Unconventional (or conventional) tips and tricks to stay warmer

[AMGS3]

P.S. Great thread - thanks for starting it, O Queen of The North!

Aww, thanks. But I really sorta see myself as more of a cold weather culture ambassador. Lol So I advocate for a lot of things that people from warmer climates might think are completely bonkers. On the other hand, I have a lot to learn about dealing with hot climates. I lived in northern Texas for one winter and was miserable because 1) it was grey grey grey, and I missed the snow and 2) everybody was dressed in parkas but I hardly ever wore anything besides tshirts and shorts because I was still waiting for it to get cold. Yup, everyone thought I was nuts. Lol. Not nuts just acclimated to much colder temps.

I was a melted puddle when I lived in Mesa AZ. And that was spring, not even summer yet. Lol. So I'm a hot weather wimp.

~angie

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[dragonstar85]

I was coming here to pretty much ask this very question after reading that thread and wondering other ways of staying warm. It’s been a winter here where majority is in the negatives. I need all the tips I can get before car living again.

 

[AMGS3]

Hey everybody!

I don't assume that all forum members/readers also follow the CRVL YouTube channel. So, in case you missed them, Bob posted two new videos on his YouTube channel about staying warm. Since they are relevant to the subject of this thread, I thought I'd link them here.





Have a great day!

~angie

 

[AMGS3]

I need all the tips I can get before car living again.

Hi Dragonstar! If you have any specific questions about your setup please feel free to ask. I've learned some interesting tips in this thread so far.

Stay warm,
~angie

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[Kaylee]

I'm a hot weather wimp.

Ditto!

The #1 piece of advice I have is to learn your limits.
For those who have never slept in their vehicle, practice in mild weather, taking daytime naps, then gradually try cooler temperatures, tweaking your gear each time.

 

[Gr8ful]

I bought some black fleece overalls for $8 on Sportsmans Guide that work great & wearing a loose fitting stocking hat helps alot as well as loose fittinng glooves. If hour head, hands & feet are warm the rest should stay warm. I'm ordering a diesel heater today, van't believe how cheap they are $116/shipped complete from the US for a 5KW (17,000+ btus) A 2kw would do but is more & doesn't save on fuel when the 5 is turned down. I havve full heat & cool front & rear but don't want to run the engine all night & these don't add moisture.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

That water bottle in a sweater one. It's still warm like 8 hrs later.

If the water bottle is still warm after 8 hours, then it hasn't transferred its heat to your body. The idea is not to keep the water bottle warm, it is to keep you warm. 
You are far better off taking that sweater and laying it on top of your feet (between some blankets to keep it from sliding around). Then the heat from the water bottle gets to your feet but stays within your bed to keep you warm.
Now, if the water bottle starts out too hot for your feet, then wrapping it in a sweater or other insulator is a good idea, just for comfort. If that water bottle is still warm by morning time, then you probably need to use a thinner sweater. Adjust till it is just warm enough for comfort in the morning. 
If you make the sweater easy to remove with your feet, then you can take the sweater off the water bottle in the morning, for a fresh resurgence of heat to your feet.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

So two days ago my friend introduced me to HotsnapZ. 
Does anyone else have any experience with these?

I have tried a similar product. I didn't like that the bag holding the chemicals was not very durable. That would be the first thing I would check before buying any more.
As to them just being for short term use: Most of the time, I just need something to get me warmed up. Once I am warmed up and my circulation is flowing, I stay warm on my own.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

if you know you have to be outside in the cold but it's sunny out, wear black pants. Your legs will feel warmer than if you were wearing a lighter color, at least where the sun is shining on you. 

This is what I do, but with one twist: I pull on my black rain-pants over my regular pants. I consider them my windbreaker for my legs. That way, once I do warm up, I can pull off the rain-pants. I now prefer these over-pants to wearing long-johns because I usually overheat with the long-johns and can't take them off.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

My feet sweat a lot. So they can often be cold even in the summer time. So, I have found that something with lots of insulation but that still breaths very well works best for me. So, I wear these "mukluks" a lot. 



The ones I have are cheap knock-offs from Pakistan. I've had them for a decade or so. But you can find them online.

I sometimes wear thick socks underneath the mukluks. It depends on how much air my feet feel like they want.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

I have a 35 watt, 12 volt, car seat heater, that I got out of the free pile at the RTR. (I had literally been planning to order one just after the RTR.)

Because I have 100 Amp hours of usable battery power, this 3 amp heater will last all night if I want. 

These things are made for people to skooch around on them as they get in and out of a car a thousand times a year, so they are relatively durable. Right now, I have it under my feet to protect them from the cold floor. I put it on top of a folded blanket, so it doesn't have to work so hard. But it is easier to move my feet around on top of this heating pad rather than under a lot of blankets. And my feet can still breath, so they don't get so sweaty. 

Just by using this 35 watt heating pad, I can avoid turning on my camp stove for heat for a large proportion of the evening. I figure that saves me about 33% on total propane usage. 

On especially cold nights, I will put it under my legs, under my sleeping bag. I usually only run it for an hour or so... and not all night, because it usually gets too darn warm. I can then turn it back on in in the morning for a while. 

When it is sunny out, I will run it all day if needed because I have plenty of solar to run this, my laptops, and have enough to charge the battery plenty fast.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

Make sure the underside of your bed support is insulated. A lot of people just put a sheet of plywood on a wooden frame and then lay a relatively thin pad of foam on top. The under side of that board will then be exposed to some of the coldest air in your van, close to the floor. So, make sure to insulate the underside of that plywood.

In my case, my bed is a board, with two, three-inch layers of foam on top. That board is resting directly on top of Rubbermaid tubs that are filled with either clothes or gear. Because the board sits directly on the top of the tubs instead of on a frame, there is essentially a seal between the board and the tubs. So the tubs retain some of the warmer air from earlier in the day. They are like heat batteries or buffers that store heat during the day and release it at night. The tubs full of clothes are also like one foot thick insulation. 

Now, some people have trouble with moisture building up under their mattresses. I use an old hand-crocheted afghan that I wrap around the bottom layer of foam. This allows the moisture to escape without allowing too much air to blow through there. Plus, it adds some insulation.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

I wear a loose, mostly cotton, hooded sweatshirt over my T-Shirt to bed. I have found that the cotton breathes more than a mostly polyester sweatshirt, so I don't wake up all sweaty. I pull the hood up over my head and make sure my ears are covered. I use a sweatshirt a couple sizes larger than I would normally wear so the hood is large enough to pull way up over my head and down over my forehead.

Yes, I know that you don't loose any more heat out of your head than anywhere else on your body. But if your head is the only thing not covered, then that is where the heat is going to escape. Besides, I don't like my ears to be cold.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

I use a thin-ish but heavy blanket,  doubled up, over the top of my sleeping bag. No, it does not compress the insulation of the sleeping bag enough to ruin its insulating value. I know because I am warmer with the blanket on. 

I like the heavier blanket because it causes my sleeping bag to conform to my body better, so less cold air moves around in there. I also like that I can whip the extra blanket completely on or off with one hand, while still in my sleeping bag. This is made possible because my bed is just a loose board on top of tubs. I slide the board away from the wall, make the bed with some of that blanket hanging down past the bed, then I shove the board back against the wall, trapping the blanket between the board and the wall. So one edge of the blanket is always kept in place. Other people could do this by tucking the edge of the blanket under their mattress. 

See my previous picture (in this thread) to see that blanket.

 

[bigsallysmom]

I'm in a S&B. I throw back the covers so the warm air hits the area where I will be sleeping. I also use a heating pad to warm where my feet will be.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

I live in a minivan. On one side of my minivan, I took out all the plastic interior and installed cabinets. I left in the headliner and the plastic on the passenger side. I have stuffed the space between the metal body of the car and that headliner and plastic interior with poly-fil stuffing from Walmart. It is $3.84 for a 16 oz bag. I have stuffed it in the space above the headliner by temporarily removing lights and control panels and using a yardstick to stuff it in place. I removed the plastic panels on the passenger side of the back of my minivan and stuffed poly-fil in behind there. 

I have used about four, 16 oz bags so far and could stand to put some more in other spaces. I can definitely tell the difference by holding my hand to areas that are insulated compared to areas that are not. It has been 33 degrees F outside, and I have woken up to it being 47 degrees F in my minivan. That's almost 15 degrees difference with my body (and my 12 v compressor fridge) being the only heat source. 

I like the poly-fil because it is moderately hydro-phobic. In other words, it doesn't trap moisture like fiberglass does.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

I just use my cook stove for heat (when my 35 watt seat warmer isn't enough). I have mounted a small fan above and to the side of where I sit the stove. Whenever I run the stove, I turn on the fan to keep the heat from accumulating in the ceiling.

 

[LoveCareThinkDo]

I have a couple of small Therm-A-Rest pads (but mine are older and uglier). Just big enough for sitting on. I got them for when I go to coffee shops because the seats are often hard and I have a bony butt. Even though they roll up into a relatively small bundle, I was trying to figure out where to store them. Then it hit me that I should "store" them between my window Reflectix and the window, as extra insulation. (Yes, I know very well exactly how Reflectix works. I don't need it reflecting heat back out of my windows in the winter, and I haven't gotten around to fancying up my Reflectix with insulation and a layer of black cloth yet.)

So, I put the Therm-A-Rest pads in the space between my window and my Reflectix on my two sliding door windows. I can tell it does make some difference just by putting my hand over where the pad is and where the pad isn't. Is it a huge difference? No. But it is some. 

So, if you have anything that would be of insulating value, think of sticking it between your windows and the Reflectix that you stick into your windows.

 

[AMGS3]

If the water bottle is still warm after 8 hours, then it hasn't transferred its heat to your body...

It has though, my feet stay warmer longer with it wrapped in a sweater than when I used to wrap it in just a tshirt.

Now, if the water bottle starts out too hot for your feet, then wrapping it in a sweater or other insulator is a good idea, just for comfort. If that water bottle is still warm by morning time, then you probably need to use a thinner sweater. Adjust till it is just warm enough for comfort in the morning. 

This is precisely the reason I use the sweater. When I reheat the water from the hot water bottle I pour about 3/4 of it out, boil it, and pour it back in the bottle (which is really more like a thick rubber bag, in case anyone hasn't seen one of these). Then I wrap it in a thick sweater and put it in the foot end of my bed. It slowly releases all that nearly boiling water heat all night. By morning it is still warm, but not hot. And my feet are still warm, not cold.
Also, with all the -30s to -40s °F overnight temps this past month, I've been sleeping with knee length hand knit thick wool socks on. And I can still feel the difference in the warmth of my bed where my feet are on top of the water bottle and the temp of the bed where my calves are, even though they are covered by the same wool socks and blankets.
The sweater just slows down the heat loss to make the heat last longer. When it was wrapped in a tshirt, by morning the bottle would be barely room temp, which felt cold by comparison instead of still warm like it is now.

~angie

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[WanderingRose]

When it’s really cold, I cover with a fleece blanket, first, and then my comforter.

Doesn’t take long to warm up, and stay that way all night.

They make fleece sleeping bag liners that would have the same effect, but without the potential for scooting out from under them in the night, as they zip up.