Surviving the Record-Breaking Cold…

The YarrVee crew has been very, very lucky with this massive, 98 year record breaking cold snap here in Denver. We’re still packing up our apartment, and while the YarrVee is in it’s new home, it’s been unoccupied.

The last 3 days have been bitter cold. The highs for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday were 17, 6, and 10. Fahrenheit. (-8/-14/-12 C, with lows of -14/-22/-24 C!). The high of 6 on Wednesday was a record breaking cold – the lowest high for November 12th in 98 years. The low broke a 130 year old record. Fortunately, between our new $50 oil-filled radiator, and setting the propane furnace to 55, the interior has remained between 40*F/4.5*C and 48*F/9*C, and we’ve got around a 1/2 tank of propane left.

Thanks to the RVGeeks Winter RVing suggestions, the water bay has a 40 watt utility light hanging in it. It’s remained below freezing, but we made sure that our water hose is empty, insulated, and has 15′ of heat tape inside the insulation. To keep the bay itself warmed up, we need a bigger bulb in there, for sure.

I crawled under there on Sunday (when it was almost 70*/23), and it looks like our black and grey tanks are mounted across the whole width of the coach, just below the floor in the bathroom, and are very flat and wide. This is good, since they’ll suck up a lot of heat from the flooring.

Even if we’d already moved out of the apartment, living the last several days in the YarrVee would have sucked (especially the showering part!), but the RV would have remained reasonably livable, if rather uncomfortable, with our current level of preparation, and that’s encouraging. We’ll probably purchase a second radiator for the 110 outlet at the front of the coach to take some slack off the propane furnace in preparation for January and February.

Once it’s not “We’re all going to die!” cold out, we’ll shoot some video of our winter preparations, including what’s worked, and what still needs work!