Winter Travel Prep

breister · October 22, 2015

I live in MN and plan to travel to Texas or some other warmer climate during January. I have a 2002 Monaco Windsor and am not sure if my holding tanks are heated or not. I am just wondering a few things about the cold travel between MN and someplace warmer.

1. Can I run my generator while I travel so I can keep the furnace running and thus the water lines from freezing?

2. I assume I should drain my water heater or again, if I run my genset maybe I could keep it on and warm while I travel?

Any other suggestions for making the cold trip? Thanks for your input everyone!

Brian

AFchap · October 22, 2015

I am fairly sure the tanks on your Windsor are enclosed, and most likely do receive some heat from the lp furnace. You can absolutely run the generator while driving, and keeping the water heater on would keep it from freezing. It would be a good idea to get a wireless thermometer with 2 or 3 remote sensors. We keep one in the water bay and one in the water pump/water heater compartment so we can monitor those temps. When parked in very cold weather I use an auto trouble light or spotlight to add heat to those two critical areas. (be sure the incandescent bulb is not too close to anything remotely flammable). There are airways under the cabinets that allow some air flow between the living area and enclosed basement, so normally if you are using the lp furnace(s) and keeping the heat going to the point you are somewhat comfortable, the water lines should be OK. Keeping cabinet doors under the sinks open can help. Our first trip in our coach in 2003 took us from VA to Western NM in Dec and January. We were in NM for a week at temps ranging from 5 below to 20 below. The light bulbs kept those two compartments well above freezing.

Kirk W · October 22, 2015

Question #1 Yes you can run the generator while traveling if need be. But you probably don't need it just to operate the furnace while traveling as most RV furnaces operate from 12V-dc power and propane. You might need the generator to supply extra power but we didn't with our coach if using the two furnaces to keep things warm as we often did in cold climates. Reading the specs for the 2002 Windsor, you should also have a 12V heater in the wet bay but the tanks are probably heated by a small duct that comes off of the RV furnace. We had two wet bays with each furnace supplying heat to one of them.

Question #2 I would just leave the water heater turned on, operating from propane. If it has an electric heater, you could operate it from your on-board generator set to supply 120V power as that is the supply for the electric heater, if it has one. Water heaters, just like your furnace, refrigerator, and all major RV appliances except the microwave operate from 12V-dc power and they do so to allow you to operate them without any supply of 120V power. The only reason that you might need to use the generator set would be if you wish to use 120V for an electric heater in the water heater and if you are using too much 12V-dc power for the chassis alternator to keep up, which isn't probable.

OLYLEN · October 23, 2015

As above with one addition. Many Windsors have the water heater with heat off of the coach motor. One thing we found was the thermostat for the furnace was on an outer wall and in COLD running we needed to set it lower or the furnace would cook us.

LEN