Winterizing an Imagine 25DBE in Arkansas River Valley: Mods & Heating Tips

[BigA62]

I live in the Arkansas River Valley and should I have any concerns about spending the winter in my travel trailer?
I have spent winters in my 5th wheel years ago and did not have to do anything extra. No under penning, etc.
I am looking for input
thank you

 

[Riverbug]

Welcome to the forum! What are the lowest temps you are likely to encounter and are they just overnight or last throughout the days? We travel south and back from/to MN in winter. With a couple mods and ensuring you use your furnace you can really extend the point at which water lines will freeze up. Looking at average temps for AR online, it looks to me like if you leave everything OEM, you'll have a hard time not freezing up. Are you up to making mods though?

 

[BigA62]

average for us is
Dec. 53/30
Jan. 50/26
Feb. 56/30
we do get the occasional winter cold days or snaps, however this camper says heater/enclosed underbelly with suspended tanks, and heated and enclosed dump valves

 

[Riverbug]

Okay. The belly in the GD travel trailers are enclosed but not insulated. However, they still do a surprisingly decent job of holding heat under there. The most important thing to remember is that you need to use your furnace and not electric heaters that heat the interior. You want the heat to get into the belly.
-The first mod is to check the belly to see exactly what they have for heat ducting down there. Ours had one 2" duct right below the furnace. I extended that one just so I could get it further back and pointed toward the middle rather than just straight down.
Also, our bedroom vent had significantly better airflow than the living area so it was hotter in the bedroom than we preferred. I replaced the bedroom vent cover with an adjustable one that we keep 95% closed. I then put a PCV T in the duct line and routed another duct line down into the belly. That one pushes much more heat into the belly than the 2" line that was there.
-While the belly was open, I added a switched 12V heat pad to each water tank.
-The one point where we still had an issue was the low point drains. Because they are exposed, cold air gets up to the waterline Ts inside the belly and causes the line to freeze/slush up. This happened when temps got down to low 20'sF overnight. When the sun came up and temps were back up to about 30F, they were okay again. My mod was to get the low point drains up into the belly where it is within the heated space so nothing was left exposed. The lowest we have been since then is 15F and have not had an issue. But not sure how much colder it could go before we had a problem. I did a post on this mod with pics a while back, but would have to find it if you are interested.

Hope that gives you some ideas to start with.

 

[Papaz8]

Hey all!
Jumping into this one. We're getting set up for winter, using framing and insulated board for the underside. I want to use another heat source to sort of keep the underneath a tad warmer. I've got heat lamps, but I'd like to try a space heater for the rear end, which always seems colder. BUT, I find that if there is a power failure or fluctuation, most heaters won't just restart when the power comes back on. They have to be switched back on. I'm not crawling under the camper, in 10 deg. thru insulated panels to re-switch on a stupid space heater!!

Question: is there an electric space heater out there that will just come back on if there is a power outage?

Much thanks and cheers!

Papaz