Some observations in freezing weather

[KenB]

Nothing earth shattering, but I thought I’d share some observations regarding freezing or not freezing items inside the camper during cold weather.  Our Elite II is often parked on a piece of lake property we own in north central Minnesota.  It’s strictly boondocking.  We were up last weekend and ran the heat for about 24 hours before we headed home.  We shut off the heat when we left.  Tonight I’m back up and noticed some items were frozen, some were not, depending on their location. 

The weather has been in the low 20’s to mid 30’s during the last three days since we left on Sunday noon.  It’s now Wednesday evening and I’m back.  I’d winterized everything on a previous trip, so I’m dry camping.  The composting toilet makes this possible.  My analog recording thermometer is mounted above the microwave and to the left of the cabinet door.  It recorded a low of 20°F.  My digital battery shunt said it was 25° in the battery compartment when I got here around 5pm.

• The 1 gallon dog bowl on the floor of the bathroom is frozen. 
•  A 1/2 full 5 gallon water jug stored on the bathroom floor is frozen. 
• There were four disposable one gallon plastic drinking water jugs from the grocery store on top of the composting toilet.  None were froze at all. 
• The contents of the pantry including drinks and canned goods were all fine. 
• The contents of the refrigerator were all fine.  This included eggs, pickles, beer, drinking water, and condiments.  (In the name of science I opened and enjoyed several cans of beer tonight just to be sure cans from both the top shelf, bottom shelf, and door were all fine!)

The take away?   Don’t store anything on the floor that you don’t want to freeze. Anything off of the floor or in a cabinet was fine.  Not sure how long it’d be fine, but for this one data point it works out.  

(Saturday is the start of Minnesota firearms whitetail deer season.  I keep the camper up north all fall as a base to bird hunt ruffed grouse with my pointing dogs.  Since the orange army is taking over the woods for a couple of weeks, I’ll move the Oliver home for the winter and put it away in the back yard under a carport.)

[Ollie-Haus]

1 hour ago, KenB said:

Nothing earth shattering, but I thought I’d share some observations regarding freezing or not freezing items inside the camper during cold weather.  

•  (In the name of science I opened and enjoyed several cans of beer tonight

           just to be sure cans from both the top shelf, bottom shelf, and door were all fine!) 😂 😂 👍

 Since the orange army is taking over the woods for a couple of weeks, I’ll move the Oliver home for the winter and put it away in the back yard under a carport.)

Love your scientific test methods! I'd love to help you in your analysis next time around!  😂

Good call on bringing the Ollie home to safety during deer season. I'd hate to find out the hard way what a stray high powered round does to the hull of an Oliver. The Ollie would be pretty invisible in the snow white countryside. 

Thanks for sharing your observations, actually pretty good information for us newbies. I've got tracking wifi thermometers in key locations in our Oliver to see how winter temps effect interior spaces. They wouldn't be much use in remote storage but in our driveway in Indiana they stay connected to the home WIFI for a permanent set of temp logs. Our first winter in storage will provide interesting data.