Hierarchy of hard sided campers that handle the snow/winter?

[calameda]

The Aterra by AT has has my attention the most for quality and lightness… curious about people’s opinions on warmth?

Bison and similar you can almost build out for $40k less. Hard to justify that big of a difference

They use PP honeycomb rather than foam, and thin at that, so it isn't going to have the thermal resistance of a bridgeless foam shell. It's probably fine for most use, but it wouldn't be ideal for cold winter camping.

The Aterra was initially marketed (wasn’t it?) as 3 season for a reason. Propane as primary fuel, the 1/2” thick honeycomb panels, lots of windows, no gray tank all suggest less extreme conditions, ie not long term sub zero. Which isnt to say you can’t be comfortable in it for say a 3-4 days in the snow with the heat cranked. Just that it isn’t intended for polar expeditions. Few are!

As for price, if you like their component choices, aesthetics and layout, I think it’s more than fair. If you have someone else do custom interior buildout, you could readily exceed that 40k to do something similar. Interior build quality is v good from what I’ve seen, w thoughtful usability touches, though with an eye towards weight savings rather than ultimate durability. And cabover bed has limited headroom, will definitely bother some. But yeah their dry weight (listed as 1200 lbs base config) is really impressive. Id hazard you can’t get close to that with anything else similarly configured. (I should add that vendor supplied weights are often optimistic; I’m curious if any Aterra owners can verify.)

It will all come down to personal preferences and tradeoffs.

 

[Spencer for Hire]

Hi there B^2, Total Composites camper owner here. I'm one of the people who "sold my mass produced 4-season truck camper" (after 14 years of ownership) and decided to go with Total Composites. 🤪 My previous truck camper was an Alpenlite Saratoga 935. It was designed for a short-box 1-ton truck, had a 9 foot floor, and a single curb-side slide. Like you, I have two kids and our family of four has traveled the entire country in a truck camper. We even took 'em out of school and traveled in the camper for a full year (If you're interested you can read about that adventure HERE). Since you said that your primary cold weather use will be ski trips to Tahoe, IMO you can easily get away with a truck camper with a slide... a cold winter in Tahoe is not the same as cold winter in the Yukon. However, you should expect to use a lot of propane and/or electricity; slides are quite draft-ey. FWIW I never experienced any mechanical or structural issues with the slide.

With regard to your question about hierarchy; I'm not qualified to list the brands/models in any kid of logical order, but there are a handful of exceptional quality 4-season truck campers you might consider. Any of these would do just fine at Tahoe: Northern Lite, Wolf Creek, Northstar, Adventurer, Bigfoot, etc. I do think that Lance makes nice campers too.

Now, having had the Total Composites box for a little more than one year, I'm in agreement with IdaSHO; What's best for your family depends on your use case and your personal wants & needs. Due to their small internal volume, all these hard side habitats are relatively easy to heat in a typical winter environment... ya' know, the kind most of us in the continental US would choose to camp in. I had no problem keeping the truck camper warm using the propane furnace at 10ºF outside temps, and it's been the same with the Total Composites with a ~6800BTU diesel furnace. Both of them get condensation on the inside, this is due to the many openings that are cut through the wall and ceiling panels for window, hatches, water & power ports, etc... and the simple fact that we cook inside the camper and are continuously exhaling water vapor.

In my case I biased my build toward camping at the beach and in the desert. I chose to have a very large rear door; it's an insulated marine door but in sub-freezing temperatures moisture can condense on it's frame exactly the same as it does on my windows & hatches The thing is, I wanted this feature and is just so spectacular when open that I wouldn't trade it for anything! Importantly, this hasn't reduced our snow camping one bit.

It's unfortunate that other folks here have hijacked your post just to talk ********** about their competition. If you want additional factual information about Total Composites campers please feel free to DM me or create a new forum post on that subject.

Cheers!
-Mark
View attachment 841616

Do you have any more pics of the TC camper? Thank You.

 

[sn_85]

The Aterra by AT has has my attention the most for quality and lightness… curious about people’s opinions on warmth?

Bison and similar you can almost build out for $40k less. Hard to justify that big of a difference

As others have mentioned the lightness of the Aterra comes at a cost and that is the thickness and type of composite paneling they use. I think someone has mentioned it's about 1/2 to maybe 3/4" thick material? By comparison I think the Bison uses 1.5" panels, TC 2" panels and Cascadia 3" panels. I'm sure the Aterra is adequate in winter but you may be seeing a lot more condensation and I'm positive the Truma will be running quite a bit harder through the night. Seems like with some of the other composite campers you can run a 2kW or 4kW diesel heater and still be plenty warm in very cold winters.

I think the Aterra is priced right for a full build with everything. All the components and systems seem very high quality which add to the price. The benefit with a shell build is that you can tailor it what you want and stick to a price point or budget as desired. I think if winter camping is a big sticking point with you I would look at other options than the Aterra. They seem to be a lot more robust and up to the task of winter camping than the Aterra IMO.

 

[calameda]

I think someone has mentioned it's about 1/2 to maybe 3/4" thick material? By comparison I think the Bison uses 1.5" panels, TC 2" panels and Cascadia 3" panels.

We should distinguish insulative capacity from structural integrity here. Skinned PE honeycomb panels are generally quite rigid and strong for a given thickness. But they do not provide insulation comparable to foam for the same thickness, simply because with honeycomb there are no structural barriers to heat flow, only air, between the skins. So, even if a skinned honeycomb panel were 2” thick it would not provide appreciably more insulation than 1/2”, though it would certainly be more rigid.

 

[andy_b]

Another thing about honeycomb that is interesting is that since it is just air between the skins, light passes through easily. The Aterra has a polyurea coating that I assume provides some opacity. In our TC camper, our bathroom is built using honeycomb panels that are an inch thick. Daylight through the door window passes through it pretty easily while the foam-cored walls are almost completely opaque. Anyhow, I agree that the Aterra is a great value but I’m not sure how efficient it would be in truly cold climes.

 

[IdaSHO]

I can understand the sentiment that the higher R-value the better.
But my research and 12+ years of first hand experience shows that the benefits must be weighed with the negatives.

Our custom camper with just R7 or so and nothing more than a 1960's gravity fed LP furnace rated at just 6kBTU has NO problem maintaining comfortable temps to -20 degrees F.
So while higher R value may seem like the thing to do, do yourself a favor and consider the additional cost/weight/volume lost when pushing to thicker and/or higher R value walls.

Personally, I consider 1-1/2 of XPS foam is more than sufficient for 99% of users, and will provide the best return on investment over the long term.

 

[rruff]

Floor R value with the composite hardboard they are using should 7-10 depending on what you give the honeycomb as the vacuum bonding process should pull most air out of the honeycomb and leave it sealed but you can’t count on it pulling and holding a hard vacuum.

The composite board may have R4/in or so if it's foam + fiberglass like Coosa.

The PP honeycomb samples I've seen are sealed in manufacture with air inside; when I got them at 7,000 ft where I live, there was a little bubble above each cell! I don't think they are being evacuated during bonding.

If you do own Cascadia as Victorian mentioned, can you provide tech specs on your foam and skins?

 

[tirod3]

R values are much like other metrics of measurement, how they are assessed can be less than empirical. Like, lumens for flashlights - one single hotspot center of beam doesn't describe the amount of illuminated area or the size of the ghost ring outside, nor does it quantify how much throw it has - how far light makes things visible.

Where the insulation is counts, one explanation I recently read suggested the floor could be R zero, walls R teens, but the ceiling, where heat rises to, needs to be R twenties. in the case of the foam being discussed, it made for two inch walls and a 4 - four - inch roof. That's how buildings are handled and the dynamics aren't much different for an RV. We often dress the same - a very warm hat covering the neck does more than expensive boots.

Filling windows with foam inserts also helps the overall heat retention. Using some kind of double pane glass helps, too. When it comes to a lot of weatherizing tho, an RV is rarely as good as a building. Gaps are filled with insulating foam, and air infiltration is tightly managed. In the small number of feet RV's contain, humidity is a much larger issue. A truly cold weather shelter would use a heat exchanger for the ventilation, moist warm outgoing air heats the incoming dryer air. I run a wood stove in the winter, and feed it outside air directed into the burn box to keep less well sealed openings in the house from allowing cold air to get sucked in.

Skirting also helps by stopping cold air breezing underneath an RV and allowing some earth berm affects where warmer underground temps finally prevail closer to the surface. Parking out of the wind helps, too. A good site could have some dense conifers upwind.

There are many tips and tricks to help retain heat which can compensate for the typically poor insulation of a camper, which are mostly oriented to fair summer weather. Many from the 60's had crank out jalousie windows, basically, adjustable glass louvers. There are many details in commercial trailers which remain from that era and they downgrade the R value of the final product. This is why the military went to foamed on site dome structures for longer term temporary winter shelters. An inflated molding tent and 20 pound tanks of poly with a entryway doesn't take up as much space as a 35 foot RV but will make that many cubic feet of habitat. Some of the tech from the 70s era did work out.

A truly 4 season capable RV would look somewhat more bulky, like a pop up trailer, the pop down skirting and reduced floor size, along with minimalist winter grade windows is going to be a stark contrast to the breezeways we haul now. They will look much more like winter ice shacks seen on frozen lakes - and those are a potential source. The fishing holes could be repurposed, too, if they were in their own little room . . .

 

[rruff]

A truly cold weather shelter would use a heat exchanger for the ventilation, moist warm outgoing air heats the incoming dryer air.

When the insulation gets quite good, the ventilation loss becomes an important factor, and a heat exchanger would certainly help. But I think this is probably only practical for someone really trying to minimize heat energy... maybe use only body heat, electric heat, or a very simple heater.

But as Idasho mentioned, the fuel use is pretty trivial for the sort of construction we are talking about. His rig even has some wood framing unlike the more common foam/fiberglass sandwich panel... which is essentially air-tight, and avoids significant bridging.

Also, regarding heat loss on the floor vs the ceiling, the loss will be proportional to the delta T between the interior/exterior surfaces. Airflow (or the lack of) on the surface can effect this, but it will usually be minor compared to the insulation value of the foam. Since the panels are sealed you won't get any air migrating through them.

 

[simple]

Another elusive tidbit with the foam core / FRP panels is that their insulative properties mean that they don't conduct much heat (thermal energy) into areas that aren't in contact with warmed air.

Idasho's wood build would likely have more heat in the nooks and cranny's and inside cabinets / under mattresses etc.

Bold statement yes. How significant, not sure. Fun to think about though.

 

[tirod3]

Like aerodynamics, thermal bridging gets more important when the conditions get more extreme. A true 4 season RV would avoid it as much as possible. But, as said, since the ability of heaters easily overcomes a deficit, in well insulated three season campers, the overall addition of structure, especially in off road trailers, would be an advantage in the long haul.

Assessing a units overall R rating is what is lacking, a simple test similar to an ice chest, bring the RV interior temp up to 72 degrees, and then parked in a 32F environment, plot it's temp change over time as it cools. Math and metrics will likely reveal some surprising results, but we won't know until those tests are actually conducted. Otherwise it's a debate over the rating of the insulation, not the total construction of the RV. A quick search online shows it's being ignored, likely due to the lack of standards in the industry. It leaves us comparing apples and oranges.

RV Insulation R-Values - a Dirty Little Secret - Ask The RV Engineer

Confession: I kinda have a thing for insulation. R-values excite me. It comes with the brain type, I suppose. I’m an RV engineer by day, intrepid blogger by night. And I DESPISE – that’s all caps – many of the myths, misconceptions, and outright lies surrounding common types of RV insulation. By...

askthervengineer.com

 

[rruff]

Assessing a units overall R rating is what is lacking, a simple test similar to an ice chest, bring the RV interior temp up to 72 degrees, and then parked in a 32F environment, plot it's temp change over time as it cools.

I measured the input to an electric heater. It's simple and works well. Hard part is gauging the exterior environment when you have variable sun and temperature and wind... but estimating is good enough.

I don't camp in extreme temperatures, but it's nice when the body heat of one person is enough to raise the interior temp >10F on cold nights.

 

[Victorian]

not sure if any other manufacturer has done that… we went through a thermal audit conducted by a government certified building inspector. He didn’t only look for cold bridges he also tested everything for air tightness. We had a portable diesel heater blasting the interior of our truck camper for over an hour. the weak points are windows and doors. Everything past with flying colours. Here is a write up we did last year about condensation and how to avoid it: https://expeditionupfitter.com/blog...-camper-moisture-free-a-complete-owners-guide

 

[Trail Talk]

Here is a data point from our composite panel camper. During our winter travels, the Webasto ThermoTop burns around a litre of fuel every 2 1/2 hours. Since it can be running 18+ hours a day, (that is, when not driving and using the engine hydronic circuit) that consumption is significant enough to factor into our range calculations. I had OEV seal up a small pass-through into the cab to eliminate one hole in the envelope but then we need to keep some cross-ventilation for air quality.

 

[simple]

Here is a data point from our composite panel camper. During our winter travels, the Webasto ThermoTop burns around a litre of fuel every 2 1/2 hours. Since it can be running 18+ hours a day, (that is, when not driving and using the engine hydronic circuit) that consumption is significant enough to factor into our range calculations. I had OEV seal up a small pass-through into the cab to eliminate one hole in the envelope but then we need to keep some cross-ventilation for air quality.

Interesting data. Burn rate is higher than expected. Do you notice much difference in consumption between 32F and 0F?