How to prevent water from freezing during the winter months

[gnx547]

For those living full time in the van, how do you prevent and keep your water from freezing in the cold winter months? Thanks

 

[bullfrog]

Stay away in climates that don’t go much below freezing and keep it in a heated space. One reason many carry 1 gallon or smaller bottles is so they can put it in a cooler or insulated box that stays open during the day to get warm and close it in the evening. If you have a larger tank and lines you need to be able to drain the lines and keep the tank above it’s freezing point.

 

[highdesertranger]

yes, drive to where it's not freezing and keep the water in the living compartment. highdesertranger

 

[gnx547]

I live in the Chicago suburbs and wont be able to escape the cold winter months. I wish I can but I cant due to work. I'm thinking using a medium size cooler and build an insulated box for it.

 

[bullfrog]

In town just keep a bottle of water with you in your pocket or in your sleeping bag. Make use of public facilities to refill.

 

[MrNoodly]

You could accept that it will freeze and work from there, like knowing you'll have to melt it on the stove. Think of frozen water the way we think of frozen food.

 

[skyl4rk]

In below freezing weather, I generally sleep with no heat on, and turn on the RV heater when I wake up. I store a crate of 4 gallon jugs in front of the heater outlet. That is by coincidence, it just happens to be a convenient place to store water, but the heat does help to keep water liquid.  A gallon jug or other large jug seems to hold heat longer than a small bottle. Generally, if it is cold, I am moving, driving somewhere else during the day.  Then the motor heats the cabin. If you are stationary, that doesn't help you. 

If you are not in the van during the work day, everything in the van will freeze solid in severe cold weather. In that situation it is probably best to carry a backpack with water bottles with you into a heated area.

At night, the warm spots in the van are under your quilt and above your head, where your warm breath rises. You might keep a 2 liter bottle by your side under your quilt on a cold night.

 

[Malamute]

When pickup nomading I kept some water in 2 liter pop bottles, they are pretty sturdy. I would bash them against the truck bumper top get the ice broken up enough I get enough water out to brush my teeth and such. i sometimes kept a 2 liter bottle in my sleeping back to keep it from freezing overnight. Most water was kept in 5 gal plastic cans. Id sometimes go from Flagstaff to the Verde (30 miles or so) to get in warmer country to thaw out a while.

When in the winnebago several years/winters, I was mainly stationary. Id get straw (not hay) bales and stack them about 3 tall all around the winny. It helped tremendously in keeping it warm and my plumbing not freezing up unless it got below zero for a while. I ran grey water out on the ground to evaporate or soak in.

One side effect of the straw bales was mice loved them. I invested in a large number of traps, too bad mouse fur prices were down or it could have been a lucrative winter hobby income. The 79 winny was terrible about mouse security, best I could tell it had huge openings for them to get inside under the front end. I just lived with it. I was building cabins and houses to sell at the time and living on site in the winny until the house was finished enough to move inside.

 

[skyl4rk]

I think your cooler idea is good. Open the cooler when heating the van and close it when not heating. That should give you a few more hours before freezing happens in severe cold weather and probably will remain liquid for days with warmer outside temps (above 20F or so).

 

[Joyce Jason]

I live in Michigan.  I find that placing water bottles in a cheap Coleman cooler, the inside lined with reflectix, will keep water from freezing until 17 degrees F.  Hope that helps.

 

[maki2]

Get a camp stove and avreally good thermos bottle. Fill the bottle with hot tap water sometime during the day. Before bed heat the water to boiling and put it back in the thermos. Then wrap that bottle in layers of thivk blankets over night. It will still be warm when you wake up so that you can at least have some water to drink.

Even though it is not freezing yet I still do the thermos bottle with hot water routine at night. Nice for making instant coffe or hot tea in the early morning without having to light the stove and wait for it to get hot.

A good quality thermos is a treasure to own for boondocking. Cold things stay cold, hot things stay hot. You ccould make hot soup for dinner at lunch time if you have a place at work to heat it up. There are a lot of simple tricks for saving time and energy for food and drinks when camping. A seasoned traveler knows to take a thermos or two on a road trip. But in the age of microwaves it has become lost as a common practice. A larger thermos of hot water has more thermal mass and will stay hot longer than a little skinny bottle.

 

[nature lover]

When I camped in a tent as a camp post it would often get into the low 20s. I had a large Coleman cooler. The very large kind that you see going on fishing boats and such I drilled a hole in the side of it ran electric cord through and put 100 W lightbulb in a. fixture inside where the water was stored. It never froze completely even when sitting on the picnic table outside. Of course the site I was in was designed for a motorhome so it had electricity. Arrange it so that the light Bulb could never touch the side of the cooler or the water jugs because they will melt.

 

[RVTravel]

Using Joyce's method of water containers in a cooler, you could also add one container of hot water if leaving the vehicle for awhile to possibly keep it from freezing below 17 degrees F.