Insulating Travel Trailer for Winter Living Part II

The most important part of insulating for winter is the skirt. Most of heat loss goes right through your floor. The winds (which can get as high as 45 mph up here) whip underneath and chills everything from the bottom up. We saved $150 off the heat bill this winter and that was only with 3/4 of the skirt done along with the insulation I put inside. We had hay bales for skirting last winter and wow the field mice felt like they got moved to the Vegas strip.

We also had propane, as you can see by the 450 gallon tank, for a few months until the forced air furnace broke. We switched to two electric large room space heaters. One is plugged in directly to our utility pole. We run the other one from the house line. We ran both to the utility line and two small room heaters from the house line when it got down to 15 below zero and were nice and toasty. They cost us less to run than the propane. Our outlet comes with a cover our electrician put in so no snow gets in. Our place is only 30 amps so we can't have BOTH heaters running on the house circuit.

Think lights out then resetting the breaker. It took us the summer to find out how much we could plug in to our new little rolling home. Plan to invest in some wind energy in the future. Our electric bill during winter is around $350/mth and $150/mth in the Summer. Sunlight isn't reliable but it's always windy up here. We're only about 1500 ft up.

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[ananominity]

How did you insulate the skirting, and how well did it work?

I'm having alot of trouble with that.

I skirted mine with 1/2" OSB and stapled carpet padding to the inside but we get alot of cold up from the floor.

The underbelly is aluminum sheeting which is terrible about absobing and transferring the cold. I'm considering spraying the whole underside with automobile undercoating.

Our doorframes are aluminum as well and condensation freezes on the inside.