2 Month Checkup - The Good. The Bad.

I've now been living in the RV for a little over two months. I've seen temps down to 15 degrees, and winds of around 55 mph. I'm starting to get a firm grasp of what it's like to live in an RV full time. In relation to living in a house, some things are better, some worse. Here's what I've found so far:

Things I Really Like

1. Small size = fast cleaning: I can clean my entire house, including vacuum, sweeping, mopping, bathrooms and kitchen in under 30 minutes. That's for a deep cleaning. When you live in ~150 square feet, it's a FAST clean with little waste and minimal cleaning products. 
2. Minimized Belongings: While I do have a big storage unit as my rough space, I tend to need rough space more than soft living spaces. But within the RV, I have minimized my dishes and all other belongings, so there's not as much potential clutter. Simple and minimized makes for just a plain simpler lifestyle. 
3. The potential to leave: How many people have had bad neighbors? I have a few I don't like, but there's profound comfort in knowing that I can literally unplug and go within 24 hours if people really bug me. And there's not much in the way of moving to be done, either. Just unskirt, unplug the utilities, and drive away. Pretty amazingly simple. 
4. Feeling the Elements: This is one that doesn't fit a lot of people, but I've found that I like being closer to what's going on outside. Even though the RV is a tiny house on wheels, temperature swings are still greater than most new stick and foundation houses. After spending 10 years going from a climate controlled workspace to a climate controlled house, I greatly appreciate some variety in my living space. Not for everyone, but it was an intentional side effect that I welcome. 

Things I Really Don't Like

1. Sewer: The RV has two tanks, one for toilet and one for all other water waste. These tanks can't just continually drain, due to the potential for leaving solids in the tank, so they have to be filled then dumped. The process isn't hard -- just opening a couple valves in the water closet, then closing them, but it's one piece of maintenance that is unwelcome. 
2. Humidity: In a space of so little volume, humidity builds up fast. Whether from cooking, shower, or breathing, the humidity rises sharply. This will become a problem come January when I can't easily just open all the windows to dry the place out a bit.
3. The Pitfalls of Small Volume: Like the humidity element, everything else works the same way. Cooking food, burning food, if you smoke up the kitchen with burnt toast, the whole house is smoked up. That's not always fun. Lots of testing of the smoke detectors. 

Overall, I'm enjoying it quite a bit -- There are challenges associated with it, but considering that my house cost as much as a modest used car, the trade-offs still seem well worth it.

Insulating the front windshield - Macgyver style

I got the front windshield and the driver and passenger windows insulated this weekend. It turns out that the super cheap comforters at Wal-Mart are the perfect size for the 'Bago. I ended up using two King-sized comforters in black to get 'er done.

What makes this job trick is that the comforters get folded fully in half, doubling their potential insulation. I'm sure it sounds really ghetto-riggy, but from inside and out, it looks like something I bought.

I ended up using safety pins to hold it all together. None of the safety pins are visible from the outside of the vehicle and from the inside, only along the top hem of the curtain that the vehicle already had.

The difference already is tremendous. The bare glass was just bleeding heat. Now, there is a major difference in how frequently the furnace runs and the temperature gradient in the beast. Most noticeably, the temperature on either side of the comforter is dramatic, indicating that the insulation job was quite successful.

It's all coming along.

Pounding snaps in canvas

I spent most of last weekend pounding 5/8" stainless-steel snap heads into the 16 oz. canvas tarp that I'm using to create the skirt on the RV. It's a faster process than I anticipated, but shaping the canvas around the sewer compartment door and the door into the vehicle are going to be difficult. For this, I have rivets intended for denim, since I don't have the sewing machinery to actually create hems.

One problem I have also run into is that the tarp company sent me a 9 foot tarp that is only 8 foot 3 inches. I was planning for something closer to 9, so they're now sending me a 10-footer. Waiting on that to arrive has slowed down the process, because it is the tarp material for both front and rear.

Spending my time pounding snaps and working on midterms has been such great fun (sarcasm). But really, it's all coming along, and I hope to have it all ready in the coming weeks, just in time for Winter.

Enduring the first freezes

Temperatures are falling on the high plains early this October. The temperatures at night have been in the high teens, which has helped me to gauge what the coming months are going to be like.

So far, it looks like my water hose is going to do well, though in a conversation with EasyHeat, my heat wire wraps will only be tight enough on the hose for -15 degrees even with the insulation. Eek.

I'm also now running to complete the skirt, so the floor doesn't get so cold. Hopefully the plan works as expected.

All of the water lines are pretty well protected by the furnace running, except the one running under the floor to the kitchen sink. I am hoping that between the skirt and the heat in the cabin that the frost gradient will protect the pipe. A frozen water line under the floor would be disastrous. Luckily, it's PEX tubing, so it should be pretty resilient.

Regrettably, since I wasn't able to complete all these projects before school started, my life has basically centered on keeping up with school, working on winterizing the RV for arctic temps, eating food, and trying to socialize in the time in between.

Get 'er Done! The tale of the heated water hose

I finally have my heated water hose made. I ended up using a 10' water hose from Camping World, wrapped with EasyHeat 'self-regulating cable' (the heater wire), then insulated with foil-covered 1" fiberglass, surrounded by foam pipe insulation.

The heater element was bound to the hose using EasyHeat-brand tape for the application; the fiberglass was secured with black electrical tape (belts to keep it in place); and the exterior was sealed along the seam with black duct tape, then belted for additional strength and to keep the tape seam from splitting.

Right now, I'm in testing phase, but I'm concerned that the heating element isn't actually self-regulating as I would expect it to be. In my view, it should come on only when it's cold (say below 45 degrees), though it comes on any time it is plugged in. Since EasyHeat provides no specs for what "self-regulating" means (that I have found), it could be working as planned.

However, even though the cable is only 3 Watts/foot, I don't really want it on all the time. I'm likely to use an EasyHeat thermostat electrical plug to make sure that it only powers on at 38 deg F. The cable heats fast and efficiently enough that 38 deg F should be sufficient time before freezing.

I also protected the water inlet on the RV with a spigot protector, modified to accommodate the insulated hose. It looks like it's ready for an arctic expedition, which at temps of -20 deg F in the Winter here, I'm sure I'll appreciate.

Wireless Temperature Sensors

There are some additional challenges of living in an RV in a cold climate than elsewhere. One thing I have to be very mindful of is the potential for freezing pipes. The compartments of concern are the sewer drain compartment, the water inlet and junction area (under the bed), and perhaps a few of the inaccessible drain areas, such as under the shower. Other important temperatures to keep in mind are inside the cabin and what the actual outdoor temperature is. 

I found a weather station that has three channels and three wireless temperature sending units. The cost was $40 and the unit itself tells the indoor temperature and relative humidity. The system is by ‘Ambient Weather’ and I picked it up on Amazon.com. 

I plan to place one sending unit in the sewer compartment, another under the bed near the outer wall, and the last on the back of the vehicle, so that I know the outdoor temperature. The point is to know what my freezing danger is in each of these areas and what the potential is based on the indoor and outdoor temperatures. 

This particular system has some oddities. For instance, the unit has to be reset by taking a battery out when a sender’s batteries die, then the whole system seems to have to be reinitiated. That means resetting the clock, time zone, etc, which isn’t difficult, but is a pain. However, for $40, it seems like a reasonable compromise and an irritant that should only occur once a year or so.

Checkpoint: How's living in the RV?

It has become apparent that I'm living on some fringe as a student living in a motor home full time. So far, one of the most frequent questions is, "What's it like?!" I think the answer is actually super simple.

Considering that RV's are made for those who don't want to exit the hard-shell home space of a home, motor homes are made as tiny houses on wheels. "Tiny" has some wiggle room to it, since some of the boats out there are gigantic.

What I have learned is that it's simple, easy to clean, and has all of the comforts of home, just on a smaller scale. Since my rolling home has a stove, oven, microwave, refrigerator/freezer, shower, toilet, two sinks, a kitchen table, a full-sized queen bed, and two TV's, I have everything that was important in my stick house, but on a scale fit for one person.

The only oddities that I'm consciously aware of are the need to drain the sewer once a week (opening two valves, no mess), and that showers have to basically be less than 8 minutes since the hot water heater is only 6 gallons.

So, the answer is simple -- it's just like living in a house, but on a small scale. So far, I really like it. One problem I anticipate is winter -- the walls are insulated with styrofoam, but the temperature changes appear to be quite severe. I'm going to have to find a way to conserve energy during winter, but not freeze pipes. Lots of new insulation will be needed in strategic places. Otherwise, still having a great time with it!

Holy Grad School, Batman!

Grad school so far has been great. It's a lot of work, though. Of course I knew that when I signed up, but I can't emphasize how different it is to have to read an entire book between Tuesday and Thursday and understand the material well enough to have meaningful discussion about it. It seems that the reading load for three courses is between 300-600 pages of reading per week. 

I have talked to many who have done grad school and it seems that the consensus is "learn what you need to read." The reason behind this is that the reading load, in addition to assistantship duties and life, is just always too much. At the moment, I'm torn whether I like this advice, because it seems that one might miss a lot by not reading --everything--, but it also seems like quantity is the theme, while I think quality is a better method. 

As I continue, I'm sure I'll come up with a better understanding of what the best method is. Right now, I'm erring on the side of caution and reading everything, mostly to get a beat for how much is being assigned and what I'm getting value out of and what I'm not. It's just not leaving much time for much else! 

Settling the RV - Current Challenges

I'm basically settled in the motor home and have a good system working, but I have yet to figure out exactly how I'm going to solve a few of the necessities for the coming Winter.

First, I have to find a way to heat and insulate the water hose. There are commercial solutions available, but none are great. Heated hoses don't tend to be shorter than 20' and hose heaters tend to be a mixed bag of fire hazards and are often incompatible with soft hose. I'm now strongly considering making my own fixed pipe with PVC then using pipe heat tape and insulating it with either fiberglass wrap or with common foam insulators.

Second, I have to get heaters in place for the sewer compartment and under the bed where the water lines are. In this, I also need to come up with new insulation for these compartments, so my heat isn't just lost through the 1.5" thick Styrofoam walls. So far, it seems like light bulbs will be a good way to go, though I would like to find a thermostat solution that would allow these to come on and off automatically, as needed. Perhaps the technology hasn't caught up to what I'm trying to do here.

Third, I need to get a "skirt" on the beast. The park I'm in requires a skirt, which is actually a good thing to prevent tire rot and to prevent wind from whistling through the underside constantly. I'm considering everything from plastic/fiberglass corrugated sheets and a wood frame to modified canvas tarpaulins with snaps that go around the vehicle. I think the canvas option would be better for fitting to the ground and moving events, but might actually be more difficult since so many snaps will need to be set for it to work. A screw-snap will need to be set every 10" along the body and whether it will hold in the wind is another issue entirely.

I never thought this would be easy, but these items that aren't readily available on the market have proven quite time consuming and require quite a bit more thought and innovation than I had hoped for.

What is Government Cheese?

What is "Government Cheese"? Looking back to the early '90s, Chris Farley starred in a Saturday Night Live (SNL) skit as a motivational speaker. The famous tagline from the skit was, "you're going to end up eating a steady diet of government cheese, livin' in a van down by the river!"


Well, here I am, after almost 10 years in the professional world, now seeking a graduate degree in two disciplines... Living in a van... down by the river.

This blog is about my little experiment, not only graduate school, but the life and decision to live in a motor home (aka. "the van") year around (aka. "down by the river"). I'm sure it will include all kinds of ramblings, from the difficulties of school, to my little inventions to make year-around RV'ing possible and comfortable. What's more, I'll be talking a lot about the economics that helped me arrive at the decisions I have and whether the decisions were the right ones.

Did I mention I'm in a location that regularly hits -20 F in the dead of Winter and is at 7,200 feet above sea level?

Gummint Cheese... yum.