In today's video, we're going to talk about this van in this extremely cold and snowy weather
so let's go what is going on youtube i am here in Missouri it's a blizzard right now it's zero
degrees it's been colder than that at night so it's cold it's snowy and people want to know how
my winnebago Travato holds up it's a national park edition it's a four season rig
so i'm going to talk about my experience the last week and a half surviving and seriously seriously
cold and snowy weather all right let's head inside
all right so outside i described this as a four season rig and that's what winnebago build the
national park edition as what does that mean i'll tell you what it means to me it means i can use
my rig no matter where i'm at if i'm in the hot desert my rig's going to work all my systems are
going to work if i'm in extremely cold weather like i am right now all my systems are going
to work so how did winnebago pull that off what they did was they brought everything they could
inside the rig so all the pipes anything that can freeze up or get too hot is inside the rig there
are still a couple things outside the rig my gray water tank my freshwater tank and my volta battery
box so how are those things not freezing up look my water works it's zero degrees outside how are
they not freezing up well that's because there are tank heaters on each one of my freshwater tanks
and there's a heater inside of the volta system back here i can switch on my tank heaters so my
gray and my freshwater tank and my black water tank are all heated by me pressing that button
it pulls electricity out of my volta system the volta battery system has a heater inside of it
as well a heating pad and that automatically comes on when the volta system needs it my volta battery
box has stayed somewhere between 50 and 60 degrees even in this really really cold weather all right
so that's all fine and good but if the inside of the rig falls below freezing all this stuff
dragged into the inside of the rig is going to freeze so how do i keep the inside of the rig
from freezing up in arctic type weather like i'm in right now well that's a really simple answer
it's my truma combi system so what does the truma combi system do it's pretty simple it provides hot
air to my coach and also heats up my water if you could feel this water right now it's really warm
because it's being heated by the truma combi system as the truma combi system is heating
my coach the truma combi system is powered two different ways it's either powered by propane or
it's powered by electricity you can also use a combination of both propane and electricity so
where does my system get propane from so there's a propane tank underneath my rig it's 4.6 gallons
which i'll talk about in a little bit is not that much propane where does it get electricity it gets
it from my volta system so i can use propane to heat my rig or i can use electricity to heat my
rig or i can use a combination of both let me show you that real quick so you have just straight gas
i'm just using propane on this setting on the next setting i'm using one electrical element
the setting after that i'm using two electrical elements after that i'm using a mix so propane and
one element and then propane and two elements all right so i can heat my coach two ways actually
there's three ways i'll talk about the third way in a moment but i can heat my coach with propane
or electricity or a combination of both but they both have their positives and negatives so let me
explain real quick so propane heats really really well no matter what the temperature outside i can
keep it nice and toasty in here with propane the problem with propane is i only have a 4.6
gallon tank so that's about the size of those tanks you use on your barbecue pet so in weather
like this it only lasts me about four days i'm actually out of propane right now and i'm gonna go
get some soon all right so electric has its issues too so i have this huge volta power bank but those
electrical elements those coils take a lot of electricity if i'm using one coil it'll last
about eight hours before i need to recharge my batteries so i either need to do an auto start to
recharge or i need to drive somewhere if i use two elements i'm only going to get about four hours of
heat out of that that sounds great okay kevin well you just do auto starts like you do with the ac
well it's not that simple so when it's really really really cold one heating element is
not gonna keep up with the heat that you need it just doesn't i've tried it it does not keep my rig
warm in super cold weather like right now zero degrees if i was in like 35 40 degrees somewhere
around there one element would probably do the trick but it does not do the trick in this kind
of cold weather what about two elements well two elements drain the battery really quick
and just like one element when it's really really super super cold like in the negatives
it can't keep up it cannot keep up with heating the rig and so i'd say two elements would work
around 25 degrees but at zero and below zero two elements just isn't enough to keep this rig warm
and you constantly have to worry about power when you've got two elements going so i'm sure
you're thinking well then kevin just use mix so the problem with that is the way mix works
is since propane is more efficient it heats the rig up to whatever temperature
you want it at like i have it set at 67 and then the elements will come on and keep the coach at
that 67 degree temperature well the problem is the elements won't keep it at that temperature
when it's super super cold so when it's set on mix it just ends up using propane all the time
anyway so you might as well just put it on propane okay i mentioned that there is one more option
so can you guess what that option is if you can type it down below i'll give you a couple seconds
i know some of you are probably saying a mr buddy heater or a plug-in electric heater or
even an electric blanket but really the third option is to just start the engine of the van
not an auto start so we're not filling up the volta battery we're just starting the engine and
letting the ram promaster heat go to work and i'm going to be honest with you when you turn that ram
pro massacre heater on it gets super warm in here it is the most efficient heater in this rig so if
i want to i can start my rig off and just sip my gas all night and i can keep it warm in here
if need be but that's kind of an emergency situation right okay so that's how i heat
my rig it's a blizzard outside but i need to go get some propane so that's what i'm gonna
do right now i'm gonna head out and go find some propane somewhere so i headed out in the blizzard
to find some propane but unfortunately it was president's day so nothing was open however i
was really impressed with how well my van did in the blizzard and i just wanted to show you
how much of a blizzard it is out here i mean there's a good there's a good foot of snow
the roads are crazy i was on the roads going you know 45 50 miles an hour they hadn't cleared the
road and she held up really well she did really good i think it's those ko2 tires
they just stick you know while she's had her issues getting out of the mud she's got no issues
in snow which is really cool i mean i'm assuming it's because this thing's ten thousand pounds plus
it has those ko2 tires so it's digging in really good getting through that snow hitting the asphalt
really really happy with it i mean it is like coming down right now it is crazy okay so i didn't
really mention it outside but that was a complete fail it's president's day so nothing's open i have
no propane this is going to be a really really interesting night we'll see if i can keep this rig
nice and toasty and warm and keep everything from freezing up so yeah this is going to be
fun so i went to bed pretty early that night around nine o'clock with two heating elements on
and no propane i woke up about three hours later because it was really really cold in my coach
so it's about 12 30 12 40 in the morning i woke up because it was getting cold in here
i don't really need an auto start but i did an auto start so i could have warm air when you
run out of propane and the temperature is really really cold like it is right now it's zero the
heating elements are just not enough to keep it warm enough on the inside to be comfortable so the
way around that when you don't have propane is to start up the engine you can either do it with an
auto start so you put electricity into the volta system or you can just normally start it up and
eventually the hot air will heat up the coach the good thing about the ram promasters the heater the
normal heater in the promaster is actually pretty good if i leave this thing run for about 15-20
minutes it'll get about 80 or 90 degrees in here it gets really really really warm almost too warm
but that means i have to wake up all night and turn on the heat it's not ideal so tomorrow i'm
definitely gonna go get some propane so the cab heater heated up the rig well i eventually drifted
back asleep but at some point the auto start went off and the rig got cold again so i had to wake
up and figure out a solution all right so it's early in the morning it's like 7. look at that
it is negative six degrees out there i don't know if you can hear it or not but my engine is running
um i decided to get up last night and just start the engine about it's probably about three hours
ago rather than continue to try to battle with just the electric and then it turning on an auto
start when the electric brought the volta down the 20 every time that would happen it would get
really toasty in here i just figured you know what i'm just going to start it up and just leave it
on and it is nice and toasty in here it's like 80 degrees but that's a lesson learned you don't want
to do anything i think below 20 degrees without being able to keep your propane replenished
so i'm definitely going to go get some propane today in the past i've been down in the 20s like
mid to high 20s and i've never had an issue using electric but it's definitely not good enough to
battle below you know 20 degree temperatures especially when it gets into the negatives so you
definitely need propane so that's what i'm gonna do this morning i'm gonna go get some propane
okay if you enjoyed this video make sure you smash that like button and if you
you know like content like this you like seeing me experimenting with different things
trying to figure stuff out with my rig obviously i learned a lot of valuable lessons make sure you
hit that subscribe button i put out weekly videos so it should be a lot of fun thanks for watching
and thanks for all the support and well wishes for my mother i really appreciate it see you next week