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Old 01-23-2010, 10:18 AM   #5
Motor31
Senior Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 2,130
All RV's could be considered rated for "4 season" depending on where geographically they are counting the seasons. They are very good at it in Florida, Texas and Arizona. Pretty lousy 4 season rigs in North Dakota, Michigan, Alaska and other Northern areas. Unless you have large dual AC units they can be pretty lousy warm season units in Southern Arizona in the Summer. A temp of 115 is hard for the AC to keep up with, I know from actual experience in multiple RV's.

Keep in mind that RV's are made withing certain constraints, size, weight, width, length and height. Inside those constraints there must be enough interior living room to make them "comfortable" for the occupants to actually live in.

The walls are typically about 2" to 3" thick with various types of insulation such as foam or fiberglass batting. Those walls have a certain R value as long as they are intact. Start poking holes in them for slides, doors, access hatches and windows and that R value drops dramatically. How thick is that basement door and how good is the seal around it for air transfer? What about the slide seals? Single wiper seal, small or large bulb seal on all 4 edges? Even dual pane windows are no where near as efficient as the wall for temperature transfer control. That little 1\4" air gap is really not insulating much at all. If it were, the entire wall would be made like that as air is far cheaper than foam or fiberglass matting. RV's have LOTS of windows per wall. Keep in mind that the major loss of insulation in a stick house is, the windows poked through the walls.
The roof also has insulation in it but then there are those pesky holes for skylights, fans, antenna's and the AC units not to mention the vents for the tanks none of which are insulated.

Then there is the belly. Air flows under the unit pulling heat away from it. The floor of the unit is plywood. Under the plywood is air, not insulation until you get to the belly "pan". Then typically they toss fiberglass insulation on the belly pan and "seal" the pan. That seal may be a plastic corrugated mat or sheet metal. Then there are those darn holes again. The tanks mush have pipes to the dump location. The water station also is usually open on the bottom with no insulation or just a plastic cover to keep stuff from falling in or out of it. Your hoses have to get water into the unit so there must be a place to hook them up and that has to remain open while you are hooked up.

If you are going to be living in cold country in the winter time you are better off living in a far better insulated structure that has no air flow underneath. There is a reason why there are "snow birds". It's better to travel to warmer climes in an RV than stay in snow country in it. You can make an RV resist the cold by building up an air block around the bottom to stop the under flow of it and adding larger propane tanks to supply the furnace. Don't think it will be inexpensive to feed that furnace as it has to heat a poorly insulated box surrounded by cold. Yep it will keep it "warm" but now where as efficiently as a fixed dwelling. It will be running, a lot. Manufacturers like to tout that their units are so well insulated that the furnace actually cycles off in real cold temperatures. Of course there is no industry standard for how long an interval the furnace will be off to indicate a really well insulated RV. Being off for 1 minute and running for 30 in a constant cycle doesn't really say much.

Look for what you want to get and be prepared to pay the piper for the temperature extremes. These really aren't that good of a dwelling in those kind of situations.
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Mike Nancy and the fuzzies
Fulltiming since June 2004
Volvo 660 MH tow vehicle
2005 MS 38RL
2007 Saturn Ion "toad"
2010 Gold Wing "piggyback"
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