winter and water tanks/systems

[skihor]

Seeing Tikvah's post about wintering in Vermont brought to mind what we did to our bus to keep the water tanks and systems from freezing. I have a 40K furnace up front and a 20K furnace in back. I ran one duct from each furnace into the rear bay. "67 MC 5A. All three tanks are in the rear bay. All of the water systems originate there as well. Being as our bus has the original insulation it takes a lot of BTU's to keep it warm. That's partly why my system works. The furnaces cycle on/off plenty. If one's bus was well insulated it may not work as well. There's no insulation of any kind, (including the doors), in the bays. I've held/kept water flowing down to -15* F. I suppose a well insulated bay  would help more.  I did this for traveling and while parked boondocking for skiing or whatever. Where we live we have a shared 15 A hook-up. I use an electric heater up front and there's not enough power to run two.
Don & Sheila

[wg4t50]

We all have different setups, I had the MC7, 12 kw genset, also has all water tanks in rear compartment with a 1500 watt electric heater, used electric water heater, all water lines were either in the rear bay or above the floor where I had two setups, one was the 30k LP Gas and a 5 kw 240 volt baseboard electric heater.  This worked fine for me down into the -10 area. that is the lowest I had it.  Being in the emergencygenerator field for 40+ years, you know I ran the little diesel 24/7 from start to finish.  3 weeks at a time a few times.

New Coach has the Aqua Hot, with the 4 thermostats plus the loop from engine, so can use engine heat or heat the engine, yes it is little costly, but sooo nice,  hot water baseboard everywhere is hard to beat, the diesel fired  boiler uses .3 GPH, but they claim less than 3 gal a day.

[TomC]

My system is simple-the water tank, 2-water heaters, 2-water pumps are under the bed and all fresh water plumbing is above the floor line. It would have to seriously freeze inside to freeze the fresh water.  Good luck, TomC