I go hunting in October every year in northern Colorado at 9,000' elevation. Sometimes it's nice (greater than 40° F) and sometimes it's not (6° F and a foot of snow a few years ago).

My 2006 Fleetwood Gearbox 220FB toy hauler was acquired last year and didn't get used last winter. An "arctic" package was not available. To make it more ready to camp in cold weather I need to do some modifications. According to the specs in the brochure I have:

• R-11 Fiberglass Insulation (Ceiling)
• R-7 Fiberglass Insulation, (Floor, Sidewall, Front Section)

The underside of the trailer is covered and insulated except for the three tanks (fresh, grey and black) which are completely exposed to the elements. Each tank has a heating pad on the bottom. The fresh tank has two heating pads. I don't know if my batteries will have enough juice to run the two heating pads on the fresh tank all night long. Probably not.

Here's what I'm planning to do, in priority order:
1. Insulate the fresh water tank. I'll do this with 1.5" and 2" rigid foam insulation. (~$200)
2. Seal any air gaps (minimal cost using materials already on hand)
3. Add skirting from EZSnapDirect.com (~$700)
4. Add 2" rigid foam insulation to the bottom of the trailer ($300)

If anyone has insulated a water tank I sure could use any advice I can get.

 

heating pads should have generator power... big time power user.

what about windows...? can use home 3m clear film, stick on.
Roof Vents? I have 3 camco vent insulation units... wal-mart.

otherwise you have most things covered.

otherwise... go "DRY" and use bottled water.. stored in shower area.

 

Insulating the windows is on my list. I figured it was going to be fairly straightforward so I didn't add it here. I was planning to get the 1" foam board for those.

I have the Camco vent insulation unit for my Fantastic Fan. But I should probably pick up another one for the bathroom fan. Thanks for the reminder. I haven't seen those at my local Wal-Mart. The last one came from Amazon.

I've thought about doing the dry camping. Dragging jugs of water around doesn't sound like a lot of fun but it would be the same thing if I was doing a tent instead of a trailer. If insulating the fresh water tank doesn't work out then I'll have to do the dry camp thing.

The one concern I have with insulating the fresh water tank is that my 2" foam board would be right up against the heating pads. Is that a problem? I have some material from Heatshield Products (high temp thermal barrier) that I could put between the pad and the foam board.

All three tanks have heating pads but I don't know which switch goes to each tank. I'll need to figure that one out.

 

A suggestion for windows is just go to home depot or lowes and get a roll of reflextics, comes in different sizes and I think thickness. Cut to size of window then you can use them in the summer also for cooling. When not using them you can store them away or just want some light in a window take it out temporarily. Don't forget your roof vents either lots of heat and cold come through.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Camco-SunS...&wl13=&veh=sem

http://www.homedepot.com/p/Reflectix...-202092205-_-N

 

I considered using the Reflectix as skirting, mainly due to cost. But attaching it could be challenging. I'm not sure it would hold up well in wind - it simply may not be rigid/strong enough. The skirting company I'm looking at recommends anchors at different spacing depending on which type is used. 12" if it is a stainless steel screw and 5" if it is a stick on anchor. I would go with the screws, not the stick on anchors.

For small windows the Reflectix should work well. Big windows I'm not so sure about. A suction cup or two might make it easy to do big windows. Reflectix is a lot easier to store than the foam board, that's for sure. I'll put that on my list to consider.

 

I have heard of bubblewrap on windows and will try it. spray water on window and it clings to the window.

 

Reflextics was only for windows. I have pieces cut for all my windows, if you take your time and cut so they fit in the groove of the window they do not droop or move at all. I think my back window is almost 4' x 4'. They do keep the rig cooler on warm days and hold the heat in on cold days. When we're not using the pieces they are behind the couch out of site and take up verry little room.

 

Washing your windows after doing that will get old after awhile.

 

It makes it a pain? Might not be a good idea then. Will look into the Reflextics

 

Something to keep in mind with the reflextics is that you don't have to leave them up the whole time say during the warmer months. I use them only when the sun hits that/ those windows and as the sun moves I'll remove from window to enjoy the views. Now if you're in a rv park with your neighbor up you butt maybe you may want them in the window.

 

try some solar power as well.


We also have heated tanks but also have heat going to the underside from the furnace. We supplement with two space heaters to keep the propane usage down.


We have camped in single digits

 

I have one solar panel. That's not going to be enough for sure, but it wasn't intended to be. It's more for keeping the batteries topped off even though it is a full size panel. I had to start with baby steps.

I'm going to be boondocking so I'll run the space heaters only when the generator is running. Depending on how cold it gets that could be a lot - or no - generator time.

Operation Insulation has begun. (Queue the theme song to Mission Impossible)
Supplies have been acquired, the trailer is at my house and the underside has been (gently) pressure washed. Skirting material was ordered today and I received notice that it shipped!

 

Operation Insulation is complete! I finished the job of insulating the fresh water tank this week. The insulation part was done last year in mid October but there were a bunch of additional details that I had to take care of.

Here is a picture of what I started with. All the metal got a coat of Rustoleum Rust Reformer and then a coat of bed liner.



The project got off to a bad start when I realized that the support beams that hold up the 120 gallon tank were bent. I suspect that one of the prior owners filled the tank all the way and then hit some bad roads.



I considered replacing the beam in the above picture but because it was welded to the vertical square tubing I decided to keep it there after removing the bend. It took considerable force to unbend it.




To prevent the crossbeam from bending again I added a second crossbeam that is much stouter than the original. One of the other crossbeams that is just a simple crossbeam (nothing welded to it) was replaced with one of the stouter square tubing crossbeams. I now have no qualms about filling the tank to 120 gallons and hitting the road.


Once the heavy supports were in good shape I started adding insulation. I created a frame of aluminum to keep the insulation in place. I considered using glue that a couple experiments with that proved to me that the glue wasn't going to hold the insulation to the tank.



With the first layer of insulation in place and sealed up a second layer of thinner insulation was added.



With all the added insulation my drain plug was now very difficult to get to. The screw in cap wasn't seating properly so it leaked. Unfortunately, I didn't know it leaked until I filled the tank near my camping destination. The screw in cap was replaced with a butterfly valve with an extension so that the valve is close to the bottom of the insulation.



To prevent water and dirt from getting into the insulation I covered the insulation with Mend-Flex belly tape. This was a very expensive waste of time. The Mend-Flex is a pain to apply and it didn't end up sticking well. It stuck to bare metal (the aluminum frame where it was still exposed) but pretty much nothing else. 4" Gorilla tape worked better, but not well enough.



To better seal the insulation I bought a few 4'x8' sheets of Coroplast (.236" thickness). In the picture below is a jig I created to bend the Coroplast to form a 1.5" lip that goes on the back edge of the tank. Coroplast will bend nicely when enough heat is applied to it. I used a heat gun. Where the Coroplast overlapped I had planned to glue it together using Loctite that worked for others. But that didn't turn out so well. I'll post more of the finished product once I get down to the storage lot this weekend.

 

Great Work.

For mine the underside where the tanks are is completely sealed with a solid piece of 1/8 sheet metal from I beam to I beam. Everything inside of that. You pretty much did the same thing.

I run 100 gallons of fresh water all the time, you should be fine now too.

 

Nice Work,
We fulltimed in our non-arctic package TH last winter, and something to keep an eye on is the water pipes.....they froze long before anything in the tanks. We had two areas that were exposed under the camper - the line to the toilet, and the supply and return to the water heater.
You will also lose a lot of heat from the doors...check the weatherstripping and make sure that it seals well.
Space heaters are great. We had a 1500W ceramic heater, and it kept us warm down into the single digits.