Surviving a Canadian Winter in an RV

When we put our home up for sale and started shopping for our 5th wheel we had no intention of trying to survive a Canadian winter in it. From the beginning our plan was to spend 7 months of the year in Canada and to chase 21 degree weather the other 5 months. That’s 70 for our American friends. Unfortunately, like virtually everyone else on the planet, 2020 threw a serious monkey wrench into our plans. When we first heard about COVID it didn’t even have a name. It was January of 2020. We were in Sedona, Arizona enjoying a few months of respite from winter in Eastern Canada when the first news reports started coming out about an illness in China. At that time we never could have imagined those news reports were the beginning of where we are now. By mid February we were back in Canada and COVID cases were now popping up all over the world. At that time I believe the hope was that COVID would soon go the way of H1N1. Big and scary in the beginning but never really amounting to too much. That’s not to say that H1N1 wasn’t serious but it certainly wasn’t the world wide pandemic that COVID has become. That hope, as we all know now, was overly optimistic. It wasn’t long before we were hearing about outbreaks all over the place, COVID numbers were growing all over the world and things were looking more and more grim each and every week. Before long, we were experiencing lockdowns, businesses were closing, we were being asked to travel for essential purposes only and the mysterious illness we heard about just a couple months ago was spreading around the world like a wildfire. It wasn’t long before our governments rules about essential travel turned into a full blown border shutdown. At that time we were still hopeful that the coming summer would nip this whole COVID thing in the bud. Between the lockdowns and the nicer weather allowing people to spend more time outdoors we were again overly optimistic that things would improve by the time summer was in full swing. By mid summer Canadians were being surveyed about the ongoing border closure and the responses were overwhelming in support of continuing the closure at least through the end of the year. When we read that first news report about 70% of the people surveyed wanting the border to remain closed we knew it would be foolish to plan our usual winter getaway. It was looking more and more like we would be spending the winter in Canada and we needed to start preparing for what that meant. It is now February and we’ve had a much easier go of wintering in Canada then we every could have imagined.

So after having surviving 4 months in an RV during a Canadian winter we thought we’d put together a list of the top 5 tips we think made staying north of the border possible.

Tip #1 : “Go West Young Man”

If we were going to remain in Canada for the winter there was no question at all about where needed to go. The West coast of British Columbia is the only place in the country that sees consistent temperatures above 0 all winter long. While we do have a 4 season rated RV, we were not confident that our Grand Design was designed for the -20, -30 and sometimes -40 temps that were common in Ontario during the winter.

Tip #2: Wear a Skirt

Have you crossed a bridge in the Norther US or Canada and noticed a caution sign that reads “Bridge Ices Before Road”? The reason for this is that a bridge does not have the warm earth below. Cold winds are able to blow both over and under the bridge, pulling any heat there might be away. The same thing happens to your RV. As the wind blows under your rig, it pulls heat with it making it considerably more difficult and expensive to heat the inside. A skirt prevents this from happening. Where we’re staying on Vancouver Island the average temperature through the day is 5-8 degrees and around freezing at night. Between our furnace and a Dyson electric heater we are able to maintain an internal temperature of 20 degrees while only using a single 30lb propane tank per week.

Tip #3: Get a Space Heater

One of the first purchases we made for the RV was a Dyson Electric Heater. While expensive, we found it both necessary and economical in the long run. We’ve never tested it but my guess is that our furnace would run twice as often without it. We also found that, due to the location of the thermostat, it could be cold in the living room while it was our desired 20 degrees up in the hallway where the thermostat is. There have been a few times we only had 30 amp power and this is really when we realize how much work the space heater is doing. When on 30amp the heater has to be switched off when we brew coffee, use the microwave or kettle. Its amazing how quickly the trailer cools down and the furnace kicks on.

Tip #4: Heat Your Hose

At the very least you will want to insulate your water hose. Using foam pipe insulation from any home improvement company should do the trick. However, if you want to be absolutely sure the you won’t wake up with a frozen water line, then I would suggest a heated water hose. They are expensive, but, for us it was well worth the peace of mind. We were even able to wrap the 8” tail of the heating element around our water pressure regulator to ensure it would also be protected.

Tip #5: Prepare for Condensation

This is a big one. Condensation, if left unchecked, can lead to water damage. We found this out first hand. Between the cold nights and damp fall air we started to have a lot of condensation on our bed-slide wall. I first noticed it when I dropped my phone down between the bed and the slide-out wall. When I reached down to pick it up I noticed the carpet was wet. Not damp, but wet. There was a period in my life when I worked for an insurance restoration company, I know all to well how damaging even a little water can be. I decided to investigate further. I took the mattress off and sure enough we had a small area of mold where the plywood touched the exterior slide wall. I decided to take the bed apart and found even more mold under the slide-out half of the bed. One of the main problems was that Grand Design did not do anything at all to allow airflow under the bed. The foot of the bed lifts up for storage but the top half of the bed was just a large empty space with no airflow whatsoever. I cleaned up all the mold, drilled a bunch of vent holes in both sides of the bed and installed an under bed fan to provide some air circulation. We also put a Damprid Moisture Absorber on both sides off the bed. I was very skeptical that these would do any good at all but man, they work awesome. One fill of crystals lasted 2 months and I was regularly dumping 1/4 to 1/2 inches of water from each of the 2 absorbers.

Also, be sure to minimize the moisture you create inside the trailer. Always use your bathroom fan and let it run for at least 20 mins after someone showers. Always run your ceiling fan and crack a window when you cook inside your trailer. Lastly, see tip #4. An electric heater produces very dry heat which will help keep excess moisture in check.

Do you have any other winter camping tips that we didn’t cover? Leave a comment below .