Insulation.

[southpennrailroad]

Russ,
Excellent on getting the insulation in the walls. If it were me, I would concentrate on getting the ceiling insualted as soon as possible. That is where the most heat gets sucked out of the trailer. That aluminum roof makes an excellent heat sink. If nothing else, if resources allow, at least get some insulation pressed in between the roof ribs over the area where you sleep. Every little bit counts. Especially on the ceiling. The front has a plywood wall, that will isolate the living spacew from the cold a little bit. Even a cople of bread bags stuffed with old rags stuffed in the space at the top of the front wall to block the air flow will help some.

If your CT has the rounded top corners, you will find that the 1" foam will be difficult to "mold" to the curved area. I used two layers of 1/2" sheets in the corners of mine. Made installation relatively easy.

Mitch

Thanks Mike on the idea of the corners. I was concerned about that. I will do a little at a time. This spot where I am parked is open field and I had everything tossed out and worked on the walls first. Then everything else is accessible while I still am in it. Had to sleep on a hard floor Thursday night (not good sleeping. Those days of rough camping are WELL over!) but I slept well last night. Here is a photo of the Thursday tear down.

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I can't believe I had so much in there. Notice the open field I am in. Notice the stuff inside that still needs to come out as well as outside. I've slimmed down some. The trip home will be a little lighter.



Look what I lost and found from over a year ago. Sweet!



Tight fit. Had to put some pressure on the sides to get it in.

[southpennrailroad]

So I am back up and running but still have the ceiling and front wall and three doors to do. I have less stuff and pulling the trailer back down off the Somerset mountain plateau was smoother. I think I got rid of 150 lbs and acquired some more floor space. I have some nice color LED Christmas light up inside and now plan to put a full size glass side window in as well. It will be fixed. last winter I had only a window on the door. This window will be at my foot of the bed.I will also use a one way film on it to see only out.

[pete42]

Like I said you may want a piece of foam to insert into the window opening to keep the cold out.
good job I looked at the pictures boy you sure did collect a lot of stuff.

maybe you can get the celing done next it will help a lot.

pete

[southpennrailroad]

Like I said you may want a piece of foam to insert into the window opening to keep the cold out.
good job I looked at the pictures boy you sure did collect a lot of stuff.

maybe you can get the celing done next it will help a lot.

pete

Thanks Pete and I will do the ceiling next. Even B4 the front.

[mskobier]

Russ,
Haven't heard much in the last few weeks. Everything going ok?

I was thinking about your insulation project and had another thought. If I remember correctly, your bed is against the rear doors. the rear doors are another major heat loss area. Almost as bad as the roof. If your doors are built anything like mine, they consist of an aluminum frame, an aluminum outter skin, with an approx 1" void inside the door and a 1/8" plywood inner skin. There is even less insulation value in the doors than the side walls with the thicker inner plywood wall. You may want to consider getting them insulated before the front wall too. Fortunately, they are fairly easy to insulate. I would do it one door at a time. It shouldn't take more than a couple of hours to do each one, assuming you do not have any rot issues in the bottom of the doors. Then it would get complicated. The process is fairly simple. Remove the hinges and latch mechanism from one of the doors and lay it flat plywood side down. Remove the aluminum frame edge. You will most likely need a square drive bit for the 8 point screws that hold them on. Carefully pry the aluminum skin off of the internal wood frame. It should only be held in place with some staples. Install the foam in the voids, and re-assemble the skin and frame. Hopefully you did not find any rot when you disassembled the door. The frames in mine are an odd dimension (1-1/8" thick) and the mid sections are laminates of up to 7 pieces. I guess to resist warping. Anyway, it should go pretty fast and not require you to clean out the trailer to perform the job.

Hopefully you will not have as cold of winter as you did last year.

How are your batteries holding up? Are you still charging them from the DC plug on the generator? I intentionally ran my battery down (fan on high for 24 hrs) so I could test the new switch mode battery charger I purchased last June. It is made by Black and Decker and is rated at 40 amps. It is fully automatic and I was able to completely recharge the battery in less than 3 hrs! I know this is hard on the battery, but I wanted to see just how well the charger would work. I recommend this particular battery charger. It works very well. Using a battery charger like this would help you conserve fuel, and hours on the generator. The DC plug on the gen is only rated at about 10 amps or so. I found my battery charger at an outlet mall, and paid less than $50.00 for it. At the current cost of fuel, it would not take long to recover that cost. It is also fairly small for its capabilities. About 1ft x 6in x 1ft. and weighs less than 10lbs. I did a review of it in the Electrical Secrets section under the heading Battery Charger.

Later
Mitch