[Archived]

Steve,

The Webasto has the capacity to keep your bus warm and toasty. A CC owner will need to share how well CC provided fan coils to keep basement utility spaces (fresh water piping) warm, but the capacity is there. To work, you will need battery power and more than 1/4 tank of diesel. Looking at the control unit (brain box that runs the burner) will tell you if yours is 12 vdc or 24 vdc.

You would want to ask the CC owner about bypassing the engine while you are sitting and not moving. No use using diesel to warm that big heat sink when you do not need to. Leave interior cabinet doors open to allow warm air into areas that contain fresh water pipes but no forced air circulation. Remember, holding tank drain lines lying on the ground will freeze any water standing in them.

As a note, a Newell owner spent two winters in Wy doing oil field land work with no freeze ups. He was using an Aqua Hot heater but the important point is his Webasto burner is the same as yours.

All the best.

[Tim]

Steve, we’ve spent part of the last 3 winters in the mountains out west.(We like winter sports) The wabasto will do a very nice job of heating the coach, last winter we were in Pinedale Wy with temps down to -26, the coldest it got to in the bus was 63. With the single pane windows in an XL it pays to have the heavy duty insulated blinds, amazing the difference in temps. Just for peace of mind I also ran a small electric heater in the water bay. Just monitor your tanks, fill and empty as needed, don’t leave hoses hooked up. You’ll be fine.

Oh, and Rudy seviced our Wabasto, he’s the best.

[Ron]

Steve,

You didn’t mention if you were going to be plugged in or not. Your CC should have electric bay heat as well as the Webasto.

[Archived]

Steve,

We’ve stayed in temps in the teens and the heating systems in our bus are totally adequate.

But I also ordered a fireplace off Amazon for $100, which fits neatly under our desk. It not only adds ambience for watching movies at night, but it puts out some great electric heat @ 12amps, requiring us to burn less Diesel thru the Webasto.

[Archived]

Yes Tom I will be plugged into 50 amp with a sewer connection.I’ll also be using water from a faucet in the park. No water in holding tanks.I have a short water hose that is electric. Where in water bay would I put a heater. No room.My 1rst bay has the slide out drawer & the electrical cabinet. Does this compartment need a portable heater?How is the bays heated,I see no heat exchangers. Thanks Steve

[Bill]

Why not have water in the holding tanks?

The greatest protection against extreme cold is the energy stored in the water in the holding tank. If you fill the water tank and keep the bay warm the holding tank ends up as warm as the bay is kept. As temperatures drop to extremes all that heat is helping prevent the bay from freezing.

[Tom]

I agree with Jon… Depending on how cold it’s going to get you don’t want to keep your main waterline connected. We were in Colorado last year and it got down to -20 a couple of nights and even with heated hose and heated faucet it all froze up.. So our process was to dump and fill each evening and stow all the hoses inside the heated bay.

Our webasto kept us nice and warm until it broke… in which case it got pretty cold. Electric toe heaters helped but we suplemented with two space heaters from walmart which we will travel with when we go back this year.

Good Luck

[Archived]

We had to spend one winter in our bus. The way it worked for us:

Only leave the 50 amp cord plugged in.

Once a week:

In the warmest part of the day, Connect sewer and water hose.

Fill the fresh water, and dump holding tanks.

Disconnect water and sewer hose and store in a warm bay.

On really cold days open cabinet doors in the kitchen and bath area to let warm air circulate around pipes.

DO not leave water and sewer hoses connected except when dumping and filling. They will freeze solid and crack and leak.

[Archived]

Steve,

You didn’t mention if you will be staying in the coach & using the systems or storing it…may make a difference in your approach.

Our cold weather routine is to run full fresh water tank and only dump (both tanks) when either gray or black reach about 3/4 full. As has been pointed out, more warm energy stored in the tanks if they have something in them than if empty. The only semi-perm connection we have is for electric. I never deploy the sewer hose & leave it out. We do run 2 small infrared electric heaters – one salon, one bedroom – to minimize/aid webasto use. If temps drop, our webasto does a great job of keeping us comfortable. I have installed a remote thermometer in the wet bay near the water pumps to monitor temps, but have never seen it drop below about 40 degrees.

Rudy put his “super tune” on our webasto as well. He has the “touch”, you know!! 😉

Good luck….

[Archived]

Steve it wont be any problem.’

In my 99 there are electric heat coils with a thermostat in the 3rd bay drivers side (mine is a 40′ so only 4 bays per side) They will work while pluged in or running the genny.

You also have the heat from the hot water heaters themselves. Every time I open that bay it is really toasty in there but I don’t know at what temp they would not provide enough ambient heat to help.

Next you can use your webasto to keep the bays warm. Turn on your webasto and push the button above the drivers seat that says Central Heat Control. This will open the bay hydronic heating loop for the webasto to provide heated coolant to the bays. You can also turn it on while going down the road and use the engine coolant.

If it is really cold be sure to stuff a rag into the shore cord door housing to help keep the warm air in and be sure to replace the sewer hose lid that goes through the floor of the plumbing bay.

If by some chance you get in a bind and the webasto wont fire, start the engine and when it reaches 140 degrees.

It will continue to run when the engine temp gets warm enough, it may shut down due to the time out on the flame detector so that is why the engine coolant needs to be around 140, that keeps the webasto from trying to fire.

[Kirby]

BTW, when we lived in western NY we would always get at least a week long stretch with temps no exceeding zero, and at least one or two days at or below minus 20.

The bus was stored in a barn and the only value to the barn was it minimized the wind on the coach but other than that it got as cold as it was outside. We did the following just for feeze protection. We filled the water tank and instead of using the bay heater supplied with the coach we used a small cube heater set to the 500 watt setting and aimed it at the water tank. That put warmth into that 130 gallon mass of water as well as keeping the bay warm. On the worst cold stretches it never got below 45 in the bay because that water which was usually about 50 degrees contributed to the warmth in the bay during the coldest times.

This doesn’t mean anything to you since you will be living in the coach and keeping inside temps warmer, but I placed a 3 setting heater on the kitchen counter and most of the time used the 500 watt setting. When it was approaching single digits I went to the 1000 watt setting, and when it got colder than that I went to the 1500 watt setting. Andre is correct in that opening cabinet doors is important if the interior is not heated to normal room temps, but when we were in the coach and it got down to minus 26 for 2 days we never had issues or concerns about pipes or staying warm. The only issue was with all the single pane glass a lot of heat escaped through the glass so driving at 55 wicked away a lot of heat and the heaters including the bus heat system were taxed. As soon as we stopped rolling it was still cold near the glass, but the heaters had no problems keeping us comfortable if the shades were down.

[Alvie]

I concur with what everyone else says. Our coach is parked outside in the Wisconsin winters, except when we go to Tennesse to visit Jeff, Buddy, and the crew and take an extra month or so to go to Florida. It does sit on the east side of the 24′ deep shop and I pull it ahead so the engine, rear axles, and water bay is somewhat protected.

Don’t leave the water and sewer hooked up. If it freezes, you have a HUGE problem. Refill and dump on warm days. Keep the water full. LOTS and LOTS of stored heat.

I have a heater in the water bay. Its simply a 120volt heat gun on (I think) a dedicated circuit, with a thermostat in the bay tied to an outlet for the heat gun, and Liberty had the visionary forethought to put a twist-plug on the cord and use a twist-plug outlet. I leave the thermostat at about 40 or 45. Do you have a simiilar heat gun set-up? If you don’t, I’m sure Jeff at ETLC could set one up for you.

I leave electric water heater on and have a remote termometer in the water bay. I’ve checked it at 10 degrees OAT, and the bay was 61 degrees.

Based on the advice and counsel of members like Jon and others, I have three 1000/1200 watt cube heaters placed throughout the coach (I wish the outlets were on five separate circuits rather than I think think two or three, but I’m working on that.

I did try to “winterize” the coach the first December we had it. Fortunately we were headed to Jeff’s just after Christmas. We got to ETLC, filled it with water, and I had water all over in the water bay. I didn’t winterize the Mach 5 Headhunter pump completely and busted it wide open. I also didn’t get water out of the line for the ice cube maker and that leaked all over when Jeff’s guys installed a new pump and turned it on. Used only compressed air to wintertize, no RV anti-freeze which was a mistake. Glad we only had the problems we actually had. If I had to leave the coach in sub-freezing weather for more than a few days and I couldn’t be there to monitor it, I would probably winterize it now that I know how to winterize, why to winterize, and what I’m doing.

Doing the above, the coach is fine. If we get really cold (below zero) for days on end, then I’ll fire up the Webasto and re-read what others have done when its really, really cold.

You ask, what do I wish I had?

(1) Infloor heat. The floor over the axles and tramsmission is really, really cold with bare feet or after a shower. So if you upgrade, make sure you consider infloor heat.

(2) Heat probes directly in the fresh water tank. While the water heater and the Liberty installed heat gun work, they are not as effective has having one or two 1000/1200 watt 120v probes in the tank itself immersed in the water. If I replace the water tank I’ll probably put heat probe bungs low in the tank along with a temp probe bung to control the hot probes. Have a digital readout in the coach and maybe in the water bay to monitor temp in the tank and I should be good to go, unless others on the Forum give me reasons why I shouldn’t do that.

I think you’ll do just fine in Angola.