Use it while Winterized

[Foiled Again]

This has been a rough winter, and it keeps teasing us with a few warm days followed by a hard freeze. I've seen several remarks where folks have dewinterized then needed to quickly get winterized again.

Well, here's an alternative - A friend of mine who hasn't been on the forums for a long time showed me this SIMPLE way to use his Airstream in the dead of winter.

You need a working battery and full propane tanks, bottled water, a teapot or pan, two towels & a washcloth or two, and a drywall tub 1/3 full of kitty litter.

drink the bottled water
sponge bathe with heated bottled water
make hot beverages with bottled water
run the furnace with propane or heaters with electric if you have it
if there are no shower houses, or for 2:00 am usage, figure out what the kitty litter is all about

There is no reason you cannot use any camper on a nice weekend early in the season without worrying about how to get re-winterized in a huge hurry.

Every winter in the past I've gone through the ritual of making up a heated white water hose, and twice I've had the heat tape short out. This winter I did the simple disconnect the hose and carry it inside trick. It's a "wake up" to run outside and reconnect it before having a shower, and trying to skip ANY of the layering because it's only a minute or two to get the thing hooked up - brrrrrr! I quickly decided to always keep the white tank just half full - and was able to keep it from freezing too.

Sometimes we do overthink things in the name of "comfort"

Paula

[SteveSueMac]

I was with you until figuring out what the kitty litter is for ... If I'm not going to camp in a tent, I'm surely not gonna scratch the litter and have at it like a cat! :-)

[masseyfarm]

Call it "EMERGENCY SURVIVAL"! If we listen to the dooms day rhetoric, we should all practise this occasionally.

Dave

[Don McKelvay]

Another thing - don't use kitty litter??? but rather windshield washer fluid or RV anti-freeze for the toilet. When we head south in Dec that is what we use.

[prudencepb]

Just clearing up some confusion...a kitty litter "toilet" works great for short term camping. The trick is to use it in a drywall bucket, NOT your camper's commode! Line the bucket with doubled kitchen trash bags and add a couple of inches of kitty litter. When it needs changed simply toss it into a dumpster, re-line your bucket and add some more kitty litter.

I've used this for primitive tent camping for years and it's cheap and easy.

[Len n Jeanne]

We've camped a number of times with a winterized Bambi. It is a little inconvenient, but no big deal. We got this advice from our AS salesman at Can-Am in Ontario.

1. You can travel with a lot of water jugs. Heat up water for tea, &c. in a teakettle on the stove.

2. You can put waste water down your sink and manually flush the toilet (keeping water jugs in the bathroom for that purpose) but just use a chaser of a light anti-freeze. He recommended ordinary windshield water fluid.

3. Keep the furnace on at night.

Our variations:

3. If you don't want to put any waste into system, then travel with some stackable flexible rectangular wash tubs, a big package of wet-wipes (baby wipes,) a large zip-lock freezer bag with ordinary garden peat moss, and sturdy plastic garbage bags of the right size to amply fit into your toilet bowl, and over the rim.

Wash and rinse your dishes in the plastic tubs, and dispose of the water appropriately outside. Use the wet wipes for basic hand-washing. For the toilet, line the bowl with one of your garbage bags, and add a small amount of peat moss-- it's highly absorbant. You can get several flush-free uses this way-- just put a little more peat moss over anything objectionable-looking. Dispose appropriately. (I thought about the sanitation aspect here, but figured dirty disposable diapers wind up in CG dumpsters, anyway.)

4. Try really hard to keep out condensation-- wet towels, jackets, &c either dry outside or in the truck. Esp. at night, leave a vent open to avoid waking up to the sight of condensation trickling down the inside walls.

5. When possible, camp near the CG restroom!

[Foiled Again]

Originally Posted by prudencepb

Just clearing up some confusion...a kitty litter "toilet" works great for short term camping. The trick is to use it in a drywall bucket, NOT your camper's commode! Line the bucket with doubled kitchen trash bags and add a couple of inches of kitty litter. When it needs changed simply toss it into a dumpster, re-line your bucket and add some more kitty litter.

I've used this for primitive tent camping for years and it's cheap and easy.

Karen... I thought the bucket was obvious as the place to pass one's waste - shame on me. Thanks to my baby sister for clearing up my post! Though lining the toilet with a plastic bag perhaps makes it more comfortable for "setters" than "pointers".
Paula

[SteveSueMac]

FYI - the bucket with kitty litter WAS obvious! That's why I panicked. First world problems :-)

[noreen&sal]

Ditto on the windshield washer fluid. Sal

[gsmithii]

Originally Posted by Foiled Again

This has been a rough winter, and it keeps teasing us with a few warm days followed by a hard freeze.

Paula

Thanks for the succinct summary, comments about kitty litter aside. I'm planning a trip north in January, weather permitting.

[r carl]

Reliance Luggable Loo® Toilet : Cabela's

[Len n Jeanne]

We bought one of those lug-a-loos during our tent camping days. For the past few years, it's been serving as a compost bucket by the kitchen door. Works really well.

[m.hony]

Originally Posted by Foiled Again

This has been a rough winter, and it keeps teasing us with a few warm days followed by a hard freeze. I've seen several remarks where folks have dewinterized then needed to quickly get winterized again.

Well, here's an alternative - A friend of mine who hasn't been on the forums for a long time showed me this SIMPLE way to use his Airstream in the dead of winter.

You need a working battery and full propane tanks, bottled water, a teapot or pan, two towels & a washcloth or two, and a drywall tub 1/3 full of kitty litter.

drink the bottled water
sponge bathe with heated bottled water
make hot beverages with bottled water
run the furnace with propane or heaters with electric if you have it
if there are no shower houses, or for 2:00 am usage, figure out what the kitty litter is all about

There is no reason you cannot use any camper on a nice weekend early in the season without worrying about how to get re-winterized in a huge hurry.

Every winter in the past I've gone through the ritual of making up a heated white water hose, and twice I've had the heat tape short out. This winter I did the simple disconnect the hose and carry it inside trick. It's a "wake up" to run outside and reconnect it before having a shower, and trying to skip ANY of the layering because it's only a minute or two to get the thing hooked up - brrrrrr! I quickly decided to always keep the white tank just half full - and was able to keep it from freezing too.

Sometimes we do overthink things in the name of "comfort"

Paula

We do it just like that except for the kitty litter part- and we could do it that way because we traveled with a cat (now deceased cat) with kitty litter, but- they way we do it is poop in a bag and tie it up- For #1 in the middle of the night I usually just wander out to a nearby tree, but men can do that-