Montana Owners Club - Keystone Montana 5th Wheel Forum - View Single Post - How I made it through the winter in the northeast

RovingHome · 04-07-2017, 10:47 AM

We noticed a draft was getting past the rubber seals around the sides through a half inch gap on really windy days.

The wife had a bunch of heavy insulated upholstery fabric from another project. So I cut it into 6-inch wide by 6 foot long strips then folded and placed in the gaps around all of the slides. Once installed it's completely unnoticeable and made a big difference in sealing in the heat.

The shower skylight was just two pieces of uninsulated Plexi that let in tons of heat in the summer and lots of cold in the winter. It had to go, so I pulled the inner skylight placed in a strip of thick batted insulation and a strip of reflectix. Then I painted the backside of the skylight with white plasti dip to make it look normal and so it could be removed in the future if someone wanted the sky light back.

Another huge cold air leak was the step, it must have no insulation at all. I'd check it with my IR thermometer and it would always be the outside temperature. So our quick fix that we ended up using the whole winter was just a left over piece of insulation laid over the step. I do plan on finding a better solution for this in the future but for now it kept the cold air out.

Next were the windows, the single pane glass that made up almost every wall was the biggest heat loss out of everything. By far the biggest help out of everything we did was cutting and lining the inside of every window with reflectix. This gained us 10 degrees of heat easy I can't stress enough how much this helped. I just cut the exact size of the window frame and the pressure held them in fine. I covered every single window besides for two small ones on each side to see out. We were faced so the large rear window so it was in the sun all day and had a large relectix style car sunshade we would unfold and put in the rear window at night and remove during the day for heat and light.

Then we pulled down all the ugly cornice boxes and fake curtains and bought these heavy 3 layer insulated curtains. The wife modified them all to fit the odd sized RV windows.

04-07-2017, 10:47 AM	#2
RovingHome Established Member Join Date: Mar 2017 Location: Upstate New York Posts: 13 M.O.C. #19508	We noticed a draft was getting past the rubber seals around the sides through a half inch gap on really windy days. The wife had a bunch of heavy insulated upholstery fabric from another project. So I cut it into 6-inch wide by 6 foot long strips then folded and placed in the gaps around all of the slides. Once installed it's completely unnoticeable and made a big difference in sealing in the heat. The shower skylight was just two pieces of uninsulated Plexi that let in tons of heat in the summer and lots of cold in the winter. It had to go, so I pulled the inner skylight placed in a strip of thick batted insulation and a strip of reflectix. Then I painted the backside of the skylight with white plasti dip to make it look normal and so it could be removed in the future if someone wanted the sky light back. Another huge cold air leak was the step, it must have no insulation at all. I'd check it with my IR thermometer and it would always be the outside temperature. So our quick fix that we ended up using the whole winter was just a left over piece of insulation laid over the step. I do plan on finding a better solution for this in the future but for now it kept the cold air out. Next were the windows, the single pane glass that made up almost every wall was the biggest heat loss out of everything. By far the biggest help out of everything we did was cutting and lining the inside of every window with reflectix. This gained us 10 degrees of heat easy I can't stress enough how much this helped. I just cut the exact size of the window frame and the pressure held them in fine. I covered every single window besides for two small ones on each side to see out. We were faced so the large rear window so it was in the sun all day and had a large relectix style car sunshade we would unfold and put in the rear window at night and remove during the day for heat and light. Then we pulled down all the ugly cornice boxes and fake curtains and bought these heavy 3 layer insulated curtains. The wife modified them all to fit the odd sized RV windows.