Living in Northern Missouri can always be a challenge in the extreme cold weather. Especially when you are living in an RV in the winter months.
Here in northern Missouri it has been below 0 every night for weeks now, and the daytime high for the last week has been in the teens. This is by far the longest, coldest winter I can remember for a long time, and only being January, winter is far from being over.
How To Stop Freeze Ups
Since we don’t have a home built here on our farm property yet, we live in our RV/fifth wheel full time. Many are wondering how we keep this RV from freezing up in this extreme cold. Well, it’s all because of this 40’x60′ metal building/shop we have here on the property. Without this shop, we would never make it in this kind of weather without freezing up.Even with skirts and tank heaters, this thing would still freeze up…somewhere. We did experience a small freeze up in the kitchen before we moved into the shop for winter, but it was an easy thaw out for us, and no damage done. It was one of those nights that the forecast didn’t say anything about getting down so cold, but it did and we didn’t have our skirts on because we knew we was heading inside in a few days.
What About Heating The Shop?
You might be thinking, what about Heating the shop so it doesn’t freeze up inside there. Well, your right. Our RV would freeze up inside too when it’s this cold if we didn’t heat the inside of shop somehow…right? Yes, that’s right!Our 40’x60′ shop is all metal and does NOT have any insulation at all. This building offers us a great wind block, and we have it sealed up really tight, but we haven’t had the time yet to insulate it, so it gets very cold in here…or it did anyway.
Wood Heat Inside
Yep, you guessed it right. We have a large wood furnace inside this large UN-insulated metal building. However, it takes a great deal of wood to keep it warm inside when the weather is below 0 every night for weeks upon weeks and the wind chill is in the negative teens each night and often times throughout the day.
Here’s what we do for wood…
We go around our farm and cut firewood using trees that are already down, or dead and need to come down. We also have a great deal of thorny locust here that must come down so it doesn’t keep spreading, and even though the thorny locust really is a pain to mess with…literally, it burns great and puts out a lot of great heat, especially when it’s seasoned.
Can We Use Our RV Furnace?
We can use our RV furnace while outside, but while we are inside our shop, we cannot use the RV furnace due to carbon monoxide. It exhaust fumes right into the sealed up and enclosed shop, and that will allow the fumes to eventually come inside our RV with us, which is deadly.
Electric Fireplace and Electric Heater
To knock the chill off inside the RV we use our electric fireplace and an electric heater. These will run us out if we don’t keep them turned down.Below is a picture of our living room temperature, and notice the outside temp which is right outside our door, in the center of the shop. So that is what the temp is in the center location of the shop. These pictures was taken at 10:19pm and it was -1.3 outdoors with a slight wind.
The next photo below here will show the shop/indoor temp which is about 6′ from the wood stove. This will also show you the outside temperature and humidity inside the shop.
I have one more photo to share with you below and it is at the opposite end of the shop from where the wood stove is located. This is also the front of our fifth wheel where our master bedroom is located. I have a thermometer inside our bedroom and also a probe right outside our bedroom window that you are seeing the temperature from.
So this kind of gives you an idea of heat displacement through the shop area and inside our RV/home. We like the lower temperature in our bedroom for good sleeping, but with our electric heater we can raise that if needed. 😉
Carbon Monoxide Alarms
Having carbon monoxide alarms is a must, especially in our current living situation. We test these often just for peace of mind. It’s nice knowing that they work properly and that we are safe and sound.Always test your carbon monoxide alarms and make sure they work as they should. If you don’t have any, then get at least one right away…ASAP!We are still working on our cabin, but since it’s been so cold we haven’t been able to get all that much done to it. The wood stove isn’t hooked up inside the cabin yet, and that makes it impossible to work inside, or at least comfortably. And of course, with this extreme cold weather, we have to spend weekends cutting wood to keep our wood piles nice and large.
Insulating The Large 40’x60′ Steel Building
The bad thing about not having our large shop insulated yet is the fact that we drive through this wood pile very very fast. Since this large curved style building and all steel, we will use spray foam insulation. This will make this building so nice and warm in the winter, and cool in the summer when working on indoor projects, painting, etc. This large building will become much more efficient than what it is now, and our wood burning will more than likely be cut back by well over 1/2 of what we currently burn.
I must say, we are very excited to finish the cabin so we can start on our new home here on our farm property. We don’t have any regrets at all about our off grid journey, but the both of us are ready to start on our new house. It will be nice to have our family’s over for a Christmas again, as well as all kinds of other family events that a person wants to do inside.With our combined large family, our RV is not even close to big enough for family events. Lol.
Proof In The Pictures
The pictures below will show you our wood stove and kind of our set up to help out more of this in perspective. Notice the large dry wood we keep inside for extreme cold weather.How long do you think this wood pile pictured will last is with extreme cold weather as I’ve mentioned in this blog post?Leave your comments below and let me know what you think. I’m looking forward to seeing who can guess the closest on the life of this wood pile pictured. Remember, we’ve had over 3 weeks of this below 0 weather, and daytime highs of 0-20 degrees. There was a few days in there that got above 20 degrees in the daytime, but just a few…
Extreme cold weather can be tough, especially when you are living in an RV full time like we are. For us, it was a blessing in disguise having found a farm property that already had a large enough metal building that we could fit our large fifth wheel inside of. Last winter with skirts and tank heaters, we cold have made it outside just fine, but not this winter. We are only in January and this extreme cold weather so far has been nothing but brutal!
Always do your best,
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