Ultra Heat for four season, plus or minus.

[pfacdb]

I wanted to pass along a bit of information to anyone interested in products to keep water from becoming a solid in winter. We have a 2011 Roadtrek converted to 4wd that we wanted to make a bit more 4 season-ish. Not really looking for winter camping any longer, but wanting to keep things from freezing while traveling to warmer climes--say from Colorado to Death Valley, Marin, that kind of thing.

Ultra-heat http://www.ultraheat.com/rv_products.html makes 12V products that will keep water tanks; elbows at storage; dump valves; and 12 inch runs heated. They are wrap-on or stick on sheets. The water tank heaters and elbows run off of a thermostat.

I'm about to order products to heat our interior fresh tank (4amps and thermostat); elbows off of gray tank 1A; short run at gray 1A); and dump valve (use 1 hour before dumping gray tank--2-4 A??

Using only our interior system (pex plumbing inside) I think we can get by with about 40 Amps--daily; based on info from one of their very nice technical support persons.

Anyway, I didn't find much on this subject on either one of the sites, so thought I'd post. Don't know much more than this, but many of the RV manufacturers are using their products from what I understand.

 

[adam88]

Hi pfacdb. Thanks for starting a discussion on this. I too plan to use ultraheat's pads in my build. I was wondering if anyone had any real world experience. I am more interested in using them for extreme cold temperatures (-40).

A problem likely to be raised here is the amount of current they take. 40 amps is a lot of current. If that was all that was running, then you would need somewhere around 700 amp hours of batteries just to keep the batteries from going below 50% overnight. Either that, or you'd need to run a generator all night (Honda eu2000i). I am guessing this is more likely your plan... to run a generator all night.

For me, I plan to just use 1 pad under the water tank (their 60 gallon pad). It draws 11.8 amps an hour. I then plan to wrap the entire tank in some sort of insulation. As for the water hoses, I may put one strip on them but I don't think they will be a problem because they will be inside and heated and not touching any floor or wall. We will see. I can always add them later.

 

[pfacdb]

Amp draw ultra heat

Sorry correction: Total draw was stated to be about 40 amps daily! That is one big tank you have at 60 gallons. Our interior tank is only 10 gallons (exterior is winterized). Still, with insulation and a thermostat you may only draw half of that 11.8 per hour. So 140 or so in 24 hours. Obviously, without solar or other backup that would be an issue for most of our 220 amp batteries.

 

[adam88]

hi pfacdb. 40 amps a day sure seems low. The smallest tank heater I can find from ultraheat is their Model 0900 which draws 4.1 amps an hour. So even at half that, assuming it toggles on and off, that's still 48 amps a day just for that one heater. Then if you add in fresh water lines and elbows etc and a gray water tank/black water tank heating pad, it adds up. I don't see how it would work for 40 amps daily. Yes 60 gallons water tank is big, but 10 gallons is small! I thought roadtrek had more than 10 gallons. Sheesh!!

 

[IdaSHO]

I can see the reasoning behind such heaters.

And will agree that 40Amps per day is WAY low.


However, a properly built camper does not need heated tanks.
Keep them within the insulated cabin and they will remain warm as long as the cabin is heated.


Doing this not only allows keeping things fluid without a huge electrical draw, it also moderates interior temps.
The water tanks act as huge heat sinks. So even after the furnace kicks off,
it may take HOURS for the temps to drop enough for the furnace to kick back on, due to the heat the water is holding.

I built my camper like this, and it does fantastic. To date we have seen just about 25 degrees below zero.
Ill admit that even the dual pain insulated windows at that temp get DAMN cold, but the interior remained comfortable,
and all water tanks and lines remained warm. My LP tank is within the insulated cabin as well (though still in a compartment
sealed from the interior, and vented to exterior), so the LP remains usable even down to real cold temps.

 

[Pacific Northwest yetti]

I agree if building, place tanks inside the cabin or insulated area. I just bought 3 ultra heat pads don't remember which ones other than 12x8 stick on. These are to retrofit my fifth wheel ( in which I live) , and then i will prob add some sort of underbelly closure. Mine wont really see extreme cold though, our fake cold does not usually even reach 0. And I will be plugged into shore power but I can let you know how they do.