We got a late start getting out of the house (good thing I plowed a clean strip to the door) and that meant a grumpy and tired six year old. I tried to take a few pictures "for the record" and she wouldn't have any of it.
She initially said she wanted to sleep in her bed but when Mom said she wanted to sleep in the camper Kassie was all in.
I turned on our two space heaters earlier in the day and had been running them at full throttle in an attempt to keep the camper decently warm. The temp earlier in the day had been in the mid single digits and the space heaters were keeping up pretty good. I have been using to Optimus 1500 watt space heaters that were given to us for free from the gas company a few years back when our furnace went kapputz and we thought there might be a problem with the gas. The gas man said we needed to call a furnace repair tech as the gas was working just fine. Before he left he handed me two free electric space heaters. This was in January and I thought holy cow what am I going to do with them? Like they can heat my house. Thats another story.
So back to bedtime. I put my daughter down and helped tuck her in. The camper was plenty warm. She had stuffed animals and a sleeping bag that made it thru nights in Yellowstone in 2010 when we had temps below 30 and woke up to snow. All of this in a popup with no furnace. Miserable nights. Nights you close your eyes and pray for a quick night.
So with my daughter in bed I went and checked the weather station. It was cold outside. Coldest temperature we've seen for an overnight. This is our third night camping at home in the new camper. We sold our Roo 233s in October and purchased our Outback 250URS a couple of weeks later.
The plan is to spend many nights outside in the camper this winter. We never did that with our Roo. You couldnt really. I mean you could but with it being a hybrid (mixture of hardside and tent ends) I've never heard of anyone camping in one when temps get below zero. The one obstacle that has been an issue with the other nights so far has been the dreaded middle of the night bathroom break. You have to get out of bed, put shoes on, grab the house keys, walk to the house and use the bathroom. Then when you are finished get back to the camper and try to fall asleep. Bleh.
We have a toilet in the camper but its not usable because we have already winterized for the season. What that means is we've drained all the water from the lines and filled them with antifreeze. For all purposes the toilet is closed until spring. So a couple of weeks ago I got online and purchased a portable toilet by Camco. It works great. I was concerned that it might not be big enough for me to sit on and actually get everything to work and land in the toilet. Smooth. Fantastic. Works great. Thats all I'll say.
After tucking Kassie in I checked on Julie. She was in bed with her hat and winter coat on. Hmmm. Hey are you planning on sleeping like that? Uhh. Yeah I'm cold she said. But thats normal. It's 70 inside the house and.....yeah. She's cold.
So the vitals looked great. It was -7 outside and a very comfortable 64 inside the camper. This was with the two electric space heaters running only. My plan for the night was to run the two space heaters along with one or both of my buddy heaters. Buddy heaters run on propane and need ventilation in an enclosed area like an RV. Buddy heaters come in handy when you are camping off the grid with no hook ups. We use them most nights when we camp in the mountains at high elevation where overnight low temps regularly dip down into the 40's and close to freezing in the middle of the summer. We've slept easily 40 nights with a buddy heater on. They have safety features such at tip over shut off and CO2 detectors. The camper has CO2 detectors as well.
When I turned in the camper felt really comfortable from our zero rated sleeping bag. The inside temp was in the 60's. I knew the buddy heaters would run out of propane somewhere early in the hours of the morning. When that happened the temperature would drop and the RV furnace would kick in when the temp dropped to 55 and hold us there until we woke up. Julie got up and used the potty at 3:30am and everything was working as planned. Sometime after that I heard the furnace kick on and knew the buddy heaters were out of propane. I quickly fell back asleep unaware of the time. I was awakened awhile later with very cold cheeks. I instantly knew something was awry. I woke up and headed over to the weather station and saw the inside temp of 39 degrees. I went and checked the furnace and it was on. I turned it off and restarted it. It instantly turned on and I waited for the click of the burner letting me know that we had ignition. It never came. I did feel a lot of cold air.
I figured that we ran out of propane. Seemed most obvious. To veryify that I went over and lit the burners on the stove. If they failed to light I knew we were out of propane. They lit. Hmmm. The plot thickens. As I began to ponder all of this I looked across to the bunks and noticed Kassie was up. Dad its REALLY cold in here. Yeah it is honey. But it'll be warm in a few minutes. I then looked across the other way and noticed Julie was awake. What happened? Its SO cold in here. The furnace. The furnace wouldnt ignite.
So there is all weather testing Minnesota style. Later in the day when I got the camper nice and warm I was able to get the furnace heating again. Not sure what that was about. Was it too cold? Did it need more power and I was using up too much with the space heaters? If that were the case why would the blower work? Questions that need answers. Answers that can only come with more testing.
So I have concluded that I need better space heaters. The bottom of the barrel freebies arent going to cut it. I have two new ones on order. They are old school and weigh about as much as a gold bar. I'll write more about that later. I'm excited to get out there again with the new space heaters. I'm hoping for some really cold temps. My weather station said the low was -17 below. I'm pretty sure that it got considerably colder than that. The stat outside the camper is just actually on the camper and thats giving me a false reading no doubt a few degrees higher than it actually is outside. I'll fix that too. Until next time keep it real!
