Winter camping

I have just moved to a Warwick Dueo from a british coach built. I want to use this all year round. Apart from insulating the fresh water tank ( if anyone has done this help would be appreciated) fitting a tank heater. Leaving outlet of grey tank open with bucket under outlet. I have a front winter cover but, are rear door covers available.
Regards

Hi dbnosey

Interested to know how you find the Duo. It looks like an improvement on the Warwick.

As for rear door covers – have you looked at the Fiamma version?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Regards
Keith

dbnosey,
Do you mean covers for the rear doors or just padded covers for the windows in the rear doors? If it is the latter, I have used the thick foil type loft insulation. I cut out the window shape, allowing a tiny bit extra all round. This can then just be pressed into the window on the inside, it will hold itself in place.

squip

Bear in mind that I believe it is universal practice at AS to insulate the lower panels of the rear doors of van conversions by stuffing them with glass fibre or rockwool sheet as used for loft insulation. No doubt it's a bit skimpy and flattens with age, but it probably means that the heat conduction path through the body of the doors will not be significantly improved by covering them from the outside although, I suppose, it wouldn't do any harm. Unless, that is, it slows you getting out in an emergency! Personally I like the sound of squip's small insulated panels over the rear windows.

IMHO the predominent issue as far as winter insulation is concerned is the mandatory level of air flow through required by the caravan construction code and, in the case of our Harmony, the poor sealing between the rear of the fridge (connected to the outside world) and the inside of the van, particularly in a side wind. Then there's the four holes in the aluminium frames of the side windows which provide annoying shoulder-level ventilation and let the condensation outside the van.

Also, particularly when parked into a head wind, don't forget to close all the vents on the vehicle heater system, or put it into the recirculate position.

Frankly in winter our van is like living in colander!

Bartfarst

The standard A-S insulation in the rear doors, the sliding door and the side panel is very thin glass fibre. I have supplemented this on my van by adding a layer of much thicker glass fibre in each of those areas. Can't really say if it is an improvement or not but I guess it must be.
Another advantage of my foil panels used to cover the rear windows is that they also keep the sun out and, as I leave the n/s rear door window cover permanently in place, it stops the sun bleaching the rear of the bathroom.
squip

Squip,

I'd say that adding better insulation was a good move. The only limitation is, I suppose, that if you pack too much in then you reduce the air pockets and you start to loose heat by conduction.

Thinking about it I think that virtually all side panels of the van have some insulation provided by AS, with exception of the front doors of course. There is also another huge area insulated with the same skimpy stuff, and that's the hi-top. Now enhancing that would be fun!

Bartfarst

Hello all

Thank you for all your valued replies, I do like the idea of the insulation covering the rear door windows effective and cheap. Has anyone insulated the fresh water tank. I know CAK Tanks do an insulation for this but I was wondering if a thin insulation from say B&Q could be used instead.
I hope AS have improved the insulation in the Warwick Duo and its not going to be like a colander that Bartfarst
suggested

Regards

Colin.

Carol made our internal thermal screens for the back windows. You can buy the material by the yard and also buy the suckers and eyelets, so with some edge binding and a eyelet punch she sewed and I punched and voila!

I think Bartfast has sorted out a problem for us, Mrs M while sitting on thde reversed cab seat complained of a draught round her legs this has baffled me untill his comment about putting the heater vent in the recirculate position, this was in the centre and could have been causing the draught. I must admit I didnt even know this lever was there as on the road her ladyship normally works the heater controls, and I had to lookup the handbook to check which position was which. Thanks Bartfast


Brian

You will notice a difference closing the vent, management being a superior brain in respects of finding draughts found that in the early days when we had the Exceutive. We also put press studs on the bottom of the dash front and she made a short curtain to clip on and cover the under dash area.

Hello dbnosey,

We have just bought a Marquis Dorset and, like you, intend to winter camp. Re insulating the fresh water tank, we've read that could cause problems in that in really low temperatures water will freeze and with the tank being insulated everything will take that much longer to thaw out.
With that in mind, we're trying to source a 15w tank heater. At present we've only found a 30w, but think this may be too big a drain on the leisure battery?
Regards
joanderic

We have winter camped in our coach-built for years, and last year we down-sized to a Warwick to carry on doing the same. Our second trip was to Minehead CC site where the temperature outside dropped to -10c. It was so cold that we could not even fill up with water at home, as our (well-insulated) outside standpipe was frozen solid! We thought about filling up on site, but their's was frozen, too. So we used the site facilities and kept a 5 litre container of water in the 'van for drinks, teeth cleaning etc.

We had a 650 watt oil-filled rad up front (for the dog), and an 800 watt halogen heater at the back, usually set to only 1 bar (400w), we find the built-in fan heater a bit noisy, and we were nice and toasty. We needed to think carefully about getting in and out of the 'van, though, because sliding open the side door for more than a few seconds resulted in the outside cold getting inside!

We have since made up insulated screens for every window, we got all the parts from CAK tanks. We intend to carry on winter camping, but to be honest we would never do it without a hook-up - there are limits!