulating for about an hour to two hours after I came in so the the lobster pot in the sand which is holding the coil did a good at retaining that heat and continuing to circulate even once the fire had had died down to coals now I'm guessing that although I stopped hearing it circulate an hour or two after I came in I think it was still circulating a little bit it just was circulating so slowly that I really couldn't hear it happening in the tank last time I stayed in the snowmobile camper i boiled some water outside on the campfire and I filled up to military canteens and I put them in here and they stayed hot for I would say three to four hours until they had lost pretty much all of their heat and by morning there wasn't any heat left in them so that leads me to believe that there must have been just a little bit of circulation throughout the night maybe even into the morning as it's sitting on some of those coals as far as my overall thoughts about the ammo box heater are concerned I would say that this is obviously a system that works it could use some refinement it does need some babysitting for example if I had just left this ammo box in the roaring fire it would probably begin to boil which isn't a great thing everything's sealed up but I wouldn't want to to push the seals past their limits and the boiling point would do that so I wouldn't trust the system to leave it in the fire and go to bed like that just because it just might begin to heat out of control so that's why I left it on the coals although it would have been nicer to have a little bit of a fire burning with it but I just don't want to go back out and tend the fire once I close this door I'm in for the night because I don't want to open this again and let all of that hard-earned heat out of here the downside of this ammo box heater is that it's really really clunky but it works so I would say this is a great system in an off-grid application but I would prefer to leave it hooked up but since I'll be packing up the camper this morning and heading out that means I'm gonna have to break the system back down again and get it all packed up which is a bit of a pain so if I were staying here multiple nights or for an extended period of time the system would make a lot more sense but so overall I'm happy with effective it seems to be I'm quite warm in here even though it's fairly cold outside this morning anyway I'm gonna get my stuff together now and help when I was able to check the water lines in the morning I noticed that the liquid inside had turned to slush I guess that's what I get for using 1/2 mixture I was just happy that I didn't use straight water after all because if I did the lines would no doubt have frozen solid likely cracking the coil and rendering my system useless as I rejoined the trail that morning my head was already filled with new improvements and designs for my little snowmobile camper which means that more of these episodes are on the way until next time my friends when it came to this journey I think I covered almost as many miles on foot as I did on the sled

Channel: The Outsider

Views: 12,517,661

Rating: 4.8217435 out of 5

Keywords: The Outsider, Snowmobile Camper, Cabin, tiny cabin, cabin sled, snowmobile camping, tiny house, off grid, water heater, copper coil water heater, heat exchanger, winter camping, snowmobile, rocket stove, DIY, selfreliance, survivalshelter

Id: x82KFhfbbBU

Length: 26min 5sec (1565 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 29 2020